All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 577 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, it's a little bit somber. Haggis Pinball, out of Australia, has finally, officially bit the bullet. even though many of us have suspected for a long time, meow, that they were on their way out. So I'm just going to pontificate a little bit about my thoughts and feelings about Haggis. I've been trying to be very, very tight-lipped and quiet about it and just keep my opinions to myself. I haven't wanted to go on a stern-level rant and talk about how frustrated I am with everything that's happened over there. But now that they've gone bankrupt, the dam is broken, the seal is broken, We're going to let it all hang out there, okay? I am going to try to do this in a kind, just for you, Damien. And we know Damien loves kind people. I'm going to try to do it in a kind, level-headed manner, okay? I'm going to try my very best. Because this is a moment. It's not the moment we all wanted to hear. But I think it's better than stringing us along for five to ten years and only pushing out one or two pins every month. You know what I mean? Like, this is actually better than that. It's kind of like when you have a family member or friend who's, like, you know, in palliative care and they've been sick for a long time and when they finally do die, you're at least happy. They're not in pain anymore. Well, I'm at least happy that all these... Do I care for just the regular workers at Haggis? Of course. The people at the top that maybe have made more mistakes, it's harder to feel bad for. and we'll talk about them in a minute. But did you all know that the very first time that Damian Hartin was ever interviewed for Haggis Pinball anyways, as far as I know, was right here on the Pinball Nerds podcast. It was back here on episode, let me pull it up. It was actually the first episode I had a guest host. That was episode 285 back on October 22nd, 2019. Chris the Pinter, some of you know him as Chris Grosvenor. formerly of the tribe, of the Poor Man's Pinball tribe, I believe he's the only tribe member to, like, officially renounce, you know, once or twice, Franchi probably thought about it when I was being a big jerk to him. Sorry, Franchi. I was in a tough place mentally. I was being a jerk. But no, a couple times I was a bit of a jerk to Franchi, and he may have thought, even though I do not represent the tribe, okay, I'm just a regular tribe member. I am not a tribe leader. I am a moderator on the Poor Man's Pinball Tribe Facebook page, So if you're a big jerk over there, or if you advertise about t-shirts, you're gone. I'll give you the boot. But as far as getting to choose who's in the tribe or who's out of the tribe, I have nothing to do with that. Now, as far as the nerd herd goes, Mr. Mike Dimas coined that years ago when he did one of my theme songs here. Mr. Pinball Shenanigans himself. Go check out his YouTube channel and see all the fun that Mike gets onto. I really like the video style he does. Not so much the repair videos. They're still interesting. But they're not really like my bag. You know what I mean? I really like when he goes on a trip to like Yagpin. Or like a fun trip where I get to see all my old pinball buds. Like Shawnee Boys he calls them there. I just call them the Shawnster. Alright, I just called him Shawn. I'm not going to lie. I didn't call him the Shawnster. But of course, Julie Dorsers. Or as I call her, the grammar queen herself. Never been late. Julie Never Been Late Dorsers. I don't think that's saying anything that she would disagree with. But shout out to her. Shout out to Shawnee Boy. Shout out to Jeff Teolis. We get to see him on there a lot traveling with those freaking Canadian nerds. I miss all y'all. And I am officially on the wait list for Jeff Teolis' masterpiece. His piece de resistance. His creme de la creme. His grepoupon. or as we would call it here in Nova Scotia the dragon's breath of blue cheese perhaps the best award winning blue cheese on planets of earth I've gone off topic I'm sorry and I try not to joke around this is sad a company did go out of business but I want to go to Jeff's The Beast that's right down there in Buffalo I believe at Pocketer Billiards my sister lives less than an hour away so I could even stay with her it would be a great time I don't know. I'd probably get a hotel just to be a bit closer, but I might stay at her house like the night before and like after the tournament's done. You know what I mean? But like anyways, who knows? I'm probably not going to get in from what I understand by the time I joined the waitlist for the Beast. That waitlist was long, long, long, long, long. But I am right now currently number four on the waitlist to get into the Sanctum. Ron Howlett Jr. is number two. That'd be great to see Ron again. Haven't seen him since Pemberg. That'd be great to see everybody else that's on the waitlist to go. I know I have some Canadian friends that hopefully are going to get to go as well. But I mean, for three of you, I'm sorry. Can three of you just not go? Because if three of y'all don't go, it means I have to go. Wait, do I have to wait for four people to not go? I'm not sure how that works. But anyway, still waiting to hear for the sanctum. And yes, I promise you all this. You, the listener. You, the person listening, hopefully, who, I don't know, if you want to hug me, you want to high-five me, you want to tie up my shoes while I'm drunk and asleep waiting for my turn in a pinball tournament. I don't know if you want to put a kick me sign on the back like a real nerd, like everyone used to in high school, make fun of this nerd, okay? I was the most bully killed around. And you know what? Probably none of those other people who picked on me have 700 episodes of a podcast under their belt, and I don't either. But it's coming. We're getting close. We're getting close, guys. We're getting close. All right, but we are here to talk about Haggis. At the very end of the show today, I am going to play for you a tiny little snippet of episode 275 Just maybe like the first two minutes. I'm also going to play like one minute of the lead into it, just so you can hear how bad the show used to sound, even though the show will sound even probably worse, because now it's going through an extra microphone, if that makes any sense. And Chris Groszner, thank you for doing this interview. I'm sorry it didn't work out. I will say this. Last night, Kerry Hardy was doing a live stream, and he was talking about how it's not fair that on Penn's side some people are slaying him and saying like, oh yeah, you're partially responsible for hyping up this game or doing the Centaur unboxing and that sort of thing. And it's like, no, Cary is a content creator. If Cary had 100% knowledge that Haggis was going to go bankrupt and he was therefore then still telling people, yeah, send in your deposits, don't worry, this company's doing fine, it would be one thing. But he was just telling you about the build quality and he was just telling you what he thought about the game or the pricing. He wasn't coming out right and saying, you know and I don't think any content creator would be smart to say this but you will 100% get your game because you know what you don't ever 100% get any game until it's there in your hot little hands until you have this spectacular toy that is real and just like Terry Hatcher says if it's not real and it's not spectacular don't get it we don't want any of those here okay it's got to be real it's got to be spectacular I saw it on Seinfeld so it has to be good sound living advice. Am I right? And the other one that I've been saying so much recently is play before you pay. This is the way. And that's not only because I'm a Star Wars nerd who also loves Mando. That's because I truly believe that if you play every pinball machine before you pay for it, you're almost guaranteed to not run into the trap that dozens and dozens of new pinball nerds run into each and every month. And they go and they buy a pinball machine because they saw and it kind of looked fun and they just bought it, but they didn't wait like a week or two, especially with Stern, a lot of them could have waited a week or two until it was actually out on location and just go play it first. Because if you get it and you realize, okay, you know what? Not every pinball machine is for every nerd. Like not every pinball machine, you know, some people love flow. Some people like the music more than playing the pinball machine. I think that's crazy. But like, you know, music's important. Don't get me wrong. So is animation. So is theme. you know so so are the shots or the mechs so there's all these it's the the things that i like to call the symphony it's every different person in the symphony has their own job to do to make this beautiful creation work and if all of these things are not incredible then it's not spectacular and if it's not spectacular it's going to get boring in your house in a couple months and if it gets boring in your house in a couple months you might sell it and lose money and every time you sell a pinball machine and lose money you're less in love with this awesome hobby and I love pinball. You love pinball. We all want to know. I don't need to get rich from playing pinball, but I also don't want to lose thousands of dollars every time I go to sell a new pen. So that being said, let's follow these rules. Make sure, because with Haggis, they never were real. You couldn't actually reach out and touch it, right? So anyways, if it's not real and it's not spectacular, don't even think about getting it. And still at that point, even if you think it looks spectacular and it's going to play spectacular and you know it's real and you can hand over your money like to stern you know you can hand it over and get your pin within a couple weeks or less than a month and you're 100 sure of that even then still play before you pay that's my huge recommendation because and i think most distributors would honestly probably have to agree with me that they would rather have a customer who loves every purchase they've ever made maybe they only buy two machines a year instead of three or four but also they're not losing two three four five grand on every new inbox purchase that they make because they're having to sell it in the first god forbid month or like three six nine months or a year these are are these are huge large investments that are meant to be like something you buy a couple times in your life that you love it's not meant to be like oh you buy 10 a year and you just sell five and like no that's a part-time job people that are buying and selling pinball machines that fast because they can't be bothered to play before they pay. Those type of people are the type of people that are pushing away new buyers into, you know, it is a symbiotic process. We have to have the new in-box buyers to have the used buyers and so on and such forth. But when a company comes out with a pin, that's like, meh. The shots are meh. The code's meh. The, you know, the mechs are meh. The bag, the LE back glass can be incredible, you know, and two things can be true. The Ellie back glass can be incredible, like for John Wick. The cab can look very nice, like John Wick. The insider connected, the little mishies you get, those can be cool. But also it can be a giant rip-off because nobody, like that's a lot of money. That's half the money I profit in a year is how much money you would lose just by buying and selling one. And I lost $1,000 on Guardians of the Galaxy and that sucked. and that's the most I've ever lost in buying and selling 15 pins and I don't ever want that to happen again. But first and foremost, I want to say my heart goes out to each and every person who bought a Haggis pinball machine and I will apologize if you heard the interview with Krista Pinteren right here on the Pinball Nerds Podcast or you heard me. Honestly, it's sickening. I can't even go back and listen to it. I couldn't tell you guys what episode it is. Please don't go look for it. But after Fathom Revisited came out, I gave, like I pulled apart Haggis' cheeks and got right in there and was like, oh my god. But it did look beautiful. It still looks beautiful. And to the people who got it, apparently there was a lot of mechanical issues from what I heard on Slam Tilt, Pinball Podcast, and a couple of other places and forums and everything else. However, they still look gorgeous. and if you could get a Fathom Revisited up and running and keep it going from what Damien has told us, if you're going to believe him at this point, that play field is indestructible. So you could probably have it for a very, very, very long time. But that being said, my heart goes out to each and every person. If you're listening right now and you have a friend, a family member, a co-worker, a buddy that you play with at League who bought a Haggis pinball machine and they received it, congratulations. Good for you. Hopefully you can get it working. But if they did not get their Haggis Pinball machine, I don't care whether they put their deposit down on Centaur. Thankfully, financially, I'm doing much better than I was a couple of years ago during COVID on the show. And I want to reach out. I want to help you. I'm going to fire you off. You just say coffee or tea. Email me, okay? Email me at pinballnerds at gmail.com and just simply tell me the name. And you can always Facebook message me under Pim O'Leary's podcast or even Albert Agar, even though I prefer to go with the email. It's just easier that way. But wow, oh wow. Let me do the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest thing for you. You already had to go through this giant struggle. If you ordered a Centaur or Fathom Revisited and you haven't received one, please just email me. Let me know your name and your address and whether you just write coffee or tea. and I will fire you off. I'm not going to sit here and ask for receipts from everybody. Even a simple screenshot or some type of email from there would be fine. I mean, for the most part, I don't think anyone's going to lie just to get... It's just a sample bag I'm going to send you, so it's good enough for 12 cups of coffee or maybe like 8 cups if you're running 7, 8 cups or a Keurig. I like it really strong. Probably only be like 6 cups for me, but I'm making double cups at once because that's how I do. But anyways that my little thing that I can do I do want to also applaud Zach Many of Flippin Out Pinball I know that he is you know Zach and I we don always see eye to eye you know and that fine Keeping in mind, he is now claiming to be what I've called him for years, Zach the Topper King Many. Wow. So first he names me Orby, and then I name him the Topper King? It's like, we have some good chemistry here. And he's even using it now. This is a sign of respect to me, basically. So thank you, Zach. I appreciate that. So coming back to you, I'm going to be open and honest. I've said this before. I've said it online. I've said it on live streams. I've said it on Twitch. I've said it on Facebook. I really, really, really appreciate that Zach and Nicole are at least, you know, obviously in an ideal world, all these people get their money back. But I'm sorry you've got to go buy a topper from the topper king with your money. But at least you're getting some money back because Zach did not have to do that. And he is doing that. I mean, at the same time, had he not done that, it would have looked really, really, really bad on mostly Haggis, but also partially Flip N Out Pinball. So I am actually glad that he did that for a number of reasons. But you've got to give praise where praise is due. So cheers, Topper King. Cheers. All right. This is what I've been waiting to say for so long. The reason why it's been extremely hard for me to be critical of Haggis is because I feel like I'm friends with Marty. Okay? if Marty never worked at Haggis, I could have been so mean to Damien. You think I was mean and rude to Stern's marketing department? You should see how rude I would have been to Damien and Haggis. But we create these things called parasocial relationships where you feel like you know the person because you listen to their podcasts all the time. There's probably some of you listening to this show right now and you think that you know me because you hear me for like an hour or two, once or twice a week, okay? And you kind of do because I'm a pretty authentic dude I wear my heart on my sleeve. It's really hard for me to not be open and honest with you guys. I try my best not to go off topic. Squirrel. But from time to time that doesn't work. However, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Marty because him and Ryan C. of Head to Head Pinball Podcast were always my favorite pinball podcast that I dropped whatever I was doing. It didn't matter what I was doing or where I was going or who I was hanging out with, other than my wife, of course, because, you know, my wife and my kids, they take the cake. But short of that, I would put on head-to-head wherever I was. And then over and above that, you know, I got to meet Marty at the very last Pinbird. In fact, Marty and I were in line for, I believe, the exact same machine. Maybe it was a machine beside me. I'm not sure. But we were in line together in Intergalactic Pinball Tournament, whatever that was, Intergalactic Pinball Festival. I don't know what it's called. Anyways, we were in line for it, and I told him how much I love the show and how much I respect him, and I got a selfie with him, and I remember my son's phone died like three or four months later, and the one picture, it wasn't like pictures of my new niece or nephew or of like my sons that I hadn't uploaded yet. It was that one picture from Pinberg that I hadn't uploaded to Facebook. Like, I did get the Ray Day picture up. I got the picture with me and Tim Sexton up. I got the picture with Elowen and I up. I got the picture with Ezra and I up. I got the picture with Jack Danger and I up. I got the picture with Steven Bowden and I up. But I did not get the picture with me and Marty Robbins up. And that picture's gone forever. I mean, I still have the cell phone. There's probably some way somehow to get it back. But anyways, you guys know where I'm coming from. This upset me that bad more than losing anything else. And I'm only bringing up this story to let you guys know, you know, how much I care for and really respect Marty. And one of the most fun things that I was perhaps the most excited for since I've even moved out here on my entire pinball podcast. Yes, it was great to talk to Christopher Franchi and Eric Stone and all these fun interviews I've got to do. You know, calling Ray Day at Christmas there. I've done so much cool stuff on this show since I moved out here in the past, I don't know, 400 shows in the past five years. But what I haven't done, the one thing that I haven't done that I really, really, really wanted to do was to get on one of what I call the big boys, one of the top three, top four pinball podcasts and just hang out with people that I love, including, of course, Marty Robbins and Jeff Teolas on the final round. So when I had the opportunity to do that, I was blown away. I had a great time. I partied a little bit too hard leading up to the show and that therefore made it so. I'm sorry to Marty and Jeff. They both probably were like, what the hell, Albert? But you know what? I had fun. I got to talk to Marty. I was super thrilled to do it probably too thrilled and I partied a little bit too hard and was basically essentially if you go listen to that podcast I think I was basically in a manic half drunk half knocked out stupor however I've recovered from it I'm feeling much better thank you I think given the chance to go on final round wait wait wait wait we haven't even talked about this oh my gosh oh my gosh my listener heard oh my gosh wait well fine it's final round cooked or will will teolas get to kind of like interview marty about the whole thing and that's the other part of it like it's been hard for me to be upset because i don't know if marty really is this sweetheart that he portrays because ryan c was always kind of the villain right like the you know but marty was always like the level-headed like always just like made sense like i don't know i just thought like if marty ever worked at a pinball company that would be a big score for the pinball company. And I still think if it was the correct pinball company, it would have been a big score for the pinball company. In fact, who knows? Haggis could have folded years ago if it wasn't for Marty. So again, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because it was extra money. And the same way I'm saying this is there's thousands of you out there who felt comfortable putting money into Haggis because you felt the same way that I felt about Marty. Perhaps. I know if I had more money when they, Fathom wasn't my thing I thought it looked gorgeous I only shot it I think once up at Adam Becker's arcade up there near Barrie but I've never ever ever actually like, I've never played the new Fathom but Centaur's way up more up my alley so Centaur's the one of the two I would have really gone for but I think that so many people out there wouldn't have given their money just to Damien and Haggis without seeing, seeing Marty join them really made us all think like, our friend works there. We're not going to get effed over by a friend. And this is the hard part to say, like, I could get unfriended by Marty Robbins after this. I could, I hope not. I don't want to say anything to offend Marty. He's already going through a tough time. But I think all of us, whether we're content creators, whether we're pinball podcasters, maybe Jeff Teolas knows, but that would probably be it, if at all. Or I don't know, maybe Zach Manning because he was the only distro in North America for them. I'm not sure. But the point is, where do we go from here? And I don't mean just the people who got screwed financially because there's not much they can do. We already saw that they've claimed bankruptcy. They've already hired bankruptcy insolvency lawyers. Any money that's going to go out there to is probably... You pay off the capital debtors, the biggest debtors first. So the people who are owed the most money and those are probably sadly not going to be any of the people who are money for pinball and i hope that it is and maybe there's like i don't know pocket your billiards for god's sake i don't know why i thought of that probably so i was talking about the beast earlier but let's say a big arcade had ordered like four or five pins from them or they did that whole series and they put in their money maybe they'd be high enough to get some of the money back you're probably going to be looking at getting pennies on the dollar quite often when insolvency happens you know you're happy to get 20 cents on the dollar frick 10 cents on the dollar i've even seen some companies where you end up getting five cents on the dollar back for what you're owed. I guess it's better than nothing. But is it? But is it? Like, I'd rather go play Thunder Turds in a dark alley at like 4am in a scary neighborhood. I don't know. Anyways, the point is, I feel bad for absolutely every person who put their hard-earned money into Haggis. I especially feel bad for you if you put your money into haggis because you like me felt like marty was your buddy your friend and you could count on him to never let you down and that's how i felt that's exactly how i felt and that's how right now i feel like i just got kicked in the nuts when i got this news last night just boom right in the old ball sack okay right i don't even care if i'm canadian and because of that my ball sack's half frozen all the time and extra cold it's got extra strengthening power like a built-in jockstrap with a moose knuckle no i don't care i don't care i care that i don't know how to feel about my buddy marty i feel worse for everybody buddy who spent a penny on it but because if marty was kind of like lulled in and and had all these kind of like sorry for the lack of a better word but i guess like charmed if marty was charmed like we all were by Damien when Damien was doing all these live streams and he's he's gonna be so forthcoming I'm gonna be telling you be so full look at this play field this play field has gone oh okay I don't offend anyone Ryan Barry and Kimba I'm sorry I hope you're still coming to my house for Christmas but uh no I won't do any Australian maybe I should get Ryan on Ryan's a little closer to the home Ryan if you're listening you'd like to come on the show just to chat about this I know you know a hell of a lot more about the Australian pinball scene and probably even Haggis and me so maybe I should have Ryan on to chat about this and honestly Marty if you're listening to this my dude I think on final round you mentioned you do listen to my show sometimes who could listen to them all there's thousands of them by now right at least thousands of hours of content but Marty if you're listening I personally would love to have you on the show I know that you have way closer friends way way closer friends in pinball podcasting which is probably why it's better like in all honestly, I could scroll back on my, other than talking to Marty in maybe, I don't know, half a dozen, maybe a dozen live streams over the past four or five years, outside of speaking with him on Final Round, I've never talked to him on the phone. I don't have his cell phone number. I've never texted him. I don't, we don't Facebook message back and forth. Like we're not close friends whatsoever. However, I do respect him and I'd like to hear his side of the story when he's ready. And Marty, so if, when, when and if you're ready, I would like to respectfully have you on the show not be a super chill a shell but i would like to respectfully have you on the show and just hear from your side because we don't know if if if marty if you were getting paid right up to the very last day and we still knew that these thousands of people were getting screwed over and they were getting their stuff back then maybe i don't want to have you on the show maybe it's not a good fit because maybe like maybe then it's going to be really really really hard for me to be i know i'm going to try to be i'm going to end this being a blog i'm going to try to have a a tiny little bit of journalistic integrity. And Marty, I want to have you on the show either way. I don't care. Because you deserve to get paid because you're there working. And that's just how companies work. The people at the companies will get paid before the customers. That's just how it is. Like, think about if Stern were to close down tomorrow, which that's not going to happen. And in fact, that's why they're great to use for an example. Because almost any other pinball company, it would be probably within the realistic, other than maybe Spooky and JJP, that, yeah, you know, it could be possible. they're not doing right now due to said market. But if Stern were to close down tomorrow, I would want Stern to pay Jack Danger and Raymond Davidson before that dude who ordered an $18,000 toy in Wisconsin or something. Do you know what I mean? I'm sorry. I would want every single solitary person who works in the cafeteria at Stern and especially, the most prized position, people think it's Gary Stern. Nah, nah, nah, nah. Oh, George Gomez, the most important person at Stern. Yeah, right. No, the most important person at Stern, we all know who it is. It's the dude who is the microwave repairman. Have you seen that wall of 420 microwaves at Stern? Like, he is a busy man. They all get to go at lunch at the same time. They all get to get done. Imagine if the microwave repairman did not get his salary. This would not be good. Imagine if all the security guards, imagine if all the custodians, imagine if all the people working on the line. Like, goddammit, that's a lot of people. Darn it, too, and I try not to swear. I'm sorry. I'm trying to bring my show back to being PG again. I want to make my show as inclusive as possible by including all the people who are offended by me swearing. So I'm trying not to swear. You're going to hear it. That's right. within just five to ten years, somewhere around show 1500, you're going to be calling me orbital level-headed Albert. It's just like, whoa, wow, this guy, he is stoic, he's calm, you know, he tells it like it is, he doesn't even give you his opinion, he just reports facts. And you know who's the first person to report the fact that I saw was Colin of the Canassas. So I got to give a shout out there. Great job, Colin. He let us all know, in fact, and then I reported it into Kerry Hardy's stream, then Kerry Hardy reported it through there. I believe there's someone in the chat. Excuse me. But Kerry Hardy was kind enough to, um, oh Jesus cripes. I just spilled my 7-Up all over my kangaroo. Hold on. God damn it. Is it true that the reason Damien like, things went down is because every single day at lunch, just shrimp on the barbie, shrimp on the barbie. I'm gonna go back for another plate of shrimp on the barbie or I could be making playfields mate maybe I'll go for more shrimp on the barbie damn it now right he's definitely not coming on okay anyways before I offend any con anymore I don't want to get up how am I going to offend Tasmania like that would be hard I could New Zealand no problem uh just say that lord is way overrated okay Australia just do whatever accent I just did now that was I tried to be Australian but it was half pirate, basically walked the plank there in Australian. Anyways, let's get back into it. I really really really hope moving forward that each and every one of you guys listening realizes that it is a little bit of a gamble And it okay I love gambling okay I am a gambling addict. I'm not even afraid to say that, even though I think I still got a couple dollars on there from... I actually stopped gambling on the... I threw 50 bucks onto the... Here in Nova Scotia, you have like a lottery gaming website or whatever. I threw 50 bucks on there when the Edmonton Oilers were in the playoffs. and after they lost like the third game in a row, I didn't have enough heart to bet anymore. So I think I actually have 20 bucks on there. I don't bet very much anymore. I don't go to casinos much anymore. But if I was going to be a gambling man, it would be with pinball. Like if a company came out with a machine that I absolutely loved and I got to go to a show, say I got to go to like this weekend, shout out to everyone, head down there to Southern Friday Gaming Expo. Really wish I could go. I was in the chat there last night with Dalton Eline. He was talking about how excited he is for it and tons of the people in the chat were excited for it. happy birthday to Dalton by the way my guy uh what a cool dude this this guy's such a laid-back mellow um but still he's laid-back and mellow but he also just like tells you how it is I love Dalton uh and this is the funny part is even though like we've lost Haggis and it was a sad night but it kind of got me thinking about pinball I end up going on Twitch I'm I swear to god I'm going back and forth between three live Twitch channels all three of these people have I met all three of these people know who I am and and you know can can call me out my name know who I am they've met me before and I'm going back and forth between all three of them and getting to chat with them like what a cool hobby that is I think it was um well Steven Bowden was on there Steve I love you the sound quality was not very good there was some wild type of background hum what I would recommend is before you actually go live do a practice go live either on a dummy account or test it depending on which uh app you're using for Twitch because there was a background hum and every time Twitch went over uh on Twitch Steve actually went over and he put the whole big screen on to Papa, shout out with Papa coming out, and when he put it up on there, on the big screen, the background hum went away, so it had something to do with the sound coming in from the barbecue game. Now, that being said, even with the sound and the little hum there, I still had a great time and chat with Steve. He had one ball that went on for like 15 minutes or something, I think I lost track, I think I ate my entire meal. I had burnt back barbecue ribs, like I was eating barbecue, like burnt burnt korean pork ribs well i was watching the barbecue stream which is kind of lit which i told steve about but and steve is i don't care what anyone says you know i'm sure he's made uh mistakes while working with companies i'm sure he has some regrets obviously with the deep root stuff but i'm telling you right now i think especially for a boutique level the size of american pinball um he really is doing great with doing the rules development because listening to him explain how all the different multipliers worked on barbecue look i'm not running out to buy one anytime soon but i'm just saying that like it's probably it's probably from a rules perspective a more fun game than people are giving it from like hey you're gonna make fun of the animations of like the meat being flipped over that looks like it's just stock stuff you got on photo hub or something or one of these photo stock or one of the you know fine that's fair enough how much cooler would it have been if they just did a video and it would have cost them not very much money literally if you saw david fix mustache okay big mustache out in front david fix with the big i'm sorry you got to take off the jurassic park hat buddy you put on the big chef hat then you put on the apron a funny apron that's like american pinball made me grill these burgers or something and and he was the one turning it or even steve fowden himself like that would be funny like that would be hilarious but just stock photos of someone just flipping over me I don't know anyways I've gone off topic I don't want any pinball nerds to ever get screwed over again at the same time I do think that you can't say well never ever ever if it depends what your wealth percentage is for me personally let's even just say I'm worth a hundred thousand dollars which is probably a little, depending on how you look at it, depending on how the market was when I go to sell this house. But let's just say I'm worth $100,000. For me to go out and spend $18,000 Canadian, as which John Wick Alley would be, that's one quarter of, or like one fifth of my net worth. I'm not going to do that. I'm just not going to do that. Because if I lose 20% of one fifth of my net worth, that's 5% of what I'm worth. I'm not willing to risk 5% of everything I've stacked up in 43 years of living. And I apologize for the background sound of the laundry or dryer finishing because I tried to make sure that wouldn't happen during the show. But I guess I'm just not level-headed enough to remember to turn that off before I started. So anyways, I don't ever, ever, ever want anyone to get ripped off or hurt from pinball. At the same time, let's say you're worth a million dollars and the down payment on the pinball machine is a thousand dollars non-refundable like what the f do you care if one tenth of one percent of your money disappears you don't so that's what i'm saying is to each their own there's lots of people out there listening to this podcast that maybe don't even own their own home yet especially if they're like 45 or 35 and under a lot of people don't they just play on location or if you live in a bigger city it's almost too expensive to have a house so there's lots of these people here listening that don't even have a pinball machine at home there's nothing wrong with that and they just play out on location and there's also nothing wrong with that but to say like i heard another pinball podcaster say just recently that oh don't be getting the don't be getting the pro like you got to get the premium obviously the elite because the premium is a sucker's bet it's like you've got don't be getting the pro no if you can only afford the pro please just get the pro if it's going to put you out of house and home it's going to be like a quarter of what you own to get the the the uh le but it's only going to be like 10 of what you own to get the pro go get the pro why would you do that so to each their own excuse me at the same time if you make like 200k a year and you want to like you know i hope that no one actually paid for their haggises in full i think uh damien tried to get a couple people to do that. I think those people, honestly, they probably, those people it's going to be trickier for because they're out a lot of money. Everybody is out like a grand, like I feel bad for you, but probably that didn't put you out. And if that was going to put you out, you knew it was going to be at least eight, nine, ten months, like you probably wouldn't have done that. So, and I think that's what most people put down for their non-refundee, which was, uh, non-refundee ain't too fun. Where, where's the fun in refund? Huh? Huh? It ain't there. She gone. So Haggis, from what I understand, was very hit or miss on their machines. I've heard from some people they're built like a freaking tank. And those people were kind of the first few people getting the first few Celts. And then as more and more people were getting Celts, I started hearing about more issues. And then more and more people started getting Fathoms. I started hearing about more and more issues and reading about more. And then I started to realize it was kind of like they said for years and years and years here in North America. I live just outside of the Talbotville Ford factory. And it was general knowledge. Like even when I was a kid, you do not buy a car built on a Friday. And if it was a 1980s or 70s, you didn't buy a car built on Mondays. So like the only good days to get a car were like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It's almost like with Haggis, the only good day to get a pinball machine built was like Wednesday mornings from 11, 11 until 4.20 PM. And then it's almost like four out of five. and this is allegedly, please don't sue me. Wait, they're bankrupt. Can you still have to be afraid to get sued? Can you even get sued? Na-na-na-na-boo-boo, you can't sue me. No, I'm not going to say that. Maybe you can. This is allegedly. I don't know if you can be sued. I'm trying not to say anything to get sued for, but I hope that moving forward, we've all learned from this, me, myself as a content creator, I'm going to be more careful when a new pinball company comes out. And I'm sorry to, you know, I know this is going to offend again some people, but I'm sorry to say it Kaneda was right here Kaneda has been kind of the has really been the main one really putting pressure on Haggis for answers now for the last couple years and he was right sometimes he's wrong and I've been in chat I've been wrong I will say straight up I've been wrong I've been in his chat saying all the time but what if they're the next Dutch that's what I was hoping that's what I was hoping is that worst case scenario went to Damien or Marty's garage and literally they just put together two to four per month shipped them out caught up with all the people, you know, but that's so hard to do. Like you're, you're not going to have quantities of scale. It's so hard to do. It's not going to work anyways. To each and every person who bought a haggis learn or, or a non, a non-fund refund, learn from it. Don't do non-refundable refunds again in the future. If you are going to do a non-refundable, make sure it's a for a theme you fricking are in love with and that you're never going to sell and B, hopefully at least try to have played it first. 99.9% of games, even every game from Spooky, you know, ever since what, Rick and Morty, you can play. The times of not being able to play a pinball machine before it sells out, they're gone. That has not happened in years and years and years. And maybe for the one in a hundred pinball machines that comes out in the next 100 years that actually does sell out, buy it on the used market. Worst case scenario, you spend $1,000 for it on the used market. Most likely, you'll save $2,000 or $3,000. So play before you pay. This is the way Haggis Pinball has taught us this. I'm only 43 years old. I want to be in this pinball hobby until I'm at least 63, if not 73. I got another two to three decades left in this, okay? I hope that when I'm 53 and doing episode 2,000, I can tell you guys, I've been saying this since a company called, and then you go, who's Haggis Pinball? Never heard of them, Morby, and I can explain to you, well, there was this company from Australia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. Okay, there's my Seinfeld reference. I already did one today. There's two in case I miss one in the future. To all of you, those on the east coast of Canada, I'm not trying to sell you anything today. I won't be talking about coffee or tea. I already did. Thank you for that most recent order. I should at least thank Aaron Davis of Fast Pinball. Thank you for that awesome order. We're getting that out to you very soon. Actually, my son is leaving very soon. You'll probably hear the door close in the next 10 or 15 minutes. They're going to grab the labels before the Atlantic printers close at 4.30. So, yes, and they're going to leave it in the mailbox for them if they're late because their dad talked too long in the podcast. But here's the thing. On my last show, I did promise that if anybody were to give me $25 American or $30 Canadian, they would get a shout out and I can't find where I put the name gosh darn you there we go Robert C I wonder if he's friends with uh Ryan C no I can't pronounce your last name Robert C but Robert C of Australia was kind enough to send me 30 bucks Australian that's even five bucks more than I needed mate thank you uh we call it there in Australia Maccas so for many many of you guys know, I did eat McDonald's only for a month, or did I? You'll have to watch the video to see. The editors are still working on it. The editors are still working on it. I suppose, I suppose I would accept more, one more credit for the old, the old, the old neighbors are going by on their quad runner. So we have Luna Tuna, Elwynn Agar here barking to announce to everybody that the neighbors are there. And speaking of Elwynn, we haven't talked to her for a while. She's, uh, Tuna. I'm on the pod, Tuna. Um, she's, uh, unfortunately being courted, uh, pretty hard right now by Franchie. But, uh, she's doing good so far. And don't worry, Franchie's been, uh, neutered. So, uh, we don't have to worry about any little dogs coming, even though it'd be very rare if you get a, if you get a golden doodle to mate with a sheep-a-doodle, you get a golden sheep-a-doodle. they're actually so rare I couldn't find a video of them on YouTube but alas I don't want to become a backyard breeder and believe me I hear those dogs are even harder to raise I do not want to try to raise those dogs but thank you thank you thank you to Aaron Davis of Fast Pinball if you guys would like to buy a little bit of coffee or tea you can but I'm not even going to tell you the name of the company you're gonna have to figure that all out yourself because that's not what today's show is about today's show is about thanking Robert C from Australia for the kind generous donation don't worry you're gonna make it with the whole spelling of your name uh in the credits uh and if you alas as well would like to be in the credits you can always uh paypal me at angry alpaca t-t-e-a at gmail.com uh and it's 30 canadian or australian or whatever that works out in euros or 25 us if you want an assistant to the manager credit for my mcdonald's doc coming soon I got two editor-in-chiefs working on it, both of them busy today going on dates. They would be my sons going on dates on different sides of the county, but both busy right now, but they're going to be working on that, and that's going to be coming out soon. I'm already working on my third video. Alas, some of you, I let out the teaser last time. How many steps do you think I'm trying to do in a day? And the answer is 40,000. Now, have I completed that yet? Again, you don't know. I'm going to make you wait and see. So on my last show, before we listen to a little bit of this Haggis thing, and I kind of conclude here, on my last show, I did the 88 Pinball Nerds who have now joined the Nerd Herd. Now, by the way, if your name was mentioned on there, you don't want to be part of the Nerd Herd. You can remove yourself. No problem. There's lots of nerds who want in. But each and every one of those most rad, most influential nerds in my life, you've automatically been entered to the Nerd Herd. Oh, yes. You're in the Nerd Herd. Welcome. But I almost as soon as hitting, like, stopping recording, I was like, wow. I looked at my messenger. Who was I talking to that morning? Mr. Todd Tuckey. I'm so sorry, Todd Tuckey. I've watched thousands of your videos, even especially as a tournament player. Sometimes the machine I want to go play at the tournament, I can't find any tournament videos of, especially if it's a rare EM or solid state. Well, who's there to at least show me what the play field looks like and tell me some general advice of how to play the game Mr Todd Tuckey who maybe perhaps done the most number of videos on YouTube for pinball of all time So I was actually just I think he reached out to me because he saw me chatting in the, in Kaneda's Saturday Morning Spectacular, and we ended up chatting for a bit. So Todd Tuckey, I can't wait to meet you at Expo, and everybody else can't wait to meet you at Expo. I also forgot about Scott Denisey. Like, this podcast basically would not have, I never would have started live streaming if it wasn't for Mr. Scott Denisey. On one of my early shows, I gave a shout out to how much I love Total Nuclear Annihilation. I think on show like five or six, and I said, wow, if anyone listening has a TNA and would let me come play it there, I would love to check it out. And then I'll give a whole review and you know me, maybe we can even do a mini chat and you can be on the podcast. Alas, mere hours, I believe, after putting out that podcast, I got a message from Ian Harwer, the Gamma Goat himself, currently now working with Harwer Games, I believe, and he just put out Blood Bank Billiards, I believe is the name, I'm pretty sure. Anyways, Ian said, I have a TNA, I'd love to do a live stream, why don't you come over, we'll do a live stream, and if you want, we can do a podcast after. And Ian was like my first ever interview of a pinball personality, I think I talked to my wife or like my best friend once before that but like he was my first like interview if you will uh also my first live stream on that live stream i think i had a pack of wacky packages from like 1988 and i eat i ate a piece of gum on the live stream so that's proof that i've been a hardcore uh collector collector for years and always on this show i've asked you guys for money you've been so kind i've got donos people have came in bought some awesome iced tea for themselves in this hot hot summer our raspberry earl gray iced tea is second to none. Get yourself some of that. One $7 package has enough for you to cold steep minimum, I would say three to four jugs and get eight to 10 cups from. So you're talking about seven bucks. You could be getting, you know, 30, 40, 50 cups of beautiful cold steeped ice tea for yourself. No sugar, unless you want to add a little bit of that or stevia or whatever it is you like for sweetener. However, you don't have to because there's natural fruit flavor in all of them. They're organic. Don't panic. They're there. They're on the website. I'm going to put the link down here. I'm also going to try to figure out how to put the link for Pinball Nerds because y'all aren't going to want to scroll back. You could just type Haggis Pinball or you could just type Pinball Nerds Podcast. Click onto the anchor link and keep scrolling down to show more. However, it's episode 285 if you want to look for it. I'm going to play a little bit of it and I'm going to leave it in the show notes as well. But there's some other people that I missed on this list. So Todd Tuckey, number 89. Scott Denisey, number 90. Jason Knapp. Jason Knapp also was reporting the same thing that Colin was, a little bit of a different way, some extra content. Jason Napa is always great though, providing content over there on Napa Arcade. How did I not mention Jason? It wasn't for Jason. I only have like half as many shows. And while I'm talking about Jason's, I got to talk about one of my other podcast creators that I absolutely love. We're both in a punk rock. His show sounds a hell of a lot better than mine. I'll tell you that, even though his has more profanity. Mine's more like kind of level-headed. It's kind of like, whoa his is like way out there you know what I mean like there's a robot there's lots of talk about sex there's lots of profanity I that's totally my thing it's not the type of show I provide I'm more even keeled than that guy but you know what I mean you know I'm saying I love you Jason of pinball party welcome to the nerd herd my turd all right and then my homie gomi did I leave George Gomez off there and somehow some way I know that I added Ron Howlett Jr. because I was talking about David Dennis and Silver Ball Chronicles but did I leave off Brucey Uncle Bruce Nightingale? Maybe that's because he didn't come visit me when he was in the Fundy, when he was in the Fundy Bay, he didn't come visit me, and I was a little bit butthurt about that. Anyways, the show's gone probably longer than it should, so I'm going to start, I'm going to have to turn around all my stuff, you're going to hear some ambient noises for a memento, okay, just pretend it's ASMR, but you're going to hear some, you're going to hear some movement for a second. Again, if you know anyone who bought a Fathom or a Centaur and they did not receive it, please email me at pimmelnerds at gmail.com um if it seems sketchy or weird i might ask just for a screenshot uh especially if i get like more than 5 10 replies i get like hundreds of replies i might have to like you know do some quality control and make sure that being said i think for the most part anyone taking the time and energy to admit that um you know uh and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say your name on the show unless you really want me to but i'm not gonna bring anything someone who did buy it and is not going to be receiving it if you think you'd like to be on the show and you can, you know, speak, uh, you know, just, oh, you must speak eloquently to be on this stupid shit. No, but like, if you could like speak about it and you want to tell me your thoughts and how you feel, hit me up as well at pinballnerds at gmail.com. And if not, you can message me at Albert Agar on Facebook. A lot of you watched the video where I landed a backflip. I couldn't believe it. I thought at 43 years old, maybe, you know, maybe it would take me a month of practicing to land a backflip or months, but I just went for it. I had one or two many beers in the middle of a hot, hot, hot day. I had a little bit of sunstroke. I had a little bit of drunk stroke and I landed a backflip. So if you do not have me on Facebook or I took you off when I like, I took off like 1100 people like three years ago. I had a little bit of a mental breakdown, took a year off of Facebook and podcasting and everything, but I'm back baby. So if you want to add me, Albert Agar, you can take a look at that video. It's so cool. It's so funny. I cannot believe that Hayden got the whole thing. Like, you can even see my feet going backwards. You can see me landing, falling down in the water. Do I wish he had done a little bit better job not going back and forth between my wife and I? Sure. But, wow. Now, did I land it off terra firma, off flat ground? Of course not. I am a very, very fat Albert. Very overweight. I don't want to use the F word. I know it offends a lot of people. I am a slightly obese. Is that better? That's a clinical term. I'm a mildly overweight. I'm, like, mildly overweight everywhere except for my gut. my gut's like nine months pregnant and it's so funny because that's funny because my uh one of my nephews was like you look like a pregnant lady uncle albert uncle albert and bam bam bam bam uh anyways i do kind of look like a pregnant woman uh not a very good looking pregnant lady but uh just in the gut so i am gonna work on that maybe i'll have to take kaneda's six month challenge uh kaneda you're challenging all of us to lose weight you don't have any weight to lose bro, I challenge you to do a backflip. I got the video of me doing the backflip. There you go. Challenge accepted, Kaneda? I want to see you do a backflip. You're living out in the burbs now. I don't want you to get too boring. I want to keep your edge. I want you to be at a pinball tournament the next time you flip out. Instead of flipping out and throwing your drink in Tim Sexton's face, you can flip out. Just do a freaking flip, man. That's way cooler. That's a way cooler way to flip out. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Anyways. Okay, guys, I've gone on too long. I've pontificated. I've got to do a little spin around here. I'm sorry to everyone. Everyone, even who didn't buy a Haggis, but everyone like me who loves Marty Robbins and loved the idea of Haggis and wanted Haggis to be around for a long time. Because it is a sad day in the pinball industry when we do alas, lose someone who is doing that. Let me see if my Bluetooth is even hooked up. My Bluetooth is not hooked up. Okay. So, let's go here. And then we're going to go here. There we go. All right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play like just a moment or two of, like actually a minute and a half before I start the interview with Damien, with Chris the Pinter, and then I'll play like the first minute of that. But in the show notes, I'm going to try to remember to leave a link to this actual episode. So you can go listen to it and just maybe listen to it and hear if there's any warning signs from back then. I listened to it about the first minute. Just the sound quality is not that great. I believe Chris is recording on a cell phone and then, you know, you're hearing it through there. but feel free to go back and listen to that whole interview and see if there's, because I don't think that Damien was a shy stuff from the start. I don't think he was a scallywag or a scammer. I think that Damien got lost along the way. I think that what happened is, is he thought, he honestly truly believed in his heart and soul he could do it. And somewhere around a year and a half to two years ago, when Damien realized he wasn't going to be able to do it, he should have just, and I'm not going to use the term man up. I'm not going to do that. He should have just stopped being a wimp. I will say that, Damien, you're a wimp. And I'm sorry, this is unkind, but Damien, you're a wimp. What you did was wimpy. You should have just came out and said, yo, I messed up. I can't give you all back all your money, but I'm not making any more pinball machines. I can't do what I said I can do, and I'm sorry. And I'm sorry, and I apologize. And just him saying sorry is worth more than the cents on the dollar they're going to get back, possibly, or the nothing. just him being like just owing up being straightforward not being a wimp okay and saying we messed up i thought for sure i could do this and you know what damien probably knew about as much about manufacturers me probably less like my last three companies we manufacture products not on a pinball type scale pinball is over complex if you ever hear mr orbital over saying i think i could make pinball machines just be like yo dude you can't you can't i bet i can barely like run like a homestead and like you know a coffee company a tea company and everything else i'm trying to do a collectibles company speaking of collectibles company this weekend if you are in the east coast area it is the big show that's right it is the monkton excuse me toy show collectibles convention um check it all out you can look up monkton toy show or just message me at Orbital Albert, and I will add you to that. And honestly, if you're somebody on this list, like, I could have added Brad Hopkins. Try to remember Brad Hopkins. Brad and I used to hang out and talk all the time playing pinball. I should have added so many people that I didn't add, but honestly, I just threw it together all at once, and I was, like, chopping names off by the time I got to 88. So don't worry. Just because you didn't make the Nerd Herd OG list, it doesn't mean you're not rad, you're not awesome. It doesn't mean I don't want you on that. Oh, and Zyra and Silvers. I can see that nice picture of, what is that, steaks or something you got on there? I'm on Facebook right now. And Zyron Silver, shout out. Hopefully you and your dad got that coffee and you're loving it. Let me know. Message me. I need to hear what you got to say about it. So, anyways, without further ado, let's make sure that we got this finally hooked up. There's no way. There we go. Okay, we got this hooked up. I've got to spin myself around. We've come from a land down under, Damien. and what did you do to the thunder? Oh, sorry, Elowen. Okay, so I'm going to spin around over here. I'm going to go sit down on the ground like a little kid, and I hope this will be loud enough. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Guys, watch your ears, watch your ears. I've got to lift the mic. Lifting the mic, lifting the mic. Here we go. Okay, I think, I think this should work here. I do apologize. I'm down one Bluetooth speaker. We're having technical difficulties. October 22, 2019. Here's Damien Damian Hartin, And his first pinball interview, as far as I know, and he is over here. Great. Yeah. You think Chris is as rad as I already knew he was. All right, buddy. We are going to listen to you now. And I'm going to say goodbye to you, you awesome listeners, for now, because I've got to go do some, I've got to go build a chicken tractor. Just Google that. It looks nothing like a tractor, but I'm making an A-frame chicken tractor. basically going to be for my 12 little chicks to not get eaten by the big chicks. And these things, I love, you guys know how much I love Jurassic Park. And yes, David Dennis, who I did get to speak with at a pinball tournament this weekend, which I'm going to do an update on later, I promise. I don't have the time right now. But I got to speak to David Dennis finally, who is a super fan for the Eclectic Gamers Pinball Podcast, and of course Dennis Kreisel there. And also, I think he's a super fan of almost all the pinball streams, who especially likes to watch Eclectic Gamers and chat with Dennis there. He asked me, he said, so what's going on with Jurassic Park? You're still in love with Jurassic Park. Are you still getting it? Yes, I'm still in love with Jurassic Park. These little tiny chickens remind me of them, but I have had very little pinball time lately. My to-do list has just got longer and longer and longer, and pinball's not as high up on it as I want it to be, but you know what it is? This frickin' pinball podcast. and let's just say I may or may not have made a podium this weekend at a pinball tournament. My first New Brunswick pinball tournament ever. I will come back and give you guys an update on that on my Fundio Flippers experience of Dylan's Arcade probably later on today if not tomorrow. So how are you doing? Oh, shout out, by the way, Dylan of Dylan's Arcade just moved all of his pins and he's going to be opening a craft beer or like a barcade. He's going to be opening a barcade in Fredericton this fall. So keep an eye out for that one. I'll be updating right here on the show. And don't worry, we're seconds away from the start of the interview with Damien. We're doing a couple today. But I am back in full force this week, baby. So get your ears ready to go. We're going to be playing a little bit of Chris DePintern. Okay, so let's take a little listen here. Oh, I'm not doing this. I'm doing direct audio. That's right. So until next time, Pinball Nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Chris the Pintern Pinball. Good morning, Pinball Nerds. I'm here in Chicago wrapping up Expo with Damian Harton of Haggis Pinball. Howdy. How are you doing, Damian? Good, thank you. Yeah, no, we're here this morning. We just got the play field out and getting that set up. How are you getting that back home, by the way? I need to swim past the local hardware store and get a couple of pieces of wood, and I'm going to just crate it up so we can take it on as checking luggage on the plane. Checking luggage. Okay, so that sounds like a fun time. Don't get in the way of that. You do have a show next, this upcoming week, right? So you're going to have 20 hours of travel home, and then within four days do this all again. Within two days. Two? Oh, shit. Okay. Well, that sounds like a wonderful time. so Damian one thing I'm kind of curious about you're kind of an unknown commodity just because a lot of you know you