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Episode 181 – Spinner Kings

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 50m·held·Feb 17, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Slam Tilt discusses awards, honors Lyman Sheats, and covers Ron's InDisc tournament experience.

Summary

Ron and Bruce from Slam Tilt Podcast discuss recent pinball awards (Degenis and Pinball Industry Awards), with their show placing third in podcasting and their homebrew games winning recognition. The episode covers Lyman Sheats' passing, Ron's experience at the InDisc tournament in Southern California, and a mysterious new Spanish pinball game called Super Hoop with surprisingly low pricing.

Key Claims

  • Slam Tilt Podcast tied for third in Excellence in Pinball Podcasting at the Pinball Industry Awards, tied with Backbox and Final Round, behind The The The Pinball Show (first) and Silver Silverball Chronicles (second)

    high confidence · Ron, Bruce, and Zach discussing Pinball Industry Awards results

  • Bruce won the 'Most Degenerate Hauler Hall' award at the Degenis for a 48-hour drive to Arkansas to pick up a $20 Cheetah pinball machine

    high confidence · Bruce claiming his own award win at Degenis

  • Zach won 'Most Degenerate Homebrew Pinball' at the Degenis for call-outs quality

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing Zach's Degenis win

  • Godzilla won nearly every major category at the Pinball Industry Awards, including Best Game with 98.08%, with Zeppelin receiving only 1.92% (likely a survey error)

    high confidence · Detailed award results discussion from Pinball Industry Awards

  • Super Hoop, a Spanish-made pinball game, has 50 units already manufactured and is priced around €5,000-€6,000 in Europe, potentially making it cheaper than current Stern machines in North America

    medium confidence · Ron and Bruce discussing Super Hoop pricing and production

  • Lyman Sheats died by suicide, revealed through his online memorial ceremony and obituary

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce's discussion of Lyman's passing and memorial ceremony

  • InDisc tournament moved to Riverside Convention Center from Banning due to the Banning Pinball Museum's closure, with weaker attendance and Festival of Fights integration

    high confidence · Ron's detailed account of attending InDisc in Southern California

  • Ron finished 32nd in target match play at InDisc but qualified for Classics 2, reaching the second round where he played with Zach Sharpe, Escher Lefkoff, and Timmer

    high confidence · Ron detailing his tournament placements at InDisc

Notable Quotes

  • “Godzilla. Here's the funny part. There was actually 98.08%. Zeppelin got the second spot at 1.92%. I think someone might have hit the wrong thing in the survey.”

    Ron Hallett @ Pinball Industry Awards discussion — Highlights the overwhelming dominance of Godzilla in awards and suggests a potential data entry error in voting

  • “So Ron is the zombie yeti of pinball podcasters.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ Awards discussion — Humorous characterization of Ron's podcast's third-place tie finish

  • “It's very sad. I mean, I'm a fairly private guy... Bruce convinced me. And when my father passed away, you know, that sucked. So, I mean, I've had anxiety attacks since I was in my 20s... for a good year, I was in so much fucking pain, I thought about suicide on a regular basis.”

    Ron Hallett @ Lyman Sheats memorial discussion — Ron opens up about his own mental health struggles in response to Lyman's death, emphasizing importance of not suffering in silence

  • “They had all these wacky different [award categories], like, what was one of them? One's the long haul. One's the best brew, a home brew. One is best stance. Who's the most intense pinball player? Best tattoo.”

    Ron Hallett @ Degenis awards discussion — Describes the unique and unconventional nature of Joe Cherovino's Degenis awards compared to traditional award shows

  • “There's like 50 of these games manufactured already, which is more than many other companies have actually managed to do, and I've never heard about them at all.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ Super Hoop discussion — Notes Super Hoop's significant manufacturing achievement relative to their lack of visibility

  • “It looks pretty cool, I have to say. It's like a single level, well, actually no, it's got a little ramp here... It feels almost like an 80s Gottlieb game.”

    Ron Hallett @ Super Hoop gameplay discussion — Describes Super Hoop's design aesthetic and appeal as retro-styled

  • “The shots in that game suck, but the rules are eh... The geometry is terrible. It plays fine, Bruce. No, it doesn't.”

Entities

Ron HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonZachpersonJoe CherovinopersonLyman SheatspersonThe Pinball ShowpodcastSilver Ball Chroniclespodcast

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Godzilla's overwhelming dominance in Pinball Industry Awards (winning nearly every category with 98.08% in Best Game) combined with Zeppelin receiving only 1.92%, suggests possible voting error or significant consolidation of community preference around a single title

    high · Ron explicitly states 'I think someone might have hit the wrong thing in the survey' and both hosts find the dominance unusual and lopsided

  • ?

    community_signal: Ron's candid discussion of suicidal ideation in response to Lyman Sheats' suicide creates moment of vulnerability and mental health awareness in the pinball podcast community

    high · Ron opens up about year-long chronic pain leading to regular suicidal thoughts, states 'don't be that guy' about suffering in silence, emphasizes need for reaching out

  • $

    market_signal: Super Hoop's €5,000-€6,000 European pricing potentially undercuts Stern's post-price-hike models in North America, signaling competitive pressure on pricing from non-US manufacturers

    medium · Bruce states 'I'm still sort of bemused by, like, someone besides Stern actually being the cheapest pinball machine out there now, after the price hike'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Super Hoop demonstrates significant manufacturing achievement with 50+ units already produced, exceeding output of many contemporary pinball manufacturers

    medium · Bruce notes: 'There's like 50 of these games manufactured already, which is more than many other companies have actually managed to do'

  • ?

    venue_signal: InDisc tournament's relocation to Riverside Convention Center from Banning shows venue dependency challenges and integration with Festival of Fights created weaker overall event experience

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.330

0:00
What the hell are you little turds doing here? We're like your best friends. Yeah, that's what you said. What the... Man, I'd kick your ass if I didn't have such a headache. Hey, you.
0:22
Look, if I ever catch you too near me again, you're dead. And if I find out you told anyone I talked to you, you're twice as dead. damn how does somebody get to be so cool
0:54
so coming to you from beautiful upstate new york this is the slam till podcast a show about all Nothing's thin ball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett. Here is my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Howdy ho, Dave Orozki. Howdy. This is episode 181. Dun, dun, dun. Yes, but we're not alone. We don't have a guest. But we have our third host. Yes, we do. Hi, Zach.
1:23
You didn't even check the sound. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. Oh, you did. Okay. I was checking it while you guys were talking. Because I'm a professional. Wow. Talented. I can even hear the slight hum on Zach's snowball, but it's fine because it's constant. It's consistent. I should be able to eliminate that in post. Okie dokie. I'll make sure I can start the drive at some point.
1:48
Oh, okay. And then Ron's just twitching in the background. Man, oh, man, oh, man. Okay, okay. So let's go down our humongous list. Oh, it's so big. It is so big. I'm trying to think of the order. What's the best way to do this? I think you talk about the award winners that you're actually on the show with right now. Okay. Okay, we'll do awards. All right. You thought we were going to talk about the Pinball Industry Awards? Well, we actually are. But first, we're going to talk about the Degenis. Is that what they're called? The Degenis. It's one of the most prestigious Pinball Awards of the year. It is. So I'm very impressed by, first, how many there were and how much time you put into it. And it went off really well. I watched like half of it before we had a Super Bowl party. Well, explain, what are the Degenes for those not initiated? Joe Cherovino runs the Pinball Degenerate Facebook page, and he made his own awards up, possibly just the only time, as he states in his thing, with all these wacky different, like, what was one of them? One's the long haul. One's the best brew, a home brew. One is best stance. Who's the most intense pinball player? Best tattoo. There's something you would never see in a regular award show. Mm-hmm. And it was fun. Actually, I watched half of it before. As I said before, we had to have our Super Bowl party, and Joe is a friend of the RPC and also the Zobo Saloon from Canada, so we're not going to hurt him against that one.

[name withheld pending review] @ Star Wars pinball discussion — Long-running disagreement between Bruce and Zach over Star Wars Pro quality, indicating design preferences

  • “I went to InDisc. It was fun. It was enjoyable. It was swell. It was great... For the most part, everything worked, which is all you can ask for, man.”

    Ron Hallett @ InDisc tournament recap — Overall positive assessment of the tournament experience despite venue and production changes

    • Slam Tilt Podcast
    podcast
    Pinball Industry Awardsevent
    Degenisevent
    Godzillagame
    Zeppelingame
    Mandogame
    Star Warsgame
    Super Hoopgame
    Attack from Marsgame
    InDiscevent
    This Week in Pinballmedia
    Straight Down the Middlemedia
    Dwight Sullivanperson
    Zach Sharpeperson
    Escher Lefkoffperson
    Zach McCarthyperson
    Robert Byersperson
    Kerry Wingperson

    high · Ron describes Riverside location as 'weak,' notes sparse attendance, one-room setup, and that Indisc stream had more viewers than Festival of Fights at some points

  • ?

    competitive_signal: InDisc introduced B-division bracket system for top 16 finishers, creating secondary competitive track for mid-tier competitors not aware of the feature

    medium · Ron states he didn't realize B-division existed and was unknowingly dropping out of it when missing top 16 cutoff

  • ?

    design_innovation: Super Hoop combines 1980s Gottlieb-style playfield design with modern manufacturing, appealing to players seeking classic feel with contemporary reliability

    medium · Ron describes it as 'feels almost like an 80s Gottlieb game' with modern construction, multi-level play with restricted complexity

  • ?

    content_signal: Multiple pinball podcast awards shows (Degenis, Pinball Industry Awards) reflect community preference for decentralized recognition over single authority

    medium · Episode discusses both Joe Cherovino's Degenis and the Pinball Industry Awards as parallel but separate systems, each with their own voting and categories

  • ?

    industry_signal: Lyman Sheats' death marks loss of designer from classic Williams/Bally era who was still actively contributing to Chicago Gaming remakes, creating gap in legacy pinball design

    high · Hosts note Sheats' work on Attack from Mars remake and other Chicago Gaming titles; multiple speakers at online memorial praised his contributions

  • ?

    product_concern: Tournament machines at InDisc experienced drop target and fall down issues exacerbated by play stress, though overall reliability was acceptable

    medium · Ron notes 'drop targets reset and maybe some fall down' issues and mentions his 'cheater' having increasing problems during tournament

  • ?

    collector_signal: Super Hoop has limited North American distribution (only 2 confirmed distributors) despite 50+ unit production, creating availability gap for US/Canadian collectors

    medium · Ron notes 'Only two distributors in North America that I saw, Nitro Pinball in Canada, and in Flip N Out Pinball' for Super Hoop

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Slam Tilt hosts struggle to book certain industry figures for interviews despite repeated outreach efforts, suggesting selective engagement or prioritization issues

    medium · Ron notes attempting to book Weebly boards creator 'three times' with 'Phone number, contact me' but never receiving response

    • 3:30
    Oh, Canada. Our home and native land. Sing it in French. It would be more impressive. That would be more impressive. We fuckery, you bastard, is your way. I don't know. Wow. Well, since we are degenerates, we're just going to talk about the ones we won. Who won? I didn't. Yeah, you suck. I suck. You've never traveled to Arkansas or made your own pinball machine. No. Bruce won an award. What was the official name of the award he won? Degenerate Hauler Hall. The most degenerate hall. Most degenerate pinball hall. So what was that, Bruce? That was the $20 cheetah from Arkansas.
    4:20
    That's quite the haul. How long was that haul? That was almost 48 hours. You are quite the degenerate. I agree. I am quite the degenerate. I'm very honored to have this award. And not only myself winning the award, we had Zach win an award. Zach, what did you win the award for? Most Degenerate Homebrew Pinball. I heard you won because the call-outs were so great. Yep, he just praised them for like 10 minutes during the acceptance speech. Awesome. And then mention my name at the end a bit.
    4:55
    But congratulations, you two. Thank you. It was very cool. Thank you, Joe, for all you do. And I'm sure if Ron had ever been nominated for anything, he would have aced that category, too, you know? He would have. Best vocal in a pinball machine. Best spinners.
    5:11
    Yeah, I should have nominated myself for best spinner. Spinner guy. Well, I heard that someone else's game has a very good spinner, too, that we picked up recently. Yes. Maybe even better than your spinner. Whoa. Okay. Got to save that for later. I got to hear about this. All right. So there was another award show, wasn't there? There was another award show.
    5:36
    The Pinball Industry Awards. Yes. We talked about this last time. The results are out. Mm-hmm. Did we win anything? Nope. But we came in the top five.
    5:50
    Yeah. Well, Silver Ball, well, let's just go over them quickly. Yes. I don't want to go stay on this too long because we have a lot of stuff. Let's see. The Excellence Awards. We have Excellence in Pinball Streaming. The winner was I.E. Pinball. Good choice. Congratulations, Carl. Please follow by Don't Panic Flip and the Mystery Pinball Theater 3000. Then we have Excellence in Pinball Podcasting. The Pinball Show won. Hmm.
    6:22
    Isn't that a TPN show that people who did the awards? Yeah, kind of like, huh? Hmm. I'm like Silver Ball Chronicles, which is also, oh, on the TPN. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I'm sorry. Silver Ball Chronicles was second. It was. I'm number two. You pulled votes. I'm like Josh Sharp. I'm number two. It's great. Split votes, though. You did split votes. I did? You did. Because Slam Tilt was tied for fourth. Third. We were tied for third with Backbox and Final Round.
    6:57
    See? So Ron is the zombie yeti of pinball podcasters. Wow. I like that. I'm a winner, I think. No. No? Excellence in pinball writing.
    7:10
    The winner was This Week in Pinball. Mm-hmm. Hi, Jeff. Hello, Jeff. With NAP Arcade in second. Yep. And Excellence in Pinball Social Media. We had a tie for first. We got a fund with bonus and NAP Arcade. And then we had a tie for second. Joe Cherovino and the Pinball Network. Yep. Excellence in Pinball Photography. Wow. Photography. Try that again. Excellence in Pinball Photography. We had NAP Arcade, number one. Mm-hmm. Orange Photography, number two. Hi, Gene.
    7:50
    Charles Acosta, Pinball Photos, in third. Then we have Excellence in Pinball Videography. We have Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show, number one.
    8:03
    Hamoto Harney, number two. And Abe Flips, number three. Uh-oh, you might want to cover yours on this one, Bruce. The Harry Williams Legacy Award went to Dwight Sullivan. What was that, huh? Did he win the most flasher? It's excellence over a long career, Bruce If he stopped it 15 years ago, I would have said he was a better career Keep going, keep going, Dwight Don't listen to Bruce No, don't We believe you can make another Star Wars again No, you won't Your face don't Love Star Wars Well, I'm going to say one thing I'm going to say one thing. Okay, okay. About the Star Wars thing. You guys bring it up, of course. Yeah. The shots in that game suck, but the rules are eh.
    8:53
    Wow, that means a lot to me for you, Bruce. What the fuck does that mean? The shots suck. I thought you were going to say something remotely positive. Nope, the geometry is terrible. It plays fine, Bruce. No, it doesn't. every person besides you two knuckleheads. We are the only two people who like that game. No, there's three. All three copies sold. Yeah, only three of the copies sold, not the multiple different versions because it was popular, and including the home version. Which somebody had a nice insert breaking crack on. Did you see that? Yeah, that was a bit. That was scary.
    9:33
    Okay, moving on. We have Best Art Cabinet and Backglass Godzilla Wins Of course I'm not going to go through all of it Best Art Playfield Godzilla Wins I suppose Mando didn't get a little higher I like Mando No?
    9:55
    Best Lighting Effects Vlad Zeppelin I can see that People love their expression lighting Wisconsin Rose is not eligible?
    10:06
    Yes, because it was in last year's. Yes. Because they haven't, Jersey Jack hasn't had anything since. New. Hey!
    10:14
    It's hard to remember because it's been so long since they ever did anything. I know. Best theme integration.
    10:21
    Godzilla. Best choice. Godzilla. Best innovation. Godzilla. 69%. Wow. Best playfield layout. Godzilla.
    10:38
    92%. You see the theme now, folks? Good God. Best rules. Godzilla. Good golly, Miss Molly. Not to, like, take away from Godzilla, which is very good, but looking at the list of games this year, it's not too exciting. No, there was no competition. There was no competition. Do you think Zeppelin should have been above Mando in rules? It wasn't? I think so. You think so? Okay. Yeah, but it wasn't. No, it finished third. But it was close. Let's see. Best accessory with 75% the Insider Connected Kit. Best music. This was a little unfair.
    11:19
    Zeppelin. Yeah, gee, surprise. Does that mean Russia's going to win next year's award? Yeah, of course it is. Best sound effects. Godzilla. Mm-hmm. Best call-outs.
    11:32
    Godzilla. This one was closer. Closer with Mando. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I don't see Mando's all that stuck. Oh, man. Really? You don't like Carl Weathers? We at least got one celebrity to talk. He didn't do it well, but at least we paid someone. Wow. Exactly. Thank you. Wow. I don't believe what I'm hearing.
    11:55
    Best animation display and effects, Godzilla. And best in show, best game. Godzilla. Here's the funny part. There was actually 98.08%. Zeppelin got the second spot at 1.92%. I think someone might have hit the wrong thing in the survey. I think someone just clicked on the wrong thing by mistake. Shit. Oh, I can't go backwards. God damn it. I wonder, when was the last non-music pin that would have won the music award?
    12:29
    Good question. Well, they've only had these awards for two years. Well, I mean, not just... I mean, if they had him back farther, you know, I don't know what won last year for music, but I sort of see music as a penalty. Cousin Roses. Yep. I don't know. Every year it seems like we're dumped on with a music pin. I mean, maybe Skinny would have managed it.
    12:49
    It does actually have, like, a vinyl out. Not many pins have that. Just that and Deadpool. God, I love Deadpool. Good game. Oh, wow. in agreement for once. Yeah. What? I didn't say anything. I know. Yeah. What's wrong with Deadpool?
    13:10
    Sneak. Oh, you with the snake. He doesn't like the snake shot. Okay, remove that from the equation. Now what don't you like about it?
    13:17
    Half the shots. You see, folks, Zach doesn't like fun. So... I don't like clunk. You got to remember that. Yeah, because he owns a Star Wars and he plays anything that's one of the best games. That's why he doesn't like fun. It's very fun. Star Wars is very fun. Star Wars has no clunky shots. Oh, God almighty. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Star Wars Pro has no clunky shots. Okay, yep. Fair, fair asterisk right there. Yes. Every shot, if you make it, it goes nice and smooth. Mm-hmm. I love some smooth shooting games. Mm-hmm. Too bad Star Wars ain't one of them. Okay. The only game we have where you have four multiball saves in your, you know, when you plunge your ball. Plunge screen, plunge screen, plunge screen, plunge screen. Don't forget Ghostbusters.
    14:09
    Trust me. Ghostbusters only gives you two. I've had Star Wars. I had it, what was it, last week, four. It's configurable. I turned it up to max.
    14:19
    Yeah, it's usually two. Wow, four saves. Yeah, thank you. Well, actually, I was playing Godzilla, and I feel like Godzilla will let you drain a lot of time. Yes, it will, too, yes. But if you get one of the skill shots. If you don't get one of the skill shots and you miss, it goes off, like, in five seconds.
    14:39
    No, but, like, you can drain it in five seconds and then, like, plunge again, and the ball table will still be on sometimes.
    14:45
    Don't forget to clean up. It needs it because it plunges directly to an out lane, but... I think Bruce just needs to plunge better on Star Wars. Yeah? No, because a frigging auto-plunger grabs it and jumps over. What the fuck? Well, then you'd need to plunge faster.
    14:59
    No. Okay. Don't adjust. Just keep complaining. Just keep pitching. Because it's a terrible design. Complain, complain, complain. It's awesome. Terrible design. Thank you very much. I'm glad you're agreeing with me finally.
    15:10
    Ah, let's see. What next? Well, let's talk about Lyman. Yes. Now, when we recorded this last time, there was some information that came out after we recorded. Yes. That we have not discussed. Yes. So I'll let you take this one. Well, we found out first they had a nice online ceremony, so everyone can actually follow along with the wake. And they had some nice people coming up and giving their memories of Lyman. It was very nice to hear and see people. You know, Mr. Sharp was there. and a couple people he worked with at Williams, and Penny, of course. And it was hard hearing, you know, people remembering him with such reverence. And then we found out also from that same ceremony, before they actually talked about in the— Oh, yeah, it was in the obituary. It was in the memoriam, yeah, the obituary that he committed suicide, unfortunately.
    16:14
    Very sad. I hope if anyone, you know, has those thoughts to hopefully reach out to somebody, please. It is very sad.
    16:28
    You guys can join in, too. It's really sad. It's sad. I mean, I'm a fairly private guy. Yes, you are, compared to me. compared to me, yes. Yeah, we really didn't talk like, when my mother died. I hate saying pass away. I just hate that. I think my mom would hate that, too. She was much more direct than that. Like, I didn't even want to mention it on the air. No. But, uh, Bruce convinced me. Yep. And when my father passed away, you know, that sucked. So, I mean, I've had anxiety attacks since I was in my 20s. They were fun. If you've never had those before, I've had depression issues before my body went to shit. After my body went to shit, that made it even worse.
    17:22
    Bruce remembers. Remember, I think it was the last pin mania we went to. It was me, you, and my dad. Yep. And that was right after I was diagnosed with the neck issues. Yep. So I'll say that. I have severe arthritis in my neck. I have degeneration at all levels, bone spurs, spinal stenosis. So it's lots of fun.
    17:45
    And honestly, for a good year, I was in so much fucking pain, I thought about suicide on a regular basis.
    17:54
    I remember being in the airport, coming back from one of those California extremes. And you were hating life. I was literally in tears in the airport because I knew I was going to have to fly all the way back, and it was fucking rough. Yeah, I remember that. I feel the pain. And unfortunately, I've always been a suffer in silence type of guy, which don't be that guy. That's all I'll say. No. There. That's the most public stuff you'll hear from me. I'm honest. It is true. Yeah.
    18:28
    So I actually did talk to Penny yesterday. Not talked, just messaged her, saying, I know I didn't come to you the past month, I know probably everyone else was, that I asked her how she was doing. And she said she was, you know, very milk horse missing, which, of course, we all are. Mm-hmm. Just, you know, sad, very sad.
    18:52
    All right. Yes. So play some Attack from Mars for Lyman. I know I will. Still put your LFS in. So what's our favorite Lyman game?
    19:04
    Ooh. Of course, it's Zach. Since he doesn't like fun, and linemen's games were generally fun, he probably doesn't have one. But with me, I would say Attack from Mars. Yeah, for me, it's Attack from Mars. Really? It's not Walking Dead or anything? No, actually, I love the humor in Attack from Mars. I like everything about it. It was just ahead of its time.
    19:27
    Okay, Zach. I'm trying to look up a list. There's a lot of them. He's doing Demoman. man. It's not, that doesn't, he literally just worked on the home run. I know. That doesn't count.
    19:41
    Well, I think I'd have to go Attack from Mars too. Wow. Okay. We have an agreement. Attack from Mars. So play some Attack from Mars. If you can, well, they made the remake. It was just the original.
    19:56
    Well, I mean, Chicago Gaming, what are the first, what, two remakes they made? Three remakes they made? Remakes. Three. and he was in the fourth.
    20:06
    Oh, yeah. He would have been fourth or four on three games he made. Yep. Alright. So let's go into... I don't think we talked about this last time. Super Hoop. There's a new game out. Kind of. So is Hoops better?
    20:25
    It's funny. When I saw this thing, Super Hoop, I just tried to think of it as the sequel to Hoops. That would be great. I feel like it's not going to go well.
    20:35
    So I'm trying to figure out, is this Spanish or Italian? Yes, Spanish. Spanish, yeah, and they made the Tokyo Drift game. Yes. If I remember. Okay. Did that ever, was it in public or anything? I don't, I've never seen it. I don't, you know. I think we saw like one video of it and everyone laughed at it, and then never heard about it again ever. But then here's something a company who's got at least like 50 of these games manufactured already, which is more than many other companies have actually managed to do, and I've never heard about them at all. Yeah, it looks pretty... People are like us going like, what's going on? It looks pretty cool, I have to say. It's like a single level, well, actually no, it's got a little ramp here. It's got a little ramp, yeah. Think of it, it'd be something you would, like a street level game kind of thing. It feels almost like an 80s Gottlieb game. Yes, yes, yes. No lies. Yes, so again... It's multi-level, but very restrictedly multi-level. It's got some weird little player controlled slingshots in the top and stuff. Hoops 2. Electric Boogaloo I'm still waiting to see what the price is because obviously you can't really compete with a modern stern Yeah, well what was the price if you're in Europe was not bad Oh, you saw a price? I just said There was some kind of price for like in Europe like what it would cost and it wasn't that bad if I remember Of course now I can't find that information even though I looked it up Only $8,000 or like only $5,000? Yeah, like $5,000, $6,000, something like that. But it would be, obviously, to get it over here, it's going to be more than that. Oh, yeah. But could it be the cheapest production pinball machine, not a home edition? Hmm.
    22:11
    Maybe Home Pin. We don't know about the second machine yet from them. Only two distributors in North America that I saw, Nitro Pinball in Canada, and in Flippin' Out. I'm still sort of bemused by, like, someone besides Stern actually being the cheapest pinball machine out there now, after the price hike. I know.
    22:29
    I do like that in the picture, it's like, here's all the freaking cabinets. Like, here's all the, like, just rows and rows of the game. Just to show you, like, hey, we did something. We're doing this. Yeah. This isn't vaporware. It might be our only 50 we have, but we're doing this. Yep. And who knows what electronics they use or how easily they'll break and be irreplaceable, but that's true. We've at least built some games. Mm-hmm. Hey, you want to start using some pots from our pots? No, no, no. You're Spanish, not Italian. No, no, no, we're still the same. You're EU, so we get everything good. Whatever.
    23:04
    One thing is, even if I didn't know, if I just looked at the artwork in this game, I'd be like, this is a European game. It's not an American game. There's some racier elements with cheerleaders and stuff like that that you would not see in any American-made game at this point. Nope. Picture, like, modesty plastic covers. Yeah, do we need modesty plastic covers? Let's just say they've got cheerleaders who are very... lots of skin. A very, like, late 80s style. Early 80s. I'm thinking more like Bally Truck Stop. I'm thinking more like Memory Lane. That's late 70s. I know, but I'm saying, like, you know, the skin in Dolly Parton. I feel like it briefly got a bit classy in the early 80s and then, like, went back down again. Yeah, this would have definitely been like 1990s. like 1990 I could see this could have been like Hoops 2 with different artwork like roller games like trashy artwork wasn't Hoops 1 1990 yes they made the sequel the same year it's incredible golly could have done that they made so many freaking games alright I mean it looks pretty I mean it looks interesting I'd love to see I'd love to play this I hope it's at a show I hope it's at Texas yeah I won't play it then oh we'll play it for you Bruce We'll tell you what it's like. Excellent. Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to get the name of the company. Dates are released for Allentown. Quetzel or something?
    24:37
    Maybe. Well, there's like the designer, and then it's made by another company that they're getting to manufacture it. And Allentown, yes, the dates, Bruce, the same dates they are every year and have been since I've been gone. Oh, not last year. Well, except last year. Except last year. For those at home, Allentown is always the same weekend as the Kentucky Derby. Yes. So if you just remember when the Kentucky Derby is. Why would I do that?
    25:03
    That's a great matter. You know what week the Kentucky Derby is? It's because it's the same week as Allentown. Ah, I see.
    25:10
    Except I also never needed to remember that, so. So which one of you guys are going to share a hotel room with me down there and listen to my great snoring? Oh, God, no. What? I'll be with my dad. You snore so loud. Hold on. It's all on here. Although my hotel mate at Indisc, which we'll talk about later, I found out he's kind of noisy too at times. Have you never roomed with him before? Yes, he has. But he was never that noisy before. So either I was able to fall asleep before his volume got up or something else. But he fell asleep before me both days, and, yeah, he was quite loud. So where did you go, Ron? Oh, you want to go into that? Okay, let's just go in the same way. I went to Indisc.
    25:57
    Is that like a pinball tournament or something? That's a pinball tournament. It never drains in Southern California. It's also the open. Never drains in Southern California. I saw a lot of draining. No, I saw a lot. I experienced a lot of draining, yes. False marketing.
    26:14
    So it was in a new location necessitated by the death of the Banning Pinball Museum. Mm-hmm. So it was in Riverside, California, at the Riverside Convention Center.
    26:28
    And it was piggybacked off of another event called the Festival of Fights. Sorry. Which is basically people playing fighting games. And to be honest, it was weak.
    26:43
    It was weak. I've seen those before. Just huge events. And I was under the impression that they were big, and we were kind of like, Indisc was just piggybacking off of them, being much smaller.
    26:57
    You would use the Festival of Fights site to register for Indisc and stuff like that. But, man, it was just like one room. They had all these tables set up, and it was like half empty. Most of the show, there was hardly anyone there. There was way more people at Indisc than there was there. and at certain points there was actually more people watching the Indisc stream than the Festival of Fight stream, which is insane that that would ever happen. Too bad you couldn get someone like Carl on the show to talk about all that stuff A little late now isn it I been trying to get people on the show and some people don even respond back to you I've never tried Carl. We have had Carl on before. We've had Carl on. Somebody asked if we can get the guy who creates the Weebly boards. I asked him three times. Phone number, contact me. I'd love to get you on.
    27:49
    Not once ever. Maybe he's a big Dwight Sullivan fan. Well, then that's his fault. and maybe he's even a bigger Lonnie Ropp fan, and you have just gone just like, no way. Fuck you. I'm never going to be on your show. Until you apologize. No, that'll never happen. Yeah, because Bruce doesn't apologize ever. No.
    28:10
    So, yeah, I went to InDisc. It was fun. It was enjoyable. It was swell. It was great. Gonna have the whole world on the plate. I'm not a good storyteller, so why don't you ask me some questions? Maybe we can do that. How were the games in the tournament, Ron?
    28:30
    On a scale of zero to Zach. Zero to one? Well, wait a minute. Yeah, zero to Zach. Do you mean Zach as in how they were at the tournament we just played in when they all died? No, not that part. Not that part? Not that part.
    28:45
    I will say there were parts when I was playing the games and I was thinking of Zach, thinking, yeah, this wouldn't be acceptable to him. But they were mostly little. There were things like drop targets reset and maybe some fall down. Totally unlike my games, which never do that. Yeah. Never. Just like my cheater right now that keeps on having a two issue. That got worse over the course of the tournament, as you would figure, as they get pounded and pounded and pounded. For the most part, everything worked, which is all you can ask for, man. And the drive out there and back from the airport? Much better. Good. Because it's shorter than the Banning. Plus, we got there later. So instead of three hours, it was two hours. It was two hours, yes. So that was nice. Just to give you an idea, folks, driving from LAX to Riverside was two hours. Driving back to the airport was like an hour and 15 minutes. That's good. It's such a difference depending on which way you're going. There were so many Whoppers to be had there. God, it was insane.
    29:52
    It was absolutely insane. I played one entry in the high stakes tournament. It was like $50 an entry just on Sunday because why not? I was basically bored. And I got like five Whopper points for that. I got more than I would get for winning something locally.
    30:07
    Wow. Yeah. Well, hopefully with your new local location, that will be much better. Yeah, we got an interesting new location, which I keep forgetting the name of. So they had classics on Friday, classics on Saturday. They had the open tournament, the main one, which ran all the way through, I think, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. They had the classics match play on Thursday, which, thank God, I made that. It was one of those deals where for so many people got in, and I got in, which necessitated me leaving a day earlier, which if I hadn't, I wouldn't have made it at all because we had a snowstorm. so if I had left Thursday like I usually left uh it would have been canceled but we left Wednesday so I made it uh let's see what else um I finished like 32nd in the target match play that was painful and that if I finished first in the last game I would have been like 12th that would have sounded much better classics one I did not qualify that was close but no cigar Classics 2, I did qualify. I advanced to the second round.
    31:20
    And in the first round, we actually had a game that was streamed on, what was it again? Sinbad. Yeah, like whoever Carl was following on the stream finished, so they just moved the rig over to our game, which was funny. One of the people in my group was like, oh, man, I don't want to be on stream. So I looked up the stream to see how many people were watching. And I was like, don't worry, there's only 462 people watching right now.
    31:52
    I pulled a Bruce. Uh-huh. Being a dick. So then I had a Lazarus on stream. That was nice. And I think I won that game. They moved on. And in the second round, I ended up in a group with Escher Lefkoff,
    32:09
    Zach Sharp, and Timmer. You were the biggest guy there. You were the head honcho. No, I was the, who's the fourth guy? Guy.
    32:20
    But I thought I held my own. I thought I played good. Even Zach Sharp says, you're playing pretty good.
    32:26
    And me and Zach did not move on. That's where Timmy moved on. Then I played two entries in open. One of them wasn't too bad. I mean, not good enough to qualify. But I didn't realize there was a B division.
    32:43
    The top 16 continue in B division, and I was in the top 16 most of the time until the very end when I dropped out. That's funny. I didn't even realize that was a thing.
    32:53
    So let's see. Anything else? They had their free play area this year where games brought by the, what do they call it, pirates? The auction house that did captains. Captains auctions. They're the ones that auction all John Wheat stuff off for the Museum of Pinball. So they had a row of just they had Tic-Tac-Toe, the Bally one. X's and O's. X's and O's, yeah. They had an NBA Fast Break, Champion Pub, Godzilla, Stranger Things. You would have loved it, Bruce. It's great. Yay. They had a Rush that was down most of the time because it was broken.
    33:33
    And a few other games. And there was a bunch of video games there, too. That was nice. Yeah. Overall, it was a very nice experience. You're going again next year, of course. Oh, hell yeah. I did some announcing on the Classics 1, which was a mistake with all my throat issues because I was on there for like four hours, and by the end, the next day I could barely talk at all. So that was a fail. It was good to see everyone. It was good to see everybody. I should remember all the winners, but I don't. I'm sorry. I know Zach McCarthy won the main tournament. Let's see. I know, oh, you'll probably yell at us if we don't mention them. Robert Byers.
    34:12
    He won Classics 1 and then put on a Rey Mysterio mask and did a promo. No size. That's freaking hilarious. And Escher won Classics 2. Keeping up the rules, if you beat me in any of the rounds, you win. You will win the tournament. You win. Yes. Let's see, Kerry Wing won the women's.
    34:31
    High stakes, I think Elwin won. Oh, cool. Yes, he did. finished watching on stream for that before we started recording. And the youth tournament, I think they only got three, and then two of them were Jim Belsito's daughters and, like, there was another kid. I don't remember who won. I think one of Jim Belsito's daughters won. And they had an older. Oh, seniors. I don't know who won seniors. Crap. Hey, Bruce, you can play in that. I can't yet. It's 55. I thought it was. Aren't you 55? Yes, it's 55.
    35:06
    I'm not your age yet, Ron. You are still older than me and always will be. You're still catching me. Yeah, that will continue to happen, Bruce. It will. It always does. It was a great event. I mean, highest level shit when it comes to tournaments.
    35:24
    Hardest damn format to qualify for. But, yeah, a splendid time. Oh, they had a nice break room next to everything, too. You could just kind of chill out. Drink some liquid death. Yeah, they had that there. Thoroughly enjoyable. The trip back was not. Oh, yes, you got bounced around. So we're driving the rental car back to Alamo on Sunday night. They were leaving Sunday night. And I just happened to check my e-mail and see that I had a flight from LAX to Charlotte and then Charlotte to Albany. My LAX to Charlotte flight was canceled. Isn't that great? so here I am I'm on the shuttle bus from Alamo to the airport feverishly trying to book another flight which I'm able to get I was able to book another flight to Charlotte LAX to Indianapolis to Charlotte but when I did that my Charlotte to Albany flight disappeared from my itinerary which concerned me so when I got to LAX I went up to the American Airlines counter and I asked them specifically, specifically, you know, this is what I did. I had to reschedule this, but now this flight is not showing up. Am I still all set with that flight? No, you're good. No problem at all. She brings it up on the computer like, oh, yeah, I had the boarding pass. You're all set. Yes, that's fine. Okay.
    36:53
    You see where this is going already. Oh, I already do. I fly to Indianapolis, had to sit around Indianapolis for like five hours. So then, flying to Charlotte, and then when the Charlotte to Albany flight is boarding, me and Chris, my buddy, we go on, they scan our tickets, beep, oh, we got a problem. Like, motherfucker. Now, I'm just instantly pissed. And it's like, uh, yeah, you're not checked in for this flight. They had just removed us from the flight. Which, number one, pissed me off they did that, but especially since I fucking asked that specific fucking question and was told everything was fine. That specific thing.
    37:32
    However, we lucked out. You know why, Bruce? Because other people's flights got canceled. No, no. When you're flying from Charlotte to Albany, that means you live in Albany. Because there's no other reason you're going to be flying to Albany. Unless you're Cuomo trying to get a piece of ass down below. Very good. Or you're going to be in the new tournament at level zero. Yeah, it's level zero tournament. It's very big these times. So typically on these flights, usually it's one of the smaller planes, but this was more like a regular full-size plane, three on each side seats.
    38:04
    So they waited until everyone boarded, and then, you know, they're on there typing things up, and they're on the phone and they're talking inside the plane, getting us, you know, what seats are free. And then they're there like, 70, 70, go. Like, you don't need anything else? No, go. Boom. So we get in the plane, and we walk in there, and there's like empty seats all over the place. So, but basically, if there hadn't been, if that had been a smaller plane, we were totally fucked. We wouldn't have got on. You've been living in Indianapolis from now on. No, we were in Charlotte by that point. Oh, Charlotte, sorry. That's right. But it just irked me so much. How much did it irk you, Ron?
    38:46
    Not just because they did it, but because I anticipated that and asked the specific question, and they told me it was okay and they just were totally wrong. Like you can't look this shit up in your own system. They were yanking you. Yeah, they were yanking me. All right. So that was the Indisc experience. Would you do it again? Yes. I mean, I wish I could get a flight into Ontario. Yeah, that's hard. They don't do that. You can't. Ontario is a smaller airport. Well, I could originally, through Charlotte, but then American Airlines again, cancel the actual flight plans. Like, no, we don't offer this anymore. So that was the end of that. Zach, if we want to go next year, we can go Buffalo to LAX as a direct flight.
    39:37
    Yeah, but you need to get to Buffalo first. That's easy, though. You're with me. You've got the driver and everything. Yeah, it's basically equivalent to like an hour and a half layover. Yeah, but if you get stuck, you're screwed. at the layover like Ron did. We have a direct flight. Well, no, then your flight can get canceled, and then you're stuck in Buffalo and have to drive back. Well, Buffalo's got a lot more options. You can go to Las Vegas and drive the other way.
    40:02
    Okay. All right. I'm getting there, goddammit. I'm getting there. Okay. While we were talking about your indisc, I just made my hotel reservation for Allentown. Okay. Jesus Christ. Okay. Hello. See, $118 a night? Mm-hmm. With steak breakfast? I can take that. Okay, if you remember our last episode, Bruce put up a Facebook post about the movie that I will be forced to watch. And now he didn't watch it on the plane like everyone wanted him to. No, no, I wanted to go over all the short, I wanted to go over how the voting went before I watched anything. It was what pinball-related movies have I not watched yet. so we got all kinds of answers here's some of the we got on the list well someone said Demoman but I have seen Demoman someone said Pinball Wizard which is a gay porn I'm not watching that Nightmare on Elm Street I have watched that Man with Two Brains which is like a Steve Martin movie I have not watched that that's a terrible movie it's not pinball related either there's no pinball called Man with Two Brains I don't think. Nobody. I have seen that. Believe it or not. A recent movie made in the last year that I've seen.
    41:24
    I know. Amazing. Was it on a plane? No. Game of Thrones. That's a TV show, not a movie. Tilt. The one with Brooke Shields in it. That one I have not seen.
    41:38
    Kingpin. That one I have seen. Wayne's World. Again, not pinball really, but I have not seen it. Now, for the voting, let's see. We had Johnny Mnemonic had one vote. The Big Lebowski had five.
    41:53
    Thunder Brews or Go had one. Again, that's a TV show. That's probably a movie, though. Lord of the Rings had two.
    42:01
    Congo had three. Flintstones, the one you wanted me to watch, had three. The Shadow was one. And the winner, Jurassic Park. So I guess I'm watching Jurassic Park. So by the time we record the next episode, I will have to have watched Jurassic Park. There you go. And if you have any questions for Ron...
    42:29
    You can quiz me about the movie to make sure I actually watched it. Exactly. I'll say, like, there's a T-Rex in it. I mean, he's played the pinball machine. He must know all the major plot points, right? Yes. There's Nublar. It's the island. And then there's a guy called Nerdy. Who's the programmer? Nedry. And there's raptors in a kitchen.
    42:51
    Like a lot of the individual scenes I've heard of or know, I've never seen the movie. But that will change. It will. I have committed to be committed. Then you'll have to watch the Lost World, all the other versions. No, God, no, no, no, no. You will? No. Although there was a Lost World pinball, so. Yes, exactly. And no one even put it on the list. No, no one did. Not bad. With that crazy mech.
    43:17
    Let's see. What else do I have here? Well, I played in another tournament this past weekend. You did? Yeah, which we mentioned in the last episode. The Flip Frenzies. My first ever Flip Frenzy. Somehow. And Bruce's first ever Flip Frenzy, right? No, I played in Flip Frenzies. They had them in Syracuse. Central New York Pinball League had them. Okay. I'm still amazed as to how few people have ever played in one. And we barely had a break.
    43:47
    It went well. The software Zach made was better than anything else I've ever dealt with. Do you think it worked well? I couldn't actually get much handle on it. I thought it worked well until it went to people started getting mad when they were waiting. Well, that was your fault for not following my directions. What? Going by the analytics.
    44:07
    It's because I never got a chance to tell you the directions. So whose fault is it then? A little background. You're saying software. What did you create, Zach? Because normally people lately, at least have I heard, they use Match Play. Yeah, Match Play, as always, has basically no options or customizability to let you do anything that you want to actually do. So you created your own thing, which was a what? It looked like a spreadsheet. It was just, yeah, Google Sheets spreadsheet setup. every time I've heard about anyone playing in a flip frenzy I hear the same complaints of like I had to play the same game three times in a row or like I had to play the same person three times in a row you know or one person got to play way more games than other people because they play really fast I'm like well we have like balanced pairing in that play you know to even out that sort of thing like why can't you have balanced pairing in a flip frenzy so I create a thing which would try to track all those metrics and rate them to choose people from the queue, not always first person in the queue, but whoever was the best fit for the game that was up next. And would you say it worked well? I think so. Mostly the limitations of Excel spreadsheets because they suck shit meant that I couldn't track the order of people in the queue, which is what Bruce was alluding to. So my instruction to people running the sheet was basically like, try to remember who's in the queue the longest and don't let them sit for too long but that instruction did not get understood or disseminated enough apparently until like midway through. I know at one point I was on black hole like twice in a row. Yeah, the one thing I would also say is I think, remember how we went on the second, we played two full matches, so it was two hours, and what happened was the first match was one hour. Match, you played two flip frenzies. Yeah, flip frenzies, and one flip frenzy, The first one had one hour of moderns, and then we went to one hour of older machines. Good games. Yes. And then the second one, we went 45 minutes on modern, and then one hour and 15 minutes on older machines. And I think we could have maybe broken that up a little bit better, because I played Black Hole a shit ton, too. The problem was the second frenzy was a bit smaller, because some people left. Yes, some people left. So it got to the point where, like, we only had, I think, five games active the entire time. So the amount of ability the software had to provide you with options was very limited the second time, sadly. But that's where your software did kick in and actually was holding you back from playing Black Hole the fourth time. Yeah, it was trying to take pity on you and hope it was going to come up, but we decided we didn't fuck you. And then once GameStop came up, it actually picked, because I never played Gamertron, it put me right into the GammaTron thing. So it did work that way. But I was waiting a while if you're going by the analytics.
    47:06
    Yeah, so I think, first of all, if we had more people that time, second of all, if I actually had real software and not just a spreadsheet that could track things a little bit better, the idea was solid. A few tweaks to execution could make it much, much better. I think it would work really well. It worked well. I thought, you know, we released it. Even given everything, I think it was better off than a straight flip frenzy. Usually is. I think you need a dedicated person. Yes, that is true. Well, you wouldn't need it if the software could actually keep track of everything, I would argue. You can argue, but I still think a dedicated person may be easier. Yeah, I think so, too. I'll argue successfully then, so.
    47:44
    I don't know about that one. Okay. I mean, that was a smaller one. If you got, like, 20, 30 people playing in it, it would be easier with a dedicated person. just take this, who won, who won, and update the sheet. If I had actual software, I could just let it automatically take entries too. You wouldn't need to have someone sitting there being a single player. Well, there you go. Make it so. I just need to re-implement all of match play. It's easy. Sadly, as a general issue with running tournaments is match play isn't really open, even to coders much. Well, I do need to look at their API. If you do want to create any other tournament software. Basically, there's either Match Play, Carl's Never Drains, which is very format-specific to Herb-style stuff, and then a few other standalone programs, which are also very limited. There's no real option for anyone that wants to start a new format besides just starting completely from zero and implementing everything. I feel it's limiting the creativity of tournaments a bit.
    48:45
    Hmm. Maybe Z-Pen needs to create a new open-source tournament system. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'll get right on that, Ron. Yeah. It's on my list right around, like, level 40. Okay. Well, luckily, we just finished 39, so there you go.
    49:04
    So it was two hours of split frenzy and then finals. Like, the first one was top eight. The second one, because we had less people, was top six. Yes. And congratulations to you, Zach. You won both of them. You won both. Yay. You almost got taken out twice, though, in the lower rounds. Yeah, I squeaked at you every time. And Steph, the pinball princess finished second both times. Yep. Who finished third? I finished third the first one and fourth the second one. I finished third. Third was Ron. In the second one. I don't remember where I finished in the first one.
    49:39
    Not top four. No, not top four. I do literally have the results up on my screen right now. Ah. Ron, you finished sixth in the first one. And the second finals was just, it was me, Zach, Bruce, and Steph. Yeah. It's like the ultimate slam tilt final four. Now, the funny thing is, I know some people don't like how we run finals. We had three games. It was match play. Bus driver drove the three games, but they had two things against them in the tournament. First, you can't pick the same game twice throughout the finals.
    50:14
    And then the second thing was you have to play in the three games. One was a modern. Well, actually, what we did is this. We go to random.org. We go modern, DMD, solid state, and EM. And the top three that come up are the ones that they can pick, and the fourth one is the tiebreaker. You're going to be playing an EM. You're going to be playing a solid state, a modern, or a DMD. So three out of four, you're going to play one of each. it seems like some people just want a tournament sometimes. And some people are like, oh, you know, I had two people come and say, this is cool how you, and then I had some people like, oh. Or the other way. Why can't it just be all EMs? Because there are people who want to play all the old games. They don't want to play the newer games. I don't want to play Godzilla. I have no idea what I'm doing. I mean, one of our previous finals, we didn't have that rule because it was a ladder final or something. And the top seed just chose EMs and very least updates like every single game. Yep. And it went fast. It went fast.
    51:14
    Just by adding extra 15 minutes of classics to the two hours, we gained an extra, like, two and a half games played. Yep. You know, that's just how much more efficient classics are. Yes, they are. We had a lot of breakdowns. Oh, yeah, there was a lot of breakdowns. But I liked it. There was almost no sitting. There was almost no not playing. So I think we are set for, if we get two dedicated people, we can do the 24-hour flip frenzy. Dedicated people for what? Taking the inputs. Well, Zach just said you don't need a dedicated person. No, no, no. Zach said we don't need a dedicated person if we had software that would take in and do all the stuff. He said that was on 40 on his list. Did he or did he not say that? No, he said 40 was for the entire new open source tournament. Oh, so he'll make it as a software just for this?
    52:03
    Well, he already did, but he needs to make it better. Yes. Can you do it, Zach, before the 24-hour? I mean, on the same 20-hour, like, I think one person could handle it, as long as we don't just have, like, 10 people lined up giving results, which might be a bit annoying, but it's not too bad. We have to make a line queue, too. Like, everyone just kept on coming up. I'm typing stuff in, and they're like, I just want to, like, wait! Yeah, we definitely need to, like, get people to actually, like, know to wait, but... Yeah. I mean, the 24-hour wouldn't be a single Crypt Frenzy, either. We'd have to do, like... No, it'd be five. Or even more than five, potentially. but yeah probably around that but so you can just have a different person run each individual one. True.
    52:42
    Six flip frenzies three hours each and then a big finals at the end. But that would be 18 hours. And then a big finals at the end. You can't have a finals for multiple tournaments. True. So I think you just have to do eight flip frenzies three hours each. Eight flip frenzies three hours each and there's no finals. You finish where you finish. Yep. And then you would have the king of Whopper points there. But do you get Whopper points without finals, though? Yeah, because it's direct play, so you still can. Yes. Flip frenzy counts as qualifying or finals format. So would you have the winners of the eight flip frenzy? Was it eight? Did you say eight? Eight flip frenzies, but then you could have an overall winner or something? The king of the hill. The king of the flip frenzy. We could give them a trophy, but we just can't give them if-or-points. Yeah, it wouldn't be if-or-points, but you could go for it. How do you figure that out? I mean, you can just do like the same way you do herbs qualifying. You know, each one shows 190, 85.
    53:41
    Or you can do percentage. Who's got the best winning percentage out of the whole thing? Yeah. That's another way. That'd be the king of the... You can get the belt. The belt. That's the king of the hill, boy. You know, back in my day... Okay. Think about that. Eight flip frenzies.
    53:58
    I'll tell you what, man. They talk about flip on, flip off, flip on, flip off. me after you know an eight-foot frenzy man it's gonna be insane man i think you do seven i'd have to say seven because you need bathroom breaks and i mean that's the thing with your friends is you can just not play a game for a little bit and go to the bathroom you could you know there's no reason for us to stop similarly there's no reason why we couldn't just watch the frenzies and just as soon as we calculate that we've gotten to 25 tgp we just smoothly just roll people in the next one non-stop and just start counting again we just do as many as we can in 24 hours We need to get people to add Zach. One for putting in all the stuff, and two to repair all the freaking games. That's true. Really, you just start with 50 games, and then by the end, you have hopefully 16 games left. So, flip frenzies. We love them. They're coming up. I'm going to plow through the tournament stuff here before everyone falls asleep. Yagpin. They had their Sign Sign And it crashed their site and they couldn do it so they going to try again next weekend Yeah I like how it always like we thought we had enough capacity but we didn You never have enough capacity. No one ever has capacity.
    55:13
    So check that off. There is the Varney Cup for us 518ers here in Albany that will be at level zero this upcoming weekend. I'm very excited. Actually, Mike, the tournament director, just messaged me asking me if I need help setting the game. The games are set up, man. They are tournament ready at all times. Let's see. What else? Stern had the, well, it was recorded quite a while ago, it seems. The Elvira House of Horror Heads Up Tournament. It's from Jack Danger's place. and it's all like someone goes in there and they just film them playing the game, like a bunch of games, and another person comes in, and another person over the course of however long it takes to film this, and then they just splice them all together like they're playing against each other, which at this point, I don't know. I mean, COVID's been going on long enough. I want to see actual head-to-head competition. Yeah. Not just from the Chicago area. Well, sure, Bruce, if you want to fly in. I was. I'm your own guy. They didn't even ask anybody. How do you know? How do you know they didn't ask anybody? They didn't. Like, last time they posted it. What was the game they did last time? Avengers? It was Avengers. A-I-G. Yeah, and before that, so I think this is the third one. Because they had the one that was Turtles, that they had people film themselves, and they gave them, like, a script of, like, you need to play this many of this, this many of this challenge, this many of this challenge. And then the Avengers won. They just had them all go to Jack Danger's place, and then they did the same thing for this one. And I know this was old because Jack Danger and Timmy, Tim Sexton hosted it, and Timmy still had his long hair, which he cut off quite a while ago. Damn hippie.
    57:00
    Damn hippie. So I know that was old. Come on. So let's see. I covered that. Oh, and the winner, I don't know who won yet. I didn't watch it yet. but the winner gets a Elvira House of Horse premium. Yeah, I'll fly out and try to win. True high stakes. That is true high stakes.
    57:20
    Yeah. I think that's it for tournaments, though. You can wake up now, folks. We're going to talk about Rush, because I got to play Rush. How did you get to play Rush? Well, I played some of it in disc, but frankly, the one there didn't work most of the time. It had a node board issue, and the scoop was really bad on that one. How's the fix coming along with that scoop issue?
    57:42
    I don't know. Well, for those at home, what the hell are they talking about? There's two scoops of Raisin Bran—no, two scoops in the Rush Spinball machine. It looks like the protector was kind of like a last-minute thing. I don't think it was on any prototypes. And then they put it in the production model, and they're getting beat to shit. They're starting to get bent all over the place and just causing all kinds of issues with the kick-out. So Stern is aware of the issue and supposedly has a solution coming. I don't know what that will be. I know they're building LEs, and I don't know if the solution is in the LEs. People say it is, but I haven't seen any actual, like, source. Yeah, I haven't seen, and I can't tell from the pictures. They showed them building LEs. They look like the same protectors, but maybe they're different. I don't know. But the game. I played Zach's game. Zach's got a pro, of course. He's a pro-only type guy. Have you played it, Bruce? I have. I've played Zax. Oh, that's right. That's right. Well, what did you think of it, Bruce?
    58:42
    I like it. Don't know about the love yet. Oh, okay. Don't know about the love yet. I like it. I have to see more code. And I have not played the newest, newest code. I think there's... Ah, it's got a ways to go. Yeah. It's still on my point... What is it? Eight? One? I can't remember what it is, but... Okay. First impressions. I thought it was fairly clunky. honestly. I agree with that one. There was a fair amount of clunk to it. When you hit the quarter shot, and I'm just going to call these shots by the games they're from originally. The quarter shot, which is on the right on this one, where the spinner is. When you hit it and it comes around, it kind of just kills it. Like immediately it just kind of trickles out. Which is good. Well, it does make it a little easier, the shot, but it's not smooth. The diverter is definitely not smooth. It was not as bad as the one when they did the reveal on the stream where it was totally killing the ball, but on Zach's, it still slows it down quite a bit. I feel like it's worked better sometimes, too. I don't know, maybe it's just the speed you hit the shots at and you were always rattling your shots or something. Sometimes it works really smooth. On Zach's, his side ramp is either very smooth or it does a bizarre thing where it goes half up and seems to almost go airborne and die. So we don't know exactly what that is. It could be more specific to Zach's game. I feel like they need a longer, clear plastic cover on that ramp. You know, like, usually ramps have covers on the tops to prevent the ball from, like, jumping out. Mm-hmm. But this doesn't, mostly. The dead-end shot, I do not like that at all.
    60:19
    Obviously, on the premium LE, that's actually a buck. So I'm sure it's totally different. But here, they just remove the buck, and you just hit a dead-end shot. It's kind of akin to Zeppelin, where they removed the side ramp and just replaced it with a target. So you just have this, you're just hitting a target. Or akin to Avengers. What's on Avengers? There's a buck on the right side, but just a target on the pro. Oh, okay. What else? The scoop, the actual, because it's two scoops. Of raisins. And if you actually remove the scoop part, it's a big hole in the play field. And if you remove the two actual scoop mechs, I mean, there's a lot of holage there. Is that even a word? Where basically when I'm shooting things and missing, which I do a lot, it just falls into scoops. It falls into scoops. And then you've got to wait. It falls into scoops. That got annoying to me. The right ramp, God, I had trouble hitting that. And, man, the shot I thought I wouldn't have trouble hitting, the time machine. God damn, I would miss like six or seven times per like trying to hit it Damn, it doesn't look like it's that hard Mm-hmm, but it is However, I will say after games like Godzilla Mandalorian Zeppelin it was kind of nice to play a game that felt a little more brutal I didn't feel like with my level of talent I could play the thing forever or have any kind of long games on it Most of the games were pretty short. Well, yes, Waltz at can, and maybe Bruce can. But even then, it's not like a consistent. I'm sure if you got a really good player and put them on Zeppelin, they would have like a long game every time.
    62:04
    Rush was not like that at all. I learned I knew more Rush songs than I thought I knew. And liked more Rush songs than I thought I would like. I'll say when I have my levels, I always go by like whether I would buy a game it has to pass the different levels. And level one is the play field. How does it shoot? I would say this game doesn't pass level one for me, so I would never buy one. But I will also say that I kept playing it over and over. I did want to keep playing it. The tip is I think it shoots better than most games. What's most games? Name a game that shoots better, then.
    62:42
    Mandalorian. Oh, yeah. Turtles. Totally. Turtles? Turtles sucks. Monsters. Yeah. Monster? No. Monster shoots better.
    62:55
    Avengers shoots better. Iron Maiden. Stranger Things shoots better. Iron Maiden shoots better. Guardians of the Galaxy. Are you high? I think you failed the drug test, dude. The Olympic Committee is coming for you. Guns N' Roses. Yeah. Guns N' Roses. Dialed in. Yeah. It shoots better in Guns N' Roses. Oh, I can't wait. We got to go back to what we're talking about. Dialed in? No. We have to go back on the subject after we're done with this conversation. What subject?
    63:21
    How, um, at Flip Frenzy, we were in our first round finals. I picked first because I was the top qualifier. Oh, yeah, you picked Lord of the Rings because you're an asshole. I picked Lord of the Rings because I'm an asshole. And I wasn't fast enough to say that wasn't allowed. Zach wanted to be a bigger asshole. Asshole. So he picked Guns N' Roses.
    63:43
    We were almost done with Lord of the Rings. We were in our third game before that first game of Guns N' Roses ended, and it ended on the pity rule. No, no. It only ended because Zach was player three. I'm player four. And I am comfortably in second by the time Zach goes up for his ball three. And I basically told him, if you drain here, I promise I will drain my ball so we can get to the next fucking game. I will take a second place. I kept my promise. It was that bad. Yeah. Yeah, I just... I mean, it wasn't bad. It was long. It was such a grind. Oh, my God. I enjoyed playing it more than I would enjoy playing 40 Minutes of Lord of the Rings.
    64:26
    No. No, because everyone else didn't enjoy it, Zach. You at least were playing. Well, I was just doing other things. Just, am I up yet? Am I up yet? Yeah, I went and fixed a game, you know, between rounds, because even when I wasn't playing, everyone else still played forever, because the game just takes forever. Oh, it's terrible. It is a terrible game. Yeah, definitely neither of those games should ever be in competition. Yeah, agreed We were looking at the list of modern games And we have a good amount of newer games You know Almost none of them are actually good for tournaments I know You know, even like Godzilla Which is, you know, a good game But like, it takes way too long sometimes And Mando 2, like, you could just Play that for so long You know, and that's like, remove all the outlane post Rubbers completely and put lightning flippers on it too Like, most of the other games aren't reliable enough to have in a tournament.
    65:18
    I'd rather just ban modern games from our tournaments and just move the few semi-useful modern games into just the DMD section. Yeah, and then you make the DMD section stronger, and then you go.
    65:29
    But I did enjoy playing Rush. And I'm looking forward to playing more Rush. I agree. I'm looking forward to finding out when we do the launch party that it also can take like 50 minutes to play some games sometimes. Sometimes. I don't know. Playing yours, my biggest gains, I was getting around maybe $200,000, $300,000,000, and that was it. Now, of course, Zach, he's getting like $2 billion, but that was not happening. I just thought it was brutal. Borg is brutal to me. Borg is definitely the most brutal Stern designer currently. I like that. You've got to have a brutal guy there. You've got to have someone who's brutal. Which makes it, I never really thought of him like that Until I actually like listed out his games in my mind Which is like, oh, yeah, they're all like that, aren't they? Iron Man Metallica Aerosmith Yeah, I think that's all I got for Rush Okay That's all I'm really saying about that Did I talk about the scoops? I mean, you were talking about like how it was annoying How much the ball fell into them, which I agree I really wish if the scoop Instead of just kicking out your flipper had a staged ball and then the Vuck fed the left in lane, then the flow wouldn't be broken and you could actually pass right foot to left flip, which you can't do right now. I think that game was shooting really nice. You hear that, Borg? Just a complete redesign of that section. I'm sure it won't cost anything. Negligible. Negligible. I wish it was easier to just make wire forms. You know, so you could just make a mod that do that.
    67:02
    Mm-hmm. I really want to play a premium Ellie just to see the difference that dead end shot would be gone that would feed the player again it's gotta be way better but the scoose will be even worse oh because it kicks him out both ways no because it has to cycle from the upper scoop to the lower scoop half the time through a locking mechanism so it's gotta like ball goes in one I presume like then it lets it from the upper scoop into the lock and then from the lock it lets into the lower scoop, and then the lower scoop kicks it out.
    67:35
    Okay, that sounds like it's going to take some time. That's what it seemed like from the stream that we watched.
    67:41
    In pinball news, we did have one news item. Barry Osler and Barry Engler joined American Pinball. So Barry Engler was at American Pinball, then he was at Jersey Jack, now he's back at American Pinball. Maybe he was waiting to, like, you know, trying to make a game and just It never happened. Yeah, after about a decade, he finally gave up and went back. He said, what the fuck is going on here? A decade? He was there for like a year or two. Has it only been that long?
    68:11
    He was, as he managed service and production departments. That's when he was there in American Pinball originally. Then he was Jersey Jack. He was the service manager.
    68:21
    And Barry Osler, we know he is. Will he actually get a game made? After what, designing or working with Highway? and it never was made, then a deep root where none of his stuff is ever going to be made. Now he's at American Pinball. Well, hopefully he can finally get something made.
    68:41
    Don't you believe it. Because we're talking about Nordman, but, hey, at least he got Elvira House of Horrors made. He got at least one thing made. I mean, poor Barry hasn't gotten anything made. His last game was Junkyard. You know, it's like I want to see him do something. Be nice. I'm sure he wants to do something. I'd like to see American Pinball release their next game at all. That's right, baby. We're going to release our game. It's going to be incredible. Barry Affleck and Barry Engler have joined American Pinball, baby. It's going to be incredible. Have they ever announced the details for Valhalla that's not the deluxe edition? Nothing. That's right, baby. We haven't announced shit, baby. Thank you, Dusty. That's right, man. It's Ric Flair. He attacked me in the parking lot. I was about to make the announcement, but now I'm severely injured. All right.
    69:31
    All right. I think that's what happened. I think the four horsemen came in there and just wrecked the factory, and now Dusty Rhodes, he's got to, you know, it's hard times for Dusty. He's got to rebuild the factory, get the games back on the line.
    69:46
    I keep hearing the next game is Nordman, and it's like the Whitewater sequel, which I have no problem with that. I love Whitewater. Mm-hmm. I don't think the theme is the strong point of it. Of course it is. It is. Come on. Whitewater 2. We've got a unique point, but like... Do you need a license to think? They do. They had one. Well, yeah. How about Sherlock Holmes? That's the other rumor.
    70:12
    Dead. Silence. Yep. Okay. No excitement for Sherlock Holmes? I like Sherlock Holmes. I don't know how that works as a pin. I said whodunit.
    70:24
    Who did it? Yeah, but whodunit is cool. It wasn't cool back in the 90s. It was one of the duds. Yeah, it didn't sell shit. I mean, we know people have no taste. It was as fun back in the 90s as it is now. It's just that before you were playing Adam's Family again, I guess. Again and again and again and again and again.
    70:47
    Let's see. Ball bag. Shoot a ball bag. All right. We have Chad. Hi, Chad. He has a question for the Spinner Kings. Ooh, we're the Spinner Kings. I like that. It's like, I know how much you guys love spinners. I thought it best to ask for advice from the pros. I've done the Ron Hallett spinner upgrade on my Deadpool Pro, and the spinner itself seems to spin great, but I just can't seem to get the switch to register the spins like I think it should. No matter how much I rip the spinner, it doesn't register more than six, seven spins max. That sounds like an issue there. I know it's never going to be the same as an opto-spinner, but is there a more sensitive switch that I could put in there? Is there some other small tweak that I could make to the switch? It seems like the Spider-Man sitting next to a register spins infinitely better than Deadpool does. First, I check the switch, make sure the switch is, you know, if it's going to be happening. Yeah, that doesn't really make sense. I would just sit there, put in switch test or in a game, and just activate yourself because it's just a micro switch. Just hit it over and over and over. And if it ain't registering every hit when you do that, it ain't the spinner. It's a switch issue. Yeah. You've got to press it slowly, too. Yeah, see how easy it is. When they go bad, they'll get, like, mushy or have, like, a vague gray zone in the middle. Yeah, I agree with that also. I mean, and make sure the switch, it's a micro switch. Make sure the, because it's got a blade, which just pushes down on a little button. Make sure the button isn't sticking because sometimes that happens. It happens a lot when If you over tighten it Because it's a switch It screws to a plate with two little screws I noticed if you tighten it too much Sometimes it will actually restrict the button So it won't pop back up And if you just loosen it a tad Boom then it pops back up Yes it does I would say try that Because if you're saying it's spinning great But it's not registering There's something wrong with that switch Yeah I don't know about sterns But like on classic ballets and sterns if the switch closes for too little of rotation, you could actually get to the point where the switch is spinning too fast for the game to sense it. True.
    72:58
    I feel like that shouldn't be a case in a modern game, but it could be. Yeah, I wouldn't think that's... Yeah. On a Deadpool, though, I don't... Nah, I shouldn't do that. So I would just double-check that switch.
    73:10
    Maybe try another switch, too. It's just a micro-switch. Let's see. Thanks for the help and for everything you guys do to make pinball great. Woo-hoo! Thanks, Chad. Thanks, Sean.
    73:23
    Let's see. Yeah, these are some. Ron, you should watch. Yeah, he's got all those people. Yeah, Kirk, he says Johnny Mnemonic is the right choice.
    73:36
    See? Because it's on Netflix, which I don't have. It takes place in 2021, during which there's a pandemic. The movie was shit in 95, but somehow improved over the years, question mark. Keanu Reeves' first Matrix movie before The Matrix.
    73:50
    I recently bought a machine, which is how I found out the movie was somehow a favorite movie of my then prepubescent wife.
    73:57
    Definitely watch Jurassic Park. Do not watch Congo. Don't let them pull you into Lord of the Rings. Thank you, Mark. Oh.
    74:07
    Oh, oh. Extended editions. Yeah, the extended versions are so good. So, wait a minute. So, Zach's seen all the Lord of the Rings movies? Like five or ten times each. Wow!
    74:18
    I saw the whole trilogy in theaters in one of the marathon watch sections one time, leading up to the first Hobbit movie.
    74:25
    But the first three parts were good. Yes. Wow. Something you actually like. I'm amazed. At least he goes to the movies. I go to the movies. What's the last time I went to the movies? Yeah, yeah. I think the first Star Wars, what is it, The Force Awakens? That might be the last one I went to. Let's see. This is from Sean. Hi, Sean. Hey, guys. Still loving the podcast, even though you keep making fun of us Canadians. Eh? Well, literally, he says, eh, guys. I mean, come on. It's the spotter. In the last episode, you talked about playing Stranger Things loud. A good discussion might be which games you should play loud or end in the dark. My TNA immediately comes to mind. Yes, TNA, Stranger Things are the two that immediately come to my mind. Black Knight 2000. To play loud, yes. Yes. Graham Stokers needs to be loud, too. Yes. How about dark, though? Oh, Ghostbusters, so you can't see anything. Yeah, any Dwight game, just do a dance. Yeah, any Dwight game. Any Dwight game, super dark, so you can be blind. Okay. You're blinded by Dwight. I mean, I say that, but I do enjoy Dwight's blinding light shows. No, I do not. I didn't say you did. I said I did. I know. I know what you said. I enjoy the ones on Star Wars. I'll say that. I enjoy the ones in Game of Thrones.
    75:47
    Yeah, so what they said. Keep up the podcasting, Sean. Thanks, Sean. Oh, and Stargate. That needs to be nice and loud. Really? Shoot the pyramid.
    76:02
    Dr. Dude says, Dr. Dude, the actual Dr. Dude. This is amazing. not a tournament name but my intramural softball team I'm saying that wrong intramural okay softball team in college was called Hermie Wajibai oh god Wajibai which is a noise produced by my roommate when my roommate said how big is your wiener into his window sound recorder and played it backwards okay Thank you.
    76:39
    Eric Russell. Hi, Eric. Which one? This one looks like it's just Eric Russell. Okay. It says, nice episode 180 with Ryan C. X1 Badger as always, even with it being a very sad week in pinball with linemen's recent passing. My favorite lineman code will always be Metallica. But, of course, he has many masterpieces in the pinball code to his credit. There are no bad choices. Thanks again for hosting the bootleg New York State Championship too, Ron. Thank you. No problem. I think it went extremely well, I agree. And great job taking the win. Hopefully it was worth all the effort put into getting all the games ready. It was.
    77:16
    Let's see, for the movie to watch, if you want to actually enjoy it, go for The Big Lebowski. I think you would like it. I didn't like it. I enjoy it. I think I have an okay chance of Ron, too. Yeah, I'd probably like that.
    77:29
    Oh, wait a minute. He has a spreadsheet. You see, he sent us an episode spreadsheet. He has things like who you say goodbye to at the end of the episode, all the little back doors. No way. Yeah? I have to look at this. Hold on. No, I can't open it because I can't open the XLSX file on this. I use my phone. That will open it. Email from Jay. He says, let's have Ron watch a movie he will actually enjoy.
    77:55
    He says, I have a chance of getting to watch another movie. I vote Jurassic Park. You are voting right. You're voting right.
    78:02
    This is from John. We got a lot of mail this week. Hi, Ron and Bruce. Long time listener. Thank you for all the amazing content. Great showing in Indisc, Ron. Oh, recent email. I was pulling for you at Classics, too, since there were multiple stars in the banks. Yes, there was. There was. It was a great selection for someone like me. After watching the Classic tournaments, I have a competitive question for you guys. Ooh.
    78:26
    What common pins do you recommend tap passing consistently to achieve high scores or keep the ball relatively safe, etc.
    78:34
    Any classic Valley. I've heard you mention tap passing while playing Paragon and Harlem Globetrotters. Yep. And during the Indus tournaments, it's obvious to see why it's an important skill to use on these two pins. Are there many other solid state pins that you deem tap passing a necessary skill to master? Is it mostly limited to that group of late 70s, 80s Valley Williams pins? It's not limited.
    79:00
    I mean, the only time it ever matters is if you have the double flippers, because otherwise you can just shot sit and be fine. That is true. So anything with the double flippers, it's good to learn. Watching the Classics Finals, Robert Byers tap passed on Argosy, which has, like, the steel flipper buttons, and they're super stiff. That's, like, insane. I wouldn't even attempt that. That's ridiculous.
    79:23
    But, I mean, it depends on comfort level, too. Some people are way more comfortable tap passing than they are alley passing. I mean, it depends on your comfort level. I want to say my comfort level would be, or what I would try, I would try post-pass first,
    79:37
    probably alley-pass second, and tap-pass third. I class-take the post-pass as often bad. Well, yeah, bad as in will drain you or just doesn't work at all. It's usually not going to work, yeah. Like, sometimes I won't even bother trying it, it just goes straight for the shacks. So I'd say, yeah. As an example, some of my local on-location pins to possibly experiment with tap passing would include Centaur, Meteor, Stars, Space Shuttle, 8-Ball Deluxe, Dragon Fist, Lost World, Target Alpha, Embryon, Hot Dog, and Fathom, Skateball, Taxi, Radical, Pinbot, Genie, Black Hole. Holy crap! That's one hell of a lineup.
    80:16
    Always from Seattle. That explains it. I spent some time on Paragon this weekend, and I finally succeeded in getting the tap pass down fairly consistently. And it feels so good. Oh, yeah. Tap passing, shatting, and alley passing are the three skills I've neglected to try for many years, but I'm finally ready to dive in. Well, pretty much any of those valleys you could try it on. I mean, meteor? I don't know. I've played classic turns where I could tap pass and others where I just could not at all.
    80:42
    Let's see. Space shuttle? I probably wouldn't do it on that one. 8-ball deluxe, definitely. Dragon if it's no. Lost world if it's the old valley, yes.
    80:51
    Target alpha. I don't know. How are the got leaps? They're pretty good. You know, Alien Star used to work for me, and now it doesn't. And, John, the other thing that comes into play is just how are the cabinet switches on the particular game you're playing. Like, I played Heartland Globetrotters where you couldn't tap that. So I played a completely restored Heartland Globetrotters. Everything brand new, couldn't tap that. So your mileage may vary, but give it a try. And definitely strats, too. This spreadsheet is incredible. Oh, he's really into the spreadsheet. It is quite incredible. It is incredible. So, Bruce, who is the first person you ever say goodbye to? According to this, Dave Cohen. There you go. In episode 25. It was 25 episodes. 26. 26 before you got your gimmick. Yeah. We love your spreadsheet, Eric. And thanks, John. Thanks for the email. Let's see. Next one from Parnell. Hi, Parnell. Hey, guys. Figured I'd drop this to you in case you haven't seen it. And, yes, I did see this one. It's a pin side post. It's the guy that makes stern drop targets at shapeways. You've probably seen it. Like he's been making, you know, the 3D print place. But he wants to do like a bulk run. And it's just, it's an interesting pin side post. Our own Scott is in it, correcting people as he can. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, doing my work. Yeah he doing the sex work I guess He doing the Lord work as much as we can Reverend Lovejoy So yeah thanks for the heads up
    82:37
    Pinsight can be a handy tool sometimes. Let's see. We got last email from John D. Hi, John. Hello, John. Say hi, guys. My name is John, and I work at a free play arcade in Branson.
    82:52
    Okay, is ML Missouri or Montana? Missouri. I was just going to confirm. Okay, Branson, Missouri. Which is the home of all the shows in the Midwest. Oh, and operate games on the side. I'm 32 years old, and I'm coming up on 10 years in the hobby and still don't know how to adjust that damn spinner to make it perfect like I see on Ron's streams. Wow, I'm quite the reputation. Do you know of any videos or types of resources for a step-by-step process? I understand getting the spinner clean and straight is only part of the battle. Are the rest of the adjustments just in the switch tension? I'm close to finishing my Stargazer build and would love to get these spinners perfect before we use it for league nights. And he has a photo of the game. He's got it in a wildfire cabinet until he does the paint job on it. Nice.
    83:39
    Is it time I just have to make a spinner video? Yeah, I think you need to do. We've had so many requests. Yes, there's things like the basics or you sand the metal parts coming out to get them as smooth as possible. A lot of times they'll have paint and other crap crud on them. You want to get all that shit off it so it's perfectly clean and smooth. Then you want, like, you know, the bracket that it's in. You don't want it to be bent and all this shit. You want it to be straight, you know, across so there's no offsetting so it rides in the holes as cleanly as possible.
    84:16
    Then, of course, there's the Teflon lube. where basically anywhere there's metal-to-metal contact, you want to put it. You don't need much at all. Very light. Just put the Teflon lube on there and work it in.
    84:30
    Come on, Bruce. Work it in. No? Okay. You work it in. Slide the spinner back and forth. Spin it. Make sure you get the lube worked in there.
    84:41
    And then the other big consideration, and this is for older games like Stargazer, They use a leaf switch underneath the play field.
    84:49
    And sometimes there's a little play to it where if you loosen the screws, you can kind of move it right or left. You can play with that. See what the optimum – I mean, you want it as straight, you know, parallel as possible. But you can play with it. Like on my Alien Star, I screwed with it for like 45 minutes. You screwed with it for 45 minutes? The spinner.
    85:11
    Dick. But, yeah, it's a pain in the ass because you've got to tighten it up and then test it. Like, oh, that wasn't as good. You just move it little increments until you get it just right. And there's also the tension of the blade because it usually will have a shorter blade and a much longer blade that's kind of floppy. So it's got some play to it. Also, where you adjust... I don't want to floppy. How you adjust it when it spins. How far does it push the other blade? You have the blade that moves and you have the blade that actually hits. If it's too close and it hits the other blade immediately, then you're getting more resistance than you need. So it'll slow it down. You want it to just touch it just barely at the end. You want a little motion. You want the – see, it is tough to explain without a video.
    86:05
    Wow. It's the porn spinner here. Is this that Pinball Wizard porn movie? So, yes, when it hits the leaf switch, you want it to move up just a little bit at the very end.
    86:18
    And also I have the red stuff, I call it. I can't remember what it's called again. I swear by that shit. It works so good. It's basically a contact cleaner. I can't remember where the hell I got it from. But, man, you got a flaky spinner or a flaky leaf switch of any kind. You put this shit on it, and it'll be worse at first. and then you just work it. You keep just actuating the switch over and over and over and over, and it'll go from intermittent to perfect.
    86:48
    I've done that and had switches for fucking eight, nine years still work perfect after using it. I swear by that shit. And the Teflon lube was something I got a tube from Radio Shack like 15 years ago. I'm still on that tube, and the tube is still three cores full. So you get one tube, you're all set. So, man, I think I beat the depth of spinner there.
    87:10
    Any other repairs we have, folks? Repairs? Well, for repairs, and that was the ball bag. No, no, there you go. So, repairs, well, from the New York State Championships, I believe I fixed the World Cup soccer. I had to refold the solder on the connector pins for the ribbon cable on the display board, on the DMD board. That was the issue. I was able to replicate. The D&D kept going out. I probably should have said what the issue was. I was able to replicate just by kind of wiggling on the connector, and it would just get it to go out, come back, go out, come back. Like, okay.
    87:48
    So I did that. I have a new rectifier board for the Stargazer. I haven't put that in yet. And I have yet to look at the prospector. Sorry.
    87:59
    I'm sorry, Zach. You mean we're not going to be able to play it at the Varney Cup? Probably not. No, you'll just have to get there early, Zach. Yeah, get there early and maybe we can fix it. No, that's even worse. That's even worse. How do you look at it? Yeah, when Zach looks at it and says it's more involved and walks away, is it like, oh, crap, now I'm in trouble?
    88:16
    So, Zach, if I get an EM and bring it to the place, you're going to help me fix it, right, and keep it running? Yeah.
    88:24
    Fuck yeah. Help. Well, the tournament, the flip frenzy, we had everything go down. God, did we. We only had like 10 games break. and let's not go over each one but yeah a shitload of them broke yeah it was painful and it was bad near the end because we were trying to get through the finals and was like okay I'll pick this game oh no I can't it broke okay we're gonna go yes what was it super straight that broke super straight I hit the out hole and all of a sudden it just it kept on you hit the click bonus hole you clicked the bonus hole but you didn't actually stay in the hole the ball bounced out after triggering it and then just started clicking bonus and yeah it's like and it's clear. Oh, crap. Bruce is going ahead of everybody. Oh, wait a minute. It's still counting. But you drained. It's still counting. Yeah, it was really great because you did at least four things at once so I don't even know which one caused the issue. Good job, Bruce. So then it's like, okay, folly. Or no, volley. Not volley. It was... Well, you went too far out but we already knew that was broken in the earlier round but I didn't have a chance to tell you before you started playing. Oh, oh well. Yeah, the drop target bank just didn't reset. So you get 5,000 points walking up to it. Like, all right! And it's a double bonus. So we gave up, I think, on EMs. I think we played Dragonfist and something instead. No, we played Volley. Oh, no, we played Volley. That's right. Dumb me. Good old Volley. Yeah, good old Volley. That might have been my best moment in the tournament.
    89:46
    I was down to Ashley. She had like 90K in her game, and I had like 30-something K on ball five. And I ended up winning. So that was cool. That's a whole lot of chopping wood. Not really. I mean, once I got all the target banks reset with, you know, the, what, how much is it a target when it's lit? 5,000. Yeah. 500 or 5,000 when lit. Yeah. And I started hitting those. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And, man, I caught up in a hurry.
    90:14
    Infinite super jackpots now lit. Yep. It's literally like super jackpots, but they're, what, how many, how many targets per bank? Five? Five. So it's five times three. So it's 15 super jackpots. Unless you hit two targets at once, you don't want to do that. Yeah, and you get screwed. But since they're all lit, you just keep hitting them and they reset, so you don't need to worry about hitting too many at once because there's just always more. Mm-hmm. Unless you're like me who had 14 or 15 down and couldn't hit one for three minutes. Yeah, I couldn't hit one either.
    90:42
    That's all I got for repairs. I've been working on the Star Trek, the Bally. Finally got every light working. I had to do a couple stitching, bad pad on one of the transistors. So I just stitch it right to the transistor and then right to the pin. Now I'm doing light sockets. The GI ones, actually, are all bad.
    91:06
    And then I'm going to re-rubber it, and then it's ready for spare game at the co-op. The co-op? Where's the co-op again, Bruce? That's 349 West Commercial Street, suite number 2965 in East Rochester, New York. 1-4-4-4-5. That's the Rochester Pinball Collective. And when are you open, Bruce? I want to go there. We're open Thursdays from 5 to 10, and we're open Saturdays from 3 to 11. And it's pay one price. $20 gets you all the pinball for that day. Come see Zach. Come see the world-famous Zach. You guys really should make, like, a promo video.
    91:51
    We need to, actually. I agree. You know what we need? What do you need? We need the best-speaking pinball game ever made. The home group. Zach's home group. We need the poker. I'm the voice, so, yeah. Yes. You need the poker there? What? We need poker there. It just really aced our game reliability rates. It'll be reliable. It'll give you encouragement to work on it more and more and more. That's exactly what I need. Yeah, I'd say he agreed with me, finally.
    92:21
    No, but you need, like, a promo video if it's just, like, quick thing going through the games and, calm down, calm down, like Crazy Eddie. Crazy, Crazy Bruce and Bob are insane!
    92:33
    The absolutely most incredible pinball machines you'll ever see, Rochester Pinball Collective. Come on, come on! Do you know who Crazy Eddie is, Zach? You won't know who it is. What? Do you know who Crazy Eddie is? Is that like Crazy Bob's brother? No. Crazy Eddie was this guy who owned a place, or several places in New York City, which Turned out to be he was siphoning money and doing all kinds of shit. But then he had some radio personality guy do his commercials.
    93:01
    That's what everyone thinks of Crazy Eddie. They think of that guy, not the actual Crazy Eddie. But, yeah, there were all these commercial spots in the New York City area. So look it up on YouTube. I always used to see him on WPYX or PIX because they had all the Yankee games. So I'd see these Crazy Eddie commercials, and they were quite entertaining. They actually had a billboard in Yankee Stadium in 1980. Crazy 80 prices are in state.
    93:29
    So we have more unfortunate news. Yes. We found out about. I guess so. Jim Knight, who was the founder, creator of Rotten Dog Amusements,
    93:41
    who made the Rotten Dog boards that have saved many a game, he passed away. Yeah. I think he sold the company a while ago. Eight months before. Yeah. and I just wish his wife Linda and his family we're so sorry for your loss I've known Jim probably since 2005 2006 when we were at Expo together we had dinner with him at Allentown very nice guy best heart anything he could try to do he would try to do for you it's a sad loss he finally just sold his pinball business he retired from Ford he was going to sail boat, he was going to do boating and unfortunately so another thing, take advantage of your life do what you want to do but we wish his whole family we're sorry for your loss this year sucks yeah this year has really sucked so I have a health update Bruce the herpes, you finally got rid of the herpes? No, the short throat thing. Oh, see, they don't go away. The short throat thing. You know, I mentioned it like two episodes ago. Then I don't think I mentioned it all last episode. No, you did not. What I've been told I have is silent reflux. What is silent reflux? Let's look it up. It's like if you have acid reflux, but you don't ever have actual heartburn or stomach pain or anything. It just goes up to the throat. So, I have to completely change my diet, and they got me on, what is it called? Some kind of blocker, some kind of pill. Acid pill, yeah, so your body is. Literally every single thing I like or eat is out now. Not chocolate, right? Yep, chocolate is one of them. That's like the cryptic, that's like the worst possible thing. So, when I gave you that chocolate this weekend, I was actually worsening your condition? Yep, I cheated this weekend. I had pizza, too. Also cheating.
    95:49
    Basically, you can't eat anything. Cardboard. Cardboard is about all you can eat, yeah. I think so. Mediterranean diet, that's it. So I got a few Mediterranean diet meals from Sun Basket. At least the first two I've had sucked.
    96:05
    Tastes like shit. How about vegetables? Vegetables good? Vegetables are good. Vegetables are always good. I like my veggies. Zach, what do you think of vegetables?
    96:14
    Potatoes are nice. I like potatoes, too. So now I'm kind of on the, I have to figure out what I can eat now. Yeah, that's going to be hard. Yeah, it's going to be really fucking hard. No sauces, no nothing. Not even Italian. No? Nope. How about butter? Is butter allowed? Probably not. I'm just thinking, like, everything I eat is not allowed. Tomato products are like, you know how I put ketchup on everything? Nope. No ketchup. I know that. I've actually been off ketchup for a long time. My new thing is, like Zach, hot sauce, buffalo sauce. Yeah, I'm sure the hot sauce is much better than the ketchup.
    96:52
    Or I've been using Aiden Zing from Buffalo Wild Wings. But I was tested in Indus gas twice. I went into In-N-Out and didn't eat anything there. So to pursue the reflux diet, Doctors recommend eliminating high-fat foods, sweet, acidic beverages, which you weren't. I usually just drink water, so I was good there. And they just said no alcohol, which, okay, that's good. No smoking. That's not a problem. Fatty cuts of meat, fried foods. Yep, but fried foods, which is, you know. Onions, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, pineapple. Yeah, no acidic fruits. Butters allowed. Also important to avoid chocolate, mints, and spicy foods. I love mints. It weakens your esophageal sphincter. That's exactly what it says. I never liked spicy foods. Mints to eat or mints to suck on? I don't really know what that... I don't know what it says as mints. I never got that one either. I read the same list you're reading. Foods to eat, though. Lean meat, which is, you know, that's good. Whole grains. Bananas. Oh, we got plenty of whole grains. Yeah, bananas. Apples, which Ron loves. Apples, I love apples. I might end up just on an all-apple diet. I'll just be apples and water. You can do salad. Salad, yeah. I'll do salad. What's legumes?
    98:19
    Legumes? Beans. They're beans. Ah. It's a vegetarian protein. So basically I've been on this for like three weeks now. We'll see how it goes. I see the doctor again at the beginning of March. We'll see if it's any better. I mean, my throat's still bothering me. That would really suck. It's like, you know, between all the other physical issues, and it's like, oh, you know all these foods you like? Yeah, I can't have them anymore. You know chocolate? You know your favorite flavor in the universe? No, can't have it. Oh, you got podcasts? Yeah, your voice is shot. You can't record without it killing you now. You want to sing? No, I can't do that anymore either.
    98:56
    Real positive way to end the podcast, huh? No, you can sleep with your head slightly elevated also. I've had no issues with sleep whatsoever. Okay, that's good. I have problems with sleep with acid reflux. Literally, my throat feels better when I wake up in the morning than it does when I go to bed. So, obviously, it's not taking any hits at night.
    99:14
    Fatty food you should stop eating. French fries, number one on the list. Oh, butter is on this list. Yeah, yeah, there's different, depending on what list you look at, they have different things. Whole milk. Ron drinks milk, but not whole. I got rid of dairy.
    99:30
    Even though I had skim milk, I got rid of dairy. I can't have ice cream. Nope, can't have that. Nope. Creamy sauces or dips. So how long before you just buy some Soylent, Ron?
    99:41
    No pineapple, no garlic. But it's made for people. Oh, I couldn't do this thing. It'd be screwed. No coffee? Get that. Oh, yeah. I don't drink coffee, so it's fine. Okay, so mint is such as peppermint or spearmint, mint itself.
    99:57
    Yeah, I mean, do you eat the mint? I mean, I like to. Some people do eat the spearmint. I like rock candy. I like mints. No aspirin? That could be also. No aspirin. I can't take aspirin anyway. I know, but it says or other pain relievers. Mm-hmm. No alpha-bacillus. Wait, wait, wait. I can't take aspirin? I mean, I can't take pain relievers anymore? It says no. It says no or other pain. I'm being totally honest. Wow. Chocolate's number one on the list. My life sucks. Oh, yeah, chocolate. Yeah, that was literally the first thing I saw. Like, ah, my most favorite flavor in the universe. And I don't know. Can't have it. No.
    100:31
    All right. At least you never broke your back. No, well, it's still quite broken, but yes. No. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. But, you know, I've talked to other people. I talked to someone at InDisc. They had what's it, GERD, G-E-R-D, that's what it's called. That's when you actually do feel it in your stomach and heartburn and all that shit, that version of it. And they were literally on the same pills I'm on right now, and it took six months until they got better. So.
    101:00
    The future is bright. Voices have been pretty strong today for whatever reason. Yeah, you're just like... Yeah, I don't understand that. Some days it's better than others, and it doesn't seem to matter at all about me eating. I can eat the same thing multiple days, but then some days I'm in more pain than other days. It doesn't really make any sense. I don't understand it.
    101:23
    You know what it is? I'm old as fuck. No, you're not. Not as old as me. You keep on telling me. I can't say it. Woo-hoo! All right. That was a great health discussion. I'm sure everyone loved hearing that. Mm-hmm. Well, hopefully we made you feel better about your own health. I feel great now. I'm ready to go run a marathon. Zach, he's taking out the chocolate bar right now. No, not a problem here. Not a problem here. Nope. Well, I'll try to leave this with a funnier note here. I'll do a Zach story.
    101:53
    Yay. Well, Bruce has been to Zach's place, and there's a lot of stuff kind of hanging out at Zach's place. A lot. On the floor and various places. Yeah, so usually when I go there, I sleep on his couch, and I always want to make sure that the path from the couch to the bathroom and the kitchen area is clear on the floor. You know, make sure there's no screws, no different items that I might step on and have a problem with. So when I made my rounds this trip, I found two interesting items. One, Zach just got his Rush pinball machine. And you know when you get a new in-box machine, those clips you got to pull out to open the box up, those metal clips? Oh, those don't hurt. Yeah, there was one of those on the floor. Like, oh, man, good thing I found that. But that was nothing compared to the second thing I found, a razor blade. Yikes. You're trying to kill Ronald off, aren't you? No, he's trying to kill himself. He walks around his house barefoot. No, you always walk around his house barefoot. Oh, my God. But he knows where he's stepping. I saved Zach from injury. Zach, thank the nice man. Thank me. I've only injured my foot once, and it was when I kicked a student playroom class.
    103:08
    That does hurt. I stepped lightly like a cat. Wow. Like a cat, baby. Like a cat. Meow! The best part is when I found the razor blade. I didn't know that the very first time. When I found the razor blade, he's like, oh, that's where it went. Because, like, it broke off when he was cutting the brush box. It's like, oh, well, I'm glad I found it for you. Ta-da! There you go. Is that a better way to end the podcast? That's much uplifting. I like that. So uplifting.
    103:45
    You want to plug anything, Zach? Oh, no, Twippy Voting's over. but you should have voted for his homebrew. If you want to play a 24-hour flip frenzy, send us an interested email or something. Yes. To where? Anywhere. Just throw it into a mailbox address to Zach, and we'll arrive. Well, you can respond to our email address, which is slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com. That's slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com. That is what it is, right? It's podcast in there? It is. Yeah. Or you can post on the Rochester Pinball Collective page. You can even like us on the Facebook, on the book in the face. Yep, the book in the face and say how, like, 24-hour flip frenzy? Count me in. Hell yeah. Seven flip frenzies in one day? Fuck yeah. Yeah, we want to run one, but we've got to get enough people together to make it, you know. We have to have at least 30 people. Yeah. 30 people, folks. Come on, Canada. 30 people. You want to come over. You want to do it. Guess what? Ron will be in it. I'll be in it. Marty from Australia, you want to make the trip. You want some time off. You want some time off from Haggis. It's hard work there. You want to play in the flip-flop. You can come with my machine. Yeah, just pack yourself in a box. Yeah, just come with me. Oh, yeah, come with Bruce's fathom. Yeah. You can bring it over. That's great. You're always thinking, Bruce. See? Always thinking. But we need 30 people. Let's make this happen. Let's do this. Exactly. We were talking May or June, right? Whenever 30 people email us. Or interest us. But what do people hate about tournaments sitting around not playing? Yeah, exactly. Problem solved. You'll be playing a lot. I sit down maybe 15 minutes out of the four hours. Yeah, I hardly sit. I sit down, look at the TV, and it's like, you're up again. Oh, okay. Yep. On the next game. And it's even better when you get to the older games where they're quick anyway. So everything is quick. It's just like, boom, you're up. Boom, you're up. I really do like the foot frenzy. I thought I would like it, and I was not disappointed. I was not either. I was very happy with it. So I think that's it. Hi, Steve from Abonis. Hi, everyone in our podcast group. Hello, Pinball Princess.
    106:01
    Mr. Raymond, number one. The one. Hi, Keith. We haven't talked to you in a while. And I'm going to add something. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Prevention Network open 24-7, toll-free number 1-800-273-8255. A good thing. So thanks, everybody. Thanks, Zach, for joining us. Thanks, Zach, as always. I'll see you this week at the Rochester Pinball Collective. And also don't forget to listen to the Silver Ball Chronicles on the Pinball Network by other podcasts.
    106:39
    See, the one plug that Bruce allows me for Silver Ball Chronicles. Zach, would you like to plug anything? Because you're always allowed to plug anything here. I already asked him that. I know, but I'm going to ask him again.
    106:52
    Because you'll get a different response than I will. Yes, of course. There you go. No response. So, again, Silver Ball Chronicles. See, I'll do it twice then. Wow. Our upcoming episode will be on lineman sheets. Good. Very good. And I would say vote for Twippy's, but the voting's over. Oh, and I broke a connector yesterday or two days ago. It was yesterday I broke a connector. I'm tasked. Come on. We're finishing up, and you're talking about connectors. Everyone's going to sleep. Yeah, I never had one snap in 40 years or 37 years. It was weird. Ron expects way too much structure from us. He does. I don't know why. How many episodes? 181 times two hours? Yeah, but every time you go on these tangents that just get way too deep, you know, I'm just going to cut them. No, that's the best part, right? That's the best part. All my fans are like, we love the tangents and the depth and detail of your conversations. Everyone loves it. We've never gotten anything saying, I love when you go off on crazy tangents that go on forever. We've never gotten an email that says that. I want an email. All right, everyone email us. Okay, there you go. Prove Ron wrong again. Tell us your feelings on crazy tangents and really in-depth to incredible degrees discussions. Prove me wrong, and I can edit less, and I will be happy. Okay, prove me wrong, people. Slamtailpodcast.gmail.com. You can also check out our website, www.slamtailpodcast.gmail.com. All our links are in the upper right-hand corner. Actually, it's just www.slamtailpodcast.com. You said at gmail.com. What? You did. I did? When you listened back, yes, you did. Okay, go to our website, www.slamtailpodcast.com. Is that better? That's perfect. Dick. Okay, and you can go there and... And add your point? Yeah.
    108:34
    You can watch our stream this Saturday. I'll probably be streaming the Barney Cup. I'm not sure what time, but you'll just keep notifications on for our Twitch channel, and you'll be informed. And I'm related. I got money from Twitch. I know. I saw that. Yeah. I think it's like they wait until you get up to $100, and then you get it. So I get like once a year, I get some money. So thanks to all my Twitch followers Thank you guys Yeah, so until next time See you later everybody Say goodbye Bruce Goodbye Ryan Grant
    109:27
    Oh my, oh my Parasite to keep you alive Oh my Gah!