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Adventures in Pinball - Pinball Show Edition

Fresh Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 8m·analyzed·Oct 2, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Fresh Pinball discusses Avatar LE, X-Men debut, and upcoming PGX Pittsburgh event.

Summary

Fresh Pinball Podcast Season 3, Episode 7 covers recent pinball events including Cleapin show, PGX Pittsburgh tournament upcoming, and hands-on impressions of Jersey Jack's Avatar LE and Stern's X-Men. Hosts discuss game mechanics, event logistics, and community engagement around new releases.

Key Claims

  • Stern's X-Men clear coat playfield quality has noticeably improved with thicker, nicer finishes

    high confidence · Host observed multiple X-Men LE unboxings this week with consistently excellent clear coat application

  • Hexa Pinball's Space Hunt is now available for play at Pastimes Arcade in Gerard, Ohio

    high confidence · Confirmed via Pinball Map; hosts plan to visit and stream the game

  • Avatar LE features UV lighting with CE version getting three color options vs one on LE

    high confidence · Direct discussion of CE specifications; hosts noted Don from Don's Pinball Podcast reported topper complications at factory

  • X-Men uses coil-actuated mechs for simplicity: Sentinel finger and hand crash are just single coils

    high confidence · Hosts examined underside of X-Men during setup; detailed mechanical breakdown discussed

  • Avatar LE has potential flipper flow/playfield plastic issues affecting ball routing on certain shots

    medium confidence · Multiple hosts observed inconsistent ball behavior on lower playfield; attributed to plastic positioning that can be adjusted via screws

  • PGX Pittsburgh show October 4-6 will feature Avatar, Ninja Eclipse, Ultraman, Jetsons, Punny Factory, Barry's Barbecue Challenge, and Ultraman

    high confidence · Confirmed lineup detailed by hosts; event at Monroeville Convention Center

  • Jersey Jack Avatar CE features hydro-dipped armor so each set is unique

    high confidence · Direct reference to CE customization process with powder coating and hydro dipping

  • Stern Venom LE topper faced design complications and required pivot to alternative design

    medium confidence · Host noted hearing through interviews that initial topper concept didn't work; fallback to plan C

Notable Quotes

  • “whoever out there is refining the QC processes over there at Stern, Pat on the back for you. Kudos, Cookie, or something, because playfields are looking nice”

    Host (unnamed) @ ~3:00 — Positive recognition of Stern manufacturing improvements on X-Men LEs

  • “I still don't like the flipper feel... The light show is nice... the little play field is kind of fun”

    Kyle @ ~32:00 — Critical but measured perspective on Avatar from frequent JJP skeptic; reveals consistent design critiques

  • “It might be something if the CE is... I wonder if the CE is going to be the upside-down level”

    Kyle @ ~36:00 — Speculation about Avatar CE features and whether UV gimmick reaches full potential

  • “oh well you hit this shot on this little ramp on the left hand side that then feeds the ball all the way across the play field up another ramp down a habit trail back over to the danger room it's like you look at it and you think oh there's no way that could work and then you hit the shot it's like holy crap that's amazing”

    Host discussing X-Men danger room shot @ ~58:00 — Demonstrates appreciation for X-Men's shot flow design despite mechanical simplicity

  • “if I didn't have witnesses to that, everyone would be throwing around accusations of the glass being off”

    Host (responding to strong flipper play) @ ~44:00 — Humorous but indicates strong flipper response on Avatar

  • “the regulars up there are all spoiled... when's x-men coming when's this coming when's that coming”

    Host @ ~50:00 — Community expectation management challenge; regular tournament players expecting continuous new machine releases

Entities

Fresh Pinball PodcastorganizationStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyHexa PinballcompanyAvatar LEgameX-MengameSpace HuntgameCleapineventPGX (Pittsburgh Gaming Expo)event

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Avatar topper design faced complications at factory; initial ambitious concept abandoned in favor of 'plan C' alternative design

    medium · Host reported hearing through interviews that topper concept 'we couldn't get that to work'; comparison to initial ambition of multiplying Mandalorian topper by 10x

  • ?

    community_signal: Fresh Pinball actively promoting JJP showroom games by routing them to community events rather than static showroom displays, generating tournament-level engagement

    high · Avatar LE at Quarter Up events generating overflow traffic; hosts noting JJP strategy of event-based demo distribution

  • ?

    event_signal: PGX Pittsburgh October 4-6 confirmed as significant regional tournament with diverse manufacturer representation (JJP Avatar, Spooky Ninja Eclipse/Ultraman, American Pinball Barry's BBQ, Pinball Adventures Jetsons)

    high · Detailed lineup confirmation; hosts noting Monroeville Convention Center location; crossover appeal with tabletop/arcade gaming communities

  • ?

    leak_detection: Mockingbird Lane homebrew machine's public debut scheduled for Quarter Up Halloween event October 28; hosts teasing reveal suggesting recent completion

    high · Direct reference to machine acquired ~1 year ago, now ready for public debut; black and white theme, Mockingbird Lane setting confirmed

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Jersey Jack Avatar CE features unique hydro-dipped armor cosmetics where each set is individually unique due to hydro dip process variability

    high · Direct host reference to CE hydro-dipping plus powder coating specification

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.206

0:00
Welcome everyone to Season 3, Episode 7 of the Fresh Pinball Podcast. We are back and better than ever. After a little bit of a sabbatical, we're back behind these microphones. Episode 7, is that what you said? Yeah. Of Season 3. Wow. Season 3? Yeah. I mean, time flies when you're having fun. I was thinking about it the other day. I didn't even look. I was just like, how many episodes have we done? I have no idea. I mean, it's more important how many seasons we've done than episodes. I think season four is coming up. I mean, it's about time to make that turn into season four, I think.
1:01
If you hear that, we've got some Rick and Morty attract mode going here. Commercials. Yeah, got to be ready for the Rick and Morty.
1:09
All right, around the table we shall go. To my left, I have on the board the birthday boy himself. Yeah, here in about 20 minutes or an hour. How are we feeling, Cal? Feeling flipping fantastic.
1:25
That's what I like to hear. And across from the table to me, the person that I have nothing left to say to today because we were in the truck all day long, Mr. Corbin. How are we feeling, buddy? Doing good, doing good. You know, it was a day. It was a day for sure. Yeah, we'll get into that a little bit more as this episode progresses. I'm shocked just that we've had this many episodes, I guess. Seasons and episodes. Wild. Yeah. And to my right, Zach. How are we doing, buddy? Flippin' fantastic. So many flippin' fantastic. Hanging out with my pinball pals. You really are. I just had to steal it from you, Zach. It's okay. It's so good. I'm willing to share. When people don't tell me they're flippin' fantastic, then I just get disappointed. Well, I'm doing good.
Pastimes Arcade
organization
Kyleperson
Corbinperson
Zachperson
Quarter Uporganization
Donperson
Rob Burkeperson
Compulsive Pinballorganization
American Pinballcompany
Pinbrew Festevent
Dark Room Johnperson
  • $

    market_signal: Regular tournament players at Quarter Up arcade venue showing FOMO and high expectations for machine rotation; treating fresh releases as essential experience rather than optional

    medium · Host noted regulars asking 'when's X-Men coming' immediately after Avatar event; characterizing players as 'spoiled' in expectations

  • ?

    community_signal: Kyle maintains consistent critical stance toward JJP design philosophy (flipper feel, mini playfield execution) despite acknowledging visual/audio production quality

    high · Multiple exchanges where Kyle praises light show/aesthetics but expresses mechanical design reservations; self-identified 'Pro guy' preference

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern X-Men demonstrates simplified, elegant mechanical design using single coils for sentinel finger and hand mech effects; community impressed by execution simplicity vs visual impact

    high · Detailed host analysis of X-Men underside during setup; specific coil actuation details; positive reception of danger room shot routing

  • ?

    product_concern: Avatar LE exhibits inconsistent ball routing on lower playfield due to plastic positioning; requires manual adjustment of screws to correct deflection patterns

    medium · Multiple hosts observed curling ball behavior; one mentioned someone replaced the plastic component; adjustment via screws confirmed feasible

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack Avatar code updates will include nerfs to extra ball stacking mechanics in future versions based on feedback from current LE testing

    medium · Host noted developers are discussing future code changes to reduce exploitable extra ball combinations

    • 2:07
    All right. I'm all right. Just hanging out. Everything's fine. Keeping on, keeping on. So a little fact check here. I don't actually have a whole lot from the last episode, but I did have. So when Stern posted their Playfield Press video that we were commenting on, the one that they leave out that I was surprised by was actually Data East. So I don't know if that was just a clerical error.
    2:34
    What else would they have used? I don't know. Surely. So it's actually interesting. as we were unboxing some of the X-Men LEs this week, I was marveling at how nice the clear coat has been on all of the playfields of those that I've seen. They've been like the thickest clear coat and the nicest that I've seen. The one I saw today looked pretty solid. I didn't see the second one. Did they flip the head up when you were... Did you see it? Yeah, so those two today I saw both and they looked nice. And then the one that I did on Friday also looked pretty spectacular. So whoever out there is refining the QC processes over there at Stern, Pat on the back for you. Kudos, Cookie, or something, because playfields are looking nice. Pizza Friday. Yeah, we haven't sent pizza over to Stern for a while. We might need to pull the trigger on that. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. And then I had seen that we briefly talked about Hexa's game Space Hunt and possibly wanting to try to bring that over here, and just the shipping costs and all of that stuff kind of amounted to too much to really make it worthwhile. I saw that they had it out on the streets of France. I saw that too. And there's still very little gameplay video. I mean, I looked and looked the other day. What did Pastime just get? Didn't they just get one of those? Or what did I tell you? It was that one or a different one? I thought it was the basketball one that they got. You might be right. Yeah, I'll check. I think you're right though. Yeah, still, I think they did one. There was like one brief little something of it very early on, and that's all I've ever seen. Yeah. And that was like two years ago now, I feel like. That was very early in development. Yeah. Now, if there are any listeners out there that own a cargo ship or something like a private plane. All sorts of stuff I need shipped over. Right. I mean, we have the German P.O. box figured out, but we need something like maybe a container ship. So if you do. Then the playfields are going to whatever, hang us on us. They might.
    4:31
    But if they can help us, Zach, where should they email? Freshpinball at gmail.com That's right I wanted to take a moment to commemorate This episode to a family Member that we lost this past week Our brother in arms One of the Fresh Pinball Podcast Puppies, Scrapper So a quick moment of silence here for Our buddy Scrapper Love you buddy Be a little buddy Of course Of course. Some pets are more family to me than my actual family. Well, you know, like when your 100-year-old grandma dies, it's not a – it's sometime relieving. But when your friend at 15 years goes, it's – It's hard. Yeah.
    5:17
    What do we got? We got some Hex over at Past Times? Oh, man. We need to get to Past Times. In Gerard, Ohio. There it is. According to Pinball Map. A space hunt. Ooh. We do have to go. Well, now the pressure's off. We don't have to import it now. Yeah, that's what I was saying. We can go test it out. Let's go Sunday. We can figure it out then. I'm just surprised we haven't seen anything. We need to go over and stream it. Yeah, okay. I mean, we could go play it at least. I'm not sure if I'm convenient with that. Where's Nick doing? Talk to Nick. A small... Isn't that the streaming guy? What's his name? Yeah, Nick Camps. N-E-O Pinball. Yeah. We'll invite him, and Matt Allen can write a nice article. Yeah. We'll invite them both out. And we can just play it. Of course. Yeah, of course. Mainly just playing it. Maybe we can get in early.
    6:00
    I don't know how long they've had it, but maybe after they have had it for a while, we trade them something else that's kind of rare for them to have out there, and we have the space option.
    6:09
    Honey factory. Rob did like that. Jetsons, because they have the other homebrew Jetsons there already, so they could have Jetsons side by side.
    6:18
    I feel like we have some options. Yeah, yeah. Maybe some dominoes. That's crazy to think that we have games that Rob Burke doesn't. That's right. Yeah, that's kind of cool. That makes it kind of special. It does. It would be cool to try the Hex out. Yeah, I want to take it out for sure. Yes, we need to get over there. Because I know they're closing up the week of Expo because all of their resources will be out in Chicago. Yeah, I saw that. I wonder if they'll pull some of that kind of stuff and take it out there. Yeah, I was just thinking, because, like, Magikarp went out there last year. It would be cool if Space Hunt was... It probably will be. That would be... Because that's one that I don't think... Like we said, I haven't seen anywhere else landed on... Do they do a game list for Expo? Like, if you go to the website?
    6:56
    I don't remember seeing one in the past. because I'd imagine it would just be too extensive for all of the games that they bring to listen to. Every edible. Them all out.
    7:06
    It would be hard to keep to a list, too. Like, oh, man, this broke the day before the expo. Yeah, without a doubt. People would hold you to it, and they'd be so annoyed. Yeah, like, oh, it's not here.
    7:18
    Where's your whatever? I did have a few complaints at Cleapin. Oh, for which game? Ninja Eclipse. So Ninja Eclipse will be I had like two or three people ask me Without a doubt it is on the trailer It is going to PGX It will be So PGX is going to be October 4th Through the 6th And we're going to have A whole list We're going to have Let's see here We're going to have Punny Factory out there Punny, BBQ We're going to have that Ninja Eclipse We're going to have Ultraman I think, did we cut Ultraman? Ultraman's going still, yeah. Ultraman's going still. I think Jetsons is going, and I think there's a Six in there. What am I forgetting? So we had Avatar, Punny Factory, Berrios, Ultraman, Jetsons, and Ninja Eclipse. Nice, nice. That's a pretty, you know, you've got a JJP in there, you've got a Pinball Adventures, an American, two Spookies, and a Turner Pinball. So anyone that missed it at the Cleveland show, come on out to the Pittsburgh show, and you're going to see Ninja Eclipse, and you can play some other funness too. Yeah. Talking about Avatar. I mean, Avatar's been... Shout out Pittsburgh Mike Bears. Yeah, Mike Bear, Mike... Mike Hogue. Yeah, all of the Mikes guys really are making dreams come true. Yeah. Where is that at? It's at the... So that's at the Monroeville Convention Center. Okay. I think this is... I know at least the third year where they've had pinball machines and they've just been adding and adding and adding to it. Because it's primarily arcades, right? Well, so it started out as like tabletop gaming. That was the primary drive of the show. And then they added in some retro console gaming and then arcade games. And now it's evolved into. This is all hand in hand. It all just goes together. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, the first delivery that we made today, the Alien Ripley edition, was to a couple that were big into tabletop gaming. And then they talked about going out and playing pinball on location and then making the investment to putting two of them in their home now, Jurassic Park and that alien. Well, I mean, Phil kind of found found that same way. Yes. Actually, yeah, that was. Yeah. A lot of people talk about it. It's the same sort of thing where it's a community. You know, there's the board game community, pinball community, all of that stuff. It's just another social circle that people then are little butterflies flying around. We're trying to get bigger group. There's so many of us. Always trying to add to the group. So that's PGX coming up. While we're talking about other events, let's go ahead and talk about other stuff that we have coming up. So at the end of October, Monday, October 28th, Quarter Up will be holding its Halloween party. Costumes are encouraged, and we have a tentative lineup of some spooky games that we're going to be bringing. We're going to surprise them, though, right? Yeah. We could tease one, maybe. Something that We may or may not record another episode before then That is very possible There's going to be a game that's black and white And takes place on Mockingbird Lane That'll be making It's public debut at quarter up We've only had the thing for like A year No no literally a year Probably too bad So that'll be a good time Where's that at Pops? Yeah So that'll be coming That and a bunch of other spooky type games But definitely there'll be a costume contest We'll have some giveaways Ben and the crew up there always absolutely Knock it out of the park So if you're in the Akron metropolitan area Come on out, come down from Cleveland Up from Canton Yeah I was glad to make it up there last time I haven't been up there in a while Literally me, Corbin and Anna are sitting at the bar And Corbin and Anna are chowing down On some of the delicious foods That they have up there I can't believe how good the pricing is there. It's very reasonable. Even like a decent beer is five bucks. And I look to my right, and who do I see sauntering into the quarter up? But Mr. Kyle himself coming in. I thought I saw a ghost for a second. It was a ghost.
    11:22
    It's a drive from my place. It is. No doubt. Corbin and I were talking today. I don't think I remember you coming up for another one of the events since like this has been the friend group. So it was definitely. I also didn't have the work schedule that I do now. So that helped you. Makes it much more negotiable.
    11:43
    All right. So previous to this, we also did, as Kyle alluded to, Klee pin. We set up our booth over there. We were adjacent to Compulsive Pinball, who brought out all of the Stern heat. Anyone who attended the show was given the rare treat of seeing an extensive list of Stern LEs, most of them being Stern LE number 11. So that's compulsive pinball with Chris Myers and Don Johnson. Everything seemed to be playing nice, too. Yeah. And it didn't look like games were down. No, they had several people. I know Steve Prusa was teching a little bit. Marvin was teching a little bit. They were doing a good job of keeping the games up and going. But over in our booth, we had some games come and go throughout the weekend because games were actually selling pretty briskly. But from time to time, we had, of course, the Punny Factory engraved edition.
    12:37
    And then the star of the show, the one that probably got the most love, was the one that Corbin came in at like the 11th hour and brought up a Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses limited edition. and people were absolutely rocking out on that game. It's a cool game. And it found a home by the end of the show as well, so we're going to be putting some modifications onto that. The light showed up today for it. Yeah. Some repairs, some cleaning, some everything else. Some levelers. So two tall gentlemen actually bought it, and one of their requests was, hey, can we raise this game up a little bit? We got to set up taller legs. Oh, like bingo legs? No, flipper football ones. I think they probably want their cool powder coat. Yeah, probably. I got a guy. We do have a guy now. We do have a guy, yeah.
    13:25
    But, yeah, so GNR found a new home. The prototype Revenge from Mars was also on the end cap for a while. That found a new home. I didn't get to play it. That thing wasn't around very much. No, no, it came, it saw, it went, it conquered. It was going to try not to move it into anywhere that it might stay for too long. Yeah, yeah, don't bring it into Zach's house. That's for sure. And then we also sold one of like 500-ish Sega Godzillas. That went basically before the show even opened up. So that's on to a new home. And then from our friends at American Pinball, we had our Barry O's Barbecue Challenge there. Always a barbecue party. I like putting barbecue next to Pony Factory. It's fun. It can go from one to the other. They can decipher which one's better. Right. And then from a fan favorite from Pinbrew Fest, we had William Slugfest, a nice little pitch and bat that everybody was having a good time on did corbin set that up with the music like way too freaking loud i mean i i was there from my house yeah why was it so loud that's a fair question it's a fair question straight out i was there for like six minutes and i went over and turned it down yeah after somebody wasn't finally on it like i wonder if after i left on friday night if someone opened the coin door and turned it up because i don't remember being that loud on here i can't imagine being loud at your house no no definitely not definitely not but if i would have had six of those slug fests i could have sold six slug fests like i had so many like kids that were between six and twelve playing with either their mom or their dad or whatever and it was just like awesome to see people playing two-player games on that they didn't quite have ollie skills but you know not everyone's that good and then the final two games that we had up there we had a shout out again to Sam Bowman. Your former Ultraman CE was up there, and it ran all weekend like a champ with just one minor adjustment. So pretty pleased with that. Yeah. And then the final game we sold was to Grant. He picked up Kyle, your old AIQ Pro. Hey, that's great. That's right. I forgot that. And we'd had it for so long that I forgot half of the things that the game had. So whenever he got home, he's like, this thing has a shaker motor. this thing has pin fidelity speakers in it I'm like oh yeah I forgot all that stuff was in there he's like I got a great deal on this I'm like yeah it sounds like you did so Klee pin was a ton of fun shout out to dark room John for hanging out at the booth for the majority of the weekend he brought some of his prints and people were enjoying picking up some of those to put into their collections to put onto their walls onto their desks and whatnot if you don't already follow darkroom underscore pinball on instagram to see everything that john is up to in the it's not just cleveland anymore yeah i've been digging the variety yeah you were talking about his old camcorder stuff he's been posting old camcorder stuff what was you said there was a taco bell baja blast concert or something yeah it's like a big punk thing they're doing up in cleveland now interesting you gotta look up a video in the parking lot of taco bell yes really taking a bunch of pictures of it i actually saw like something it's just a punk show it's great five different photographers and he was one of them who took pictures at that show you know different perspectives of it that's cool that's cool yeah it's definitely different signage he's been doing stuff yeah absolutely yeah but john's a must follow um he is an artiste a professional high-end photography so moving on let's talk a little jersey jack pinball we've all had a little bit of time on avatar le i've probably had the most of the group at the table corbin was nice enough to let me set it up at my house for what four or five days and then we had a bunch of people over for our buddy Tank the Dog birthday party Don wait
    17:18
    But everybody came over and was rocking that out. Kyle, you're probably the biggest, I don't want to say Jersey Jack hater at the table, but you're the most critical of their games. What's your honest takeaways of Avatar? It's pretty. They always are. Always very pretty. Awesome light shows. I still don't like the flipper feel. What did you like?
    17:43
    The light show. Yeah, the light show is nice. I mean, I guess that little play field is kind of fun. So the one that's the pop bumper or the little one that has the crab suit with the tiny flippers? Yeah, I don't care about the tiny flippers. Okay. They all have that. anything that has a lower play field in recent years just feels exactly like that.
    18:06
    How did you feel about the UV lighting gimmick? Added to the game? Didn't do much for you? I mean, it was cool looking, but I don't know. I'm curious to see. It was cool, but I feel like it wasn't upside-down mode where I was like, oh, this is sick. It might be something, one of those situations. It might be something if the CE is. I wonder if the CE is going to be the upside-down level. Maybe. Because the CE is supposed to have three different colors of UV. And that version only has one. Okay. So one versus the three, if I understand correctly. Because I'm also interested to see on the CE, so they're powder coating the side armor, but then they're also hydro dipping it so that each and every set of armor is going to be unique because no two hydro dips are exactly the same. We'll see, Matt. There's a half of them at Expo, right? Oh, I can't imagine they wouldn't. Yeah, I don't know.
    18:54
    I mean, you played it. I did, but if it was in my basement and got some time with it, maybe I'd like it. But I don't know. As much as Corbin and I... It's not something I want to put money in. I didn't play it last night. Yeah, I played the game on it last night, but everybody else was on it. Corbin wears Pulp Fiction. It's in the other room. Yeah, exactly. You were rocking Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Corbin, takeaways on Avatar Ellie?
    19:19
    You know, it's very pretty. Yeah. I mean, I'm just over the top, of course. I think I have I played maybe I've had maybe a dozen games on it max Yeah probably less than that But it seems like a fun game It's got some cool shots What did you think of the flow chart To navigate your way around through all of the modes I literally never pay attention to any of that stuff So it really didn't help me that much But you framed it I did frame it because it felt nice Just rules are so much It clashed it up a little bit Contrary to his I like the mini playfield. I liked it too. It had that little crab suit down there. See, that kind of stuff gets me. It also seemed to... My downside was that little dude dancing around. The ball bounced off and knocked his leg off a day out in the wild. Oh, jeez. Yeah, one day out. Poor little mech suit guy. His leg comes off down in the trough, jams it up. Go on, take care of that. What I liked about the tiny little playfield too was that it wasn't just bashing that crab suit with a couple little targets. There was an orbit of either side of it to go around, which I thought was really cool. I like that it wasn't dead center also. How it's off to the side a little bit. Yeah. I think I like it. I mean, doesn't ACDC have that same little orbit, though? It does, but it's dead center in the play field. I don't know. That makes it feel, this makes it feel more like you're looking into another world. Right. Like, under that. You're looking underwater. It's all part of, like, the immersive. I think that's kind of. World under glass. In a world. And, like, with the UV thing, I'm definitely curious to see the three color versus the one color. Yeah, definitely. I'm also interested in seeing the topper because what Don from Don's Pinball Podcast was saying when he was at the factory that the topper is just absolutely bonkers. Yeah. It's like take the one from Mandalorian and multiply it by like 10. That's the sort of.
    21:07
    That's what I heard they're doing with Stern Venom ones. It's supposed to be something like that. That was, I have so many people that are so excited for those accessories and they'd been building it up that this topper was going to be like the topper to end all toppers. And then all of a sudden I'm hearing through interviews that, oh, well, we couldn't get that to work. So now we're going to have to do something else. It's like, oh. Bummer. We're going to have to go to plan C. Anyway, Avatar, I liked it. I'd say, you know, I'm curious to play it a little more and everything, see how it does. I feel like the reception we've had of it so far has been people seem to like it. And it's a pretty game. What's not to – The only – the one takeaway I did have from it, though, and I don't know. Jeff didn't have it set up very steep at his house. It was pretty flat. We put it up steeper when we put it out. So I hope it helped because it's a long player. Well, yeah, it was a long player, but we figured that. But where those play fields were, like the plastic on there, it seemed like it changed the ball path. Oh, I had to definitely do it to me a few times. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that's like – I'm sure that's something you guys can tweak and make it flatter. Yeah, you can adjust out the little screws. Someone just told me they put a different one on there. Really? Different plastic? But it seemed like every time I had maybe a reject on that side of the play field, where it was coming back slowly, it kind of did a... You could see it curling around it, yeah. I probably didn't notice that because I hit my shot so clean. Oh, that's it. He's ever rolled back on it with those very powerful flippers. Mr. Three Billion over here. Oh, man, that was epic. If I didn't have witnesses to that, everyone would be throwing around accusations of the glass being off. Yeah, we were all there. The truth is the truth. I've gotten those so many times. I think I had two different people message me and say, man, look, he cleaned his fingerprints off the inside of the glass this time.
    22:57
    Trying to be courteous to other players. Come on. Trying to be part of the... Oh, man. What did you think, Zach? Like, well, everyone else said the light show is awesome on it. But I thought it was kind of random on the out lane on the left-hand side how instead of just kicking the ball back and held it for a second. It was interesting. Yeah. I'd never seen that before. It was like staging the ball like I'm going to grab it. Stop it. Stall. Then kick it out. Feed that upper flipper. Yeah, to that upper flipper. I like that a lot. But I felt like it was always on. It never drained down the left side. Such a long player. Right. It felt like kickback was always on. Yeah. And I know one of the games that I played on, and I kept getting many extra balls, and I know they're talking about in future code nerfing some of the extra ball stuff because you can stack them up pretty quick. Then the left-hand only mode, left flip roll. That was cool. I haven't gotten into that. I got the one time. Yeah, I got one flip, and then it was like, hey, it's fed to the right. What was this? Dude, just let it go. I think when the video dropped of it, I'm like, that's the only thing I think is cool about this game. The left-hand combo is cool. I like that. I completely forgot about that.
    24:05
    But then I loved all of the – so Jersey Jacks are known for having all the different skill shots that you can get to. So you hit the action button, and you can scroll through all of the different ones. And it's always neat to me. One of the main lock shots is the left orbit, so you can make that your skill shot, hit that skill shot, and it's like a two-for-one. You get the super skill shot, and then you're also locking a ball simultaneously, which I thought was really, really, really neat. I had a lot of fun on it. I would think in a home it would be a ton of fun. yeah that's where I'd really crank it up hear some sound yeah turn the lights down crank it up like it's a fully immersive game it's like the gentleman we were talking to today that we delivered the alien to I told him and his partner I'm like hey whenever you guys go to play this tonight once the sun goes down turn down the lights crank up the sound on this encouraging all kinds of stuff yeah I think when I first light a few candles you know I think when I came over and played Alien in your Garage one time randomly at 8 o'clock in the morning or something. I'm like, can we turn the lights off? It was like, oh, this is way better. It's a completely different and better experience. In Avatar, I felt the same way about it once I moved it into the game room. I was like, oh, yes, we can control all of this.
    25:18
    But yeah, overall, definitely fun, excited. I know everyone, like we had, Corbin, you had people come from Western PA to come over to Akron, Ohio to play Avatar. And it's like, hey, if you guys listen to this podcast, you know that this game is coming to Pittsburgh. So you made a little bit of a drive for not a lot of reason. You got to play it 100 games for everybody else. Yeah, so very cool. Thanks again to Jersey Jack for getting out our showroom slash display game. And I think it's always fun to get those ones, you know, instead of just putting them in a static showroom and having people, oh, come to the showroom and check out this game, like to get them out to these events. Yeah, it seems like they had a pretty good turnout last night too. quarter up for their monday even if it's just a regular monday night tournament they get a good turnout whenever we bring something special it definitely amps it up a little bit it's funny now though because the regulars up there are all spoiled they are so spoiled like if you're listening like not spoiled in a bad way but it was i don't know you by the way like avatar is cool and we're having a good time but when's x-men coming when's this coming when's that coming it's like don't worry yeah when is x-men coming oh i kind of thought me and zach haven't got to play that one i still have not i played one game on let's talk let's talk a little x-men all right we're talking it looks sweet yeah let's start with zach so zach from what you've seen but not played yeah exactly oh it looks like gold wings which is i which i have fun with i know it looks like shit but you know i love gold wings it's a lot of fun so i'm excited for it i want to play it i mean i'm an x-men fan so a good theme i i'm really surprised and like i'm not like super whatever I'm a pro guy Everybody knows I'm a pro guy But it doesn't look That stripped down No I mean they took off The two hand mechs basically And what And the It doesn't go up and down Because though Because it's so They are You need the rest of that play field To make it even work And it's super simple Like the way they did it So it's like It's actually Yeah Maybe you can just like Put it on the one The habit trail You just like Make it tilt It just never fucking goes It never actually Makes the whole habit trail It just always falls off You just add a Add a godzillan or something Yeah once we got under the play field though i was amazed how simple like how cool the mechs are but then how simple the execution of it is so the finger the sentinel finger finger that flips the ball back up the habit trail is literally just a coil that fires and sends it and then the other side where the hand crashes through the other habit trail again is just a coil that actuates it and then it folds down which is super cool and then the levitating ball on the return of the left habit trail i thought oh it just levitates there's it must be a magnet or something it's literally just a pin it's like slides over back yeah it's so simple but it's so freaking cool very effective effect it's like um pinball magic in the floating wall yeah and then we were looking when we were setting up outlaw bobs that was the one that you corbin played a game on to where we were trying to figure out well what's what's the intended way to get into the danger room and it's like oh well you hit this shot on this little ramp on the left hand side that then feeds the ball all the way across the play field up another ramp down a habit trail back over to the danger room it's like you look at it and you think oh there's no way that could work and then you hit the shot it's like holy crap that's amazing i don't imagine you even have to hit it real clean no no as long as it exits with some velocity yeah i saw someone on facebook he was doing with the ball he's like watch how easy it is. He just like kind of flipped it with his finger, barely any power and it made it up and around. No problem. There's that one loop that was real satisfying. That was real quick. So nobody had like an amazing game, but Corbin on his ball three, like got into some awesome combos. Yeah. They felt pretty, pretty nice. I feel like it's from like Foo Fighters, you know, exactly. Real flowy, real sweet. Yeah. It's just, the ball was coming back to the flippers so fast and the ball pass going underneath plastics and just in directions that I just think that's, It's going to be Danger style. It's just the way it's going to be. I have nothing wrong with that. No. Keep doing what you're doing, bud. I love it. I love my Jurassic Park home. I mean, I'll say it a million other times. The game is fun. It is. It's a great game. I kind of enjoyed it. Once I was on the game and you're tracking the ball. Oh, you like the flipper feel of a stern? He's talking about them being offset. I'm talking about the positioning. Oh, well.
    29:45
    Once I'm playing, I didn't know it didn't affect me at all. I was kind of jagged. Whatever. Because I almost forgot about the danger room until I got into it. I'm like, oh, there's this whole other thing over here that I need to focus on. Kick it back up. Zach, how was your experience playing? It was amazing, Kyle. How about yours? Oh, dude. Blew my mind. Yeah, mine too. See, these two are trying to peer pressure Corbin into unboxing the LE that is available. Well, he literally said that he didn't get an extra one. It didn't show up. It didn't. It was legitimately lost all weekend. Right. But it was so weird. So you call and they said it was there. Then some guy calls me and is like, hey, I just want to let you know we found it, but it's going to be in tomorrow. I'm like, okay, whatever. Right. Then like an hour later, I get a call from a lady and she's like, hey, it's in. And I'm like, all right. Well, they delivered to the wrong place. I have no idea. They literally leave Stern, Schomburg. They go to the FedEx hub over there and then they all get on the same truck. Like everybody hold hands. Who's your partner? Well, that's the problem. They were moving buddy. They all said one of them. You know, one of five or one of whatever. Yeah, yeah. Normal shipping. All labeled together. The problem is an odd number was coming to us, so somebody didn't have a moving buddy, so they got it.
    30:56
    Okay, that's fine. Potato Head got left behind. Left at the rest stop. I'm interested to see what number it is, though, because we had, what, 70? It was a 70-something. 76, 134. I think it was like 74. It's like what? Kevin McAllister. It might be 75, I'm thinking. I think it might be 75. Kevin! But yeah, I saw some of the cereal, like the one Don got from our Chicago depot was like $300 and something. So we had ones as low as $70 and then ones as high as into the $300s. That's wild. Why would they do that? I don't know. I know it's not going to be sequential, but you would think if you're getting 10 or 12, they're going to be within like 20 or 30 numbers of each other. Yeah, because they're all just going to come off together. And how would you prioritize? I don't think people get to certain numbers, don't they? Yeah. Unless you can pay if you want. I want numbers. $75 or whatever. You can pay for it. $1 through $50 is an extra $1,000 if you want it. $51 through $811 is $500. Am I remembering that correctly? I think so.
    31:56
    Oh, we're allowed to talk about that? Yeah, I mean, it's public information. That's what you pay as a customer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't pay much. I don't care if it's number... I think Avengers is $54 or $57 or something. I think it's in the 50s, yeah. It was the guy's car model year or whatever. Oh, yeah, that's right. Same guy got it every time. All the person who can't and didn't. And then he canceled on it. And so then we were, like, it was during COVID, so. Yeah. Right. Oh, okay. We've had some interesting numbers come through over time. I had someone that got an Avira blood red kiss that got number 13. I thought that was kind of cool. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. Just to have, like, an Avira. I'm surprised not somebody didn't get that. Let's keep that up. Yeah. I think the Ninja Turtles. But they already bought number 13 at least. Three or five. Five. I think the Turtles is number five. That early X-Men stern we had was five, wasn't it? It was. It was, yeah. I wish that was a better game because I love that theme. Right.
    32:48
    You mean Rush. Stop it, Kyle. Sorry. John Borg might be listening. I love John. I want to buy him a beer at Expo. All right, so we touched on Kleepin. We touched on X-Men. We touched on Avatar, PGX, Quarter Up. Let's talk about some of the cool stuff that's been coming in on trades and whatnot. not so uh one of the our customers who picked up an x-men le traded in his jersey jack hobbit le and once again corbin was so generous he just moves in his house and he's like he's so generous it's like i pulled that like jeff will buy a game and it just sits in his trailer for a few months yeah that's kind of ultra man is ultra man in your house yet tia might be listening so we can't we can't talk about that one that you sold she already knows about ultra man well she knows about it but she was salty that like certain games aren't at home where's rick and morty where's ultraman why does she want rick did she play rick and morty it's because rick and morty was so expensive is her hang up on it is is that which i understand joe bitt price yeah for real um but yeah the hobbit so got traded in it already had the upgraded uh capacitors on the io board so it has the snappier stronger flippers completely changes that game still not a great like amazing game for me but second game that i played on it um there are 31 total modes in it i started or completed 21 modes made it into 2 out of the 3 wizard modes It was like I seeing parts of this game Quit taking the glass off Just sitting there It's a fucking Jersey Jack I'm just going to diddle you a little bit Come here little hobbit I'm going to diddle you But yes Tia went upstairs Hobbit doodling And I'm like hey As soon as I'm done diddling this Hobbit, I'll be upstairs.
    34:47
    And she comes downstairs like 25 minutes later. She's like, you're still on the same game? I'm like, yeah. Don't you see I have three and a half million points right now? Like, obviously, I've been playing this for a long time. Ball one, three extra balls. I haven't played that yet. I should play it. Yes, definitely. What's that thing weigh, like 755 pounds? That's what I said to Corbin today. It's heavier than Lebowski's weight. Wow. I had to have Noren help me pick up the back end of it to put the legs on. Did you use your pin pillow to pick it up? My pin pillow. Is that what it was called? Yeah. My pin prop? My pin something. Maybe a prop. Yeah. Anyway. Pinball adventures. Oh, boy.
    35:22
    So having tons of fun on that one. If someone is looking. Are you, though? Oh, I'm. So between Avatar and that, like, I've been getting nothing done because I've just been playing pinball. I don't even know who you are anymore. I know. I finally. You're the JJP guy. Oh, breaking news. Is there a breaking news sounder over here, Kyle? Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. Say what? Meow, meow, meow, meow. So Star Trek LE I've had for a while now, and Pop Pop had had the top score on there, the GC the entire time that I've had it. I'm not one to reset my scores to set my own. I've got to legitimately take it. I know you made a post and was like, yeah, I don't, nobody does. Yeah, no one that responded. Hopefully nobody respectable resets their scores. All the responses that I got were, no, I've got to take them down legitimately. So, I finally made it through all of the modes in the game, which then gives you Kobayashi Maru multiball, which is the first mini wizard mode. And then if you beat all the level 2 ones, it then takes you into Enterprise Amok, which is the furthest that I've ever made it into the game. And all of the bonuses that you get when you go into those mini wizard modes are definitely what adds up your score. Because otherwise I would have had maybe like 230 million, but I got crazy bonuses going into each one of those multiballs. which finally took down Mr. Pop Pop, and that felt good. I got one of your highest scores at your house, too. So for Mr. Tank's birthday party, everybody was over having some pizzas, playing some pinball, and I said at the very beginning, hey, I need someone to take down the current GC on Deadpool Premium and put up a new GC. And, of course, Mr. Corbin took the challenge, went over there. One game, owner. one game one game casually new gc so now i've got a new yeah i was just like casually playing some godzilla or whatever i'm like i'm gonna go after this then i stood there for like 40 minutes my corpsman just blew it up because he doesn't know what he's doing you're like dude you just need to like collect whatever this and that weapon or whatever he's collecting weapons he's going into battles boom just blew got katana multi-ball he's got mech suit multi-ball like i would think you almost got it. We think you almost got it. Like on ball two and they already had blown it out of the water. It was insane. It was a good game. Good time. That was a good game and a good time. But no, that was a good night.
    37:44
    So Hobbit, if anyone I think at one point you're like, oh shit, I should probably sign in. Go ahead and get some achievements here. Unlock some badges. If you're looking for a 2016 Hobbit LE with a topper, upgraded IO board, all of that stuff, get at Jeff at MadPinball.com or Corbin at MadPinball.com. 2016 Did they make them other years? So they actually, I think they did three different editions of this one. Okay. I don't know. They did it like a standard then, right? Yeah. Like a 2016 Honda Civic for sale. Oh, wow. How would you? 281,000 miles. I know what I'm talking about. She's fresh. But no, it's fantastic condition. Having a great time on it. What's that? Nothing.
    38:28
    I think we had 8,500 on it. So if you're local, come pick it up. Put some cash in my hands. I think that's a good deal. It is. I mean, we gave kind of a pretty fair price on it. You have to pick it up and take it, though, yourself. I'll help you load it into your vehicle, but if I have to bring it to your house, you're going to have to provide the ibuprofen or whatever it's going to take to get it into your game room. So then we're also taking in, finally shipping was confirmed today, from the West Coast to Ohio, another JJP, a little Wonka LE. Yeah. One of our good... We're going to play that for a little while. That one's going to probably hang for a little bit. But an operator out there on the West Coast, he's trading that in, and it was towards a... He's getting an X-Men premium, so definitely a little switch up there. That's a good move. Yeah. I think he had this Wonka in his home collection. It wasn't routed, so that one will be coming in and may or may not come up for sale here in the short term or the long term. But if you're looking for one, once again, email theboysatmadpinball.com and we'll get you squared away.
    39:40
    So that's the cool stuff that's been coming through the game room. You guys want to talk a little bit of Pinball Expo? Can you believe that we're only, what, less than two weeks away from? I've been training hard for Olympics.
    39:54
    Is that eating tacos training? I've been training, drinking beers. I've eaten tacos while playing pinball. So, you know.
    40:02
    Just getting my game on. It is coming up pretty quick. We're going to get through this week. So we're going to get these games out to PGX, get the games back. And then that following week, that Friday, we'll be headed out to Pinball Expo. Next Friday? Yeah. A week from this Friday? I know. Are you serious right now? We probably should get our accommodations booked and figure it out. But yeah, I think the game plan on that is to leave super early on Friday morning, get out to Chicago, hit the Expo. Yeah, that's coming up fast. That's coming up quick, man. Busy weekend. So if anybody is at the Chicago Pinball Expo on the Friday there, stop out and say hello if you see us wandering around. I've heard that maybe... You're going to hang out with Mr. Fix for a little while. So we're teaming up with our friends at the Electric Playground, working, you know, having some shirts and stuff at their booth. So I think there might be an Electric Playground booth takeover. Mr. Corbin Angeli might be there from like 7 to 8 o'clock. Signing autographs. 7 to 8 o'clock at night? He'll have 8 by 10 glossy photos of himself from him winning the Pinball Olympics trophy. Mr. Fix will be with me. Yeah, I'll be there. Last week, so... I'll fix it. I hear the autographs are going to be pretty reasonable, so just... A beer per autograph. Stop by and say hello. But yeah, Friday that we'll be doing that, probably we'll do the traditional head downtown Friday night, hit up Logan Arcade. Problem sign autographs at 7 o'clock at night. Come on, you know we're not heading down to Logan until way after that. Come on. Well, we'll leave at 8, get there at 10.30. Yeah, I mean, that's the typical drive into town. Yeah, it's like a half hour for every mile that you have to go. And then Saturday. We've got Olympics on Saturday. Well, isn't that part of the training, though? Yeah, it absolutely is. Yeah. You've got to drink and stay up all night. And then Saturday will be pinball Olympics, which we've been hearing from a bunch of people that are podcast listeners and people in our circle that we know that are going to be going for the first time. So I'm very disappointed Don's not going with us this year. he is such a social butterfly that you can't be pried away from expo for too long i know he's gonna have that media mixer we'll miss you i'll see you a little bit while we're out did we get invited to the media mix we did we got invited to the what is it called did mad pinball or did fresh pinball it was fresh pinball specifically to fresh pinball to go wednesday it was this week in pinball media mixers on Thursday. So then Mad Pinball was invited to the Stern distributor one out on Wednesday. And the Stern Army on Friday. And the Stern Army on Friday, but I think... We did have an open bar.
    42:50
    I think the JJP one does too. Oh, God. Open bar, dude. Yeah. So, we're gonna have some decisions to make for sure, but it should be a good time. I think it'd be amusing. What if we just set while we're at that, we set Tank and Keith loose on the Stern open bar. Yeah, I think we're going to have to have a conversation over this podcast. As we always should.
    43:14
    So Pinball Expo coming up. Kyle, what are you most excited for? What do you hope to see? What do you hope to play? What do you hope to do? What sort of debauchery? We're hoping to play New X-Men because, you know, we don't know what we're going to do. I hope there is a New X-Men. I hope I can play New X-Men. You guys are so salty. We've only flipped one game. I've flipped three. more than us Zach could have GC'd both of them I did it in my initials not for like a high score but for some mode I mean pinball related I don't know I'm just seeing the people man just seeing people we don't see all the time we were talking about that a little bit pre-podcast where when the three of us me, Corbin, and Kyle went three years ago we were completely anonymous It was so awesome. We were just kind of like back in the shadows doing whatever we wanted. And then this last year with Zach along, it's like, okay, people kind of know who we are a little bit. We're doing the panel, whatever. This year I think it might be even a little more weird. I'll wear a hat. I want to wear a disguise for sure. Mr. Fixed is going with me. So since Corbin has the epic beard, instead of wearing like how people wear the bald skull caps, He's going to wear the bald face cap so that people just think he's cool with shaving. Real weird looking to form a face. Zach, anything you're excited for at Pinball Expo? Just, you know, getting out there, playing all the games.
    44:43
    Seeing what homebrew is coming through this year. I hope we play that TNA head-to-head thing again. Yes, I definitely want to get on that. Yeah. Did you guys see that Joust head-to-head for 10 grand? I saw somebody picked up a Joust head-to-head for 10 grand. No, no, for $100. Where? It was like in Georgia or something. Yeah. How do we remember that? So we saw that catnip though before we made it. Craigslist, I bet it was on Craigslist. I'm telling you, that's why I checked Craigslist though. Somebody would have put that up there like weird coffee table, 100 bucks.
    45:12
    It has these fighting ostriches. On my way. I'm literally on my way right now. They're like, oh, thanks, Fresh Pinball. Checks the Craigslist. I'm excited to see if Space Hunt is there. That's definitely one that I want to get some time on. The homebrews I've heard is going to be more prominently featured, so I'm excited. After TPF and seeing the quality of some of those down there, I'm excited to get on those. If Alice is there from Dutch Pinball. Yeah, that would be cool. Definitely. I forgot about that one. Because I could see them, if they do bring it, they're going to bring one, which is going to make the line. Oh, outrageous. If it's even going to be playable, I don't know. I'm interested to see. Because Lebowski is supposed to be cut off at the end of the year. I mean, how long have we been teasing that now, though? Alice? Yeah. They respond on Pinside. They actually interact with the terrorists from time to time. They engage with the terrorists? Don't negotiate with terrorists. They're literally like, when you see it, you'll get over your issues or whatever.
    46:12
    They're confident. I like it. A little cocky. But the thing that I'm most excited to see... Corbin already knows. It has the flowchart of all flowcharts and how to navigate this game. Avatar? Pinball Brothers. abba need to get a little bit of time is it gonna be on two ball i don't know it's gonna be on 12 i remember that time what didn't they queen yeah two ball well that's because the game got there with literally like you would get into modes and it would just be the song there would be no indication on the playfield whatsoever it would just be freddie mercury belting out we are the champions you can take this home with you today why can i does mine light up but yeah i showed Corbin they'd put out on social media the flowchart of all of the modes in ABBA and then we put it side by side to the one on Avatar and it's like a little bit different here. You'd have to be a really special ABBA fan to want to put that game into your lineup. I'm sure there must be a market for it. Oh, there's definitely a market for it. I'd flip it. If they have one there, I'll play it. If they have it, why not? It's again the whole European thing that we've come back to over and over again in all of the different interviews we've done or heard of that there is a completely different market over there that has you know not necessarily always a connection with what we want very specific tastes but yeah uh excited for that pinball olympics i definitely want to get on if they have the uh exercise bike hooked up to the um get my cardio going that way it's so good i don't know why you guys didn't do that i didn't because you were on it the whole time with the guy serving you coronas it was very i've never I've seen you drink so many Coronas. Corona Carlos. And then I definitely want to play No Good Gophers with the two men dressed in gopher costumes heckling me. See, and the way they had it set up is I was peddling on my EM watching that. So it was like... Double win. Yeah. And then now that we know, we need to get to the upstairs of the outbuilding and we need to play a certain four-player cocktail game. It's on.
    48:20
    We need to make sure that it's turned off. because we need to be playing some rotation eight. That's one that we have since learned about, know it's there, ready to rock and roll. Hiding in plain sight. And then I heard that Zach and MB have been in deep training for the TNA immersion booth. Just not trying to suck this year at it. We all went in, we're like, we're going to do good, and we're like, oh, we all literally did not even get a reactor going.
    48:46
    I feel like we need to learn how to deal with the pressure. Somehow we need to simulate the pressure at home. I think we might just have to build one. build a fire in the garage do we have like a stack of car batteries and i can hook up like whenever you guys aren't doing well i can just zap you with like the car battery it has to be on the nipples or they won't i mean obviously that's where like all of the nerve endings are so i mean we've got a clamp down so excited for pinball olympics i know you guys are already talking about i mean so if there is another long line for the tna immersion booth i'm not gonna I'm going to make Tank stand in it.
    49:22
    Tank stay. Good boy. You stay right here. You stay here. There'll be a treat involved. I'll bring you a couple tacos, dude, all right? Double tacos.
    49:31
    I think we timed it right because I think by the end of it, there wasn't really as big of a problem. I think so, too. We made the mistake of going straight there. We need to go to other things first. By the time I figured out the garage, it was too late. I'm just going to the naughty room and never coming out. The naughty room. I figured that's where we'd find you. Isn't that Corbin's room? He can take his time there. take his time thanks you pulled it oh what's happening so while we were delivering an x-men le today uh outlaw pinball bob was showing us the pin snake which i'd been seeing all over social media of a cleaning device and it's basically a bunch of like 3d printed snake component segments that all go together and then there's a special microfiber cloth that wraps around it so that you can get into all kinds of crazy nooks and crannies that you can't easily get. It actually seems pretty cool. Yeah, it's actually... That sounds pretty cool, actually. It's special because it's just the size that wraps up around the side of it, like perfectly sized. Perfectly fits the pin snake. So like I could cut one. Yeah, pin snake. Yeah, probably. So I looked online into buying one, and it had been so popular that it was like a multiple month wait to get one. But I heard he's going to be at Pinball Expo selling them. I'd get one if they had one there. Yeah, and that they're going to be available there, so Pinball Expo attendees. I mean, I guess it beats, like, a bendy magnet with a... Yeah. Or I just don't do it. I just don't do it sometimes. I mean, if I can't see the dirt, is the dirt really there without telling me you're an operator?
    51:04
    Or take it apart all the way. Either I strip the top of the play field or I don't clean it. There's no in-between. His website's currently down. everybody must be listening live they've overloaded the servers we've seen like four what's a four pack looking like well Bob already said get the pin snake and make sure that you get the three pack whatever of the cloths I feel like I prepared for the pin snake So that going to be I mean if I get that I just going to be running around like cleaning all your machines Corbin You do, man. I need your keys. Go for it. I need to get in there. I need to clean that shit, man. Look how dirty this pin snake cloth is. Look at all this dirt I got. It's like you're that person now. It's like, hey, hey, look at this. Look, look, look. Always judging. All right. Final-ish item that I have for the podcast this time is Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. So not only just a game that we as a group have been chasing for some time now. To recapture. Former glory. I just should have put that deposit down and never paid him. Anyway, we've had a regular local customer that we've been doing work for that has an Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. And he's a pretty big Alice fan. Super big Alice fan. Been to the shows, met him, got autographs, all of that. Um, it came up with another customer that was looking for an Alice Cooper. I was explaining, Hey, you know, there are some available on pin side that are used, whatever else. He's like, eh, I'm not really sure I want to use one. Trying to tell him, like, I don't know that there are really any 500 or 750. I feel like 500 feels like the right number, but I'm trying there. I'm like, Hey, there really are five new inbox. Alice Cooper's left. He's like, well, no, if you go to this website, there are, there are Alice Cooper's left. I'm like, no way. Like this has to be like some sort of scam. So if you go to AliceCooperPinball.com, there actually are some Alice Cooper pinball machines left that are – 500 is what they're made of. Okay, 500 total production. So this Alice Cooper – Alice Cooper's Solid Rock Teen Center, so basically his foundation when these games were originally made, took 10 units. And then when customers ordered them, they would do three different packages, a bronze package, a silver package, or a gold package that would get you different little additions onto the game. So for the bronze, you would get custom solid rock playfield trade graphic between the flippers signed by Alice himself. Custom flipper instructions, triangle decals featuring actual images of Alice. Custom award card art. Autograph photo of Alice posed with his Nightmare Castle. Large Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle challenge medallion personalized with the buyer's name. bronze solid rock challenge medallion featuring alice in makeup and a thank you letter for supporting the cause i want an alice cooper cardboard cutout too you know so i can hang out with them while i'm sad oh yeah yeah so then the silver edition in addition to all of that gets you interior cabinet graveyard decals i'm guessing those would be the interior art blades a shaker motor real knocker kit five-piece plastic protector set custom powder trim powder coat trim and a .999 fine silver Solid Rock Challenge medallion that replaces the bronze medallion.
    54:26
    I feel like, isn't that the way that game came? A medallion? No, not the fucking medallions, but all the other shit that's on there.
    54:37
    But if the bronze and the silver aren't enough, you can upgrade. Go for the gold. You can go for the gold. I would imagine I don't remember either You get the butter Obviously didn't lowball Jeff on it You get the butter cabinet Hand dipped in rich colored ink Rolled with automotive clear coat And buffed to shiny perfection That's what Tia says when I take my shirt off She's like he's buffed to shiny perfection She's talking about your fucking head Autographed nightmare castle back glass Translite suitable for framing and your medallion is upgraded to a 24 karat gold. So you get a back glass in the game and one for the wall? You do. Okay. Perfect for framing. Frame not included. Well, no.
    55:25
    That's the double gold platinum. Powder coated interior blades and all that stuff. So this gentleman that was looking for this game contacted the foundation and apparently out of the original 10 ones that they purchased, they've sold seven in different trim levels. and they have three left. So if you wanted to get the gold package of the Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle Edition,
    55:50
    Kyle, what do you think the cost on the Alice Cooper gold? No, I want the broads. I want the cheapest one. Gold. If you ask that, they're like, this isn't for you. They'll be like, this is for the children, Kyle. Can't you upgrade to gold? We only have the gold buffs. I only like kids if they're real small. Well, this is for 12 to 20-year-olds, which is weird for a teen center since you have 12, which is not teen, and 20, which is not teen. 20, you're an adult. Good job. Cut your fucking hair. Real talk from Zach.
    56:19
    What do you think? What's your number? Gold edition. 14,000. Okay, 14,000. Corbin? They were what? I told you the number. Do you remember the number? How much were they new? Like 75? I think it was like 17. Okay. Zach? I'll go with 16,500. Corbin did remember accurately. At least $17,000. So you have to figure like about 10,000 of that would be going probably to his foundation. So pretty cool little donation there, but I thought that was an interesting nugget. So is he going for it then? So he actually ended up getting one of these editions, one of these seven that someone had already gotten and was selling it. He bought it secondhand. So he bought it secondhand. For real? But he was getting one of those editions. When did it end up? Do you have any – I forget what he said he paid. He did tell me, but I didn't – Was it under 17? Yes, yes. It was significantly under. But at the time, like, I had never heard of this. I wasn't aware of this. So I was like, hey, man, this sounds like it could possibly be a scam. Let me, like, research this a little bit. So, like, I called, like, I found the name that was attached to the website, called the person, and, like, found all kinds of. Like, no, no, this is legit. Yeah, it's legit, legit. That's really cool that Alice Cooper obviously was involved in this. He's a cool dude, man. It's cool that he was involved. I'm sure Spooky, who are awesome people, had a hand in probably getting those 10 games to him at cost. It was probably part of the deal of doing the licensing and everything else. So, yeah, I thought that was super fascinating.
    57:47
    But I think those are all of the notes that I have for this current episode. So I'm going to go across the table to Mr. Corbin. Any final thoughts here, buddy? No. I'm just reflecting on our day of tires. Did we tell this story? You did not. Oh, all right. Yeah. We need to. We're almost at an hour, but this story's got to be told. So I should start playing the music, right? Hey, that's it. So in our dedication to getting these X-Men LEs out, we made a. So we're in northeast Ohio. Went through central Ohio into the Columbus metro area. All the way out to western Ohio to Botkins, Vandalia, Dayton area. So we start the morning at, you know, an early 730, hop in the truck, trailer's loaded up. Let's, you know, head into Columbus. Head into Columbus, get to our first stop, drop off the alien, get it set up. Doing good. Everybody's feeling good. Everyone's doing good. So we leave that location, and the GPS gives me two different options of how to get to the highway. That's right. And I'm like. Well, hell, this one's shorter. I start. We want the longer one, I think. Yeah. I'm like, oh, let's take this longer one because it's going to take, like, it just seems like. It's just straighter or whatever. Yeah, nice. We're pulling a trailer, so it looks like a nice straighter route. So we're making a hard right-hand turn from a county road onto a state road. And anyone knows, sometimes people go off the road a little bit and start to create a little bit of a pothole or a pit there. So Corbin pulls the right-hand turn just a little too tight, and the back passenger side tire. Who are you guys driving, 3500? No, we're in the classic. You're in the gold truck. The classic. The rim just barely clips the inside edge of this pothole, and it just catches it just right to where it bends the rim, and all you hear is... Immediately.
    59:40
    Corbin and I both look at each other, drop an expletive, pull over. He puts on the four-ways. We get out. Okay. I knew that he had put the spare tire in the back of the truck. Corbin is always awesome about making sure the four-way lug and the spare tire always make it on the truck. Just because. Yeah, he's always good for it. So I'm like, I know we have the spare. No problem. So we're in the toolbox and he pulls out, you know, all of this different stuff and he's starting to loosen up the lug nuts. He's like, hey, go ahead and grab the floor jack out of the box up there and we'll get this thing jacked up. I'm like, uh, is the floor jack like somewhere not in here? He's like, oh, yeah, I think we forgot to put that back in there. So just go ahead and grab the jack out of the vehicle, out of the truck. This will be fine. So thankfully it was a nice little bottle jack. We get it jacked up. The classic always comes through. Yeah. Get the lug nuts off, get the spare tire on, drop the trailer, the weight back onto the spare tire. And there's about maybe 15 pounds of pressure in this tire. When we got to the gas station, I think it said 14. Yeah. Just eyeballing it. Not bad. No.
    60:46
    So he's like, hey, I've got a can, like a big thing, you know, a big tank that you can fill with air. We go to put that on there. it's empty it's like all right well let's limp up here to the gas station get this baby topped off get it topped off we're rolling down the highway everything's good we get into columbus we make our delivery uh in columbus no muss no fuss we hop back on the road we're going west again out to botkins and we're about 15 minutes from our destination on this old country road through between all these cornfields and all of a sudden i hear corbin go holy shit i saw the fender flying up in the air like it was i look into the passenger side mirror all i see is the fender like careening down like the shoulder of the road the tire just like completely torn apart it was dry rotted so the treads completely had separated from the side walls so at this point i'm like thinking in my head do we have a spare tire for the spare tire like do we have backups for the backups here so of course we parked the trailer we dumped the trailer corbin leaves like a madman scrawling note on it like hey we'll be back for this i know i said like getting a tire no x-men in here yeah there's still two x-men in there there was a two x-men sitting on the side what deadpool was in there yeah escalera there was some money in there but yeah he wrote in like crayon or something on like the scrap of paper that he then taped on with i don't even know what it was it wasn't even legible right so i'm looking up on my phone like hey there's a tractor supply that's like 23 minutes from us let me give them a call as we're driving towards them and make sure that they have the size that we need ready to go because if we need to go somewhere else we'll do that so i'm on the phone get on you know connected up the girl actually goes back to the shelf to verify that it's there puts her hands on it confirms that They have what we need. She brings it up. Hey, it says you have two in stock. Exactly. Should have picked up one of those chickens while we were there. Yeah, no kidding. The skeleton chicken. So she even brings it up to the register for us, the whole nine yards. We get over there. $200.
    62:59
    For a single trailer tire. For like a single ply trailer. Yeah. So we paid the brick and mortar tax there for sure. It's okay. So then we get back in the truck. It's like, okay, let's go back and get the trailer. I look at Corbin. Corbin looks at me and I'm like hey did you like drop a pin on the map or something like where we left the trailer he's like no like I figured you were the one doing the mapping that you had it on your phone so about by memory about six turns yeah probably no less than six turns we somehow managed to navigate our way back and we're going down this long straight stretch I'm like this seems kind of familiar but again when you're driving through cornfields it all seems like very familiar and then finally landmarks we would catch yeah like the uh the church that had the culture the cult that had like all the dorms this church we went by today we went because we went by twice i went there on the way back and you were on the on the right we did it was a good sign but it was like there's the prison there's the cult there's the school there's the airport That place had the little church area, and it probably had enough dorms. There was probably at least four or five little double-story. Triple. Yeah, they were. It was significant. It was something. If we couldn't find the trailer, honestly, I was ready to join, because I'm not sure that I would be welcome back at Mad Pinball if I couldn't find the trailer full of games. We don't have any fucking avatars in there, Jeff.
    64:29
    Well, we were joking after we found it. It's like, oh, man, if we wouldn't have been able to, we would have had to have gotten Bob and Todd, the LE owners, to get a search party out and start searching a grid to try to find this trailer. But we're driving along, finally, and in the horizon. X-Men, assembled!
    64:45
    I can just barely, behind a tree, see the trailer, and this warm glow of relief just washes over me. It's like parked by an 1843 grave of some German immigrant. I'm fairly convinced the house that we were parked at was abandoned because I went to the door to knock on it to let them know like hey if you're home yeah like this is here but we're coming back for it like shortly your terrorist ransom note just starts happening it all could have been a lot worse I think it would have blown on the freeway that would have been real bad because you know that fender would hit some car and then swerve around So we get the third tire. I'd like to know the date code on that tire. Oh, the dry-routed one? Either one. 1992? No, the one that was on it before was like 2019, 2020. Yeah, yeah, four or five years ago. The tire was fine. I'm almost sure that that tire is still fine. It's just the rim that's screwed up. This explicit episode was brought to you in part by... Off that rim, not the other rim. Yeah, we could have, but I don't know. The other rim then, because we kind of drove on it once we... Not a lot, but backed around on it. So I wouldn't know if I'd trust it. So we're on our third tire on that side of the trip. Fender's gone. It looks like a rat rod back there. We're open wheeling it. And we're about 30 minutes from home.
    66:09
    It's dark now. We're going down the freeway, going down 30. There's a semi to our right. And all of a sudden I see this big rectangular thing in the middle of the road. and Corbin drives directly over top of it. And I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, there was a semi. I couldn't go anywhere. I'm like, do I need to drive right now? Do I need to drive right now? You can't just. Like, we're closer. Zach can get here sooner.
    66:36
    So that was the kicker to it all. Was on the second flat tire. Zach, bless his heart. I was trying to help you. You're here making fun of me. I'll remember this, Jeff. I was like, hey. You guys want to fight? If you guys need me to come out, I can come out. I would have jumped in the WRX and it would have been cruising with a tire.
    66:55
    That would have been epic. Zach to save the day. You don't think he would have done it, do you? He definitely would have done it. He was ready to go. Oh, I would have found a tire on the road, dude. On the road again. So, yeah, that was, if you think that being a pinball distributor is all, you know, playing LEs and going to events and shows and visiting arcades, I can assure you It wasn't raining either I appreciate your positivity I still won't feel bad for you Honestly we handled it Here's why you should feel bad I had to sit in the hot truck While Corbin changed two tires That's why you should feel bad No he got out and sat on the fender for one of them The first one when the fender was still there He clipped his fucking fingernails World city working vibes Are we still here? It was a problem with the bottle jack on the second one. Oh, the big rattle. There were some problems.
    67:53
    But that's all I've got. That was our adventure for today. Kyle, do you want to play us out with some Mad Pinball jingle here?
    68:00
    Make everyone feel good with the Mad Pinball jingle. But, yeah, if you're coming out to Pinball Expo, we'd love to see you. Love to say hi. First game's on me. At Expo. Would you say that we're absolutely going to be there? We are absolutely 100% going to be there. Jeff said absolutely.
    68:22
    Absolutely. Thanks for listening. See you guys next time.