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Episode 43 – Zombie Yeti (Jeremy Packer) interview on Iron Maiden

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·analyzed·May 14, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.019

TL;DR

Jeremy Packer discusses his Iron Maiden pinball art design and creative philosophy.

Summary

Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti), a legendary pinball artist at Stern, discusses his career trajectory from fine arts to animation to commercial work, his distinctive illustration style, and the creative challenges of designing art for Iron Maiden pinball across three cabinet variants (Pro/Premium/LE). He explains his approach to honoring Derek Riggs' iconic artwork while incorporating new Iron Iron Maiden from their mobile game and comic book, and reflects on why pinball art represents the pinnacle of his creative work due to its historical longevity and community appreciation.

Key Claims

  • Iron Maiden pinball artwork will be released 'sooner than later and hopefully very soon'

    high confidence · Jeremy Packer directly to Head2Head Pinball hosts regarding Iron Maiden release timing

  • Jeremy Packer believed only 40-50% overlap between Iron Maiden fans and pinball fans, but realized the numbers were higher

    medium confidence · Jeremy Packer estimation of market overlap during interview

  • Designer (Keith Elwin) controls the pinball machine vision and picks the artist, not manufacturer mandate

    high confidence · Jeremy Packer explaining the designer selection process for art team

  • Derek Riggs used gouache for many Iron Maiden album artworks, which creates muddy blacks problematic for pinball presentation

    medium confidence · Jeremy Packer discussing color palette decisions for Iron Maiden

  • Jeremy Packer owns a vintage Roller Coaster pinball machine from childhood that inspired his career path

    high confidence · Jeremy Packer sharing personal history about his father's influence and pinball machine ownership

Notable Quotes

  • “If I'm ever going to leak anything, by the way, I'm not going to, but if I were going to leak anything, I'd leak final work.”

    Jeremy Packer — Response to being accused of leaking Ghostbusters artwork early; reveals designer approach to finished work standards

  • “I don't think I'm a great artist. Because it, like, well, for one thing, I'm not a competitive guy... I would set goals for like every time I drew something, it's like, no, it's still not quite what I'm seeing in my head.”

    Jeremy Packer — Core philosophy about creative process and self-improvement motivation

  • “If you don't have the fundamentals, kids, the software and hardware is just going to hurt your pocketbook.”

    Jeremy Packer — Advice to aspiring artists on the importance of traditional skills over tools

  • “When I was approached, I said, well, wait a minute, why would I do this? Like, what's the upside for me? This is nothing but risk, because as an Iron Maiden fan, I would just want to see Derek Riggs artwork on there, and that's it.”

    Jeremy Packer — Initial hesitation about taking Iron Maiden project despite being perfect fit

  • “I didn't necessarily want to go super dark with everything because it is pinball. I tried to make it as dark as I could but still approachable.”

    Jeremy Packer — Design philosophy balancing Iron Maiden's dark aesthetic with pinball's arcade appeal

  • “I know that people can complain about the shots in Ghostbusters all they want, but no one's going to give a shit in 50 years if they look at it and still like the way it looks.”

    Jeremy Packer — Articulates why pinball art represents career highlight: historical longevity and lasting appreciation

  • “The designers really do control their pins... Keeves even more so. Keith had this thing literally so well planned out.”

    Jeremy Packer — Confirms designer primacy in machine vision and describes Keith Elwin's specific collaborative approach

  • “Everything I do has a purpose, but the purpose is to be fun and engaging. It's not if I can make you weep or cry or think about shit.”

Entities

Jeremy PackerpersonKeith ElwinpersonDerek RiggspersonStern Pinball Inc.gameStern PinballcompanyHead2Head Pinballorganization

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: Jeremy Packer deliberately shifted from Derek Riggs' gouache-based color palette (which produces muddy blacks) to vibrant, saturated color values inspired by Iron Maiden's Legacy of the Beast mobile game and comic art, creating brighter, more visually dynamic pinball playfield

    high · Packer explained: 'Derek Riggs did a lot of his work with gouache... gets muddy... in pinball, black is not always good... I would start with the album base, but then I would work color palettes off of more along the lines of what would go in tune with the comic or the game'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jeremy Packer approached Iron Maiden art as a celebration rather than dark/gothic aesthetic, deliberately making it 'approachable' for modern pinball audience despite Iron Maiden's historical image

    high · Packer stated: 'I didn't want to go super dark with everything because it is pinball... I tried to make it as dark as I could but still approachable... the world's a lot different now... I wanted people to see it as a celebration of Iron Maiden'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Designer (Keith Elwin) holds primary control over artist selection and machine vision; Stern's role appears to be licensing/approval rather than creative direction

    high · Packer confirmed: 'The designers pick who they want to be on the art... The designer decides, they then approach me... the designers really do control their pins... Keeves even more so'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Iron Maiden pinball uses distinct visual strategies across Pro/Premium/LE models: Pro emphasizes core IP celebration for operators, LE provides bragging rights uniqueness, Premium bridges both with thematic depth

    high · Packer explained: 'The pro has to encompass the pin... Premium is the one where you meet in the middle... LE has to be unique... for bragging rights'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.102

0:00
Music You're listening to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. Find us on Facebook. Email us at headtoheadpinball.com or go to our website at headtoheadpinball.com Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast episode number 43 and my name's Martin and with me... Ryan C was another special guest Marty. Have we really got another guest? Yeah, this is a big one Marty. He has worked for the likes of Harley Davidson, The Foo Fighters, Metallica, Adidas, Charlie Sheen, the Coke Snorter himself, Microsoft, Stern Pinball, and most importantly, your mum, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Zombie Eddie himself, Jeremy Paco. How are you, Jeremy? How you going, Jeremy?
1:03
Hello, good morning, or good evening for you guys, but yeah, I'm doing well in yourselves. I'm doing good, Marty, how are you? It's not going to be quite up to the standards of our New Year's episode, but, you know, I've had a good night.
1:24
Well, that's good. Between that and the fact that I'm barely awake, I think we'll even out somewhere in between. We're probably both feeling the same at the moment. Both slurring our words.
1:38
Are you a Plants vs. Zombies fan? Is that where your name, Zombie E, came from? No, as a matter of fact, I had that coined before that game came out. Now, what's interesting, though, is I think the first, kind of the first official year that I was using it, I think it was like that summer or something when that game came out. And everyone was like, oh, no, fuck you. Anyway, the short of it is this. Um, uh, I, I was, uh, um, I did not do illustration when I got, I went to, I went to art school. I, I, uh, was a fine arts major. And, um, uh, then I watched all these people graduating, working at gas stations. And I said, I don't know about this. I think I need to find something else. So, uh, I switched majors, um, and, uh, was, uh, time-based media, which was film and animation. And, and, um, uh, which is where my focus was. As a matter of fact, my portfolio out of college was actually all traditional and 3D animation stuff.

Jeremy Packer — Core artistic philosophy rejecting pretense in favor of functional, engaging design

Ghostbusters
game
Pinball Magicgame
Deadpool (Stern pinball game)game
Joshua Smithperson
Iron Maidenorganization
Legacy of the Beastproduct
Steve Ritchieperson
John Trudeauperson
Christopher Franchiperson
Roller Coastergame
  • ?

    product_launch: Iron Maiden pinball artwork/packages will be released 'sooner than later and hopefully very soon' after approvals came through; indicates imminent reveal but not immediate shipping

    high · Jeremy Packer stated: 'I do know it's going to be sooner than later and hopefully very soon... I do know when approvals come in and things like that because then I get to, they tell me so that I can relax'

  • ?

    content_signal: Jeremy Packer identifies pinball art as career highlight despite extensive work in music industry (gig posters) and commercial design, citing historical longevity and community appreciation as unique value

    high · Packer explained: 'Inherently it's the longevity of it... it's a very unique and appreciated space... I know that people can complain about shots in Ghostbusters all they want, but no one's going to give a shit in 50 years if they look at it and still like the way it looks'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jeremy Packer emphasizes traditional artistic fundamentals over software/hardware tools; critiques young artists relying on digital tools without foundational drawing skills

    high · Packer stated: 'People who actually know what they're doing on paper and on a canvas can leverage the tools... If you don't have the fundamentals, kids, the software and hardware is just going to hurt your pocketbook'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jeremy Packer demonstrates mature resilience to community criticism, crediting early negative experience (high school art teacher sabotage attempts) with forming thick skin and non-defensive approach to subjective art interpretation

    high · Packer noted: 'I had an art teacher who tried to call every college... tell them not to take me... I had already had a really great time not giving a shit what other people think... If people don't like what I did, that's art subjective. I don't have an issue with that'

  • $

    market_signal: Jeremy Packer initially underestimated overlap between Iron Maiden fans and pinball fans (estimated 40-50% at high end) but discovered actual numbers were significantly higher

    medium · Packer stated: 'I didn't think there would be as many pinball fans who were also Iron Maiden fans... I thought maybe 40 to 50 percent at the high end. And I don't know, could be higher than that'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Iron Maiden pinball artwork successfully integrates multiple concurrent IP assets: Derek Riggs' historical album art, new Legacy of the Beast mobile game aesthetic, and companion comic book styling

    high · Packer explained: 'The mobile game had just come out when we started and the comic book was gestating... I was told to meld everything together... iconic Derek Riggs stuff, new directions... comic and game go different directions stylistically'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Keith Elwin's approach to designer-artist collaboration involves detailed upfront planning and geometry/rules communication; contrasts with previous designer (John Trudeau) who used more hands-off 'do what you want' approach

    high · Packer noted: 'Keith had this thing literally so well planned out... I sort of knew sort of a map of everything very early on... he's a very thoughtful designer... high-level player, thinking of the rules and everything else'

    • 2:46
    Needless to say, I met my wife in college and we got married. And by the way, I'm trying to make this short. I got a job working actually because I was kind of a technically inclined nerd also.
    3:01
    I applied for a job at a toy company, Resource Toys. They used to make video game toys, which is wonderful because I love video games. And I love toys. And they actually at the time wanted to do online sales. And that was, you know, before Amazon had more than one row of tabs. So it was the early years. And long story compressed very shortly, ended up working in that department and sort of helping them create an online store, which then got leveraged into its own business.
    3:37
    And I did like Hershey's first online store and all this other crap. And I did that for years. And I was creative director for a few different software companies. And then I guess it's been about seven or eight years ago, an old friend of mine from middle school who is actually a professional now, He does a lot of stuff with Nike and Lucasfilm and stuff like that. He goes by Hydro 74. His name is Joshua Smith. And he was like, man, I look for your work all the time. Are you doing comics? Are you doing this, that, the other? And I'm like, well, no, I haven't done jack shit. And he's like, well, why? And I'm like, well, I don't know.
    4:21
    I got sidetracked. I had a family and all this other stuff. So he kind of encouraged me to start picking up a pencil again. It had been like 10 years since I had really drawn anything. And what I found was in that 10 years, all that growing up that I did in other avenues actually helped me quite a bit with the illustration stuff. I sort of approach things a lot differently than I used to.
    4:51
    And it was advantageous and it was good. And he hired me to do a few things here and there and helped push me. And then I'm like, hey, how come all these jackasses have these weird names that are out here in this art world? And he's like, I don't know.
    5:06
    And I'm like, okay. So my wife, because I, after hours, was working on this illustration stuff. My wife sort of inadvertently coined it because I sort of walked around like a zombie.
    5:19
    And I'm a tall guy and I was not shaving regularly out of pure laziness. And so it sort of just all kind of came natural from there. And Zombie Eddie was sort of born out of that as a joke, I might add.
    5:36
    Now, it kind of worked out in the end only because it's such a stupid name. And Jeremy Packer is an even worse name. Nobody likes that. Three syllables? Nobody likes saying three syllables. Well, if you're in Australia, you'd be called Jezza Marty? Jezza? Jezza. J-Bomb. The J-Train. Is that what Jezza is? Is that Jeremy? Or is it? I don't know. Yeah, Jezza. We call you Jezza. Jezza. Jezza. Oh, interesting. Jezza. Oh, nice. So obviously you've been doing art for a very long time and we're going to get on to probably all the machines that you've done and you've got quite a distinct style.
    6:20
    Has that always been the case or did you sort of just grow into that over time? You know, my style's evolved, but I've always had kind of a distinct style, which I have a lot of people asking me, How do you create a style? I have a lot of young kids. By the way, these young kids nowadays, they think software and hardware is going to make them artists. And here's the key. People who actually know what they're doing on paper and on a canvas can leverage the tools that are out there and make amazing stuff. If you don't have the fundamentals, kids, the software and hardware is just going to hurt your pocketbook. Anyway, that's my lesson today. So what would you say has made you a great artist? And look, you are a great artist. So what do you think has been your secret?
    7:16
    Well, you are. The fact that I don't think I'm a great artist. Because it, like, well, for one thing, I'm not a competitive guy. Like, I grew up in northern Indiana, which, by the way, if you're tall, actually, if you're not tall, If you're in Indiana, you're supposed to play sports and in particular basketball. I was always the tallest kid in my class and I had no coordination. As a kid, I was awful at all sports. I learned very early on not to be competitive because there was no way I was going to win. I leveraged that in my art career. And it was always just sort of a, you know, kind of a, I would set goals for like I was every time I drew something, it's like, no, it's still not quite what I'm seeing in my head type of thing. So I just always try to do something better than the last time, which which is, you know, you could you drive yourself nuts. But again, I would say my biggest asset is I don't think I'm a great artist. But were you one of these guys that was, you know, like drawing during school? Like was it always something that you were really interested in? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, my parents have wonderful stories. And kindergarten, my kindergarten teacher said whenever I would start to act up or misbehave, all she had to do was tell me that she was going to take coloring time away from me. And then I would be fine. And it's true throughout elementary school. Back in my day, I literally, the way I paid attention in class was I would doodle, and I was able to do both at the same time, and I always did wonderful.
    9:02
    Now, apparently nowadays they don't allow that so much according to my kids, so I would fail miserably now is what I'm saying.
    9:09
    Having said that, though, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. So just to touch on what you said before about how you don't think of yourself enough and kind of hold your art as maybe as high-esteem as other people do, how do you stop that from being self-deprecating and self-loathing? Do you look at your art and say, it could be better, or I'll do better next time? How does that work with what you're producing right now? Well, so I do two things. One is I go ahead and I work and I work and I work until I go, you know what? Even if this isn't great in my mind, I've put so much damn time into it. People will at least see the effort and hopefully give me a pass.
    9:54
    That's sort of like my mantra in my mind. But surely you've seen the stuff that people have said about your pinball art, and that's obviously where we come into it because we focus on the pinball stuff. Like, honestly, it's the one thing people have unanimously said is your art is amazing. Full stop. Well, I appreciate that, but I look at it, I put it in perspective because I have a lot of people I look up to in the art world, and I have a lot of friends in the art world that do things better. Now, when I say that, here's my thing, and I tell my kids this because my kids are all, you know, pretty artistic as well. And so I always say don't try to do things like somebody else because you're bound to fail.
    10:41
    You know, if you want to make yourself in this market, because it's a crowded market. It's small, but at the same time, it's a crowded market. If you want to make yourself stand out from the crowd, do things differently. Now, fortunately, I was raised to be an individual, for better or worse. My parents started their own business and they were very hardworking people who gave me a good work ethic.
    11:09
    For me, it's one of those things where I always just tried to find my niche. Now, what that came out of is complete self-indulgence because I would see things and go, oh, that's pretty cool, but man, you know what I'd love to have on my wall? That's sort of where I started, especially when I started doing the gig poster stuff. That was the greatest thing in the world because, man, bands just trust you. They go, hey, do whatever you want. And I'm like, what? And you're serious?
    11:38
    And so that's sort of like, honestly, that's probably the space that I balance out my insecurities is when I get to do that stuff.
    11:49
    But, yeah, there are times, there are days where I go, man, what in the hell am I going to do? So, like, especially in pinball because it's, you know, you've got to bite off digestible chunks. But it's, you know, when you're at the front of the line looking at, oh, man, I've got to get all the way down, you know, to this path, to this final approved color and everything else. Like, I don't know where the fuck I'm going to go with this. But knowing that people are critical as they are and, you know, it's a massive echo chamber that we know. Does that worry you? When you're designing, do you worry that people are going to be critical of your work? Well, listen, are you talking about the Ghostbusters? Anyway, that was one of the first things that came out when Ghostbusters, so there was a leak on Ghostbusters. Yes. By the way, I was accused and asked if I was the leak. Let me tell you one thing. If I'm ever going to leak anything, by the way, I'm not going to, but if I were going to leak anything, I'd leak final work. Anyway, but that was sort of my first taste of, oh, yeah, no, you know, like, you know, critics. Well, now, fortunately, I've never really given a shit. Like in high school, I had an art teacher who, by the way, tried to call every college that I applied to and got scholarships from and tell them not to take me because she hated me because I didn't listen to her. So I had already had a really great time not giving a shit what other people think. Especially when I put the effort into it, I know that at the end of the day I can rest at night knowing that I put the effort into it. If people don't like what I did, that's art subjective. I don't have an issue with that. If somebody wants to call, you know, an Ellie package Christmas, I don't have a problem with that because it's, you know, it's their own interpretation. It's one of the first time of the year, right? Well, listen, everybody loves Christmas. There's not one person who does not love Christmas. Having said that, there's decisions that get made when you don't always have all the pieces of the puzzle too. So sometimes you have to make the best decision you can at the time. Yeah. Now Jeremy, let's move on and use that as a segue to talk about Ion Maiden. I guess the question on everyone's lips is where the fuck is the Pino at where FI?
    14:28
    Well, listen, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but I don't care. No, no, I'm joking. I think it's safe to say you'll be seeing it sooner than two weeks ago. I know when approvals come in and things like that because then I get to, like, they tell me so that I can relax for a second. And I do know it's going to be sooner than later and hopefully very soon. I don't know when it's going to be. I do know that it's not like, in all cases here, it's not like Stern was holding back on purpose. Although, I said this. I think it's not a bad idea if you actually give each package their own due. Yeah, sure. As far as, now, but you don't want to stretch it out for months. You want to do it, you know, maybe like days or weeks. What is it, fruit? You could do the three days of Maiden. I don't know, whatever. Did you have a different approach for each of the models? Yeah, I do. I have ideas that maybe are not right and maybe other people don't agree with, but my thought is this. The pro has to be the overall, you know, this encompasses this pin so that, number one, people go, oh, well, I don't really care that, you know, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles. Like, you know, this is what the core of this entire pin was, and obviously it's going to be out there with operators and people are going to, you know, you want people to be enticed to play this game and put money into it. And then you go to the LE, which has to be unique. Like, I don't think that the LE has to be, like, more specialized, yet it is. But it needs to be unique, because this is something that people are going to use as bragging rights. Right? Like, you know, people are going to be like, oh, I've got this, and you don't. And then the premium is the one where you meet in the middle where you have this sort of specialized package that, you know, again, it's all-encompassing, but it's something that has to thematically hit the fan. And so Iron Maiden is an interesting one because I didn't think there would be as many pinball fans who were also Iron Maiden fans. And I think I was wrong about the numbers. I thought it was maybe going to be like, if we were lucky, maybe 40 to 50 percent at the high end. And I don't know. It could be higher than that because I'm a stupid American. Were you a fan of Ion Maiden before or even their art? Oh, absolutely. I was a huge fan of Derek Riggs as a kid. Well, first off, I'm a huge music fan to begin with.
    17:33
    Seeing Eddie as a kid, I remember the first time that I saw an album. And by the way, I grew up back when there were still records. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I'm like, you know, 20 years old.
    17:51
    Sure. But look, I was saying that particularly with Iron Maiden, the art being so iconic and so detailed, you know, and again, I grew up on records as well. It's like you would put the record on and stare at the artwork. And I'm particularly, for me, I just remember staring at the art. And the more you stared at it, the more detail you would see. So, I mean, that's a big undertaking and a big responsibility that you've got to take doing that art justice. Well, yeah, and when I was approached, and I'll be honest, this is how I approach anything that I'm asked to do, but when I was approached, I said, well, wait a minute, why would I do this? Like, what's the upside for me? This is nothing but risk, because as an Iron Maiden fan, I would just want to see Derek Riggs artwork on there, and that's it. So anything less than that is just that, less than. And it's, you know, so what happened was, so I've got the, you know, I was telling you, like, I'm not competitive, like with other people, but I'm really competitive with myself. I was finally convinced because the one thing that I always say, and it always bites me in the ass, is I say, you know what? And I usually take on jobs and projects that interest me or challenge me. And I'm like, ah, shit, I got caught on that one. So they said, well, won't that be a challenge? I'm like, yeah, I guess so. And so, oh, yeah. And, you know, Keith Elwin helped sweeten the pot. But, you know, when I found out that Keith was involved and he actually wanted me to be involved in this and I had met with him or whatever. And by the way, fair warning to all listeners, there's going to be an edit here because I'm going to tell a joke that I can't publicly tell.
    19:47
    And I apologize, you're going to have to edit this one. So what happened was I met Keith and we talked and I had obviously known of him but I didn't know him personally. We talked for a period of time and I had been in there for another project I was working on and so we got to know each other a little bit here and there. And occasionally he understood my jokes and laughed at them so I'm like, oh, he's not so bad. And then we were talking and I'm like, I still don't know about this Maiden thing. And one day he said something that resonated with me and it really just changed my opinion of him entirely. And I said, I'm on board. He said, hilarious joke edited out. And I thought, you know, that's great. As a pinball designer, there's nothing to be concerned about working with you. So let's do this.
    20:43
    Anyway, you've got to edit that one out. So, okay, so did Stern approach you with, how does it happen? Do they say, okay, we've got Iron Maiden, and do they pick up the phone and say, Jeremy, are you interested? We need your answer in a couple of days. How does it work? Do you get to see the assets that you'd be working with before you say yes? So the way it works is actually the designers pick who they want to be on the art.
    21:16
    So like, you know, Steve, as a matter of fact, Steve Ritchie and I almost work together, but this one put me on the schedule for it.
    21:25
    It's sort of, you know, the designer decides, they then approach me and say, hey, would you be interested? And then I say things like, I don't know. And they go, it will be a challenge. No, and, you know, yeah, that's sort of, the designers, you know, really do control their pins. You know, even though they've got these wonderful teams of people, myself excluded, but, you know, like all of their mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, all these people, you know, Chuck's team, everybody, they really sort of make the decision up front and drive everything. And I'll say this, Keeves even more so. Now, obviously, I, you know, had worked previously with, you know, an ex-employee. No, I worked previously with John Trudeau, who had a completely different style. He was very much, you know, like just, you know, kind of go to town and, you know, he'd occasionally, before I would start something, would be like, well, I have kind of an idea of what this will be over here. This will be over there, but do what you want with it. Take it or leave it, whatever.
    22:39
    But with Keith, it was interesting because Keith had this thing literally so well planned out. I sort of knew sort of a map of everything very early on. And we would sort of talk and pass some things out. But he's a very thoughtful designer. And I'm not saying others aren't, but he definitely is a high-level player, thinking of the rules and everything else. As he was sort of ironing out geometry and stuff, I was very impressed with Keith. He's a good guy. And hopefully he continues. Did he choose the three Ion Maiden things for the Pro Premium and Ali, or was that you, or where does that come from? We both did. We both did. And as a matter of fact, some of it switched.
    23:35
    And so here's one thing I'll just throw out there. So if you notice, you know, the band itself is now branching out. They have, you know, a mobile game and they also have a comic book. And those two things, the mobile game had just come out when we started and the comic book was gestating. But they had sent us some early previews of that stuff. And so it was sort of my job to meld everything together. So you have, you know, the iconic Derek Riggs stuff. You have, you know, these new directions. And by the way, the comic and the game, while being related, both, you know, they go different directions stylistically too. And so, you know, we had to kind of put it all together. As soon as we found out that Legacy of the Beast was going to be Iron Maiden and it was Iron Maiden and Legacy of the Beast, it's like, okay, so how do you get this all working? Now, I think it kind of worked to my advantage because, again, it's an excuse. It's an excuse to have art on there that's not just Derek Riggs.
    24:44
    So then people are like, okay, well, what the hell? If he did it, that's fine. But not only that, you've also then got the different albums which have a unique style in themselves. So you've got the art from the game, the comic and all the different albums which have evolved over time and they've got completely different things as well. How the hell do you incorporate that all into a bloody play field? Basically what you do, I always started with the album. Everything always started with the album and then I would sort of decide how I could go ahead and kind of where I could... I'll tell you this is a very boring thing but when it comes to color palette I would start with the album. Now, here's the interesting thing. Derek Riggs did a lot of his work, and I shouldn't say all of it, but I know quite a few of the pieces were done with gouache. Anyone who's ever worked with gouache knows it gets muddy, and in particular when you introduce black. And so in pinball, other than line, black is not always good. If you can use a darker value of something that has some color and saturation to it, it's always more bright and cheery and wonderful. And I personally like color, so I went ahead and would start with the album base, but then I would work color palettes off of more along the lines of what would go in tune with, say, the comic or the game. And the comic even more so because, you know, obviously they do the same thing. They don't like black others in the lines either.
    26:30
    So it was just sort of a, you know, I had to feel my way through it. You know, if you want to call it intuition, I mean, it was, you know, informed intuition because I, you know, was always sort of looking and planning whenever I knew tonally where I was going to go. So I'd look across the board of everything that was there and then be like, OK, how do I find the best of all this and put it all together? You know, it was just sort of, you know, it's kind of not something you can exactly plan out, but you can sort of, you know, at least plot a course and say, OK, I'm heading this direction and see what happens along the way. Well, when we first heard it was you, and we got tipped off early on, our response was, fuck yeah. Who tipped you off? Well, we're not mentioning who, but everyone tells us shit. But our response was, fuck yeah, you know, if someone's going to do this, it's going to be you. At what stage, when you were doing the art for this, did you go, fuck yeah, this is great? Well, not until it was done, so, you know, a couple of weeks ago. When I say that, I only mean because, again, I looked at it as like nothing but a potential for failure for me, right? Like, listen, you know, Ghostbusters was well received, the art packages and everything like that. You know, even Magic Girl was well received, and I apologize to everyone.
    28:03
    Magic Girl is gorgeous, you know that. Well, you know what's funny about that is I started that when I still had a day job and I didn't, you know, I wasn't doing illustration full time. And so I, because of that schedule, was able to spend just unlimited hours, you know, sort of finding my way through that one. But that's a story for another day. Anyway, yeah, I was excited, but I was, you know, fearful. But that's good because when I'm in the fear zone, that makes me just work that much harder to try to get myself out of the fear zone. So I was excited the whole time. Listen, how iconic is Iron Maiden? As somebody who is fortunate enough to do both things in the music world and in the pinball world, if I was going to do a music pin, I'm like, why not? This was the best possible choice that I could have. Now having said that, I didn't want to go, and I know I'm going to catch a lot of hell for this, but because of the comic, because of the game and stuff like that, I didn't necessarily want to go super dark with everything because it is pinball. And I don't, like, I tried to make it as dark as I could but still approachable. Like, I think we live in a different world now. Like, let's be honest, Iron Maiden is not dark. And as dark as they may have seemed when I was seven years old, the world's a lot different now. There's a lot darker stuff out there. So it's one of those things where I wanted people to see it and see it as a celebration of Iron Maiden, I guess. I know that sounds so tacky, but whatever. Jeremy, you mentioned on a website, I was just Googling you before, and half the shit I was Googling was the plants versus zombies. The other half is just your stuff.
    30:01
    And basically, I'm paraphrasing here, but you kind of said that your career highlight was kind of doing art for Pimball. And Christopher Frenchy said something similar on our show. What is it about Pimball art? Because you do do a lot of work outside of Pimball for bands and things like that. So why is Pimball so much different than everything else you do professionally? And why is it one of the favorite things that you do? Well, I'll try to be as succinct as I can. First off, I grew up in the days of arcades, and I grew up with a father who loved pinball.
    30:41
    Keep in mind, my parents were hardworking. We were definitely lower middle class growing up. But my dad had bought an old used pinball machine that he got just an incredible deal on. It was an old Gottlieb roller coaster, so it's not like the greatest thing in the world. But at the same time, it was a working machine, and it was in our basement, our house. And my dad got it because he loved pinball as a kid, so he definitely got me interested at that. I used to stare at this thing while I wasn't playing, when somebody else was playing, and think, man, you know, this artwork is like, you know, like I like the, you know, the silkscreen, the hard lines and stuff. And at that time, I didn't know that's why it looked the way it did.
    31:28
    But I'm like, man, you know, I'd love to, you know, do something here, whatever. And I always thought of different things that I'd want to do. And I'm sure somewhere I've probably even got drawings of me drawing stupid pinball machines that I wanted to see when I was a kid. And chances are they were probably like video game licenses because I was a stupid kid. But, so that got me. So, you know, getting to now, I'm actually proud of everything I've done. I don't think I've taken on anything that I couldn't be potentially proud of. I'm also a very optimistic individual, believe it or not. I'm also cynical as hell, but I'm very optimistic. But what about pinball makes it special?
    32:12
    Well, so inherently it's the longevity of it. Like, look, silkscreen posters in the gig world also have this, but it's in a smaller sort of space. Like the idea of pinball, you know, if you do it right, living historically, it's such a small, small space, but it's a very, very unique and appreciated space too. Is, you know, it's just, it's very fortunate and lucky to be a part of, and it's not lost on me. I know that people can complain about the shots in Ghostbusters all they want, but no one's going to give a shit in 50 years if they look at it and still like the way it looks.
    33:09
    And that's interesting to me. I'm going to be dead and gone probably in a week or two. I don't know when. We don't know when. No one knows when. No one knows when. What am I saying? No, but that was a cry for help. Hey, this is a true story. A little side note. When I was a senior in high school, remember I told you my art teacher hated me and we did not get along. Now, I think it's because she sobered up, but whatever.
    33:43
    I'm not defaming her. That was a joke. Anyway, I actually had to do a senior art show where you have to put up all your work you had done and like all this other stuff. And by the way, it's in a space with everybody else's artwork. It's just that I had like a wall to put crap on or whatever, right?
    34:03
    They told me I had to title everything. And by the way, I am not a pretentious artist. I absolutely hate pretense. Everything I do has a purpose, but the purpose is to be fun and engaging. It's not if I can make you weep or cry or think about shit. Um, and, uh, uh, I, I was so, uh, like, just put off by having to title everything that I, as a joke, I would make up these pretentious titles and then I would put in parentheses as a subtitle, A Cry for Help. And I did this to every piece, right? My parents got called by the guidance counselor to discuss, uh, my, my, uh, well-being. Anyway, so that was fun. Uh, what was I talking about before? Is this why when you list every single company that you've worked for on your website, you also write your mom? Well, yeah, that's just a great joke. I'm perpetually 13 years old, and as a matter of fact, my Xbox Live ID, my PSN name tag and everything, I was a beta tester for Xbox Live. So I got your mom. That's my gamer tag. And it's also my PlayStation Network. It's probably worth like half a thousand dollars or something, right? Listen, I literally get, you know, and by the way, in hindsight, I should have just called myself your mom instead of Zombie Yeti. Anyway, I get messages like every like ten minutes on there. It's like, oh, nice gamer tag or where's dad? And, you know, I mean, it's just, you know, ten-year-old kids. But it's entertaining. I saw it on your website, but then I saw it on another website, so I'm like, okay, he's not going to make the same joke twice. So I actually Googled your mom brand or your mom product, and I was like, no, this is just a joke.
    36:03
    No, it's a joke. Yeah, it's a joke. At the end of the day, any good quick response that ends in your mom is always good. It's a good retort when somebody says something. So just going back to Ion Maiden then, so with the design that you're doing, how much of it was either knocked back or what was sort of like the approval process with the band or whoever manages the band? Well, so the way it sort of works, the way I work I should say, first and foremost is I sort of do like, you know, rough sketches that then get approved to go to ink. And that's to head off changes so that when you get to the ink stage I can just focus on the ink. And at that point they can decide if I inked it well or not and say, no, do this, do this, which is, you know, usually not the case. But and then from there it's color. Now, in this case, we tried to head off a lot of stuff up front. As a matter of fact, I almost think, and I could be wrong on this, so don't quote me on it, ask Keith. But I think Keith and I originally had the LE and the premium focus reversed of what it is now to a point. I almost think that's how we started out. And they were like, you know, actually, and they gave us a really good reason to make a change and say, no, no, no, switch those. Make this one the premium, make this one the LE.
    37:34
    And obviously they know their brand way better than we do. As much as we think we may know it, as much as we would like to think, you know, that we have the inside track on that, you know, we don't. We have to defer. And so I will say along the process I had, you know, minor changes. And then at one point they sort of rethought one thing and it was sort of at the same time we were rethinking things too And at first I was like oh man this is going to add a lot of work And then I was like oh wait a minute this is actually a good idea so it kind of worth it And so that probably pushed out why we have the premium and LE reveals a little bit later down the line was playing catch up with some of those changes. But we're not talking anything arbitrary. It was all for the betterment of the project and for the fans. So I'm okay with it and I was okay with it. Now, keep in mind too, I'm a stupid American and I'm a pushover.
    38:50
    So if you think about when you look at the play field, the first thing you see is obviously the Egyptian theme and probably the Power Slave album. I know it's got everything else there, but that's what you see when you first see the playfield. Was that your direction, or was that sort of given to you?
    39:13
    Well, so Keefe had sort of laid out his sort of master plan of inserts, and he sort of laid them out in a pyramid, and he was like, you know, I'm thinking like, you know, I don't know, maybe some sort of power slave-y type of stuff, like in this area, right? And so I'm like, well, yeah, no, absolutely. Obviously, you know, as a focal point, that would be good. So what I did was I took that when I actually worked on it and I sort of reacted to myself and made a decision that I don't know. And I still to this day don't know that everybody agrees on their likes. But the one thing about Ghostbusters, and keep in mind, with Ghostbusters I did, I tried to do the play field as if it were silkscreen. Old school, like hard lines, there's very little, you know, that could not be traditionally screen printed. Not to say four color screen printed like the way, you know, pens used to be at Stern. And so with this one I said, you know what, I got so much shit on there. Even though it's about negative space, it's very little negative space, I wanted to open up a lot of space. I wanted, and I know this is going to sound stupid, but the thing I loved about Keith's design was, first off, you could always see where the ball was. Boy, that's nice.
    40:43
    And secondly, that's a joke, but it's true. And secondly, I loved the openness down on the lower half of the playfield that sort of allowed you to, I guess for me, because again I used to come from user interface, I looked at it and I said this is great space to sort of play with to sort of allow people to appreciate each of these shots. So you can go ahead and be like, oh, it seems so open. And so I like the idea of extending the power slave area into a desert wasteland that, by the way, had I had time, I would have probably chocked full of all kinds of stuff. But I wanted there to be openness that I did not have in Ghostbusters. And again, for better or worse, some people probably like it. Some people go, no, it's too much. But I wanted it. Interesting topic because do you, like, would you prefer less inserts on a Pinball machine? Like, obviously the more space there is, the easier it is for you to do your work, right? Yeah, I think less inserts sounds like the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Because I always say that because you need those to tell the tale. And Keith's proven it with this game. You don't need anything but looking at that play field to understand the game at any given time. And it's because of those inserts. Like, if you start taking them down, and maybe, I don't know, maybe you do some sort of combo, you know, like in the old, you know, days where it would essentially be like, you know, thousands and ten thousands and whatever. But I don't. Keith also allowed me to, you know, peek in some art over some inserts, which I would have loved to have actually experimented with more and pushed further. But obviously time is of the essence, so, you know, you go where you can. But no, I actually understand the depth that's needed for these games. You need the inserts. So that's not the thing that I would change. If I wanted more art on this thing, I would say you go ahead and figure out how to get some art on that damn blank speaker area. Come on, guys.
    43:12
    It's my own personal opinion. Instruction cards. Well, yeah, that's not bad either. Oh, my God. No, I'll be honest. So coming off of Ghostbusters is my first actual produced pin, clearing my throat.
    43:31
    You know, the one thing that I was, you know, kind of sad about was losing my ratio and format, losing some space on the Translight and Backglass because of the LCD. But in the end, I'm fine with it. It's okay. But I miss it a little bit. What can you tell us about the premium artwork? Because by the time people listen to this, they might have already seen it. But it says on the feature matrix it's Egyptian themed. So how much Egyptian-ness is there on there? Is there like the Sphinx style thing? Is it just big Iron Maiden letters? It's nothing but sand.
    44:21
    It's actually a new technique. It's all sand, and it's actually you have to take a penny and scrape the side to reveal what's underneath the sand.
    44:31
    By the way, that's not true. I don't recommend it. You will damage your machine, and I do not warrant you that.
    44:39
    No, I can't say anything because I'm a good guy. All I'll say is this. I think if people like the idea of Egyptian themes and the Iron Maiden logo, they'll love it. Okay.
    45:02
    I'm sorry. No, no, stop. Let me go back. No. I think if people like Christmas, This is not for them. I've missed something. What's the Christmas comment? What one's that for? It's just green and red. Yeah, because of the green trim. Which one? The red armor on the LA. The one that you're getting, Marty. The fucking LA that you're getting has red trim. This is why I'm trying to work it out. So that's the one that I've got. I've seen the art. Are people calling that the Christmas edition? Just us stupid Americans. No, yes, you know, it started as, I think, a joke that somebody made. Can you believe it? And I think I'm making this joke because I saw on Pinside that there were, you know, quite a few people who were like, hey, look, I'm funny, I'm making the same joke. And so I'm just sort of trying to run it into the ground like they are, I guess. Yeah, just on an own. Listen, you are going to absolutely adore that machine.
    46:16
    First off, and this is nothing against Sterner, the folks that do their photo shoots, but the photos of that are awful. When you see the actual thing. And listen, I'm not talking about mine. I'm just talking about the printing, everything about it, when you see it in person. Yeah, well, none of those shots have ever looked as good as what they do in real life. And I know that they try to do their best with what they can to highlight, I guess, the power. But, you know, and obviously with the LE, we've got whatever the foil sides are. That doesn't come across in any picture, so you really won't be able to see that. Yeah, and the foil comes through on anything that's metallic. So I actually masked out non-metallic areas and stuff. So it's got a really interesting look to it as you walk around it. It's pretty cool. I think, anyway. What do I know? Jeremy, you've got a Ghostbusters, and obviously, well, not obviously, but you chose that Ghostbusters maybe depending on the artwork package that you like the most that you produce. So what Ion Maiden do you plan on getting is where I'm trying to get at. Well, now, first off, let me be very clear. That's not a loaded question. I chose the Ghostbusters package that I did because I didn't have a lot of money. And so, no, I didn't negotiate well. I'm not smart. I don't know this stuff, right? No, I'm joking. I got a wonderful deal in my contract. And so I chose the pro because I honestly was more fearful of how the hell am I going to handle more things going wrong with a machine if they go wrong as everyone's telling me that they go wrong eventually.
    48:22
    No, that's not true either. You're right. The Pro's the best one. Anyway, having said that, I'm trying to be nice. No, no. I was informed that I can do something special when I have mine on order, and so I'm actually going to do a premium with one side, the Pro, if that says it. I could not get a hold of an LE. Ah, by the way. Sure, okay. True story. They would not. Well, Francis does the same. And he does like a little hybrid and makes them make up a, you know, super extra limited edition one of one kind of thing just so he can be able to do the same. Yeah, well, I'm actually, the front, the cabinet front, I'm actually, I'm going with the Ghostbusters cabinet front on this one. Just to make it really confusing to people. So is there anything that if you had more time you would do differently with the Iron Maiden art? Everything.
    49:28
    More stands, more stands. You can quote me on this one, you can always go further. Probably, if I had to say anything, it's the play field.
    49:41
    Where I would probably have tried to hide and tuck in as much stuff as humanly possible. As is, there's a lot of stuff you don't get to see. It's little stuff. But listen, it's not that I didn't spend the time on it. I totally did. It's just that if it were one of those things where I had time to noodle beyond the scope, I would have tried to hide in just about everything and the kitchen sink that I could. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm looking at the playfield here, that 25 meg picture that you can zoom in to like specks of dust on the playfield, and there's like nowhere to fit crap. Like, what are you talking about? What are you trying to hide in? Like underneath plastics or something? Well, yeah, not just that, but I really... You're not supposed to tell people what you didn't put in, damn it. So I gotta pull back on this. I take that back. No, there's nothing that I would have done differently. No, there's always things that you could have done. You think in hindsight, oh man, I wish I would have done this, that or the other.
    50:52
    I'll leave those up to your imagination. Okay, let me ask a different question then. Have you been working or are you going to start working on the accessories package? We all know that Stern does kind of like toppers these days. Who knows when they come out, the Star Wars ones. I'm sorry in the light of the day, but, you know, the armor, inner blades for the pro and the pinium, are you working on that kind of stuff?
    51:17
    Would you believe me if I told you I might actually have just finished all that stuff off? No. I think, I'm waiting for approvals, but I think I might be done with them. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff, and they're pretty cool, like ridiculously cool. And I, yeah, I gotta watch what I say here because I don't know how I'm supposed to say that. But no, yeah, I think there is stuff and it's cool. Does the top of it move or is it static?
    51:57
    That, I will tell you, I don't necessarily have the answers to. I know there are multiple parts and that I did art for multiple parts. And I know there are dimensions.
    52:13
    I know that there is some depth. I don't know anything past that at this point. Now, having said that, I'm actually going in for a meeting this week. As a matter of fact, while I was working on Iron Maiden, ordinarily I go into, when I'm working on a project with Stern, I go in about every two to three weeks and just sort of meet with the team and we hash things out. And then I make lots of jokes and people look at me funny.
    52:45
    But during this process, because it was sort of a, you know, we were rushing to fill a space because maybe the game I was working on before for some reason got shelved, whatever.
    52:56
    Sure. So I actually have not been there since like September. That's how, like I sort of started this in September and, you know, kind of just finished up, you know. But whatever. So I'm going in and I'll hopefully see some of that stuff and not tell you, but I'll know this week.
    53:22
    Fair enough. Let's go back. We're going to turn the time machine backwards and we'll go back as far as you want us to go back if you know where we're heading.
    53:32
    Last week. The last week. I want to know what happened last week. No? Okay, here's what I want. I know where you're going with this. Well, I wanted to go to Ghostbusters, really. Okay, perfect. That's wonderful. We're going to go further. Let's face it right now. Yeah, that's probably true. But actually, I don't necessarily want to go too far back and, you know, relive all the pain and pick off a scab, but I'm actually just really curious to know, I kind of said it before, and I know it sounds like a bit of a suck, but, you know, the playfield art on Ghostbusters is pretty phenomenal. I'm curious to know that process now working with Stern for the first time, how much of an easy transition that was for you.
    54:27
    The single greatest asset as a human being to me at Stern is Greg Ferreres. He's fantastic and he basically knows how to keep me calm. Right. Obviously, first time I worked with him. I'm going to tell you, I literally felt like I was open to do whatever I wanted on that project. And whether Greg somehow used mind manipulation to get specific things out of me, I don't recall. I remember him always just being encouraging, and they kind of, because that was sort of a little bit of a dead license in that, They didn't have assets. They had very little. So it was kind of like do what you want. That play field in particular, you know, I had a meeting and Dwight and JT sort of, we all sort of with an ink pen and Dwight had it taped up to a whiteboard, was kind of like, I think over here we're going to have this thing, you know, because he's thinking of the rules and he's like, and over here, this, this. And then it was just sort of left to me to kind of interpret, you know, like, okay, this is going to have something to do with the librarian over here. This is going to have something to do, you know, whatever.
    55:48
    I was actually left to my own devices for the most part. And, you know, I got to explore and kind of experiment. So it was, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think it ended up being ultimately a good thing because, again, I didn't want to fail. I was working my ass off to make sure I didn't fail.
    56:13
    And I set myself up with sort of, you know, the concept that I had, which was very organic. and it was all about negative space in regards to sort of a tighter, smaller bit of negative space. But I always had the whole thing in my mind being, you know what, I'm going to be a nerd for a second.
    56:40
    So in the art world, there's a bunch of different ways that you can create composition and there's a lot of different ways that you can push depth. I am a big fan because I love color. I'm a big fan of contrasting not only value but warms and cools in the color spectrum, right? And so in my mind, I always thought of the sky. I'm explaining away the magenta and purple now. I always thought of the sky in Ghostbusters, towards the end in particular, obviously, I always thought of it as very purple. Very, very, you know, depending on which projection I had seen or which, you know, remastered version I had seen, it always had this very sort of weird, warm and cool tone, which to me always ended up being like sort of magenta purple kind of thing. And so I instantly started as a base that, and I started building a palette out of it because I was left to meander into my own devices. And it turns out people actually liked it, and I was allowed to continue. And so it was an experiment, right? The whole thing was an experiment. But Greg made it effortless for me. And the whole reason I even did the project and worked with Greg was because of Dennis Nordman, so thank that guy. So if you think about the Ghostbusters license and obviously Iron Maiden license, is it a similar process for you because you've got the likes of Greg that's dealing with a license holder and you're getting your direction from him? Um, no, it's always a little bit different. And some of the difference comes in the fact that we now know each other better and are probably more comfortable with each other.
    58:47
    And at the same time, the processes, depending on the schedule, have a big thing to do with it. Ghostbusters, and I could, you know, listen, I could be wrong, but I kind of think Ghostbusters was a bit of an experiment and a bit of a risk with CERN. They did not expect it to be a big seller. I don't think they expected it to be a big machine in general. And maybe that's why, you know, they put JT on it. I don't know.
    59:19
    Why do they always seem to get it wrong? Like, did they get that wrong for Iron Maiden as well? Is that why there's only 500 LEs versus Guardians of the Galaxy, which has, I think, 600 and they're still available?
    59:32
    I really don't know. I really don't know. I don't know who – at the end of the day, I don't know – I do know a lot of the bean counters there. No, I do know a lot of the people there who make those decisions. I don't know a lot of the decisions being made. And I obviously, at the end of the day, I don't think I second-guess any of their decisions. I think there are risks to be taken in all projects. And I think when you're talking about dollars and cents in sort of the perspective of what's going on at the time you're making that decision, I think they're making the best decisions they possibly can. Now, I don't know what drives them in that regard, but I don't think anyone ever sets out to not make the right decision. How's that?
    60:25
    Isn't that judicious of me? Yeah, absolutely. So, along those lines, what would you have been able to do with the Star Wars machine?
    60:35
    You know what? Nothing. No, I'll be honest with you. There was one conversation I had at one point when I knew that was going on when I was working on Ghostbusters. And somebody made kind of like, you know, like, oh, would you be interested? And I said, fuck no. And I've done some work for Lucasfilm with my friend Hydro. And, you know, that was before Disney, you know, took the reins. And all I know is this. It's a protected brand. It's a very protected brand. If I'm not mistaken, you know, the artists who ended up working on that were all like Lucasfilm approved and pretty much like they were the ones they said, you need to use these people. Yeah. And, you know, this, that, and the other. So, yeah, there was no way on earth anyone was ever going to be pleased with that based on the process alone. Now, I think it's a great game. Obviously, Steve is the king for a reason. Everyone loves him.
    61:48
    And I don't think that you ever could have done that one right in the time frame that was put forth. How's that? Because personally, if I'm doing that license, I'm saying, listen, this thing has to live forever. If you want to do it right, let's extend the time to produce this thing and make it right. But I know that's not the way business works. Let me ask you this. Chris Franchi, we had him on the show a couple of weeks ago. He said that he's contracted for two more titles from CERN, possibly out this year. We don't know that.
    62:30
    Are you contracted for any more titles from CERN currently? Officially? Of course, one. Officially. How's that? In that, that's why I'm going in this week because it starts up again. So obviously put two and two together and know that what I was working on with JT was scrapped because nobody wants to, of course he's innocent until proven guilty, But nobody wants to put out a pin with potential stains on it. So that one, and I think this is known, and if it's not, this will be the last pin I work on, but George Gomez took over and started over, and I'm working with him on that one, and we'll see.
    63:27
    That's supposed to be out this year, I'm told. So I don't know. How does that work with you? I mean, you finish doing, well, I'm not sure how far you got into the job, but does it become almost... Really? Yeah. Well, I remember in an interview with JT, he said that you're so quick and you kind of already finished the work for the Neskimo machine, and that was like a year and a half ago or something. So, does that just double your work? I don't want to know details about your contract with Stern, but do you get credit for that or do you just do it and say, okay, well, I got a contract for this Pinball machine. I guess I just have to do it again.
    64:09
    No, no, they're very fair. If something has to be done again, yeah, they're very fair about that. That's not an issue. I will say this. Let me be clear. We had approvals on everything when the shoe dropped.
    64:31
    I think everything except we had literally just started on the playfield, but I had actually had the playfield ready to go to Inc. So if it was going to happen, it kind of happened at the best time. Now, it could have happened a few weeks earlier, it would have been better, but it's not like the play field was colored and done and everything like that. So it's not a bad thing. And I will say this, that what there was versus what I've seen George do, this is going to be way more than what it was for the better, and it's something special. So I'm excited. I mean, like, I was excited before, but I'm very excited now.
    65:15
    And obviously working with George, he's a great guy. He's the guy who's, by the way, who's hired me for everything. So you've got to thank him at the end of the day, too.
    65:27
    I'm really excited. And, you know, Tanya Kleiss? Tanya's been working. Yeah, for sure. Okay, well, you will. Look him up. You know, Tanya's a great guy. And Tanya has been, Tanya, George, and myself have been sort of, I guess, the main brains behind this one, I guess. Mainly it's Tanya and George, and then I just go ahead and draw things. And, yeah, I'm excited. We'll see. Maybe people. Here's the thing, though. So my whole goal always is to outdo what I did the last time, right? So let's put this into perspective. If I do Ghostbusters, then I do this next one, and then it gets put to the side, and then I do Maiden. So obviously it's going to be less than Maiden. Lower your expectations.
    66:24
    It's kind of true. No, but whatever. I always learn, listen, I always learn things. As a matter of fact, you young artists out there, here's the key. Every time you do something, recognize your failures, recognize your successes, throw the failures out the window, put the successful stuff beside you and build on that for the next thing. So what I'm saying is every time I do something, I find something that I'm like, oh, I like the way this was, you know, I came to this solution. I don't like the way I came to this solution. And then I sort of throw that away or I put the other one in front of me and move on. So what led to Maiden is directly correlated to what I did on that some day to be released project.
    67:09
    And so maybe that'll, like when you see it, you'll kind of recognize that or you won't because I don't know how people who aren't artists look at this. Okay, well then let's do it. Let's do it. And I'm not going to go into the gory details, but all I want to know is, because you said sort of, you know, moving forward, you look at what you've done and you improve. So reflecting back on Magic Girl, you go into as much as you want about the experience. I'm more so interested when you look back at the art that you did, forgetting the experience that you had, when you look at it, what do you think? I know it's probably hard to separate it, but... No, no, no, I can be good, I can be good. But can you look at it objectively like we do? We threw it in the flesh probably about, I don't know, four or five months ago, and it is just such a beautiful thing.
    68:06
    Well, I, again, appreciate that, because if people didn't think that, then Stern never would have hired me, that's for sure. And this is what we've said. We've said a long time as we've reported on that over the time that it ended up being a good news story for you because something good came out of it and it might not have happened that way. But looking back at it, can you look at it? No, I can't. Listen, I can. I can.
    68:35
    You know, this is – listen, first off I just want to say this. I had a lot of great time working with John. As a matter of fact, you know, if things would have been handled ever so slightly differently, as in if he would have communicated and let me in on things so that after the fact I didn't think he was, you know, possibly being less than truthful with everyone, I would have given him the benefit of the doubt and, you know, we'd be okay. As a matter of fact, listen, I wish the best for John. All I've ever wanted is for him to rectify the situation and get his reputation back. Because, you know, love him or hate him for his choices, you know, he's a talented guy. He's a very interesting creative. So I wish him the best. I don't know everything that's going on. I did read that there's some Zidware court case. Yeah, there's a court case. Yeah, I won't comment on that because I don't know anything about it. But I will say this. I have no ill will towards John. And he actually came here and took me to this old 50s. And literally, it's been around since like the 40s. It's a truck stop not too far from my place. He always wanted to have breakfast there. And so one day he actually showed up, and this was, you know, last fall, maybe. Might have been early. I don't know. And he showed up and said, hey, do you want to go eat? And we talked. Did he have a boombox at the front of your lawn? He did not.
    70:31
    But he did pay for breakfast. So it's kind of the same thing. No, but no, we had a talk and, you know, obviously, you know, he was kind of telling me of, you know, like, we made up. How's that? We tried to make up and, you know, unfortunately I told him I just don't think I can, you know, obviously contractually, but also just, you know, for the sake of history and, you know, my question. He's like a new girlfriend, right? He's like a new girlfriend. You want to move on, right? Yeah, like, well, like, we can still be friends, which means we're never going to talk again. But listen, I hope nothing but the best for him. And one of these days I hope that he shows up at a pinball convention and people don't want to punch him. But that's probably good for you. I mean, it's part of the cathartic experience, right? You have been for it. At some way you can have some sort of resolution. And it's kind of what I'm sort of saying. I mention it again that Magic Girl is a beautiful machine to look at and it is a beautiful machine only to look at. It's a shit thing to play. We've played it. It's dreadful. But for you to be able to look back at that and not have resentment to that memory, it's probably good for you to have at least that moment where you go, yeah, okay, we spoke, we've moved on and now I'm moving forward and I've got this great future with Stern. Sure. Yeah, well, yeah, and, you know, it wasn't even, like, I'll be honest with you, like, it's in the back of my head when I took Ghostbusters, in the back of my head I thought, hey, you know, in a perfect world, you know, this is going to work out great, maybe John, you know, gets things worked out, and when this is over, John's free and clear, and I'll talk to George and everybody, and we'll get, maybe we'll get Magic Girl in here, and John work it, you know, like, you know, like, I was so naive and stupid. I even kept wishing for the best case scenarios in the back of my head kind of thing, right? And by the way, I don't know that I ever thought that out loud in my head. By the way, what does that mean? Is that like an oxymoron? That's interesting. But it was one of those things where I always hoped for the best. And, you know, to this day, listen, I know in particular Deep Root. You know, a lot of people like to make the jokes about Deep Root because I am told it means something different in other countries.
    73:17
    Root, right? Root means something? Yeah, it means something. Right, we've covered it many times. It literally means as in there as you can get. So it's the equivalent of the Americans' balls deep.
    73:35
    Anyway, which is a pinball term, right? Exactly, exactly. So listen, I hope for the best there. And, you know, I actually met Robert.
    73:49
    I literally ran into him. He was parked, and I ran into his car. No, I ran into him at the Midwest Indian Classic as we were both walking in. Somebody yelled my name and I turn around and I look and it was him. And we talked, we had a good conversation and then I think he was like off with Dennis Nordman and I think that's the last time I saw him. But we had a nice talk. I think his intentions are good. Obviously anyone who's spending money intends to not lose it.
    74:31
    So let's hope for the best, right? Yeah. I guess the last thing on Magic Girl and that whole part of your career.
    74:40
    Does she have a name? Because I mean I had this chick as the background of my phone for like two years because I don't know what it is about that picture, but it just kind of sucks me in and it's like this mysterious like, you know, who is she? Why does she have these wee tattoos on her face?
    74:55
    Why is she so damn good looking and she's not even real? You know what's interesting? I wish that I could sit down and tell you all the conversations that John and I had about that. But in good confidence, I'm not going to because I'm going to leave that up to them. It's not my character, I guess, as it were. I can just tell you what I tried to do with it. And that was I tried to make something strong and hopefully attractive.
    75:31
    And, you know, I was hoping at the end of the day that compositionally speaking it all worked out. And, again, it had to be traditionally silkscreen, so that was my approach. I went very straightforward, solid colors and stuff like that. It looks great without the backlighting and then you turn it on and it just gets totally saturated with purple and pink or whatever the hell is behind the back glass. I don't know what... I think that's a combination of bad lighting and bad printing, in my opinion, but whatever. Well, Ryan's had a long history of enjoying himself with... we've been put on the back box of Pinnball machines, so thanks for depositing into his bank. I do what I can Go balls deep Jeremy I know this is a lame question I sure you get asked it all the time I like lame questions. Well, I mean, you drew Alice in Wonderland, and you were just kind of getting started with that, and that's an absolutely beautiful picture in itself. Is there a dream thing? Whether or not it's possible to make it a bit more machine, we don't care about that. Is there a licensed or an unlicensed kind of like a genre that you would love to draw in at the moment? Well, there's quite a few. Again, because I love music, I have a lot of bands that I would love to see that I know are impossibilities because of the fact that they're even more niche than anyone else. But obviously because of my childhood love and my continued work with the band Primus, I think they'd maybe, you know, from a visual standpoint, they would be great. Also, the Melvins is probably my go-to if I had to do that.
    77:31
    But as far as, like, film and everything else, I'll be honest with you. There's one that I've said for a long time, and now this past week, someone's going to snatch it up, and I'm not going to be the one to do it. But I always wanted to do Bill and Ted, mainly because of Bill and Ted's bogus journey. Listen, that's a music pin that just happens to have some zany characters and story going on. Well, did the lightest film just get renewed? Yeah, that's what I said. I'm like, man. But nobody, I won't get to touch it. Somebody else will snatch that one up. Or, you know, listen, you know, just as a side note, the way I do things, the way Donnie does things. By the way, I want to give a shout out to Donnie because, first off, Donnie's a great guy. But also, if it weren't for Donnie, I wouldn't have ever even probably got hired by John to do Magic Girl at the end of the day. If you look at the timing of when he hired me, it was after the success and popularity of Metallica. I mean, really, timing-wise. And I never put that together until later. But anyway, so I love Donnie, and I thank Donnie for everything. And one of these days, him and I are going to work on something together.
    78:45
    But having said that, I'm not saying it's a pin, by the way. Don't get too excited. But one of the things about the way I do things, the way Donnie does things, versus the way someone, say, like Christopher Franchi does something, If you're dealing with high-definition LCDs and you have assets to live-action things like film, man, you go with francy, man. Because you're going to get an interpretation and a disconnect if you have, you know, line-drawn, interpreted art. And then you've got actual film clips from the movie and it's like these human beings in the real world. So when I say that, I'm not even sure if thanks to that damned high-def LCD, curse you, Jersey Jack. I don't know, we might get stuck in some sort of space where all Donnie and I get to work on or, you know, I don't know. It's not going to be original pins, right? Nobody does those anymore.
    80:01
    Anyway, I just throw that out there because I curse the high-def LCD and I just wanted everyone to know that.
    80:09
    And by the way, I have no evidence that that's the case. I just say that because, you know, if you want to go with, you know, if you want to go that direction, you know, Christopher Franchi is insanely talented in what, the way he does things and what he does. And, you know, if you're going to do like Star Wars, I think he would have been great for Star Wars. Now, obviously, I know that, you know, there was other things in there, but I think he would have been perfect for that. Whatever. Well, I know. Jeremy, I want to tell you a quick story before we close it up here. I went to Stern Pinball Festival and before I went I spent a couple of days in Vegas. Now I just thought Vegas was this really classy joint so I stupidly packed a little suit and blazer and a tie. The first night I was in Vegas I dressed it all up and I looked around and everyone was bumming around in shorts and t-shirts and stuff.
    81:05
    It's hot out there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the second day I kind of just relaxed and I kind of just wore my pinball t-shirt and I got compliments on what I was wearing. And I was wearing the Stern's 30th anniversary limited edition Zombie Yeti skull t-shirt. And two people stopped me and told me that they love my t-shirt, where did I get it from? Like, well, you can't get it, you know, it was just a limited edition thing. So that's the power of a Zombie Yeti. I thought I was going to get complimented or be this really cool guy in this freaking suit. And it was your artwork that literally two people stopped me. And that never happened.
    81:43
    Wow. Well, that's nice. That's nice. Nobody stopped me yesterday. I was wearing my pissing gizmo shirt that I made. And not one person stopped me. Said anything about it. So I guess that's a counter to your point. But no, that's great. I appreciate that. I would love to do more things like that. As a matter of fact, you know, that was actually just a little shitty sticker originally. And then they're like, oh, that'd be cool as a shirt. I'm like, oh, damn it. I once drew something small. But I went ahead and I reworked it, and it turned out pretty good. I liked it. I've had one. So, unfortunately, for the past eight months, I've been sitting in a chair drinking soda and working, so I'm not sure how well I look at it now.
    82:39
    The weather's warming up. I'll get outside. Yeah, no, that's great. I appreciate that, and I appreciate you guys asking me to come on. I don't know that I had anything interesting to say, but I don't mind talking because I don't talk much. Unless you get me talking.
    82:58
    Well, as I say, you're an asset to Stern. You're a reason why a lot of collectors buy Pinball machines. You attract people to play Pinball machines on site. So we thank you for that, and we look forward to seeing what's coming up next with George Gomez. Well, listen, I want to personally thank every person who's ever supported me in my life, and in particular my mother on this Mother's Day, because isn't that what you're supposed to do with a good son? Do you guys have Mother's Day over there? Do they call it something disappointing? Yeah, we do. We get it.
    83:31
    Good. Did you do something nice for your moms? Sure. Yeah. That was very convincing. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. By the way, I don't know, like, you know, I actually, my parents were always supportive of me, by the way. I have to say that. Like, you know, out of everything, my parents always supported me. My mom used to ask me why I don't draw nice things. But other than that, they were always very supportive.
    84:01
    And so it's one of those things where I got to give them a lot of credit for getting me where I'm at just by not telling me to stop. And also, I honestly legitimately want to thank everybody in the pinball world who has ever, you know, Obviously, if you buy stuff that I've done, that's great. It helps me out. Actually, it doesn't help me out directly, but it gets me hired again. Keeps me employed. Yeah, it keeps me employed. But at the same time, literally the kind words, you guys actually being interested enough to have me out and ask me some questions. I appreciate all of it. It does not get lost on me. So, thank you.
    84:46
    Where can people head to send money your way? Besides buying a pinball machine, what's the PayPal address to send some money? No, no, no, we won't go there. Although I did just... Oh, hey now. Pinball designer, social justice.
    85:05
    I just, I like to call myself, I have this new URL, it is pinballartistinventor.org. Anyway, I'm back. That's a joke. Oh, no, all I'll say is just yesterday I did Primus' gig poster for yesterday's show, and I think almost everything's sold out on my site, but those will actually be going on sale this next week at some point. I couldn't tell you when. What's your site? Zombie Yeti.com? Oh, Zombie Yeti.com, yeah. Yeah, it's zonbyyetti.com slash pinball artist inventor. No, listen, I got to say this again. I thank John for everything that he taught me. And by the way, as I said before, whenever I do anything, I look for the good and the bad, and I throw the bad away, and I concentrate on the bad. So anyway, yeah, I hope someday. You and Dave Van Ness, right? We had him on the show a couple of weeks ago. Did you just call each other up and just cry and just give each other a virtual hug? No, you know what? Actually, yeah, so you know what? I got to give a shout out to David Van Ness while we're talking. So quick story was David and I met after Zidware went south because David was actually working on, The LCD animations and all that good stuff for Magic Girl and for, actually, I think, Raza as well.
    86:47
    And so we just sort of serendipitously, when I was reaching out and discovered the forums at Pinside, and all the wonderful people who have nothing but positive things to say about the hobby that they love. And we became friends. And we actually talk on and off throughout the weekend. Obviously, he works at Spooky. He works with Spooky now, and I work with Stern. And we have this wonderful, very outspoken rule that we don't discuss pinball at all. So we discuss our other work in our other lives because, obviously, he's a film editor and a filmmaker. Dink Tops, Dizzy Lens. Oh yeah, he's totally into that stuff, man. He's super into that. I appreciate all that stuff, but I'm into much stupider things than that. By the way, that's proper English if you're American to say stupid. But yeah, no, no, David's a great guy. Hi, David. And he has one of those super cool accents like you guys do, so everything he says sounds like really important.
    88:05
    I'm not saying anyone's ever said that about us. Oh, no, no, no, absolutely. No, no, you guys sound, you sound much, you know, like when I talk, all I hear is sort of like, like nothing. As an American, of course, I realize that my speech pattern is the baseline and everybody else is just weird and different.
    88:29
    But everything you say sounds really special. It's the opposite of Jeff Teowas. He's giving me compliments on the way I speak. So thank you, Jeremy. We appreciate you. And thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me and hopefully you don't have to add it too much. I wasn't going to do anything.
    88:53
    And lastly, thanks to Keith Elwin and all the Stern folks, George Gomez, Greg Ferris, Keith's wonderful programming team, everybody else for making this thing incredible.
    89:11
    Now go buy two, everyone. You've done your bit now. If you buy, no listen, if you buy two, I promise you at some point I will personally thank you on a podcast when I'm supposed to let them go because it's time to go.
    89:34
    How's that? Alright, mate. Thanks, man. Thanks. Take care. So there you go. That was Jeremy Packer, Zombie Yeti. What did we learn, Ryan?
    89:46
    That this will be our most edited episode. I'm not sure how many... Hey, Dad, no filter. That's the first thing that we said when we stopped recording, you know, after the interview. And he was like, oh, really? Like, that was me being tame. I'm like, holy shit.
    90:07
    I do. One thing we learned, he is a funny bastard. Yeah. He is funny. I look forward to seeing the premium artwork, which I'm sure by the time this episode airs and people listening to it, they might have already seen it. But I think we're just lucky to have him, Dirty Johnny and Christopher Franchi as the kind of the awesome trio that you can use to launch their Pinball machines. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that they've been pretty crucial in, I guess, restoring people's faith in Stern and the machines that they do. When people talk about Ghostbusters, they talk about the art. When they talk about Donny's machines, they talk about the art and Franchi as well. They've added so much to the visual presentation of these machines. Yep, and as I said, they're selling points. Who designed the machine? Who's coding the machine? And who's the art? You know, the three questions that people kind of ask these days.
    91:00
    Yeah, so there you go. And for those people that are probably going to bring up, we really didn't want to delve too much into the whole J-pop thing because, you know, effectively it's a part of his life that he's moved on from and he touched on it and that's probably enough, really.
    91:16
    Yeah. So, do you know what? It's not a week unless we talk about Highway. What do you reckon? I fucking love talking about Highway.
    91:28
    Did you know that there was a document released, Marty? I do know that there was a document released.
    91:35
    We got the unedited version. We got the full thing. So this was the report to creditors for Highway Pinball Limited in liquidation. Now, Marty, we've got viewers and listeners from all around the globe, right? So we don't want to alienate people by talking in a certain currency. So the amount owing that was on there, the balance sheet of liabilities, was about 1.9 million pounds. Now, for all the Aussies out there, that's about $3.4 million Australian dollars. For all the people that conform to the European Union and the Euro, that's $2.1 million. All the people in the US, almost $2.6 million.
    92:23
    For all the Vietnamese listeners out there, it's 59 billion dong. That's a lot of dong. You've never had too much dong. So, for all of our Iranian listeners, it's 109 billion Iranian rials is how much they're in the hole. So, just putting it out there. I'm just putting it out there that of all the things that you could have done with this news piece, you've just gone and converted into these currencies. I said it last week, if I can't make fun of this situation, then I can't talk about it. It's too depressing. Well, shall we make even more fun out of this situation?
    93:07
    We've got to keep it a little bit classy, Marty. I'm not sure where you're going with this. Well, we have never been classy, so let's not do it now.
    93:16
    Okay. But, look, effectively, it's been left with a shitload of debt, right? And I would say probably a lot more than I thought there would be, if I'm honest.
    93:31
    This is the thing though, I mean they list kind of the Pinball Brothers on there as well and is that kind of like cash injection? I mean this is business and you can fudge numbers and move stuff around in assets and make things look worse off than they are, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is the whole thing. On the list obviously Pinball Brothers was there being owed £800,000, right? So is that the money that they invested up front to try and get back or is that additional that they put in after? Who knows? But there's also the list of everybody that's, well we know it's not a complete list but it did actually have a list of those people that had, you know, the end users that had money in on the machines as well and there's some people that we know that didn't have their names on there. Yeah, and apparently there's some names on there that have kind of full amounts owing, let's say for example £100,000, but that was the initial purchase order and then they received maybe $50,000 worth of goods. So we don't really know how accurate that list is and maybe that's just the first draft and it will continue to evolve. I don't know. I guess the question is, how much of this is Andrew Highway's problem and how much of it is the Pimble Brothers?
    94:52
    I mean, they were the kind of investors from the start, and people say Andrew kind of made all the wrong decisions which caused the company to go down this path, but these Pinball brothers are kind of like a faceless, you know, who are they? What do they look like? When you want to get angry at someone, Marty, you want a punchable face, right? Yeah, well, we got one. Yeah, like when you want to be angry at the Australian government, you think of the Prime Minister, you're like, fuck that guy. Yeah. You want to be angry at Highway Pinball? Andrew Highway. How can you be angry at someone when you don't know what they look like, right? No, that's right. All we've got is a list of names and, you know, there's names all over this. So, you know, there's also, you know, obviously we saw on the list that Pinball Brothers were owed a lot of money. There's also another company in Europe that's got a large sum that's owed to them that I believe is also probably one of the investors as well. So, you know, I think really what's happening here is everybody's bailing, get what you can. Yeah. But what is there to get? Like, if there's absolutely no money, where are you going to get it from?
    96:05
    I don't know. Go for it. It's just your voice and it's like, oh man. Yeah, we're done. So, Alien. Is it a good game, Marty? We got to play it, Ryan. Yeah, we did.
    96:21
    We don't know how long these games are going to be floating around in Australia for. I mean, there's a couple here, maybe, I don't know, like less than ten.
    96:29
    If I could have a wild guess, I think there's seven. Seven, okay. And there's more coming. Some of the Cointaker batches heading down to Australia and it'll probably head back to the US anyway because I believe most of the people that are interested in the machines are in the US. And now this machine kind of becomes, well let's talk about the game, right? What are your impressions of it? So remember we played it, God, nearly a year ago at Flipout in Melbourne and you had two balls, I had one game. And I was really surprised how much it played. I thought it was going to be an absolute stinker.
    97:12
    And so second time around we played it for probably three hours I think so that's enough time to have an informed view. Here's my overall impressions of it.
    97:24
    I actually quite like the layout. I like the shots. I like how it feels. They do feel a little bit awkward, particularly the left ramp feels a bit of an unusual shot. I think you sort of mentioned as well that it's at a weird sort of angle and I think that's probably because it is a wide body and because that ramp is so far out on the left it's at a strange angle.
    97:52
    It sounds great, it looks great. So we were running beta code, the 1.2 code. So visually it looks good.
    98:02
    My only, and people keep saying, are you going to get one, are you going to get one? Because, you know, I wanted to trade my Hobbit for one.
    98:11
    I'd say the only thing I really didn't like, Ryan, and that is the rules. And it's not that I... I was about to say the fact the machine broke down like... No, we wouldn't be able to get to that too. Yeah, because, you know, beta K, so we can put under the umbrella of that. But, no, it was more so that, you know, well, let's, elephant in the room, right, everyone talks about the fact that, you know, Sigourney Weaver's not there, the actors aren't there, all that kind of stuff. So, what it actually really does, it tries to make you feel like you're in that world, not that you're necessarily participating in the movies. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. So, you know, like one of the modes where you've got to hit the pop bumpers which have the eggs on top of it. I understand why I'm doing that. I'm trying to destroy the eggs before they hatch, right? Mm-hmm. But that never really made me feel like I was in a part of the film where that happened. What more do I need to do than have, like, intense music, have the eggs physically on the playfield turning from green to red with sound effects, The clips playing on the LCD on the playfield and in front of you. If that doesn't make you feel like you're in the movie, then what happens if you feel like you're in the movie? It makes me feel like I'm in the alien world. It doesn't make me feel like I'm in a movie. And the parallel I will draw is Game of Thrones. Go with me on this if you can. Oh, gosh. Because, you know, if you think about Game of Thrones, and I think that came out, we were up to probably season five when that came out. So this big long story had happened. When you're playing Game of Thrones, you're playing houses within the movie and you're not necessarily playing along the storyline. Make sense? Yeah. It's more generic because they didn't know where it was going because the book hasn't been written yet. It also hasn't been written. So they had to make it more generic. And thinking back at it now, they actually did a really good job with what they've got. It's more generic than Walking Dead which kind of told half the story and then it just stops. But that's what I'm saying about Alien in that you're playing these little mini episodes and I never really felt like I was part of an evolving story. I didn't really feel like I was heading anywhere. Or you head towards the wizard mode for that movie. Like you play the five modes. Yeah, I know. It felt more like I was playing a pinball machine than I was being drawn into a story. That's my take on it. Okay.
    100:53
    I just want to give a shout out quickly to Brian Dominey and Joe Shover who emailed us the beta firmware. Because it's not out there yet. We wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the older rules and the newer rules, But some of the people on the stream that had an alien did recognize it and were talking to us and giving us some tips.
    101:15
    Like you, I like the layout. It's almost there. It's almost like a really good layout, but as I said, there's something wrong. I'm not sure if it's the geometry or if it's the fact that the geometry is just a little bit different than the way people normally do it. You know, like when we talk about the whole Steve Ritchie, Pat Lawler thing, you know where the ramps are going to be. And it's also that the ramps are metal. So when you get a rejection from that metal ramp that's really close, kind of like in the Shadow, it feels horrible. Like the clunk sound. And that's why I love, love, love plastic ramps. People bag plastic ramps all the time. They just feel good. They feel like the ball's gliding across like on Walking Dead.
    101:57
    Somehow Metallica and apparently Iron Maiden is able to make metal ramps feel really good. Yeah, so layout's pretty good. Code, I think the code, there's some really unique modes, which I like that. I like unique stuff in coding Pinball machines. One of the biggest gripes for me is you can't skip animations. And I just, the two things that drove me crazy is that, yes, you can't skip it, but the part that they show you is like the intro, and then they flash the instructions of the mode, and then it spits out the ball straight away. Like, it kind of draws you to the LCD screen, so you're like, okay, I'm going to find out, like any second now, and then it gives you the instructions and chucks out the ball. It's like, give me the instructions first, and then play this stupid clip. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I mean, when we put the hat on now of how to review this game, it's like reviewing Big Bang Bar. So that's what this machine is now. This machine isn't, they should do this, they should do that. Like, it's done, right? And it's now like a time capsule of this failed company, and that's what I want to compare it to, right? Sure. Is it better than Big Bang Bar? Yes. Yeah. It's more fun than Big Bang Bar. If someone said, would you rather an alien or a Big Bang Bar? I would too. Yeah. I would too because I just felt like there's a lot more in it.
    103:20
    You know, we did it. We went through the five modes, you get to the wizard mode and then you move from either alien to aliens or vice versa. Yeah. The weapons. Multi-balls as well were great. The weapons. The weapons is amazing. It's like a walker bomb or whatever but there's five different ones you get to choose. So it's all about timing and there's a lot of strategy involved with that. I don't think this is like some brilliant, you know, the next line in sheets kind of thing, but it's refreshing to have that kind of new code. And I think the people that have it, as long as they don't make these again by some stupid kind of licensing thing, but I think they wouldn't be allowed to make these again.
    104:01
    I can't see them kind of going anywhere but up eventually because that's rare, you know. Less than 200 units. It's a collector's piece now. It's not a normal Pinball machine. Yeah. So, you know, I certainly, I didn't put money down on it and I'm not going to get one. But it's, if there wasn't any of the shit that had happened and then there's the thought about supporting it and as you know what I'm like when it comes to supporting machines. If I was somebody that could tinker with these kinds of things, I'd be in for sure.
    104:42
    Yeah, so we don't know where the thing's going with parts. As I said, apparently Pinball Brothers is going to try and make a queen. And it's going to be a funny debate, you know, like will people just flat out reject this company and say, no, you can't just kind of wipe away the, you know, wipe away the whole alien debacle and just pretend like it didn't happen. Or, you know, is the Queen going to be this amazing game that people are like, okay, I don't give a shit, like this is a good game and I want to play it. I guess we'll see, I don't know, whenever that comes, I can say, in years' time from now. I don't know. What would they have to do to restore people's faith?
    105:22
    Well, as I said, the theme is Queen. Sure. To me, Queen means a lot. To people in the UK, Queen means a lot. But when you read Pinside, people acting like Queen isn't a big thing. Is Queen not big in the US? Surely people recognise the genius of Freddie Mercury. Yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things where they're a great band, they're an epic band, but are they, I don't know, do they still have the current cachet? Are people still going, oh man, they are just this fan that we all miss? It's like Iron Maiden. There's a group of people that like him and if it's a good Pinball machine then it's a good Pinball machine but I guess it's going to be a wide body because that's the whole Pire Mait mantra. Look, I guess when you see an Iron Maiden fan, they're an Iron Maiden fan. They will let you know that they're an Iron Maiden fan, generally because they will have an Iron Maiden t-shirt, right? How many people would you see walking down the street and you go, oh, there's a Queen fan?
    106:35
    I just don't want to answer that question. But what I guess I'm saying is that with this band, they were an amazing band. And as I mentioned before, I saw them in 1985 Live. It was my very first concert I ever went to with Freddie Mercury. And it was amazing. They were a fantastic band. They were an iconic band. I just don't know whether they have the same sort of rapid fan loyalty that other bands have.
    107:04
    Well, do you think the Beatles have that fan loyalty? I don't think there's a massive crossover in the middle of the Venn diagram between Beatles fans and Pinball fans. Well, the people that were obsessed with the Beatles is all those screaming, freaking annoying teenagers. They've grown up and they've got... Yeah, for sure. I mean, we will see. We will see what happens, but yeah, that's what I think. Look, I'll answer the question that I was hoping you'd answer. And that is ultimately this company needs to come out with a great design and they need to come out with 100 machines already built. People can buy them, no pre-order, you get your machine when it's done. I think anything less than that, people will just be way too sceptical.
    108:00
    Cool. Close the book, boom, done. Dern. Dern. Dern. Okay. Some people were complaining about the Iron Maiden kind of having split cabinets and we could have talked about this last week but the episode was kind of already too long. So I think around the time of Aerosmith, people's cabinets, especially on site because people move machines on site, they're a bit more violent with those because they're paying money and they want their balls to last longer. and little tiny splits appear in the cabs. It wasn't that widespread, but these little issues are kind of blown up out of proportion if five out of a thousand machines kind of have it.
    108:44
    They kind of reinforce the, I think Star Wars was after Aerosmith, they reinforce the cabinets. They're now back to apparently shipping the old-style cabinets. I'm not sure if it was a mistake, a part shortage. We'll never know. We'll never get, this is one of those things that you never get a straight answer out of CERN. But there are some Iron Maidians that are splitting. And it's not just the pros, it's the LEs as well that don't have them. I haven't seen any pictures of split LEs, but people are installing the old-style belly limbs brackets to kind of spread the load of the pressure when the machine is moved around. And is this something, Marnie, that you have given a thought to or is thinking about doing? Because it's not that expensive to buy these brackets. Not even a lick of thought has gone into what I'm going to do to reinforce my cabinet. Is that because you missed the feather touch or because you just think I'll just play it and if it cracks I'll just ring AMD and it'll fix it for me? Yeah, I think so, but probably more the former.
    109:44
    My machines are planted to the ground. The legs, whatever they are underneath it, are all the way up so you can't move the machines. I've got my tilt set on very tight so my machines don't get moved.
    109:57
    Cool. So, I don't know. What's next? Alright, what else? We've got some updates. Yes. Every week now we've got like 10 updates in Stern. So the hashtag where's the code is dead except for all the other games. Like I say, Ghostbusters and stuff. Except for Kiss and Ghostbusters and Wheel of Fortune. Just ignore them. Wheel of Fortune.
    110:23
    So, Star Wars. There's been an update. Yeah, big update. Yeah, I didn't really read through anything except that the Keith Elwin... I'm calling it the Keith Elwin D-Bounce settings because the Iron Maiden machine was the first machine that had the D-Bounce. Do you know what D-Bounce means, Marty? Is that to do with the tilt? Well, do you know what the word debounce means kind of just in general? Basically, when you hit a target or a switch, it kind of like it goes, like, it gets pushed in and then it goes out and then it's kind of like a trampoline. Or do you remember that Simpsons episode where he did the fat jiggle test and he... Yep. So it just keeps on jiggling. So there has to be like a millisecond delay where it doesn't count twice. Like, if you didn't hit that switch twice, it just bounced kind of back and forth. Sure. So, tilts have debounce settings because it doesn't want to count, like if it kind of goes around in a circle and it doesn't want to count that as two tilt warnings. So, there's a millisecond delay and with Stern, you know this Marty, you can literally have one massive slide save per game and it'll give you two tilt warnings and it depends on how it's set up. Yeah. So, with Keef Dallin's machine, Ion Maiden, there's now a debounce setting that you can change, so you can't do that anymore, I believe. It'll tilt out. The D-bounce setting you can adjust to be lower. When it's in tournament settings it'll automatically be lower. That is now in Star Wars. So this might be a new thing going forward with Stern that operators or people running a tournament can now change this if they want to. Okay. So the only other, I sort of read through the release notes as well, and probably the only other thing that I noticed that stood out was, it said, greatly improved catching and holding the ball in the horseshoe loop for modes like Lightsaber Dural, Hyperspace Hurry Up, and Hyperspace Multiple.
    112:15
    And that's probably been one of the criticisms I think that people have had, and I think that's, isn't that like little forks that come up that sort of don't really hold the ball properly? So that's something that needed to be improved.
    112:28
    We probably won't go into it, but I'm curious to know how they would fix that, which felt like a physical problem with software.
    112:38
    Yeah, probably something to do with the timing. Timing or how high up it is changes the way the ball bounces. I don't know.
    112:46
    There's also Ion Maiden, you Ion Maiden Co., I think up to 0.97 money. You probably know all that. Yeah, I think it is. And again, lots of updates. This is actually quite a big code update and the Number of the Beast wizard mode is now complete. Is that the biggest wizard mode? I think that is the final wizard mode. I really don't know the rules of it all that well. I think Keith Allen said that there's a wizard mode that is kind of like beyond the final one and there's no inserts or anything for it. It's like a secret wizard mode. I'm guessing completing everything.
    113:27
    Congratulations, Marty. You didn't say it. I know. I didn't say it because you dared me to say it. Just another spin polish.
    113:38
    That's about Marty. What else have you got, Marty? What's happening in Brisbane at the moment? Well, there's a thread that just started on Pinside. Admittedly, it's only had about five posts on it, but it's not a big change. Huge news. Huge news, but it's just interesting that the title of it is Brisbane, Australia is the pinball capital of the Southern Hemisphere. Do you think that's true, Ryan?
    114:04
    Well, I haven't been to all the major cities in the Southern Hemisphere, but sure, sure, it is. If they said in sort of inner Brisbane, there's 157 machines on site. Yeah, this is a new place called Pinball House and it's opened up right next to Netherworld. And Jimmy is the nicest guy ever and he even promotes these companies but man if I owned a pinball I just putting it out there right just to show you what kind of asshole I am If I had spent all that money and opened up a pinball place and someone opened up another pinball place like literally you know like 50 metres away or something I be fucking pissed off Well, yeah, but you know what, you know, if you remember our very first interview that we had on the Head to Head Pinball podcast was with Jimmy Nails from Netherworld. And it's not just Pinball that makes his place great. He's got just a great venue that has all the elements coming together to make a great venue, not just Pinball. So, you know, other people have got to be able to create that kind of magic as well. Well, yeah, you have to be different and offer something, you know, that others aren't. And this guy is offering beef jerky. So instead of drinks and alcohol, beef jerky. Is beef jerky oily? I don't know. I don't think so. So what I'm hearing you say to me is that pinball plus beer plus jerky equals dollars. Well, there's no beer. So the formula, Gary, has changed. So the next time I see you at Expo, it's pinball plus beef jerky equals dollars. Awesome.
    115:47
    That's it? Well, not only that with Brisbane having all those venues, But they've also got on the Gold Coast about an hour down, they've also got those two big time zones that have got, you know, Iron Maiden was put in there today. They usually air freight those to Australia, get them before everybody else. So, you know, just Queensland in general is a good place for pinball. So if anybody is coming to Australia, go to Brisbane.
    116:15
    Yeah, well, if you're going for pinball. If you're going for culture, come down to Melbourne and shitty weather. That's why our culture is so good because of the shitty weather. Because of the really shitty weather and today is no exception.
    116:28
    It really is. What else? So, Ryan, would you believe me if I told you that I have done a pinball machine workshop?
    116:42
    Were you just like texting on your phone the entire time so you wouldn't learn anything? So this is actually a course that's put on by Norbert Snyther and so for those people that are in Australia, Norbert Snyther is very well known. He was one of the first people that put on competitions in Australia and he runs Pimball HQ and the Australian Pimball League as well.
    117:05
    So he's just put up on Facebook and we'll link it as well that there's an upcoming two-day seminar and I have done this two-day seminar before, Ryan. I just don't understand, Monty. So, what you've got to understand is that it's actually quite an intense seminar. It goes for two days and before I did the seminar, I wouldn't ever lift up my play field. After doing the seminar, I now lift up my play field, then I call you to come over. There's a big difference.
    117:45
    Look, I came away from it not being scared about opening up my pinball machine and tinkering around. So if there's anything that's mechanical, I'm usually okay with that. When it comes to things like optos and boards and all that kind of stuff, I leave that to people that know a lot more than me.
    118:06
    Yeah, you ring me, I ring Bruce. Yeah, that's the cycle of life. We'll link that in the show notes if anyone's interested in doing it. I think he does this maybe once a year or once every two years. I've had some friends that have done it as well and come out knowing a lot more. Certainly a lot more than me anyway. I believe he starts from the start. Really basic stuff that you might miss and people assume that you know what an opto is and how it works and IO boards and switch matrices. Right, yeah, all that kind of stuff. So to give you an idea of where it's at, you need to bring your own multimeter to the course. So if you're not going to have a multimeter, then you're going to miss what this is about. Marty, do you play Pinball on the Pinball Arcade? I play Pinball on the Pinball Arcade quite a lot, Ryan. I've been playing it a bit more this week than normal because of the news and I'm so bad at it that I can't even hit, I do the trial table for Paragon and I can't even hit the fourth highest score for it to disable itself. That's how hard Paragon is. It's so hard. Anyway. Anyway, so for those people that don't know, so Pimball Arcade is digital representations of popular Pimball machines from the ages that you can play on any of your smart devices, on your PC via Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch. And effectively what was announced this week is that the license for Bally Williams has not been renewed. That's okay. There's plenty of other good machines that aren't Bally Williams machines, right? Like Gotleads?
    119:56
    Starter East Games? Yeah, so it's a problem. It is a problem. And from what I heard, so I listened to and I recommend everybody, you know, listen to the latest episode but certainly listen to this podcast anyway. It's called The Blarcade Pinball Podcast. Hi, Jared and Chris.
    120:18
    So they actually had Bobby King who's from Farsight Studios on their latest podcast and he sort of really did give the lowdown on what the situation is. And really what he said is that the license holder, I can't remember the name, you know, look at it. It's like scientific something. Something like that. They've decided to go in another direction with the license. What that probably means, either, you know, whatever they have to do with this license is just worth so little that they couldn't give a shit about it, or they're going to do their own thing with it. And this company makes a lot of, you know, the poking machines. So, you know, maybe they'll do something. Maybe someone has outbid them and, you know, it seems like a lot of effort though. The point at which the Pinball arcade is at now, I just remember all that stuff they had to do to get the Addams Family recreated. Yeah, all the Kickstarter. And that's the Kickstarter and this, this and that. I mean, surely someone's going to start over and do all that again. Well, yeah, I don't know. But what it means is that if you have purchased those machines before June 30th, So June 30 is when the license expires so you will no longer be able to purchase any Bailey Williams machines. But any machine that you have bought before then will stay and they will support it. They are going to focus on porting over all the new Stern machines that were released on Stern's Pinball Arcade. They're all going to come over and they've sort of said that they're going to start focusing on recreations of other Stern machines. So that's good. Okay, cool. You know, there's Gottlieb machines.
    122:01
    I know. As long as they're not the Gottlieb Premier ones. And do you know what? I've pretty much downloaded every single table that has ever come out, except for the last four Gottlieb Premier games. Because they are just turds. What platform do you have on your PC? No, I have mine on iOS. So I have one on my iPad and my phone, but I usually play it on my iPad.
    122:31
    I mean, if I kind of travel more, then I have them all, but whenever I feel myself kind of like playing it, and unless it's kind of like specifically learn the rules of a game, I just like, wow, why do I have $100,000 worth of Timmel machines in the other room? What am I doing with my life when I can just go get up and play with them? Well, because it's obviously not the same experience. And, you know, you're talking about Paragon before, and, you know, obviously Paragon's a difficult game in real life anyway, but it feels unnaturally bad on Pimball Arcade, but not all the machines are like that, but it's a digital platform, so you're never going to get the nuances of all the different shot variations that you can have. When you go down that little squiggly thing on the right on Paragon, where does the ball usually land? I guess it's per machine, but on the Pimball Arcade it lands on the tip of the lower flipper every single time. Like you can't, I don't know. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You don't get the same amount of variance that you would in a real game.
    123:36
    But, you know, also, you know, if they're going to look at Stern machines, I wonder whether they're going to look back at Stern Electronics and start releasing some of the old Stern games. They also said they want to do the Capcom games as well.
    123:50
    But obviously, with newer Stern machines as well, there's the hurdle of now having to incorporate the new screen as well. So that'll be interesting to see what they do. So if you do want to know more, check out the Blahcade Pinball Podcast. That's B-L-A-H-C-A-D-E. We'll take the show notes and I'll link it directly. Yeah, cool. Marty, is it time for Slam, the top 100? Yes, it is, Ryan, and I'm very excited this week to talk about it.
    124:21
    Are you excited, Marty, or are you dead inside? I am excited. Okay. Because I won. Yes. I actually won. 58% of the votes went to Guns N' Roses being a better machine than Stern Star Trek. And it isn't. Not even close to being better than Stern Star Trek, but clearly I had the better argument.
    124:49
    The begging argument? Pretty much the one that said, don't let him win again. Okay. That's over now, guys. That's over. Let's get back to normal, okay? Let's do again. I'm just checking the top 100. Where is Iron Maiden at number 12? It slid down. Oh, no way. Pinside PD strikes again. Yeah. Thanks. Pinside PD, by the way, he's on Facebook and he's sending me all these weird messages. But did we get any mail from Pinside PD this week, mate? Um, we, well, yes, we actually did.
    125:29
    I haven't listened to it. Binside Petey is, you know, he's a bit annoyed that, you know, you called him out for not giving you a rating. So, he decided to give you a rating. Would you like to hear what he said about you? Go for it. And I'm not joking, I haven't listened to this yet. Hey, Dirk, I didn't know you were going to play my message last week. At least it was the one good thing about your stupid podcast. Hashtag first burn. It's no wonder you played it. You need someone with a good voice. Dudes, you have no right making fun of Bobby Bobo and Garcianus. Do you hear yourselves talk? Hashtag speak English. Oh, Ryan, you want a rating from me? Here you go. Here's a two. I said grow a pair. She's one of my secret future girlfriend, Mrs. Pim. She totally wants me. She said you look like one of the Jonas Brothers. Yeah, if she was hit by a truck in the face. Hashtag, I'm on a roll. Ryan, your doppelganger is more like Rudy from Funhouse. You got a big, stupid head, never shut up, and I still want to shove my balls right in your mouth. Pinball, you frickin' pervert. Hashtag, get your head out of the gutter and fuck off. Oh, God. Pinside PD strikes again. I am going to excuse that number. Oh, it's sliding. Pinsliding all the way down. Oh, it is pinsliding.
    127:04
    Alright. Let's do this, Marnie. Let's go for it. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Coming right up.
    127:17
    44. 44 is... Three sales. Ooh, okay. Good one. Please generate a number from zero to one hundred. Sure.
    127:37
    Seventy-six. No, of course. Of course. A lower number than yours. Ah, yeah. Trans-warmers. Okay.
    127:48
    Okay. Sorry. All right. 30 seconds. Fishtails, one of Mark Ritchie's finest games. You can pick this game up super cheap. Very underrated. That's why it gets my vote for the best game. I hate this game.
    128:08
    Two rounds in the middle. Left, right, left, right combo. And then, bam, you've got a couple of seconds to hit it up the left orbit to get Monster Fish. Fast cast, multiball, it's chaotic. This game never drags on for too long with lightning flippers. It's a great game to tell you to mates. It's a fishing theme. Uh, uh, okay.
    128:33
    Yeah. Fish tales. It's got a higher rating than Transformers, Marty. Well, that is true. Let me know when you're ready for Transformers. Okay, ready, set, go. Transformers is a great game. It's one of these ones where I don't think it really has been given the justice that it deserves. It's a great George Gomez game and I know people sort of love them and hate them but this is great. It's got great art. You can play as Autobots or Decepticons, right? It's got great toys in it. It's got great ramps. It's got great flow. It's got that centre shot that goes up to bloody what his name is, Megatron or whatever and it raises. It's great. It's also got great sound. David Thiel does no wrong. This is a great game. Shut up.
    129:26
    The rebuttal's coming. You ready? Yep. Transformers, an absolute turd. Yes, you have the left and the right, but it's like picking between two pieces of shit, Marty.
    129:38
    The good shit or the bad shit. You want to chop wood to the left or chop wood to the right? I agree, the sounds are amazing. That doesn't make a game. It's got a poor layout. The alley has that annoying bit that does absolutely nothing in the top right-hand corner. The most boring, uninspiring software that Stern has ever created. This makes Big Buck Hunter look like medieval madness. Boom. So, you say that.
    130:04
    Is there a photo? You say that, but it actually still has better code than Fishtails. Fishtails is really right ramp, left ramp, right ramp, left ramp, monster fish, right ramp, left ramp, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Shit, boring game. And it's got those ridiculous lightning flippers on it as well. Just ruins any type of fun you are going to have on that machine. Terrible. Hate it. Fuck off. This is actually an interesting topic, right? Because Transformers on paper, and this is the whole thing that I'm going through my head now with Big Buck Hunter, is it actually a shit game or is it actually just a shit game for the time that it came out compared to what it was around it? Because Fishtails is a pretty simple game, but when it came out, that's what they were, right? Right? So, how do people judge games? They judge it for the time that it came out. Adam's Family, amazing game. Best-selling game of all time. It's pretty boring after a while, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So, we'll see how people vote. The nostalgia factor of things were simplest was a good game at the time, or, hey, this is like the only surviving company and they released an absolute... Yeah. Honestly, this is not me. This is me in my honest opinion. Fishtails is more fun to play than Transformers. Even though the code on Transformers might be slightly better, it is just more boring. No, I really don't agree. I think that the thing that probably isn't so great in Transformers' favour is I don't think the rules are as intuitive as they should be. And I know because a lot of people that I've spoken to that play it sort of don't really know how to play it. Like, I pick autopots. How do you not? Okay, you have all the guys there and you hit those shots a bunch of times until you start that shot. That is the epitome. I think I heard it today on the Pinball podcast with Jeff and Jessica Zanato and he was saying that Lyman kind of pioneered that movement away from that. You don't just kind of hit shots over and over again until something happens. That's what shit-coded. People have moved on from that and that came out in 2011 and it still had that crap. Yeah, well, you know, if Monster Bash comes out, people are going to say, oh, I love the fact that you do these shots and that lights up a mode or whatever. You know, it just depends. It's one of these things where people either like it or they don't, right? I think the problem with Transformers, I know we're probably still going on about these machines, but the biggest problem that Transformers had at the time was I think it was one of those games where it was made when Stern were really struggling to survive. And so the build quality suffered a lot. So whenever you saw these on location, nine times out of ten they were broken.
    133:05
    Okay. I've always played them on a home use only and they play well. Just like Avengers. I punch the ball and I'm bored ten seconds later. And again, that's another George Gomez from the Stern years. I just think it's one of those layouts that people either like or they don't. George Gomez made Lord of the Rings, so he can produce as many turds as I think they're turds, and I'll give him a pass for Lord of the Rings.
    133:32
    They're going to cover the show. Lifetime membership. I'm sorry, George Gomez, if you're listening. Okay, so we'll put that up on Facebook tomorrow, I guess, so it's usually Monday or Tuesday, and you can vote for who won. This Week in Pinball. Brought to you by Jeff from This Week in Pinball. What happened this week? Did we miss anything this week in Dimball? The Munsters apparently going to appear at TPF next year? Okay, that's right. It was some guy that used to feature in the Munsters, had a website with all these details, and it was removed. Everything is removed after Stern tells people not to leak their information, and he's going to appear at TPF. So does that mean that the month is maybe going to get delayed and revealed in TPF or does that mean that they're just going to be celebrating it there and have that guy make an appearance? Who knows? Apparently it's meant to come out this year. What else? So D-Boot, they've released their price range anywhere from $3,500 up to $50,000.
    134:42
    That's a pretty big range. That's quite the range, isn't it? Can you imagine, like, I've got a D-for-Pinball machine, you know, which one, the shit one, or like the one that's like a play-hitting goals? I love this quote, he says, this is from Robert Mueller, he says, $3,500 might be a little expensive for our low end. We wouldn't feel comfortable taking that much profit. As for the upper end, Kaneda keeps insisting that he wants to buy a pinball machine for $50,000, so we'd like to give him the opportunity to do it. Oh, fuck. That's cool. He's gone up in my books.
    135:18
    I mean, okay, Marty, if someone was offering you a new Pimball machine for three and a half grand, how much of the Pimball machine do you think you'll get? Do you think that includes the legs?
    135:31
    No, I'm serious. Like, the legs, the bracket, the LCD, the back box. Or is it just a replacement play field? Or is it like less than a replacement PlayStation? Is it like half of a replacement? Is this like P3? If they could do a fully-fledged Pinball machine for $3,500, game over. There it is. But that's pretty ambitious, do you reckon? Hey, if a machine is that cheap, then a lot of operators will start saying, hey, if this earns money, then I can put it out on site. To buy a pro in Australia, the cheapest model, Stern, is like eight and a half grand. Yeah. So, yes, there's a return on investment. Yes, it holds its value. But if you're talking about the amount of capital that you need to have, say, 50 machines on site if you're a big operator, That's 50 times 8.5 grand versus 50 times 3.5 grand. It should probably be about 5, maybe 6 grand here. Sure.
    136:32
    What I'm getting at is that you can put more out and make more money. It's not a good business model to be putting Super LEs or 50 grand thermal machines on site. So it's a lot of talk. It's a lot of hot air. We'll see what happens when it actually happens. Yeah. As I said, they just need to bring a great product. I don't care what they're pricing it at, whether it is $3,500 or $50,000. Just make it a good theme, make it a good game, make it work, make it play well, then you can put whatever price you want on it.
    137:11
    Alright, so let's talk about this week in Pinball. What did we do together, Ryan? We streamed Alien.
    137:19
    We met up at your place on Friday night? Yeah, sure. Yeah, there's a guy, Andy, came from interstate and wanted to do a pinball kind of pup crawl and I told him to start at my house.
    137:30
    This guy's really nice. He brought out an apple pie, it was so freaking good. Oh my God. Best apple pie ever. Now, we got into almost like a bit of an argument, Marty. Do you want to repeat what was said on Friday night, if you remember, about Lord of the Rings? Because you did something that you usually don't do and you read a rule sheet on Lord of the Rings. I did read a rule sheet because you had mentioned, I don't know whether it was last week or the week before, that my rule knowledge on Lord of the Rings is not great. And you were absolutely spot on. It's not been great. So I decided to read up just to understand. I read the entire rule sheet, literally word for word, but it was all too much for me. So I then sort of looked around and looked at some strategies that people gave. So I had a much better understanding of what I needed to do with that machine. So I'm glad I did. And then you came to my house and? And you've absolutely destroyed that machine. You have taken every essence of fun that that game has. So George Gomez, just cover your ears because I'm going to tell you what he's done to your machine. You have made it so not fun to play. Okay, that's my point. What did you do to it, Ryan? Tell everyone what you've done to it. I totally removed the outlines, the post isn't there. Not a problem if you hit your shots and it's a fan layout so you have like four shots that return perfectly to the slipper or five shots that include the VDK in the middle. So what else did I do? I changed the first two multiballs to a harder setting so you don't just kind of get given and handed a multiball and just sit there and backhand the right ramp over and over again on easy settings. So I made it fair so that all multiballs are equally hard to get into. Now, Marty, this is not Star Trek. You can't just flail and you'll hit one of the six shots that are available in the game by Steve Ritchie. And I feel like I almost, you said you're making this game, you're designing it for Jordan Shredway and Richard Rhodes and that's it. And I included myself in that because I had to go after you. It was your machine. Yeah. And then what happened is after you left, I sat there and kind of talked to Stacey about strategies and what to do. And he struggled for a little while, like you were. And then he put up a 70 million or so. So he learnt how to play the game.
    140:00
    But people are coming to your place for a tournament. They're not necessarily going to have that amount of time. And also Safety Borg is also a really good player. I understand, but if I make them easy, then everyone has a good time. No, no, no. I'm not saying that you need to make them easy, but I think it's almost like a case of, you know, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. No, too salty. Take it back. You've just gone that little bit extra where it's like, okay, now it's not fun anymore. You need to turn it back a little bit. Big Buck Hunter on default settings will have shorter ball times than My Lord of the Rings is bastardized. Okay. So what does that say? Does that say that Big Buck Hunter isn't fun? Look, you know, and I was being critical because it wasn't fun and I'd read the rules and I was hoping to have a great game. I just think it's one of these interesting things where I understand that you've got to set machines up for the competition mode and when it is a really serious tournament you've probably got to do that. But, you know, I just say consider the audience that's coming along and not everybody's going to be elite. Well, that's my objective of the tournament is to make people more elite and, you know, with the machines that everyone else is playing on site, there's a competition going on right now in Northcote. I mean, those machines have, like, some of them don't have a tool bob on, probably. And you can smash the machine around, and that's not teaching anyone anything except for to be rough with games. Sure. And then they go to ACS, you know, the Australian Championship, and they get smashed. Yeah. Because the people in Queensland set up their machines, probably. I know. So, but if you remember, a good friend of the show, Bowen, he said, as tournament director, you should be making it as fun for a new person that hasn't played before as well as the elite. Well, that's why... Do you listen to Bowen? I am listening to Bowen because I did Pinnberg style where people were grouped together in the same thing. It's just instead of there being 800 people, there's only like 30. I know. Anyway, it's happening this week. I bet you if you win, Marty, you'll say, yeah, it was awesome. That's awesome. Keep it that way. If you finish out of the top four... You're a perfectionist, Marty. If you don't finish first, you're going to be upset, right? If you're second, it's a loss. Yeah, that's right. There is a big competition happening this week in Coolingatta. The Cooley Classic will be 60 or 70 Aussies there. The New York Pinball Championship is going to be happening and Rage Cills at Rises version 2.
    142:28
    I will take your feedback on board, Marty, and I will consider maybe doing that whole best game thing, like your four best games count towards it, and that way people can just keep on going back and back and back to the same game. Sure. In a certain period. Maybe that works better as an introduction to my Pinball machines. Yeah. Anyway, that's what we did this week. We also had a Pinball meet on Saturday night. Yep, there's a guy called Glenn's House. I did a little Facebook Live video. I brought my wife along, Chanel, and yeah, it's probably the last time I'm going to bring her to a pinball place.
    143:04
    Yeah, I don't know. Pinball meets, I mean, as much as I want them to be kind of, you know, there are females there, but the females that are there kind of have been there for a while and they kind of get like slowly, you know, brought into it and they're kind of one of the guys, so to speak. But my wife just kind of was, you know, it's like this crowded space with like guys kind of like screaming and drinking beer and it's not her. You know, she's an introvert anyway, but it's not really her thing. So I didn't hang around for too long, but it was an amazing meat. The food there was amazing. Yeah. That's chef. It was amazing. Yeah.
    143:38
    What did you get up to, Marty, this week? Well, besides that, there really was only one other thing that was in my life, and that was Eurovision, obviously. Ryan, and you were injured as well. So we should have been, on Saturday and Sunday, we should have been out playing more pinball. Instead, I think, it might have been Saturday, we were watching Eurovision at the same time commenting on how the reacts. But the reason why I'm bringing that up is that I was talking to somebody today about Eurovision because it's what we do. And someone said, you know what, I mentioned a while ago about the whole notion of what would be a good band theme that's not a rock band.
    144:23
    I'm just going to put this out there because I'm not going to shut this person down. But they said B-52s.
    144:31
    As in Love Shack? As in Love Shack, Rock Lobster, Home, I can't remember what it is. But I was just thinking about it because their visual style is very colourful. It's very sort of, you know, 50s, 60s Atlanta type cool. And you could do sort of themes based around their songs. It would be quite an interesting pin. I don't think it would necessarily sell all that well. But I just like the way that somebody was thinking about a non-rock band having their own Pimple. B-52s, that would have been good back in the day, the 80s, having a B-52s Pimple machine.
    145:15
    50 miles to the left, Shack. My dad used to play that over and over again. Come on, you could just see it happen. Roam multiball where you've got to roam around the world. Come on, guys, this thing would just write itself. I love when people think of a theme, and I'm guilty of doing this, and you just name anything you know from that theme and put multiple after it. Oh, the Goonies, Truffle Shuffle Multiball. Don't you get it? It's the Truffle Shuffle, the thing you love, plus multiball. You like Pimball? Truffle Shuffle, Truffle Shuffle. I'm doing it right now, Marty. Truffle Shuffle.
    145:52
    Anyway, Truffle Shuffle, if they ever make a Goonies Pimball machine, it's Truffle Shuffle Switch Frenzy. And every time you hit a switch, he does the shuffle, okay? It's not a multivolt. Anyway, yeah, Eurovision. I picked my winner and I was wrong. I think you picked it, Marty. Did you pick Israel? Israel. That was the one I wanted to win, yeah. She was great. It's really weird because I'm still listening to the music and certain other songs, like the Austrian song, like really growing on me. And it's just, yeah. I know this is not Pinball, guys, but Eurovision this year, because this is one of the things, remember, Ryan and I didn't know each other and the only thing that we really had in common was Pinball. We've now got something else that's in common and that's our love of Eurovision. And I'm just putting it out here, Ryan, I reckon this year, probably the best standard Eurovision has had in years. Yeah, since 2009. 2009 was the benchmark here. But yeah, there's some songs that you instantly like that by the time the song contest is finished, you don't like it anymore. By the way, Mata, you know that people in America don't know what Eurovision is? No, I expect that people in America don't know what Eurovision is. Although there was that whole Deadpool 2 thing where they sort of called it out. The thing that's probably going to be really weird is that, you know, this is a song contest that happens in Europe. And Australia is in it. Yeah. And I said to my wife, if Australia somehow wins and they hold it here, I don't care what city it's in, I'm going. Because I've been watching these things since I was like two years old. Like, it's a family tradition. Anyway, what did I do this week? I rebuilt my Metallica Flippers. It literally, you had to hit the shots to hit the ramps really accurately. and I refuse to believe that my flippers needed a rebuild because it was a home use only, had maybe like 2,000, 2,500 plays on it. Yeah, I replaced the core slots in the core sleeve and it feels like a brand new Pinball machine. So I need to do that for my Star Trek. Probably won't do it before the competition and maybe Simpsons or some of the other games. I think all my machines deserve $15 each just to feel brand new again. I headed to Jared's today. I'm totally overpinball at the moment. I've got to do nothing between now and the competition next week. But I headed over there because I've never been over his house and we played some Belly's Strikes and Stairs, one of my favourite Pinball machines from my youth. You know all about that. I forgot that the two women on the back, like sitting down on the back glass, have even bigger boobs than the main chit. Sure, okay. Yes, but I was reminded of that today. Yep. And, yeah, he's got amazing machines and he beat me on Strikes and Stares, which was the final game and he won 3-2. Yeah.
    148:52
    What have we got, Marnie? We got the mailbag. We, yeah, well, we got some feedback. We asked last week about mechs that are super interesting, that are kind of like all-in-one mechs, and Dave Mackay messaged me and said that we left out the Theater of Magic trunk. Yeah. I totally forgot about that. Yeah, John Papadook, doing design. He's a great, great guy. We also got an email from Ezra and they suggested a new kind of segment we can have. Yeah, we'll talk about that. We will do that when we don't interview someone and we don't have a three-hour podcast.
    149:32
    When we need to do it, basically. So, yeah, it's a great idea, though. So thank you Ezra. Competition winner. Yes. We put it up on Facebook and the R of geometry was winning by a lot. Yeah. And then the whole social media thing came with the light. The power of social media. The power of social media came in and the gagging for the trans light came away with the win. I believe his wife posted, can you please vote for this? And people that have no idea what it's about just blindly voted for him. And these are the rules that we set. And he was one of the only people that actually followed the 10-second rule thing anyway. So it's all just a bit of fun. Probably not the best sound out there, and I'm sure everyone will agree. Well, almost everyone. But he wins because that's the rules. I don't know. Maybe we should do the whole Eurovision thing where it's like there's a jury vote. Yeah. I don't know. We do have a lot of other stuff to give away. We've got the dialed-in headbox decals, the dialed-in full decals signed by Jersi Jack, A new one that was donated today by Jared Mendoza is a Star Wars Pro Translight from Stern.
    150:44
    All this stuff, and you've still got a whole bunch of the critical hits cards. I do, and I've also got a Game of Thrones Translight here that will be up for a price then. Is that the one in your Skype? Yeah, it is.
    150:58
    Cool. So we should probably do that before Pimberg, just in case someone from the US wins, because we're not shipping it to you guys in the US if you win. Someone will have to pick it up from Pimberg. We're not spending it. I'm not just going to have like a second suitcase just full of all these prizes. Well, one little tube is fine. You can shut it up your ass by.
    151:24
    Anything else? Are we done? I think we're done. I think it's now time for me to spend three or four hours editing this. Fucking zombie yeti.
    151:34
    I think it's more than just zombie yeti tonight. Alright. Where can people find us, Ryan? Headtoheadpinball.com. Bam. That's all you need to do. Email us, headtoheadpinball.gmail.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that kind of stuff. So, are you going to sing me out your favourite song from Eurovision this week? I wasn't planning to, but I can give you the stupid winner, that stupid song. I'm not your boy, not your boy, you stupid boy, stupid boy.
    152:11
    You know what my little kid calls her? What's that? Sushi Chicken Lady. Every time we go to a sushi store, they have that golden cat thing, whatever it's called. She's a sushi lady daddy and my three year old calls the Cypress girl glitter vagina. So, yep. I can understand why. Cool. Great way to end this show. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening. You have to get classy.