Welcome Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, episode 592 or 93 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and here on today's show, that's right, I'm going to be bringing you the very first ever interview with Mark Seiden. I'm so excited for this. But before we get to that, there is a couple things I need to mention. A little bit of housekeeping. I haven't been here for a while. I've been just taking some time off, trying to get pumped, trying to get excited, for Expo. Part of me's nervous to meet so many new people. The other part of me is excited. The other part of me is nervous about spending so much money. The other part of me is excited. The other part of me is nervous about getting on it. Why are we talking about negatives? Let's be positive here. Let's be positive and just get right into this. I cannot believe that I, Mr. Orbital Albert, even though I didn't get an invite to Jersey Jack's Avatar media tour release, I did snag the first ever interview with Eric Seiden. So we're going to talk about that in just un momento. First, I've got to be honest with you guys. I heard something that really hurt my feelings. Perhaps one of the sweetest guys in all pinball, not even podcasting, not even content creation, but maybe out of even all the operators of all the arcades in all of the world, Mr. Cale Hernandez himself, okay, over there, of course, of Electric Bat. Him and Rachel are partners in crime together and they operate not only one of the largest pinball leagues in North America, if not the world, but they also have not one but two pinball bars that are both incredible that I want to go visit someday. And this poor man, when he was at the Jersey Jack Media Tour, simply asked Jack Gwinerian why it was so challenging for them to even come close to breaking even on the lowest expensive model of Jersey Jack. I believe the last two they had were Toy Story and The Godfather. And this man went on an Orby-level style rant as if he didn't get invited to some type of get-together, media mixer, or party. Okay. And this man told Cale that he would personally should call him so he could teach him how to properly, properly operate a pinball bar or operate a Jersey Jack pinball machine in said bar. Now, first of all, first of all, I have no clue about Jack Guarnerian's health. I've seen people commenting about that and such. I have no clue. I have no insider information. My pinballnerds at gmail.com inbox is empty. Alas, I did not hear from anyone at Jersey Jack, and I have absolutely no clue what's going on with his health. I hope, though, that he is okay. That being said, whether or not his health is okay, he obviously has kind of lost touch with the importance of inviting people to said place of work is to help sell them on wanting to have more of your machines. And whether or not that was just a snarky answer that went absolutely 100% wrong, is this the headlines that they wanted? almost every other content creator has now had to bring this up and talk about this and here we are instead of talking about how awesome Mark Seiden's first pin is we're talking about how rude Jack Winarian was to the sweetest sweetheart of all the sweethearts of pinball content creation. Kale this one's for you buddy. When I started thinking about how nobody bought my X-Men 49 and that meant I could sing every single day of this show from here to the end of the year, I also started thinking about what song would most remind me of you, Kale. And it was, very simply put, this sweetheart of a song that you're going to get to hear Franchi sing right now. Congratulations to Christopher Franchi who, on Cary Hardy's livestream with Bug from Spooky Pimble announced he's now the exclusive the exclusive artist for them. Franchi, what type of music would you like to hear? What type of music do you think really would remind us all how rad Kale is and how he shouldn't get yelled at by Jack Granarian? Okay, so yeah, it's either that or some crappy old Hall & Oates or something. Music, I got Pandora, so I'll pop on some music back when music was good. when I don't know what the shit is that's on the radio now. Yeah, my kids are very familiar with the 90s. It's funny, but music comes on, and I'll ask my girls, like, who does this? And they're like, Foo Fighters, and they mainly know that because of the game. Because those kids are dead, it turns out. Yeah, I don't know what happened to music, but apparently you have to be a stripper to be a female vocalist these days. And every song is like... Since you already warned the women, or the children not to listen, I can say every song sounds like in the pussy! Pussy, pussy, pussy! I'm just like, what the fuck is this? What happened? And that was the exact moment that Bug regretted his decision. No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. That was so funny. Franchi, I don't think that you like modern music for one reason or another. That being said, there is a lot of really rad modern music, and I'm now going to play the song that I was trying to play before that I evidently X'd out. Thank you, Franchi, for that. That was a fun little musical interlude. But this song is for Kale. I'm not going to sing to it. I can't sing Ho's year, but this is too sweet. Sort of like you, Kale. How could anyone get mad at Kale? If I was there and Jack yelled at me, I get it. If Cary Hardy was there, I get it. Even if he yelled at Kaneda, we would all get it. But Kale? Come on! This guy's the sweetest heart of the sweethearts of all the pinball creation, content creation, and maybe of all the arcades on planet Earth. He could be the sweetest fellow at all Expo, for all we know. And I'm going to find out, because I can't wait to high-five this guy and tell him I'm sorry that he was treated so rude when he was invited to be their guest. I guess maybe when you invite people to be your guest, you should be a little nicer next time, good old Jack. All right. Play it for me, Hozier. it's definitely not going to be a commercial for Xbox. 100%. For Halo, whoa! There's a little bit of a tie-in. Am I right? Is that a little tie-in or what? I'd say so. My coffee empty and my bed is clean You're too sweet for me. Okay, I'm in a big musical mood, but that's going to be it until at least closer to the end of the podcast. I've got to start by thanking my boy, Antonio Verduzco. V-E-R-D-U-Z-C-O. Thank you, Antonio. He did fire me off a message. He sent me off a PayPal. 130 bones, my guy. That's incredible. I specifically said, I'm not asking for donos right now. And Antonio said, I got a message so important for Orby, I'm going to make him sit down and read it twice and think, damn, Antonio, that was nice. So here was his message for me. I was being a little bit of a negative Nancy, being a little tiny bit of a Debbie Downer, complaining about not getting an invite to go to good old... I mean, when I heard my boy Tom over there at Fox Cities didn't get an invite either, I went, well, if Tom didn't get an invite, I don't even care. And it always happens like that. It's like, why do we want to be included in this stuff? I don't know. I thought somewhere around episode 500 or 600 of me showing my commitment to loving pinball eventually, some of the pinball companies would love me back a little. But who knows? Maybe it's because I go off the rails too much. Probably that would be it. But let's get back to Antonio here. Here's the message he sent to me on PayPal. He said, whether you get an invite or not to any of these manufacturers, do not use this as a self-assessment or validation for what you do for the pinball community. Love your content and keep doing you. Antonio, I'm going to do just that. So whether or not, you're not going to have to hear me be a negative Nancy or Debbie Downer. It doesn't even matter. guys, I might not even get invited to the Cuphead media tour. It might not happen. I don't know if American Pinball is going to do that or not. Considering Dave Fix saying that he didn't matter, it didn't really seem to matter if they were going to be in the red or in the black, if they were going to be positive money or not for the end of the year. Go all out, Dave Fix. Fly me in like Kaneda. Put me on first class. Let's go. Five star. You know what? I might not be fancy. I might live in the middle of nowhere on a homestead. I might have been an ex, you know, I was known as the goat master for a long time. Okay, orbs the goat master, but I don't have goats anymore. Still got those chickens. Actually, Danielle's making up a big gigantic quiche right now made with maple infused sausages. Almost every ingredient going into this other than the pie crust and the sausages, which we got at the local market, are going to be from the homestead here, including the green peppers, the hot peppers, the cherry tomatoes, the big giant mortgage lifter beefsteak tomatoes, everything going into this. I think we had like half a red pepper in there that maybe wasn't from there. Hayden is very, very excited, though, because he just got a new car today, and we're probably going to hear him come in the door any second. I thought I would get this podcast started a little bit sooner, but I didn't. And I know you all are waiting to hear. first of all Antonio and last of all Antonio thank you thank you thank you thank you I did not deserve that I mean maybe I did who knows but I really appreciate the donation I am so stoked to get it I am really really really hoping that you know in a couple months down the road when I maybe go to ask for donations again any people holding up wait till then or maybe some coffee sales who knows But let's just get into that Mark Seiden interview, okay? So as many of you know, I got to interview Mark Seiden back, it was August 8th, well it was not August 8th, but this was released on August 8th, 2019, so just over five years ago. This is from Pimple Nerds Podcast episode 245, it is, the title for it is Helicon Pinterviews, Neil McRae, Ryan Kuyper, of course, of TurboGrafx7. So it's so cool. I got to speak with Neil McRae of the UK Open, which is either happening now or soon or this weekend. I think it's this weekend, actually. Shout out to the UK Open. Make sure you guys go there. I think Backhand Pinball will have it on Twitch. So I'll try to be in that chat as well. You can say hello to me at Orbital Albert if you see me on Twitch. Or just for the listeners, when I'm on my other laptop, it'll just say Pinball Wizard. Or I want to be a Pinball Wizard. but anyways yeah episode 245 I got I was trying to do 100 two-minute interviews I believe I only end up getting 69 but Mark Seiden was one of them and this is of course everybody was saying if you're going to do a two-minute interview you've got to do it with this Mark Seiden guy over here he made the coolest homebrew ever which was of course Metroid so I hope it looks like I don't go too much over the two minutes so we're just going to listen to it together I paused it right at the start of this. I'm excited to listen to it. Here we go. All right, I've got my next victim, and what is your name? My name is Mark Seiden. I am the arcade on Twitch. Oh, my God, I have you. Yeah. I have you. I knew that. As soon as you said that, I have that. Okay, and you're also known as the Metroid guy. Yeah, I'm the Metroid guy. I guess that kind of goes with that. I thought it was a custom reskin or something, but it's a brand new homebrew. It's completely original. Like, I started off with a piece of plywood, and started drilling stuff in there. The plywood was your white wood? Yeah, pretty much. And then the one that... You had brown wood. Yeah, it was a graph wood. Of course, I had graph paper on it. Oh, my God. So I did the graph paper so I could know when I... I knew I had to go to CAD after that. So I was like, all right, how am I going to measure this graph? So I was like, all right, well, if I have graph paper on it, I can just go one, two, three, four. You can count it out and see the squares. And I'm like, all right, all right, move it over a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what I'm doing. That's so awesome. So is that your first and only homebrew, or are you working on something else? My first and only homebrew, I'm going to finish that before I even think about a second one. Fair enough. It's not quite done? It's not quite done. It has no art. It's a whitewood right now. Fully clear-coated and everything, so it plays like a good commercial machine. If people want to look you up, how many R's are in the R? Five R's. Five R's. And you pronounce every one of them. Each and every time you've got to roll your R. Yes. I love it. I love it. Are you playing in Pemberg? I am playing in Pemberg. This is my second Pemberg. Second Pemberg. How'd you do last year? I'm a little D. Hey, not bad. Not bad. Are you hoping to do better? I'm hoping to do better. Maybe C. You don't have A aspirations, because those guys are incredible. Yeah, I don't want to get an A, because I'll just... Chat's a bad probably, because those guys are nuts. Yeah. Did you play in the three strikes tonight? I did play in the three strikes. I made it four rounds, I believe. Nice! That's better than me. I only made it three. All right. So now, to be fair, the one guy who took me out said he had the grand champion on that machine. And I'm like, okay, I don't feel as bad. He's a cricket local. That's right. That's right. Oh, my God. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. It was so pleasurable. It was great meeting you finally because I think I've listened to your podcast at least once. I've done it once or twice. That's right. That's right. And I came over and chatted with you on the show at least once. So I would love to, in the future, have you on the podcast for a full-size episode. Well, that would work, yeah. All right. Keep working on that Metroid and everyone listening make sure you go take a look because this is cool shit Awesome Okay that was cool Sorry about the sound not being super awesome Did I say Eric Seiden? If I did, I apologize. It's obviously Mark Seiden of Jersey Jack. And I did want to say this, I did want to say this, in case when I did my five-rounding too bad, I wasn't being objective enough. For his first pinball machine, he knocked it out of the park. Okay, he knocked it at least. It's at least the in-park home run, okay? I don't know if he knocked it completely. It wasn't maybe like a full grand slam, okay? But it was very, very, very good. And for a first pinball machine, not just Mark Seiden, but the entire team over there should take a bow, especially, I believe it's JP to win, did the user interface, I'll call it, because obviously, you know, it's integrating their custom animations with the entire screen and how you read everything. And I think that's really cool. And that was done great. I think the lighting is great. The artwork is absolutely incredible. And it looks like it's got some interesting, fun shots. I will say this. I do have to be open and honest. And this is nothing against Mark. This is more... And you know what? It's not even really against Jersey Jack, from what I understand. It could have just been a bad quinky dink. Obviously, I do think it would be a smart idea if they attempt to avoid this in the future. but had just everybody put yourself in my position and go back one month ago if this had just been released like like you know two weeks two weeks before we saw x-men before we started getting any of the teasers for x-men i think that the sales would have been maybe not 20 higher but at least five to ten percent higher there would have been so much more FOMO yes some of those people would switch their orders over to X-Men, obviously, but I think a lot of the people would have just said, well, I've already picked this one, let's try this one first, you know, so that being said, they're both incredible machines, we don't need to argue about which ones are better, or which one is better, because I'm still hoping to do that debate, I know I'm running a little bit late on that, life gets busy sometimes, life gets to the best of us sometimes, I did want to talk, first of all just to paint a picture that was uh outside of helicon brewery um the night before pembroke started mark hopefully that didn't embarrass you too much i don't think you said anything in there that was bad whatsoever of course it would have been really cool if you were like man i always wanted to work on avatar though like imagine if that nugget was in there and we just heard it together live or he said oh he's wanted to work for jersey jack like that would have been cool i remember not too long before that I got to live stream um at Ian Harrower's house the Gamma Goat himself by the way uh shout out and uh I got to live stream on the Wizard of Oz and at that time Woz was my favorite pin you guys know that and I know you're thinking like what you're such a stern fan boy how could Woz have been and it's like I just at the time I had never seen a new pinball machine with so many incredible mechs with such incredible lighting and we still jersey jack have the incredible lighting i just don't know if we have the incredible mechs part right like i can count six or seven mechs alone at least four off the top of my head in waz that are better than anything we're seeing right now uh again i haven't shot the scram maybe the scram is better than the the spinning roof or like the magnetized monkey or the door that opens in the mini play field right maybe it is maybe the scamp is that good but so far i'm not hearing anyone rant or rave about a really cool mech that they played in avatar in fact i'm hearing most people that even went to jersey jack are saying they also played x-men and they liked x-men most people are saying they like x-men better i think other than perhaps maybe don now i've already said if a year from now if x-men is not ranked higher than Avatar, I will quit my show. I quickly took that back and I said, whoa, I will let Don publicly humiliate me because he thinks Avatar is better. And he said, that's a fine opinion, sir, because they're both incredible. And who's to say which one's better? I would say from an animations, a lighting, a sound integration, all obviously with Music Gate. I've got to talk about that for a second. I have to. I have to. I'm sorry, Jack Danger. I love you, but I have to address Music Gate. Now, as you all know, I was a little bit drunk for the live stream. I've been drinking the old, having the old wobbly pops from when Drop Target Danielle got home from work until the live stream started, as I do for almost every live stream. However, I will say this. I wasn't that drunk, so I should have, I don't know, maybe I was just, maybe I just loved watching dead flip and jack danger for so long i i really i mean i think i know good music and really i didn't catch until i was in the live stream with carrie hardy after i recorded my show how much he didn't like the music and then i was like whoa he kind of has a point so anyways music gate or not i would say if you directly had to give each of these pinball machines a grade if I had to, I would say right now, I would have to give X-Men, I'd have to back off a bit till we hear the new music, till we hear some new call-outs, okay? I would have to probably give it an A-. It shoots like an A++. We don't know much about the code. We don't know much about the rules. I was probably a little bit overzealous on the animations, obviously, but sometimes you're wrong, and that's okay to be wrong, right? Right, Cary Hardy? Now, listen, as bad as my singing was at the start of this show, I promise y'all if someone didn't buy X-Men 49, the origin story of Beast, and many other first appearances by the way, that you'd have to listen to me sing for the end of the year. And no one bought it. No one bought X-Men. If you still want X-Men 49, let me know. The price has gone up. The price has gone up. It's been reassessed. It's up to $420 Canadian. I would probably be able to squeeze out like $350 US or $330 US shipped if you asked really nicely but I would like to sell that. That certainly would ease my concerns for getting my butt to Expo. I would tell you that for sure. And more importantly, just I don't like holding on to big products like that. They're just sitting on my books there. And unlike, I don't have diamond hands like JJP. I did hear that basically what they'll do is essentially just hold on to these pins forever and ever and ever and just hold on to them and just wait until enough new people come in to buy them. Okay, you can do that or you could lower the price and you could sell twice as much have your line twice as busy pay better bonuses to everyone in your company actually see like because the problem is we won't ever necessarily know if mark seiden's pinball machine in the vacuum of pre-covid would have sold well or not and i guess we can assume a it looks beautiful b it looks like it has fun shots i don't know what's going on with that lower play field with the pop bumper that does not seem but I will say this, my favorite coverage of everybody was someone who was not even there, and that's Mr. Travis Murie, take a bow, this man was slinging mud towards Avatar, which fair enough, everything he said was true, but he was doing it in the nicest way, I've never heard anyone lambaste someone so bad in the nicest kindest way just the way that he was anyways that was a masterclass in how to beat on a game without really doing it kindly He was killing them with kindness over there. But that lower play field sounds like it is not very fun, the one with the bumper. You're kind of like, oh, okay. Like after the first two or three times of moving the lights around, you're like, all right, let's go. On to the other little play field. Okay, all right, you're in this little rinky-dink one. Hurry up. Finish my 30 seconds. Let's go. Let's start playing pinball again. sounds like that is not that fun but I do want to stop on MusicGate just for one second I was so happy to hear that Gary Stern said that he was without a doubt going to be making sure that the music was changed when he was at some type of rocky type of something you can hear Franchi over there being loud it's almost like Franchi has to listen to new new music again over here I should have moved the Doggate two rooms over, not one roo over. That was my loss, obviously. Let's just for a second, let's listen to Cary Hardy. I backed it up a bit from his singing, just for him to tell us how much he loves the music in this. So this is actually from 13 days ago. This is Uncanny X-Men Gameplay Premier View Party on Cary Hardy's YouTube channel. So, music. If that is the music in the game and that is there to stay, and that's what you get, I don't like it. I do not like it. That is 100% the final. I do not like it. Not like, you know, it's, it's almost a, it's almost a make or break kind of thing. That's why I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that that's just a placeholder. Tell us how you really feel, Kerry. Cause that seemed very, and for those that didn't hear it, I'm going to do it once for you again, right here. Does that sound fucking... Does that sound fucking X-Men to you? No, it doesn't fucking sound like X-Men to me at all, Cary Hardy. But I also think that your singing skills are not good enough to exactly replicate how it sounded better than that. Carrie Hardy. It sounded better than that. But yeah, that was kind of like the riff. I get it. I get it. It was kind of mellow. It's kind of like mellow. It's kind of chill. And then like it picks up speed and pace when you go to the future. That's how it's supposed to be in the future. Am I right? Am I right? Or am I right? Or am I right? All right. Music gate over because it's going to get fixed. Also, we got to see Jack Danger and Wason go in and do a new gameplay video to kind of squelch out any of the flames. Is that a term? I don't know. They were putting out the flames that happened after the original gameplay video. I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. I go to Comic Cons. I thought it was so funny that they dressed up for it. I also thought part of the reason maybe why they were okay with dressing up for it and wearing gloves and such was because it is not too easy of a shooter, but for players that good, it could easily be too easy of a shooter. I mean, I've seen Jack Danger on, like, even machines from the 80s and 90s play 45-minute balls, minute balls, like one ball, not even including extra balls. So, like, Jack knows better than anybody else that he didn't want to have, like, a super-duper long playing. Sorry, I got distracted by Elwin there. Hi. You just get up from a nap? Okay, Dad's recording right now. I'll be with you in a minute, okay? Luna. Luna, Tuna, Elwin, Agar. Go chill. Well, I can't right now. I'll let you outside. Okay, just chill, just chill. All right, okay. Ellen's appearing to chill a little, but I will try to end the podcast quickly because I know dinner is coming soon. It's very rare that I get all four family members home. We're all going to have a nice meal together. We're very excited. Honey, can you let Luna out? Sorry, guys. So I got distracted there but here's the thing here's the thing music gate is getting fixed 100 and i'm excited about that even though i didn't necessarily think it needs fixed could it be more rad for sure could it be maybe a little bit more on point for x-men yes does carrie have a hardy have a point for sure i think maybe he was like you know overdoing it just a tad put her on just a little but maybe he hadn't had his Chipotle yet. Maybe the man was hungry. Who knows? We all get a little bit crazy when we get hungry. Am I right? That's the whole reason why I went on that Stern rant. I was finishing off a 72-hour fast and I was just hangry, guys. If I just had a little bit of Chipotle, even a little bit of taco smell, I would have not probably lost my... No, I'm just kidding. All right. No more excuses. Let's be honest. I can't wait for Expo. I'm a little bit nervous but really stoked. It's going to be a hell of a time. There's so many people there I get to meet that I haven't seen that I'm just excited to shake their hand or high-five them or give them a hug depending on how long I've known them or haven't known them. And I did want to say, Franchi, you did mention that there's not a lot of good modern music right now. And this is how I was going to end the show, but I accidentally X'd out of the wrong song earlier. So I wanted to end it by saying a band that I've really been into recently, cage the elephant who's not only just still doing rock they're less rock like punk rock and they're more like indie rock now but just four months ago and this has got half a million views already four months ago they put out this song called neon pill okay so uh and it's really good let's just play it for a half a sec here Around, no doubt, my friend So here I am, on my own No one's lost, but he's on I'm all in, I'm Alright, so I guess my whole point was when I was going back, I wanted to throw part of that Franchi interview in, and the part that was funniest was obviously the part where he was doing the beatboxing, But Franchi, there was really good beatboxing even back in the 80s and 90s. In fact, some of the best beatboxing was from back then. And I know where he's coming from. Even Drop Target Danielle, when I was getting ready to do the show, she agreed with them and said, it is true that a large percentage of music nowadays does not have someone playing an instrument. He went on to explain that. Playing an instrument, it's just someone with a drum loop in the back. And I get that. That is true. A large percentage of those songs are that way. But if you still work your butt off, you can find incredible rock and roll. And I wanted to finish with an incredible rock and roll song. Until next time, pinball nerds, say it with me. Remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Cage the Elephant's Cigarette Daydreams. Standing in the poor of the grave