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Ep 68: The Golden Trio

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 50m·analyzed·Apr 28, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Final Round hosts meet in-person at TPF; discuss new 2025 releases and modern pinball design philosophy.

Summary

Jeff and Martin from Final Round Pinball Podcast discuss their first in-person meeting at Texas Pinball Festival (TPF) after four years of remote co-hosting. They cover TPF attendance, new game releases (Foo Fighters, Scooby-Doo, and others), Martin's voice loss during the event, local food debates (Whataburger vs. In-N-Out, Hutchins vs. Haraday BBQ), and detailed gameplay impressions of Foo Fighters, focusing on its focused rule design versus modern pinball fatigue with over-complicated machines.

Key Claims

  • Foo Fighters features a focused rule set that avoids overwhelming the player with simultaneous modes and options, contrasting with recent trend of 'modern pinball fatigue'

    high confidence · Martin Robbins and Jeff discussing Foo Fighters gameplay at TPF

  • Scooby-Doo sold out before TPF

    medium confidence · Jeff and Ryan C discussing pre-TPF announcements; Jeff expresses uncertainty ('Maybe. Maybe it has to make Jeff seem knowledgeable')

  • Foo Fighters has a steep left ramp that is more difficult/less repeatable than it initially appears visually

    high confidence · Jeff correcting his earlier assessment after playing the game at TPF

  • Foo Fighters Premium features an upper playfield with a post mechanism on the left outlane that 'boots' the ball back into play

    high confidence · Jeff describing Premium playfield features he observed at TPF

  • Jack Danger worked with Tanio Klyce on Foo Fighters rules design

    high confidence · Jeff mentioning conversations with Jack Danger at TPF about Foo Fighters layout and design

  • Pirates of the Caribbean had three spinning discs originally planned but was reduced to one due to player/designer feedback about randomness

    medium confidence · Jeff and Martin debating the spinning disc feature and its impact on competitive play; Jeff citing IFPA tournament practice of disabling randomness elements

  • Final Round Pinball Podcast has been running for four years (started February 2020)

    high confidence · Jeff and Martin confirming launch date and episode count in opening segment

  • Martin experienced near-total voice loss by Sunday morning of TPF, taking four days to recover to 95% capacity

    high confidence · Martin's detailed account of voice loss progression and recovery timeline

Notable Quotes

  • “I reckoned I'd be in the maybe 15, 16 count of people coming up to me saying, Jeff is a cunt. And some of those people would then follow it up by saying, I've never said that word.”

    Martin Robbins @ mid-episode — Humorous account of TPF attendee interactions and community culture; notable because several were 'drive-by' statements

  • “What's the number one question people asked us? How long was your flight? Because people just couldn't believe that we travelled halfway around the world to come to this event.”

    Martin Robbins @ early-mid-episode — Reflects community appreciation for manufacturer/host presence at major events; reveals audience priorities

  • “Modern pinball fatigue, and that is where there's just everything. And I call it the Godzilla effect, where everything's at you, lights are flashing, things are going on, you get a jackpot, you get a jackpot.”

    Martin Robbins @ late-episode — Key design philosophy critique; emerging industry sentiment about rule complexity and sensory overload

  • “Foo Fighters is really focused. Its rules are focused. It's just not one of these throw everything at you at once. It's quite deliberate.”

    Martin Robbins @ late-episode — Positive assessment of Foo Fighters design philosophy; contrasts with modern pinball trends

  • “Why has this not existed before? It's just genius. It's like, it just is so natural.”

    Jeff @ late-episode — Referring to the death save feature on Foo Fighters Premium; reflects intuitive design appreciation

  • “Head to Head, it's not coming back. We're doing it once a year. It's fun once a year. That's it.”

    Jeff @ mid-episode — Confirms Head to Head Pinball Podcast is effectively discontinued as regular series; now annual only

  • “People were saying it was great to see you. Wherever I go, they're always asking, where's Marty, where's Marty? Always.”

    Jeff @ mid-episode — Indicates Martin's prominence in pinball community and audience connection to the podcast hosts

Entities

Jeff TeolispersonMartin RobbinspersonRyan CpersonJack DangerpersonTanio KlycepersonDamienpersonGeorgiaperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2025 characterized as unprecedented in scale of simultaneous new game unveilings; multiple manufacturers debuted machines simultaneously in March

    high · Jeff: 'You get a pinball machine. You get a pinball machine... So many new pinball machines. Just crazy March. March was just unprecedented, just overwhelming.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Emerging community sentiment against 'modern pinball fatigue' — preference for focused, deliberate rule design over sensory overload; Foo Fighters cited as exemplar of new direction

    high · Martin: 'Foo Fighters is really focused... It's quite deliberate... people are like, oh, we love your game' contrasted with Jersey Jack pattern of 'always in multiball' and constant bombardment

  • ?

    product_launch: Foo Fighters received strong positive reception at TPF for layout innovation and rule clarity; noted as departure from recent design trends

    high · Jeff and Martin praise innovative features; Jeff: 'I love the layout... there were things on there that I hadn't seen before'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Foo Fighters Premium features intuitive death save mechanic (left outlane post) that community finds natural and elegant

    high · Jeff: 'it's one of those things that's so intuitive... it just is so natural. Why has this not existed before?'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Foo Fighters left ramp is steeper and less repeatable than visual appearance suggests; balls exit in unpredictable directions similar to Radical

    high · Jeff: 'I looked at that left ramp... oh, that looks like it's pretty repeatable. Uh-uh... It was pretty hot... It's steep'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.330

0:00
Hey, it's Jeff. Sorry about the delay. It is all my fault. This actually was recorded four weeks ago. And I had some family issues, and I thank you for the nice messages and your understanding. Better late than never. I say that now before you've heard the show. But nevertheless, here you go.
0:21
The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round.
0:57
Home sweet home. I'm Jeff Fules, back in Canada. And I am Martin Robbins, back with a voice. In Australia. Australia, right? Australia. No, I don't subscribe to that. Well, Toronto isn't Toronto, it's Toronto. No, I know it's Toronto. But it's like saying, Merica. No, I just, I'm not going to subscribe to that kind of Boganism. You don't say Melbourne, you say Melbourne. Yeah, but I'm not shortening it.
1:31
It's a little tight. Well, I'm saying Australia. I'm not saying Australia. Anyway, it don't matter. And that's our podcast, everyone. Good night. See you later. That's all we have to talk about. That's all that's happened. We just needed to just absolutely clear the air with that, and now we're done. Thank you very much, everybody. Do we have more? Was there more? Well, I guess we probably should talk about the fact that we caught up. You and I, face-to-face, skin-to-skin.
2:02
Oh, in more ways than one. That's the next episode. Yeah, save that for the next episode. This is episode 68. 69 is next. And you are listening to the Flannel Round Pinball Podcast, which is funny that you say that. You know, we got to see each other face-to-face. People listening for the show now in its fourth year. Is that not crazy to think? What is that? We started in 2020, so we've done three full years. Yeah, we've done a year, another year, another year. Yeah, we're in technically our fourth year. I think that's math. I don't know. I don't know how it works. It doesn't matter. The point is, we've done all of these episodes, and we talk to each other all the time. Not once since the birth of this podcast have we seen each other face-to-face. I know. Well, because it was around the same time. And didn't you come to Australia just before we were going to do it? So I was there for my 50th. We were there in January of 2020. I bring that up so you can put it on your calendar so you don't forget my birthday again next year. It's also Australia Day. The point is, yes, I was there. And then this little thing called the pandemic happened. Thanks, Ian.
Carl D'Angelo
person
Ray Dayperson
Eric Meunierperson
Haggis Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
Marco Specialtiescompany
Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)event
Foo Fightersgame
Scooby-Doogame
Keltsgame
Fathomgame
Pirates of the Caribbeangame
Final Round Pinball Podcastorganization
Head to Head Pinball Podcastorganization
Godzillagame
Godfathergame
Radicalgame
  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tournament play (IFPA) removes randomness features from machines to ensure skill-based competition; example: disabling spinning discs in Beatles and Pirates of the Caribbean

    high · Jeff: 'In the IFPA big events, they kill any kind of randomness... you shouldn't be punished... for something... randomness screws you'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jack Danger collaborated with Tanio Klyce on Foo Fighters rules; Ray Day also contributed to rules design

    high · Jeff: 'I talked to Jack Danger a little bit about it... I also talked to Ray Day... Ray Day about it because he also helped Tanio Klyce with the rules'

  • ?

    product_concern: Pirates of the Caribbean underwent design revision removing multiple spinning discs; community perception was negative (feature loss) but designer perspective was improvement (reducing randomness)

    medium · Discussion of Eric Meunier's design choices; Jeff: 'Spinning discs. What a stupid, stupid thing to worry about that never impacted the ball at all' vs. Marty's experience of hating randomness element

  • ?

    content_signal: Head to Head Pinball Podcast has been effectively discontinued as regular series; now only annual special event; community expressed nostalgia at TPF

    high · Jeff: 'Head to Head, it's not coming back. We're doing it once a year... That's it.' Ryan noting at TPF: 'people mentioned Head to Head'

  • ?

    community_signal: Final Round Podcast hosts experienced strong community recognition and engagement at TPF; attendees frequently asked about co-host locations and expressed appreciation for in-person attendance

    high · Martin: 'where's Marty, where's Marty? Always' and 'it was great to see you... People listening for the show now in its fourth year'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Haggis Pinball's strong booth presence at TPF with multiple machines (Fathom, Kelts) generated significant player interest and feedback; Fathom highly desired with limited stock

    high · Martin: 'The good news is everybody loved Fathom. The bad news was everybody wanted to buy a Fathom... it was such a long time ago that we produced Kelts... people going, oh, my God, Kelts is absolutely amazing'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Fathom appears to have strong demand with potential stock limitations; some units still available through distributors per Haggis representative

    medium · Martin: 'people couldn't buy a Fathom... Sunday somebody came up to me and said that they had managed to secure one. So maybe they are still out there. Check out the distributors.'

    • 3:11
    And, in fact, I think when I was there, I said, do you want to record one now? Because we were going to start in February. I think the birth of TPN was February 1st, 2020. It was in February anyway. And now we'll do it when you get home. I'm like, all right. Yeah. So I thought it would be wise to record while we're actually together. That same thought came into my mind when we were in Texas last weekend. And I'm like, you know what? Not only would it be funny, we're probably going to have a little bit of sauce on us. It could be really good. It's so much easier to edit when you're actually there with the person and you're just recording, we'll do a snap piece of cake, especially since this is the episode that I'm editing. Yeah, sure. I had other ideas. No, that's not true. Texas had other ideas. We had big plans. I saw you, what, Thursday night? We had a couple of drinks with some friends. Mm-hmm. Yep. The show opens up 5 o'clock on Friday. We said, you know what? I've got to play it safe because I've got to play some pinball. But Saturday night, that'll be our good piss-up, and we'll record then. And what did you say early on in the night where I said, I think I'm losing my voice? Yeah. Mid-Saturday. Yep. Early as a parachute of all time. No, but I didn't say, let's not. I just said, look, hey, something with the voice. But I think it was about, I don't know, 10 o'clock at night, so two hours before the main show finished. On a Saturday night, it goes for a further two hours for exhibitors and vendors and all that kind of stuff. But with an hour to go till midnight, I sent you a note saying, mate, we can't do this podcast tonight because I'm losing my voice. And that was me saying, I'm losing my voice. I really should probably rest my voice for the next day because we still have Sunday to go. And then I'm glad we didn't record because Sunday morning, first thing I did every morning was go to Starbucks and get a coffee. And I literally went up to the counter and the person said, I can help you and I went I just looked mortified you have a hairball I had zero voice actually zero because I hadn't spoken since I went to bed the night before at like 2 30 in the morning so I didn't test my vocal cords to see whether I could talk and I couldn't it's now Sunday night so I've been back here since Tuesday morning my voice is probably at 95 I can still feel it's a little bit raspy, but it took me four days for me to recover my voice. That's the truth of it, and that's why we didn't record. No one gives a fuck. Let's just talk about TPF, shall we? Well, I will say, you were working, and you did a wonderful job, you and Damien and Georgia, for Haggis Pinball. It was nice to see Keltz and Fathom revisited there, and you really were working. You were on the floor, albeit maybe two hours of the entire TPF talking, and because the machines were so loud because everyone wanted to hear this now. You're right beside Queen and the Alien. They wanted to pump that great audio too. And then, of course, not too far away was Marco and you had Scooby-Doo on the one side and everything was just really cranked. Yeah, you had to yell a lot, so I kind of will sympathize with you. You won't sympathize with me. I will. Okay. Again, that Saturday, we started at 8 a.m., finished at 2 a.m. I left the booth twice to take a piss. That was it. It was just non-stop talking to people coming to the Haggis booth. And I've just got to say, it was for us, for me, with my company hat on, it was just a phenomenal showing for us. We had such good feedback. I took a lot of notes on people's feedback on the code and how they were playing it. You know, a few tweaks here and there. But overall, people just really appreciated us being there. and we thought the number one question people were going to ask was, what's the next game? Is the next game A, B or C? Do you know what the number one question people asked us was? I don't. How long was your flight? Oh. I'm not kidding you. It was the number one question we were asked was, how long was your flight? Because people just couldn't believe that we travelled halfway around the world to come to this event. Well, why it was so important for you to be there, think about it, because it wouldn't have made sense to be there a year ago. We were just kind of getting out of COVID. You were in high production. And the important thing for you to be there this year, and it's coincidental that all the new machines are there, but that machine, especially Fathom, was a new machine to a lot of people that haven't been able to play that. Yeah, correct. So the fact you had a couple there and a couple of Celts there, do you want to share with the listener the thing you told me, the good news, bad news that you got? Well, yeah. I mean, the good news is everybody loved Fathom. The bad news was everybody wanted to buy a fathom.
    8:01
    And I'll say people couldn't buy a fathom, but that's actually not true because Sunday somebody came up to me and said that they had managed to secure one. So maybe they are still out there. Check out the distributors. But as per the other shows that we've been to, because this is really our fourth show and clearly the biggest show, what happened was the same that happened in all those other shows. and people came for Fathom and were blown away by Kelts. And it was such a long time ago that we produced Kelts, and it was one of these things that Damien put together for TPF four years ago. So it was this full circle moment to come back with people going, oh, my God, Kelts is absolutely amazing. So there you go. Yeah, it was a good showing for Haggis, and it was a good showing for all the companies, let's be honest. But we'll get to those in just a bit. I want to know what some of the comments you received about pinball, or I don't know, maybe this podcast, because I've got a few myself. I can tell you that I think I didn't do a proper count, but I reckon I'd be in the maybe 15, 16 count of people coming up to me saying, Jeff is a cunt. And some of those people would then follow it up by saying, I've never said that word. Oh, my God. One person we know, which we won't mention, said that's the third time they've ever used that word in their life. So it was worth it. But what the funniest was, I think three of those 16 were hilarious drive-bys. People literally yelled it at me as they were just walking past. Didn't even stop, didn't whisper it, just yelled it and kept going. And I thought that was just fantastic. Well, I thought it was funny too. And I appreciate when you and I were at TPF and we were hosting a couple events, no one blurted it out at that point because the events were for the others. That would have been horrible. Here we are. Here's Todd Tucky. Here's Emoto. We're about to show Skill Shot Baby or the Roger Sharp movie, Pinball the Man Who Saved the Game, and no one blurted it out. So that was very, very kind. And it was funny. Some of those drive-bys. Now, one of them said to you, I've never said that word. Yep, correct. I'm calling him out right now. I'm calling him out on this podcast because I don't believe him. He was our last guest. His name was Carl D'Angelo, and he even said it to you. He whispered it into you. He had a mask, so it all could be lips. I would believe that. I'll tell you why I would believe it, because some people say the word, and there's a hint of naughtiness about it. Some people say it with confidence. You could tell it was the first time he'd ever uttered that word. There was no practice. There was no experience. It was like he didn't know how to say it properly. I'm calling bullshit, and I'll tell you why.
    10:50
    Because I found something out about Carl. And let's first of all congratulate him. He was the Wizards winner. He won the big event, and it went on until 220.
    10:59
    And he and I went out for dinner because we hadn't eaten because it was too late. The sale started at 4. Yes. And we text you, and you must have been out cold or drunk or faking a sore voice, whatever it was. You didn't come with us. We went. and we went to a place, we went to two times in two days, that he says, oh, it's all shit. You look, wind the tapes back. He says, I'm an In-N-Out Burger guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, they're the best. And I say, no, no, no, no, no, it's Whataburger, especially when you're in Texas. Well, Carl was there twice, and I have photo evidence, and it's going to be all over our final round social media. Sorry, Carl, you're busted, dude. You're a Whataburger guy. I don't want to hear the words In-N-Out ever come out of your mouth again. Whataburger Carl is his new nickname. So I had Whataburger. You be careful. You be very careful. Well, this is what I'll say. It was enjoyable. It was fine. It's probably the best of the trashiest burgers. Thank you. You know what I mean? It's still Trashy Burger, but it's fine. It's fine. Is it better than In-N-Out? I would actually say yes. I would actually, based on my last experience with In-N-Out, I felt, yeah, what a burger just had extra fucking hormones in the beef or something. Whatever it was. But I'll tell you, were they really, Sean? Do you call them chips? Do you call them fries? What do you call them? Fries. Yeah. They're fries. The seasoning on them, just fantastic. The best. Excellent. Love them. The podcast will continue. Well said. Even though you're thousands of miles away, correct answer, and you don't have to put it on your shoulder. Well done. So let's talk Texas barbecue then. Okay, all right, all right. Now, okay. Keep in mind, we are tourists, all right? We... By the way, Carl and I also went to one of those places. If you remember in the last episode, people listening like, are these fucking guys ever going to talk pinball? You think about pinball, yeah. You listen to this program and you get what you get. You get nothing. You fucking like it. You fucking like this for what we do.
    13:04
    There's the dial. Turn it off. We have got so many better things that we could be doing right now. So you get what you get. You don't even know what I have planned.
    13:15
    Like there's zero notes going in this. I gave you some bullshit before we turned on the mic. It's all bullshit. I got something else planned for you. Anyway. Cool. Anyway, Carl and I also went to Hutchins. Yes. Didn't make a trip to Haraday, did you? I think you did both. No, I only got to Hutchins. The only night we had free was the Wednesday night, so we went to Hutchins. And this is what I would say. I would say this. It is American barbecue that exists.
    13:48
    No, what I would say is this. I think that they're much of a much. I really do think they're both great, great American barbecue. I tell you what, though. There's this one thing that goes so well with American barbecue. beer. And that is alcohol. Yeah, you know, I can't argue with you. Heartache has booze. Hutchins doesn't. I'll give you that. Doesn't. Also, the other thing was I think Heartache has a lot more, a better sort of sauces, like the Hickory BBQ type sauces, whereas Hutchins was more like spicy kind of tangy sauce. Anyway, they were both fine. They were both fine. I then did go back and surveyed a lot of people at the festival and it's bizarre. It's bizarre because, and I don't want to get political on you, but there are certain countries where you have to pick a side. You have to pick a side. You're either red or you're blue. You're either Ford or you're Holden. I don't know what Holden is in other countries, but you know what I mean? General Motors. You want to say Ford or GM, yeah. Because that's, I'm assuming NASCAR has that. You're either Ford or you're GM or something like that. So what I found doesn't matter who you talk to about american barbecue in texas everybody has picked a side and they are fucking hating the other side oh hutchins is the best that fucking heart is fucking shit it's fucking fucking you're a fucking fucking shit fuck sorry that was probably a bit of an exaggeration but it kind of wasn't in that people were just like getting really heated about whether they were a heartache guy or whether they were a hutchins guy it don't matter They're both good And it comes back to your Oh, you're either in and out Or you're what a beggar Who gives a fuck? They're both shitty trash burgers Enjoy them both Hmm Wow Okay, I'm done They're cool Comparisons of Marty For those just listening in This is Guy Fieri's pinball food talk Who's that? He's that tool with the bleach blonde hair And he wears sunglasses backwards on his head He's got flame sort of shirts My wife loves that show I'm like, can you turn this off? Please. I've never seen a show he's in, but I kind of know who he is. Food Network kind of guy. Anyway, should we do a half an hour on that? We probably should. No.
    16:08
    Okay, so you had people that were polarized in Texas. You had people that came up to you and gave you some fly-by-Jephs-the-Sea and all that kind of good stuff. Yep. I got a lot of podcast talk, and it was kind of while I was standing around Haggis. I don't know if you were in earshot of any of it. No. You know, people were saying it was great to see you. Wherever I go, they're always asking, where's Marty, where's Marty? Always. Wow. You knew where I was this time. Yes. For some reason at Texas, with you there, they couldn't say, where's Marty? What they'd say was, I really miss head-to-head. And I would say, so do I.
    16:48
    Like, big time. In fact, I've said it before, I'll say it again. I did pinball profile, started it. And then the first time I heard Ted Dead, I went, oh, shit, that's the show I wish I could have done. Like that kind of style, the back and forth, the, you know, humor, having the guts to have an opinion, but really just trying to make people, each other laugh. And so this is the cousin of that, if you will. It's the spiritual show. It still is the same show. I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't funny. I've got to tell you, I had a few people mention head to head, But the majority of people mentioned this podcast, so there you go. Head to Head is dead. Head to Head is dead? Yep. Listen, I have to put this disclaimer out because people will vilify me. Yes, you killed off Head to Head. No, fuck off. Bullshit.
    17:42
    My disclaimer is, if you said, you know what, I think we're going to start Head to Head again, I would bow out in a second because I want to listen to it. Sure, but it's just, I can't remember what it was. Someone recently said, I've got a hypothetical for you. Blah, blah, blah. And this was a hypothetical. I said, no, that hypothetical doesn't exist. It's not a real thing. It would never happen. So it doesn't exist. So I'm not going to answer your hypothetical question because it doesn't exist. So like that. Head to head, it's not coming back. We're doing it once a year. It's fun once a year. That's it. We had our moment. It was fun. We could have won a trippy had we asked for votes or paid for them, but we didn't. So we just let it go. Can we talk pinball? Nope, because now it's our old friend Ryan C. How are you? I'm good. My pecker is still tiny. My little pecker, my little pecker. Mm-hmm. How's TPF, boys? Fair enough. It's all right. That's fine. Actually, I'm coming in halfway. through so you're ready we haven't talked yet surely we've covered the whole thing by now I want to know was that Texan meat place better than that we did spend more time talking about just tell me so I don't have to like wait a fucking week to they're both great Ryan the big thing I had a bit of a rant when I'm saying one thing that fucking drives me nuts is when you have to pick a side you know I can like both no So, over there, if you were either HeartAid or you were Hutch's, you couldn't be both. That just frustrates me. Hutch's sounds like an insurance agency. HeartAid sounds much better. Well, HeartAid sounds like a brothel. So, there's that.
    19:36
    Did you visit any of them while you were over there, Marty? You know I'm all about them brothels. So, yeah. Anyway, so the short of it was, they're both great. HeartAid has alcohol. Hutch's doesn't. There you go. There's a big difference. We saved the pinball talk until I knew you were coming on.
    19:55
    Yes, because I've been following Texas Pinball Festival and all the new releases, just like I know all about all the new pinball machines. Okay, what do you know? What do you know? What I'm keen to know, the reason why I ask that is because we haven't talked about the rundown of all the machines that were revealed, like this unprecedented show where all these new games were revealed, and I got to play them all. So I know what my thoughts are. You haven't played them, so you haven't got thoughts on that. But you've got the general consensus out there on what people would think, I'd imagine. Yeah. I mean, that's not my opinion, though. Like, other people's opinions are not my opinion. Ryan, why we're putting it to you this way is Marty and I haven't done any show prep. We brought you on so you can ask the questions and we can respond. You fucking do the work. God. Okay, yeah. Well, he just asked me, okay, hey. Guys, so many new pinball machines. Just crazy March. March was just unprecedented, just overwhelming. Here's a pinball machine. You get a pinball machine. You're into fucking Pulp Fiction. You get a pinball machine. You're into TNA, but you've got a P3. You get a pinball machine.
    21:06
    So, you play them all. So, let's start with Foo Fighters. Foo Fighters was, I guess, the first of the March bunch, I think. When did Scooby get announced? Is that... Scooby was before and sold out before. I actually played it two weeks prior to Tech Festival Festival. Has Scooby-Doo actually sold out? I thought so. Maybe. Maybe it has to make Jeff seem knowledgeable. But Foo Fighters is what you asked. I'm jumping ahead here, but one of the consensus, and maybe I got this because I was at the Haggis booth and we got single-lever playfield games, but there was a recurring theme that people kept coming up saying that there's a bit of modern pinball fatigue, and that is where there's just everything. And I call it the Godzilla effect, where everything's at you, lights are flashing, things are going on, you get a jackpot, you get a jackpot, all that kind of stuff. And so people are like, oh, we love your game. So what was really interesting was I was thinking that Foo Fighters is going to be another one of these, you push the start button and you get a GC, like everything just goes off. Foo Fighters, first of all, an amazing layout. It shoots so well. But second of all, it's really focused. Its rules are focused. It's just not one of these throw everything at you at once. It's quite deliberate. Like Godzilla, mate. Like Godzilla. Godzilla, obviously, as I mentioned many times. Ding, ding, ding, ding. No, it's not just that. I mean, we'll get to Godfather as well, But also, you know, in recent years, Jersey Jack is you're always in multiball. You know, so there's this constant you're always doing something and it's an assault on the senses. What was really good with Food Fighters is it wasn't like that. It was really focused. You do something, you know what you're doing, it calls out and tells you what you're doing and it guides you through rather than everything being available at once. There you go. That's my thoughts. Jeff. Jeff, on you. So, I got to play it a couple of times. once at the Marco booth. They had several there with Stern. And I did that before I went up to the Wizards tournament because it was actually in the tournament. And there was new software kind of like the day before the tournament started. So I wanted to get the feel for it. And as Martin said, it's a very different, funky layout. I talked to Jack Danger a little bit about it. I haven't talked to Tanya about it. I haven't seen him. But I did talk to Ray Day about it because he also helped Tanya with the rules. I said to Jack, I said, And, man, I love the layout. I mean, you saw some of it when he was working on his homebrew with Deadflip. But there were things on there that I hadn't seen before. And let me make a correction because I think I said either on this podcast. I probably did on this podcast. When I looked at the Foo Fighters layout, when you're looking just at visuals, and this is the mistake of judging a machine before you play it, I looked at that left ramp. I go, oh, that looks like it's pretty repeatable. Uh-uh, uh-uh. It was pretty hot. No, that's right. It's steep, so I want to make that correction. And trust me, I didn't hit the ramp as much as I wanted to hit that ramp. So that was good, though. That was difficult. I liked that. And when you play Radical, it's like, where the hell is the ball going to come out? Where is it going to go? Yeah. That's what Foo Fighters is like. It's like, oh, wow. It goes in all kinds of different spots. That's a good game to compare it to, where that's just got this weird layout that just has this flow that you don't expect. That's what I loved about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've mainly played the Pro. I've hardly played the premium, which certainly has different things. It has an upper play field. It has the, when you go up the left out lane, the post comes up, you hold the left upper up, and it kind of boots it out. It's so cool. Was the premium there? Yep. How could you play it? Yeah, I only played the pro and love the pro, so I like both. Did you get to do that, Marty? Did you get to do the little death safety? Yep, yep. I did it accidentally first. Then when I was, I remembered, I'm like, oh, that's right. It is so good. And it actually is, it's one of those things that's so intuitive. You go, why has this not existed before? It's just genius. It's like, it just is so natural. The funny thing is, my favorite thing about that game, you can't even see when you're standing behind the apron and flipping. Just above where you release the ball after the plunge, there's this kind of curved lane that the ball exits. And I don't know what, it's not a very target, but there's like this, it's not a pop bumper it acts like a pop bumper when you hit the top of that it's like a sling really it's like a sling when you hit the top of the sling it bounces off it in different directions that's my favourite thing about that game it's so good so you do know what I'm talking about it is so cool is it kind of like the targets I mean what you're describing it as sorry I haven't seen it I probably should have is it like the targets in Genesis is it Genesis from Gully where they like yeah or no that's a very target TX Factor no Where they've got those two big sides on the right that just look like, but they fucking sling them back at you. But which way are they facing? Sort of towards the flippers. What you're hearing is, we love the rules, the code, the animations, the art. You're going to hear a lot of these reviews where it sounds like, oh, they love everything. Fast forward a little sneak peek. I did love everything. Do you think, because a lot of designers on podcasts have admitted that, in retrospect when they're talking about their career, their first Pimor machine, they have so many ideas and they just kind of like chuck everything in there and then their second and third machine is usually the better one because they've kind of like calmed down and found that sweet spot. Jack Danger did have the home version of Jurassic Park, but obviously under bomb restrictions for that, from all accounts, it's an amazing game as well. How do we feel about Foo Fires? Do we think like, is there too much in it? Is it a nice sweet spot? the death save kind of feature? Is there a lot of stuff that you think maybe that shatting target, does that work all right? Yeah, it does. But the whole thing of it is, it's not like he's introduced things that are really complicated. They're not complicated vex. They're just simple things that people just hadn't thought to do before. And they just work. That's what it is. But I think, obviously, Keith's shown us that he can do a follow-up game. I be curious to go back to All the designers And look at their first and second games To see whether they did actually release a second game that was better than the first Because it comes back to I always draw the analogy to music where these bands, when they do their first album, they've got 10 years of material that they fine-tuned to get that first album. Second album, they've got 12 months to write and record new material, and that's why the second album usually fails. I think, I mean, maybe Eric Meunier might be the best example with Pirates since it had so much in it and then they cut, what, two things out, I think, and then people got really upset. But then when you kind of look at it, it's like there was still a ridiculous amount of stuff in it. It was just, you know, people were upset about features getting taken away. But, you know, the spinning disc, the two bits. I thought they were mad, weren't they? I remember someone messaged me, Marty, after our head-to-head podcast, and while he was listening to the episode right after Pirates and he messaged me and he was like, shut the fuck up. And I'm like, what? And he's just like, you guys have been talking about Pirates for like an hour. I get it. Like, you like it. And for some reason, that's fucking my head. But like, yeah, we talked about this new release, Pimple Machine, that we hadn't played for over an hour because it had so much stuff in there that you've never seen before. But kind of not sustainable. Well, but it didn't have three spinning discs and the Chaser chest didn't open.
    28:53
    Spinning discs. What a stupid, stupid thing to worry about that never impacted the ball at all. What? They did. No, they didn't. Oh, my God. No, it didn't. Because it wasn't like it had grips like Fireball on it. It did. No, fuck. It still has a spinning disc on it. So it doesn't... I streamed that prototype many times for many hours and it was the thing that I hated the most was the three spinning discs. Oh, good. So when they changed it, I'm like, good, thank you. Why did you hate it, mate? Because of the fact that it had this random effect of where the ball would go because you'd think it was going to go, oh, no, and then it's to the right and then it's to the left. So in the IFPA big events, they kill any kind of randomness. When they set up pinball machines, I'll give you an example. In Beatles, they turn off the discs, the magnets in the discs. what I'm saying is you shouldn't be punished like for something you make a shot and some randomness screws you, case in point Ghostbusters Premium right the slings, you can't control that if it's real slings you can kind of nudge up but with the randomness you can't so you don't see that game in a lot of big tournaments and stuff so if what you're saying is true Marty that that did throw the ball in chaos, yeah it would piss me off too so good that this is gone Wait, how about Guardians, like, say, Guardians Premium or LA with the... Turn off Orb. When you hit Orb. No, they turn off Orb. They do. Wow. I feel like it's, like, the randomness is random, but you have to hit the thing. You have to hit Orb. Like, I'm going to go for Orb, and I know when the ball comes out, it might fling it in the left out lane, which is just, like, I still can't believe they've never updated the code to, like, do a certain type of fling. No, not just... No, yeah, ball save or just the effect of the magnet. I mean, it seems to be so common. Well, maybe it's his mind machine. Think about it. Rush, okay. Rush had the scoop kick out. When that first came out, there was no ball save. So now in single ball play, there's a one-second ball save. They had to add one for Gene Simmons, the kiss mouth, because that was throwing it in chaos, too. You shouldn't be punished for making the shot you're supposed to make. The weirdest one, which I don't know why. every Ghostbusters I play, the right scoop or eject lands perfectly on the left flipper and then will bounce to the right flipper. But the left scoop, that's the one that doesn't have the ball save and that's the one on like a bunch of Ghostbusters would chuck it down the middle. But there was no ball save on that. I was always confused. I'm like, wait, did they fuck it up in the code by switching it around? Anyway, that's one thing we'll machine down.
    31:32
    Let's move to Godfather. you talked about Eric Minier, and I got to play that game. I loved playing that game. Again, common theme you're going to hear, love playing all new games. So, first of all, we talked about the theme, loved the theme, and it still shocks the shit out of me. Whether it's you, Marty, or anybody I talk to, oh, I've never seen the movie. Oh, my God. But I bet you've seen every Fast and Furious. See a masterpiece. Sit through three hours. See how acting is done. Are you talking about Fast and Furious? Are you talking about Marty seeing Fast and Furious? I'm just talking about people in general. I'm talking about the people. I can't imagine Marty watching Fast and Furious. I can. Well, actually, because I like cars, you'd be surprised that I've not seen a single one. Neither have I. It's the same movie as The Godfather. It's all about family. Somebody put a horse in the bed. Anyway, the game. What did you like about the game? Well, artistically, Christopher Franchi, welcome back, because your artwork has proven time and time again to be fantastic. You did it on two games, and we'll get to the next one in a second, but it looks great on Godfather. Talking to Eric Minier with Carl D'Angelo as we were playing it, and how he wrote a letter to Al Pacino to get Al's likeness in it, so that was very, very important if you're a fan of the movies. the modes were fun, the ideas were fun, the shots were great. There's kind of a shot you do where it comes down like a wire form and then quickly throws it to the right. It hits a stand-up right before it lands on the flipper. Think of Black Rose, right, how it comes down after the cannon shot. It reminded me of that, but a little more aggressive. You better be ready or you're going to lose the ball. I left playing it, and I'm like, God, I want to play this again. And there were lineups and lineups and lineups, and I got to play it actually at Pocketeer Billiards last week and loved it just as much. So early on, it might be my favourite JJP game. Okay. So interestingly, and I can say this now because I've seen it, but when I first saw the game, I went, oh, I'm a bit disappointed by the art. Sorry, Chris Franci.
    33:50
    But when I actually saw it in person, I just went, oh, I'll hang on. I don't know what I was seeing before, but I'm now seeing this, and this is just phenomenal. It really is. Two things. First of all, what they shouldn't do, they shouldn't disrespect the color palette that's been used. What I mean by that is don't use clown lighting. Don't use pinks and purples and greens and yellows and every fucking color of the rainbow when you've got this sort of gritty art deco golds and reds and browns and yellows. When you start putting all the rainbow colours over it, you're taking me out of the fantasy. I'm now, I can't play pinball again as opposed to I'm playing a Godfather game. That's what I would say is, is that in attractive mode, Marty, or is that why you're playing the rainbows shooting out? I honestly can't remember. I only got to play it once. I can't even remember what they call those lights down the side. Was it the spiral? No, it's the lights down the side. You know, the ones that face up? They're like pinch stadiums facing up, expression, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, all I'm saying is just make sure you keep it tasteful, the colour palette with all the lighting, because that sort of takes it out. But this is the main thing I wanted to say. I have gone off JGP a bit, and I'll tell you why. I think since Dialed In I've not liked their flipper feel I've always felt them to be a little bit spongy and lacking that snappiness that Wizard of Oz has and that Hoppin has that really nice snappiness so when I first played Wonka I'm like oh this feels like a bit limp Toy Story just felt a little bit limp one flip on Godfather I was like thank you you're back in the room, well done thank you for fixing your flippers it was just snappy and with a game like that with still a lot of flow, you want it to be really snappy so it comes back to the flipper really quickly, it's just brilliant, it's a really really good game there you go. I haven't been keeping up to date so I remember hearing that there's 29 ball paths due to a lot of diverters, so did you get that feeling? Did you get ball path euphoria while you were playing the game? Like, whoa, look at the ball go that way. Whoa, it's going the other way down. No, not really. No, I didn't feel that either. No, no, everything didn't feel like it was a gimmick. It just felt, and probably used it to get further into the game, but no, everything just felt, it felt mature is what I'm going to say. Was the collector's edition there or just the LE well I saw I don't the LE is kind of their standard one correct the I think the collectors was there because it had the topper with the two Tommy Gunners on top and the car I think it had like the gold lines on the legs yeah yes and the horse's head plunger yes it looks so good I'm looking at pictures now like again and yeah as you said Marty welcome back Christopher wait no sorry that was welcome back Welcome back, both of them. Welcome back, Franchi and Jersey Jack. Let's hope it's a long partnership. And, yeah, I mean, it does look good. I've only seen photos of that gold trim, but, you know, does it fall into a tank? Nope. That's Franchi's next game, Galactic Tank Force from American Pinball. And they had one actually on rollers, and they would move it all around Texas Pinball Festival. It would go in the hallways and stuff and stop, and people could play it. It was a neat novelty, and I think the reaction of most people playing was like, hey, this is fun. I mean, you really have to, with a game that doesn't have a theme you know, you really got to win them over when you play it, because games with themes are going to get that first quarter. Okay, I'm interested. I like that movie. I like that music. Here's my money. With Galactic Tank Force, it's like, all right, let's try it. And you better like it, because, you know, you don't have anything invested into it, and they had to create all the assets. They came up with a great art package, again from Franchi. And I think it was a pleasant hit. We're not talking about price or anything like that. We're talking about playing the game and the assets and the shots and Dennis Dortman's nice layout. It seemed to be pleasing a lot of people. I got on it a few times. I've actually played it a year ago. But what did you think? You got on, didn't you, Marty?
    38:29
    Hmm. So, it is a pinball that exists. Oh, no. No, it wasn't for me. That's all I'll say. What did you like about it? The artwork. No, I love it. No. One thing I can tell you right now, it is a gorgeous game. And it is jam-packed with stuff. I think it's one of those things where one or two, I think I had maybe two, possibly even three games. I don't think that was enough for me to get in tune with the layout. I felt the layout for me, just for me, was just a bit clunky is all I'm saying. So, hmm. Well, I've got to get back on it. I remember shooting that red ship or the tank or whatever it is in the middle. I loved the video assets. It was neat to see some of the people you recognize in there. Who were the people you recognize? Because Zofia and Steve Bowden are in there. Okay. Yeah, they're pilots.
    39:34
    Okay. I don't know if Zofia is Pilot Cougar or something like that. I thought I heard that name. Sorry, I apologize. I don't know. But it was funny to see the acting and the campiness. It looked pretty good. It looks like they're going to sell out, too, of the games they want to sell out in a tough market where everyone's selling. What does that mean? They're going to sell out of the games they want to sell out? Well, they have a limited edition.
    40:01
    I'm very tired. What it means is they have a limited edition, and they're going to sell all those out. Okay. Have they named how much, what the numbers are on their limited edition run? I thought I heard $200 for the deluxe. Oh, that's the deluxe. That's the, yeah. With the lunchbox. The lunchbox edition. Yep. I don't know. When people are creating products, when I'm trying to sell services at work, We have this thing we talk about, feasibility, desirability, and viability. And in the nexus of those, like a Venn diagram, is the sweet spot for innovation. And that's the product that you make. I still feel like American Pinball in their entire existence has never really got the desirability part right. I almost feel like Houdini was their most desirable game. maybe it was a from when it came out or maybe it's the it's the theme but it's cool but i i don't know like like octoberfest is cool when octoberfest came out i was like cheering it on like yeah you fucking sell that pinball machine it's so much fun like it's just silly a silly theme and then now with six plus pinball machines getting released in the space of a couple of weeks. I just think, is it just that the people left over? They came in last. Is it just the people that say no to every other pinball machine and they're like, okay, this is an original theme and it's a bit of quirky fun and I want it? It can't be that many people. I have no idea. But if you've owned an American pinball machine, you know they're built very, very well. I'm sure their vendors and distributors have a list of clients. I have no idea. I know it's on location in a few places. It's one of those ones you really got to get your hands on. You're not buying it sight unseen. I would imagine you really want to flip it first, as you should for every machine, but people don't do that, as we know. I got to tell you, people's buying habits and their opinions, I just fucking laugh and laugh and laugh. Because the next game we're going to talk about, if this game came out four or five years ago, people would vilify this thing. They'd say, what a piece of shit. Single level play field? No screen? Alpha numeric? Are you kidding me? Terrible. I want ramps. No one wants a single level play field. Yet, one of the biggest lineups you would have seen at TPF, and a game I couldn't even get on because the lineups were so big. They only had four machines. You played it, though, didn't you? I did not. Pulp Fiction. Oh. Okay. Game of the show. Easy. Okay. Hands down. Really? Yep. Why? Hands down. Because it's stupid fun. The layout should not be anywhere near as fun as it is. It shoots really well. The geometry is fantastic. It's just, it's dumb fun. Everybody that played it was just like, holy crap. I mean, we kept surveying everybody that came to our stand, and obviously they said Fathom was the best game there. I mean, that's obvious. Followed by Celts. but people kept saying that Pulp Fiction was their favourite game that they played and I'm telling you 80% of people would have said Pulp Fiction, number one and I would agree. It shouldn't be as good as it is. It just shouldn't and I don't like to think, yes, this is a movie I've actually seen so, you know, one of the three but you couldn't hear it was the only problem. It wasn't loud enough so you could hear any of the call-outs but it just felt really good to shoot the things that are in that game it's just it's really good guys I don't know, single level was it obvious what you meant to do? yes, very I will say this, I watched Carl D'Angelo play it and I was going to play after Carl I couldn't play after Carl because on that 7 digit display he was about to roll it and he was playing for 40 minutes, let's say. So I realize he's one of the best players.
    44:13
    The layout did look kind of easy. I didn't shoot it, so I can't say that. I'm just saying what it looked like. The theme is near and dear to so many people's hearts, mine included. The call-outs, the fact they've got all those assets, that's great. The artwork was fine. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great. It was fine. it's on the really bad side when the machine's not turned on, but when it's turned on, it's fine. It's good. It's fine. The topper is pretty cool, but again, you don't play a topper. That's cool. I'm not going to stare at it year after year after year. It's going to get old quick, but it's cool. Don't get me wrong. I can say that about almost every topper unless it's interactive like something like Mandalorian or something. But I do want to play it. I just don't understand how the pinsiders of the world shit all over Denise for putting out TNA years ago. Single level. Oh my God, all this money. Oh my God. And then, I'm sure you got it with Kelts too. Single level. Oh my God, give me a ramp. What's the other big one that was... Oh, fucking Bond. 60th. Oh my God, it's the greatest game ever. Whoa. Where's all this bitching? I need a ramp and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure everybody said oh wow, $31,500.
    45:27
    So, I think that's what they said. Beatles, don't forget Beatles happened as well. Yeah. Do you feel like the reception to Pulp Fiction would have been the same if Bond hadn't been released and kind of like the release of that was so, I don't know, just shitty the way they did it? Did that soften everyone up to the release of Pulp Fiction being a single-level play for them? They're like, ah, it's like, it's not X amount of dollars. It's like, it's reachable. Like, I can buy this. In his, he's a straight down the middle video, which details the passion that went behind it for 45 minutes. Like, those videos... Agreed. They're not perfect, but they're so fucking good compared to, like, what everyone else does. Stern would release... I'm not sure what they're doing now. Maybe it's behind the paywall, but they would release those videos, like, a year after the game came out. Like, I don't fucking care. Like, I bought it or didn't buy it. I'm not going to buy it a year later based off that video because I've already played it. But, I don't know, something like Galactic Tank Force, I feel like that's where you need a video like that. Like, all right, here's a theme I know nothing about, and here's some weird video clips. Like, I'm not going to watch a one-hour seminar. Give me a choreographed experience of the pinball machine. Oh, for sure. We made it. That would have helped for sure. I was talking to somebody who's close to that company, and they were saying, yeah, the video didn't help that they put out. It was a teaser and all that kind of stuff, but it just didn't help. Whereas, like you described, I watched that whole Pulp Fiction thing with Mark Ritchie and with Josh Sharp and others, too, and I was getting excited. Now, by the end of it, I was like, I've seen everything. I guess I just want to play it. And I saw it, and I was like, is there more to do on this? Because I'm missing stuff. But, again, you have to play it. You have to hear it. You played it, Marty. Others played it. They found it fun. And, like you say, Ryan, compared to the price of Bond 60th, Oh, it's a bargain.
    47:26
    Still pretty expensive. But if one didn't come out, is it then, oh, this is more expensive than Foo Fighters? Like, why would I get this? I don't know. Yeah, I would say yes. You've got the money right now. You get to pick one game or another. Are you picking Pulp Fiction or Foo Fighters? Premium. Which one would you rather have? I know what I'd rather have. Are they the same price? Let's just say they're the same price. Keep or take. Whatever. It doesn't really matter. Why am I buying it, Jeff? Am I buying it to make money? Am I buying it for myself to play at home? Why am I buying it? You're not an operator because that's a minority of people. So I would assume for your collection, something you're going to enjoy for a long time, maybe it's a passion of a theme. But for me, every pinball machine with the exception of one, I buy because I like the way it shoots. Yeah. I would still lean heavily towards Pulp Fiction because of the theme, and I love the movie. and yeah, I mean, but I might enjoy playing Foo Fighters way more because it's probably a more satisfying game in the long term, but I can't make that call now. You said something really interesting, Jeff and Marty, about the art being like acceptable. Like it's pretty good. It's like it does the job. Back, you know, 10 years ago, just when artwork was all kind of very, very average, you know, in the CSIs in the 24th of the world, and then it got really good, and then pinball machines were almost sold. Like, here's Ghostbusters and here's Zombie Eddie. And I was like, oh my God, like, I'm buying this because the artwork is amazing. And then it kind of, it hasn't got to a point where, like, every single machine is amazing. But I feel like it's got to the point where artwork doesn't sell a pinball machine anymore. Like, it would help. It's definitely going to help. Like, people don't look at James Bond and be like, oh my God, I got to buy it because of the art. So if it doesn't help, can it hurt? Because I think, don't know if the Dr. No James Bond helps. No, it doesn't. But like, is anyone saying, look at the artwork on Foo Fighters? Like, it's not, I feel like film machines have got to a stage where, like, it's not the selling point anymore. It's not the number one thing. People are kind of saying, you know, check or not check, but it has to come down to other things. Marty, if you were to look at the games that were out there, and we've so far mentioned Foo Fighters, we've mentioned Godfather, we even briefly mentioned Scooby-Doo we've mentioned Galactic Tank Force and now we're talking about Pulp Fiction not to shit on the art because it's fine, it's the worst of those art packages, out of all of those ones I just mentioned and it's subjective, I know that but the others are that good they are that good it's one of those things, the pictures don't do it justice I said before when I walked up to Godfather and looked at the play field, I just went oh wow, I'm seeing so much that I didn't see in the photos. Foo Fighters was exactly the same. In fact, Foo Fighters on paper looks to me the art was like, okay it looks, you know, it's Zombie Yeti it's Godzilla but it's actually not. If you put those side by side and looked at the play fields the art style that he's used for Foo Fighters is actually really different to Godzilla and to Avengers. It just is, but they looked the same when I saw photos of them. But it kind of plays to what you're saying, Ryan. Does it matter? Well, I don't think it matters necessarily with Pulp Fiction because Pulp Fiction is such a theme that so many people love. And how many are they going to be selling with Pulp Fiction? I don't think it's like 10,000 that they want to sell.
    51:03
    So I think they're going to sell out of what they want even at that price point, which I think the top of the range is going to be... What do you mean they're going to sell the number that they want? He said the same thing. I get what Marty's saying. You're right. This is the amount they want to sell, and of course they're going to hit that. But to answer the question I asked earlier, and you haven't answered it, Marty, first of all, I would like to have both games. I like them both very much. And I haven't even played Pulp Fiction, but it looks, like you say, fun, and I love the theme. If I can only have one, I got the money, it's Foo Fighters. Now, why isn't it Godfather? Easy for you. No, no, no. I said between those two. Between those three, it's actually Godfather. Pulp Fiction, still best game. Just fun. Super fun. I think I'd be bored of it, after all. I think I'd love it. And then you sell it for profit. I don't know in Australia, Marty. Do you know how much it is in Australia? You know what? 19,000 dollars. If it's for an investment, yeah, I guess Pulp Fiction makes sense. But if it's for playing, like I buy pinball machines to play and have fun. Well, I think Godfather would be great. I think, I don't know. I was just comparing between Foo's and Pulp. They're all, I want all the games. Every one was so much fucking fun. There's still one you haven't spoken about. There's two. There's a couple, yeah. Okay, well, what's the next one? Let's go to Scooby-Dooby-Doo. No. You don't want to go to that? No, no. It was one you were thinking, Marty. That's not it. Queen? Well, there's Queen as well. No, no. I know the one you want to talk about. The first game I played at TPF That was the new game God did I have fun And I played it all three days I was there Final Resistance Loved, loved, loved that game So, let me tell you a couple of things about Final Resistance For people that don't know This is Scott Denise's game on the P3 multimodal platform With its own module It's interesting because Actually this is the first time I got to play it with the new rebuilt shippers that they've done, so it now feels so much more like pinball. Let me tell you the crazy thing. Here is the crazy thing, because Ryan and I, we played the P3 at a friend, Nick, I think his name was, at his place, and it was fun. It was fun, but was it pinball? Yeah, it was pinball, but was it pinball? Okay, here is what has happened. Scott Denisey has used that big fuck-off TV screen in the playfield to put pinball inserts on. And let me tell you what it does. It makes you feel like you're playing proper pinball. For the first time playing a P3 Multimorphic game, this felt 100% like pinball because the inserts were like arrows that would start halfway down the screen. So in your mind, those shots feel so much closer to the flipper than being right at the back. And also that you're knowing exactly where you need to shoot the ball because those arrows are telling the direction of the shots. So it's just so much more fun to play this game. There you go. I've said it. Jeff, why did you play so much of this and no Pulp Fiction? That's a hard one to know. Is it because of the cues? The cues were long at Pulp Fiction, but I also got to play, when I say I played all three days, I lied. I played the Thursday. I was there before it opened up, and I saw Jerry, and got to play it and just freaking loved it. Then I saw Steven Silver afterwards, and we played it too. I never saw Denise, but I saw it with Bowen Cairns, who did the code on it, and he was telling me a little bit about it upstairs at the tournament, and I wanted to go back on it again. And, you know, I just kind of... I waited, to be honest. I waited to get on And I know I be able to play Pulp Fiction in places It not a lot of places you get to play P3 And the last three I mean I always liked P3s and Multimorphic but I loved Heist. And then Weird Al was special and enjoyed that too. And now this. That is such a great investment to buy one of those machines and then flip the module for $3,400. If you only have to have one or a few machines, good investment. Yeah, they're in a bit of a roll with those last three you mentioned. Jeff, I know they're kind of struggling to keep up with demand after Weird Al, because that was their first kind of licensed title that sold. Like, that started to move units. But, yeah, it still hasn't reached that point where enough people have P3s that when these games come out, it's like, oh, yeah, I don't need to spend $15,000 on the pinball machine. I can just spend three and a half or whatever it is to get a brand new game. But also, I'd imagine anyone that's jumped in on Weird Al is going back to all the previous modules. So that's production that they've got to do on top of getting Weird Al out as well. And now you've got Final Resistance on top of it. What's the benefit of having these modules that don't have themes? Oh, I know. You can do them whenever. You can print them again. You don't have to re-license up. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I know for a while there was a lot of games per module, but do we have anything for those last three that you mentioned? Weird Al, I'm guessing, can't really be repurposed because it's licensed, so it's got content on there that's only specific to Weird Al, but Heist and Final Resistance is obviously the new one. Has anyone repurposed Heist just to bring out a software add-on for it? I don't know. I think Nick Baldridge has done some things, and I can't be specific, but his name comes up a lot, and I say that because he's always somebody I consider for the top ten most intriguing people because he does a lot of things behind the scenes, and he's a pretty special guy in that multi-morphic world, and I know other users have created things. I don't know with what platform, and I don't know if it's only available with the basic one that you bought when you got Flexi Lightspeed. I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter. A lot of those are for free, too, so, again, additional games. Good benefit. Love the game, so that was Final Resistance. We should move on. Queen Pinball was there, and probably the first time, I think, at TPF it was at Expo, but it was much different. And I was talking to David Thiel, who did the sound on it, and he has told me about some of the tweaks they've done to the machines. Actually, I was talking to the Pinball Brothers, and they did that as well. They tweaked a bunch of the shots a little bit, so it's a much different game than when you play it at Expo, But the sound, and again, TPF wasn't the best place to hear it because everything was so loud. The way the call-outs work, the way the music works, just that David Thiel touch. So much fun to play that game. Hmm. If you're in Queens, and you've seen Queens. I just watched a good show. I was going to see Queen and Adam Lambert, actually. Oh, not with Freddie Mercury. Oh, that's a joke.
    58:10
    He can't hit the high notes anymore. Look, here's what I'll say about Queen. Again, it's one of these ones where it just looks a bit pox in photos. When you actually walk up to it, it actually looks really good. It actually does look the part, I must say. I didn't get that much of a chance to play it, but it was fine. It was fine. It was a pinball machine that exists. It exists. It didn't tickle my balls, is all I'm saying. What did tickle your balls? Oh, they said last game. Bring out the gimp. Marty wants his balls tickled.
    58:51
    The gimp had a zip over their mouth, so having it tickle Marty's balls. One thing I did love about Pulp Fiction, if you look behind, like in the middle of the play field, is three, I think, drop targets. There's drop targets there, and then you can lock the ball behind the drop targets. So if you're standing at the flippers, you can't see what's behind it. But if you go to the side of the machine, you can see what's behind it, and they have a plastic of the GIMP zipped up. And I loved it, that it was kind of hidden.
    59:20
    Anyway, what else? Scooby-Doo. Did you want to elaborate on Scooby-Doo? Scooby-Doo was there with a mystery machine, and they had a bunch of machines there. People ask me, what's it like to play it? I'm like, well, it's fun. If you like Scooby-Doo, it's a fun game. You get all the assets there. I will confess this to Marty, because I said it on a previous episode. And I've played Scooby-Doo a bunch. I played it a lot at Louisville Arcade Expo. Even though it is the voice actor, holy shit, does Scooby-Doo and Fred sound just a little different. Mm-hmm. I'll give it to you. I was right. Yeah, you were right. I just said it. I know. And again, it's one of those, it's uncanny valley. It's like something's just, it's not quite right, and it's making me feel uncomfortable. It still had cool assets. I love the visuals, the cartoons and stuff. By the way, Foo Fighters is Scooby-Doo .2 because there's a mode where they're running through and being chased by the bad guy, and it's the Scooby-Doo run where they run in a group and their legs are flying and arms are flying. They do the same thing. The animations are so good on that. But the animations on Scooby-Doo are absolutely authentic and perfect. I don't know. It's a fun game. The one thing I heard people say is, boy, you're shooting the ball a lot, and you don't know where it goes because that upper play field is so big. That's a fair analogy. It's true. It's still a way better game than Halloween. Oh, so I did get to play Halloween for the first time.
    60:50
    What's your review, money? Two years. I still haven't played it, but I'm interested. So my review is this.
    60:57
    Wow. Just wow. Wow. Oh, jeez. Oh, my God. Well, it reminds me of what Ryan said earlier, where you're designing a machine and you want to put everything in there, and after a few machines you go, okay, I don't need to put everything in there. Maybe scale it back. I think that's what happened with Halloween. Did Halloween have, like, it wasn't a design by committee kind of thing where there was four people initially designing everything? Like, it was, like, just everyone. That would probably make sense. It's fine. It's a pinball that exists, but it just, it lacks focus and it lacks cohesion. I don't know. It was just, yeah, it was too bad. It's because the artwork is spectacular. The theme is very popular. It's Jim Balsito's favorite theme, so he loves that game. Expect that to be at InDisc sometime soon. Maybe. Now, so what I will say about Scooby-Doo is this. Like, obviously, the big concerns that I think people had was that Halloween slash Ultraman, that there was some quality controls, some fit and finish. Scooby-Doo feels really solid. Like, it just feels different, better, solid, heavy, just a real fucking chunky fucking game. The art is beautiful. It is really good to look at. Light show's great. The rules are fine. It's that upper play field that I have a problem with. You're up there way too much. Okay. But, and also, yeah, just that I like to see the ball and where it's travelling, and maybe that's a tournament player thing, where you need to get the cadence of the ball so you know when it's going to come back and where it's coming back from. As soon as you've got it going into a tunnel, it's like, okay, I'm disconnected, now I'm back in, and that happens all the time. That disconnect and reconnect is really off-putting. Is that for every game, Marty? Is that for Game of Thrones, Ellie? Is that for Twilight Zone? Yeah, it is, but those games that you're talking about have probably got one, maximum two shots that are covered. This has got all seven shots all covered by that upper playfield. All of them. Are we talking about Scooby-Doo still here? Yep. Yeah, okay. The one thing I do like about the upper playfield, and I'm not a huge upper playfield fan, so you better be good if you're making an upper play field. I do like the left flipper. It's a huge L flipper that you can do different things with. Instead of transferring the ball from the left to the right, there's a neat way to do that. I liked it. You're right. I mean, you could stay out there a long time. I think some code tweaking would really help that game, but if you're a fan of Scooby-Doo, you're going to love, love that game. Yeah. Absolutely agreed. And it's one of those ones where, you know, if somebody had bought another type of game, I'd be like, oh god, I feel bad for that person. Not with this, not with Scooby-Doo. People bought this and were like, you know what, you'll enjoy it. You'll have a lot of fun. Go crazy. That's seven pinball machines. Well, there was even another one.
    64:06
    There was. It was announced. Turner Pinball. Turner Pinball is the one that bought the assets from a little old company. I don't know if you remember this. Loser Kid loved that company. It was called Deep Root. So they bought the assets and they're They're going to make some of the games. They're not making Raza, which is a shame. Oh, no.
    64:29
    Hey, man, it was fun. It was fun. Do a call out for us, Jeff. Martians of Earth! I honestly thought he was going to do the Thor voice, but he didn't. No.
    64:43
    When you record certain things, there are some... I talked to Mark Silk about this. I'm like, do you ever record a bunch of stuff that are like absolute throat rippers? Like I save those for the end of the day when I don't have to do more spots, commercials.
    64:56
    And he said, no, no, no. And so what he's saying is I'm not stupid enough to do things that wreck your voice, whereas I am like, ah, fuck, I'll do it. And there were some throat rippers on doing Thor, so there weren't with Raza. But anyway, Turner's going to be doing some of the games to be determined, and they were there for a brief little bit. So I'm curious to see what they're going to do. Yeah, I spoke to Chris Turner quite a lot through the show. Super nice guy. And I said to him what I, I may say on this podcast, I think he has gone about it the right way. I still think, unfortunately, there's a lot of bad blood there. And I think people are like, oh, what's he going to do? It's like, just, you know, he hasn't come out like all other companies that have got these J-pop assets and said, we're fucking awesome, suck out, you know, that kind of stuff, which they all have, let's face it. Wow. I remember when American Pinball did that. They were like, we are awesome, suck out.
    65:55
    Okay, I dropped C-bombs. I'm not putting that in. Come on. Anyway, these companies came out just swinging wild. You know, we are awesome. We're going to change things. And they didn't. At least Turnipinball have gone, you know what, we're going to give this a crack. We're not going to take your money. We're going to do something. You know what, I say good luck to them. I don't think they've done anything so far to garner the hate that they're getting, except buy the assets of Deep Root, which was never going to go down well. So was this one of the Deep Root, like they used the assets of something else and then rethemed it? Or is it Ninja Eclipse? Yep, UIP. Completely new. Okay. I wanted to play it, and I planned on playing it, and every time I went over there, someone was either on it, or there was a line, or they'd left and it wasn't on, so I didn't get a chance to play it. But it looked fun. In summary, if you brought a new game to TPF, good for you, good for your company, good for Haggis for showing it for the first time in that festival and to a lot of people in North America, and all the others, the homebrews we haven't even talked about, some spectacular ones there. If you brought a game, you're probably going to make yourself some sales. It's going to be a tough competitive field to buy those games, especially where there's perhaps a recession on the way, if already not here. But still, a lot of variety, and we always complain, oh, it's a slow news day. It was a busy news day. It's probably going to be slow for the next few months, because who's going to be releasing a game? But it was nice to see all these great machines. And for the most part, all do really, really well. So I enjoyed it. And Ryan, I brought you on for a couple of reasons. One, do you realize it's been, I think, five years since you went to TPF or four years? When were you there?
    67:58
    2018. 2000 and, yeah, I think, yeah, yeah. 2018, you had all those different T-shirts, iHexagon, Franchi. You had the Deep Root one too, didn't you? Deep Root, and I had the Scott Dinesi one about my, what did I say, my favorite designer repurposes testicles from my national company and puts coins in them. It was a really long t-shirt. It was great. You had all these shirts. You went to TPF. You had a good time there. It's been five years since you were at TPF. Do you know it's been a year? You were last on this program a year ago. It was in April. And it's not from lack of getting you on. and we've been asking and asking, and mind you, it hasn't. If you haven't given me a lot of notice. Just so you know, I haven't asked you to come on. I just wanted this to be really clear. Anyway, it's good to have you on. We're not kicking you off yet. We've still got some more stuff to talk about, but your thoughts. Can I just say, there was also one game, believe it or not, one game I got to play for the first time. You mentioned it before, and I just want to talk about it, and that is James Bond. Not the 60th anniversary. They didn't have that there, which I didn't see. You're just disappointed. I wanted to have a flip of that. But I got to play James Bond, the George Gomez version. And this is what I'm going to tell you. It's a fun game. It actually shoots really well. I like the rules. I think, again, they're very focused, very George Gomez, very linear in all the different things that you can do. Not Godzilla, Brian.
    69:30
    How is Godzilla going, Marty? I think I've totally forgotten that I've got it at your house. Yeah, you can go and pick it up any time. Yeah, I haven't played it since January. Okay. So, good use of a fucking $15,000 pinball machine. Well, you know it's going to be looked after. Anyway, what I'm going to say is, I think James Bond is a perfectly serviceable game. I had so much fun playing it. Like, really, really lots of fun. The only thing I'll say is that I don't know whether it necessarily pushes pinball forward, if that makes sense. It's fine, it's got a great layout It does everything that it should do But in this world where everybody's trying to innovate And everybody's trying to do something radically different It's just good It's just not radically different Conversely, I heard some people say And this is what people in the tournament area say Is, you know, years ago When they would give away a new in-box game It was WrestleMania Yes They're still doing that, aren't they? Bond is the new WrestleMania Really, which one? The pro. The pro, right. Okay. It didn't sell well? I don't know if it didn't sell well. Did they have it in the league? I'm not enjoying it. That's just me. I love the theme, too, so I really want to enjoy it. I'm not a fan of the artwork. I think that left side, there's an upper left flipper, and behind it you drop the ball into it and it goes into a scuba shot. It looks like, yeah, I think it's a scuba shot, thunderball shot. and it ejects the ball and it puts it on the Dr. No dragon machine thing. And I looked at that and I'm like, that's a lot of wasted real estate for me. It's really, there's nothing going on there. It's really barren on the pro. It's ejecting it to hit a stand-up that I can hit with both flippers. So what is it really doing? It starts a mode and all that stuff, but still it's just a lot of real estate and it's just not satisfying. Unique ramps, it feels great to make the side ramp from the upper flipper. It's a tough shot. Code is not there yet. So I want to reserve criticisms. The code needs some work. And I'm sure it'll get better, but it's not... I think people are saying it's shallow. I've played a lot, man. Yeah, no, I know. I don't think they need to make it any more complex or deeper. I think it's fine the way it is. It just needs to be tightened up and balanced. There you go. Compared to all those other games we just mentioned earlier, I'd rather play each one of those that had a bond. I was looking through the Pinball News. They do a great job at kind of like cataloging almost everything, it seems, that happens at TPF. Have you seen the picture they put up of you, Marty? Of all the pictures they could have taken, the picture of you and Jeff. Jeff, you look all right. Marty, not the most flattering. They caught you in the middle of looking at Jeff with a certain expression, I think. Good. No, I wasn't looking at Jeff. I was looking at probably the people I just asked a question to. So, yeah, I did look at that photo and I went, eh, not the most flattering thing, but not bothered. If people are looking at Marty for the first time after that thing, Marty's a very good-looking person in real life. I will prove it. Go to our Facebook page. I'm going to post a lot of pictures that Marty and I took of people that came up to us, and we had some conversations. And at the end of this program, we recorded a bunch of those. So it was loud. You'll hear how loud the TPF was, but we had some good conversations, and we're saving that for the end of the episode. We're going to move away from TPF right now. Ryan, are you still TDing? Are you still doing a lot of tournaments?
    73:02
    Yeah, I mean, it's changed a little bit this year. We're trying a league out, so, yeah, I haven't restarted every single comp that I was doing last year. So, yes, but not as intense as last year. Leagues are new, though. That's not the norm for you. With the 200%, are people enjoying leagues or do they want the satisfaction of knowing, I won this night, it's over. If I had a bad night, it's over. I can start fresh new. Guess what, Jeff? It is fucking impossible to please everybody. Really?
    73:33
    It's so hard. So you never, yeah, there's never a tournament structure you can run. You run something too hard, people are like, oh, you're just trying to max out TGP. You run something too easy. people are like, I want to play more pinball. You run Flip Frenzy, someone's going to say, ah, it's not fair because this person played this many games and blah, blah, blah. You run Best Game, people say it's not social enough because they're not playing with people. There is no format that is the magical format. And the trick is, I guess, just to run as many tournaments and a wide variety of tournaments and then people come to the ones they want and they don't come to the ones they hate. Like, ah, fuck, Ryan, you're running a one-ball Flip Frenzy. It's fucking stupid. Cool. Don't come. Or I invite everyone. Everyone thinks that there's a magical boys club where only those people can run pinball tournaments. Guess what? Anyone can run a pinball tournament. Like, you can literally just create an IFPA login and go on and register a tournament and run it. So I implore people to come forth and run any tournament structure that they want. That's how it's going, Jeff and Marty. I would be very surprised if anybody takes up your call to action it's too much work it's like a non-paid decrease it is and I think there's the problem with it is that if you do one tournament as regular you are committed to that until it ends you cannot miss it and so what you've got are people that don't come to every tournament so therefore they couldn't run it and then there's those that come to every tournament that don't want to run it because they come to every tournament because they're enjoying just playing in the tournament. I have the best time going to the other two tournaments in the league because I, you know, Stu runs one and Brody runs the other one and I just relax and I socialise. But when I'm running a tournament, there's no socialising. I mean, I started running tournaments while we were recording head-to-head and you can go back and listen to those episodes. Like, everything was new and I was very passionate about this new thing in my life. I still enjoy running tournaments for sure but the shine has worn off a little bit and I'm not putting my focused energy into growing as much as I could and I'd like to but as I said it's hard because it's not like everyone puts their hands up to replace me or replace anyone else who's doing it because it's a hard gig I also think that obviously you know with Melbourne Silver Bowl I put a lot of effort into that remember the top 16 people got fucking gift bags, remember? Yes, with moisturiser. They did, and Metamucil. Was the moisturiser just your car money? Yeah, because it was. You don't have to ask.
    76:21
    What am I going to do for the beast? Oh, God. What I'm saying is, we put a lot of effort into those tournaments. You have as well, but really, all you need to have is a fucking couple of machines that turn on. People will play anyway. There's only really a handful at best, handful at best, that are really doing it to be able to represent Australia internationally. You know what I mean? I mean, I want to run a bit of a tournament.
    76:52
    Yeah, it's true. I feel bad sometimes when there's a handful of people that will go to Queensland every time they run a weekend. Not because I don't want them to enjoy a pinball. They can travel and they can do whatever they want. but I feel like that should be available here. And so I carry a bit of, like, almost guilt about that. I'm like, I want to run tournaments that people don't need, like, they don't need to go away from their family to get Whoppers. Like, they can just come to my house, you know, but you can't compete with, like, Queensland in Australia is, like, the one big state that dominates everything. And rightly so. They just, like, they're so good at running, like, a weekend worth of tournaments. And no one in any other state does that. We, you know, have small little things here and there, but my little pecker, my little pecker. That's where a lot of it has come from in the past. I want someone to be able to qualify for the national championships without leaving the state. They shouldn't have to travel to another state and spend thousands of dollars and spend time away from their family, if they've got a family, just to prove that they're the best in Australia. Are you guys going to go to Brisbane Masters? Interesting you should say that. There was an article that came out recently that mentioned that we would be revealing our game at Business Masters. Yeah. That's it. Not true, is it? No, that was news to me. So it's bullshit. Rumors. No, I think what happened is that we spoke to Nath Arcade when they were at TPF and mentioned that we would be revealing our next game mid-year. And I think they looked around and went, hmm, what events are happening mid-year? Oh, Business Masters, it must be at Business Masters. Ryan, hearing you say the different tournaments always produce some sort of negativity, can I give you a few, I want to say nightmare stories. This weekend coming up is my final Pinball Profile Played in America Tour event, and I have loved doing these. Before that, it was the Pinball Profile World Tour event, and you know I was in Australia. In fact, I won that event. Oh, yeah. I'm fucking mentioning it. Yeah, I don't care anymore. Yeah, I don't care. Come get me, Greg. Anyway, how many have I done? 25 of them because I did the thing called a road trip once. I've done 25 of these events and thanks to incredible sponsors. But the nice thing is, a thousand different players have played in these tournaments. So that's a thousand people that are wearing the pinball profile shirt flag if you will and saying that they had fun at the tournament. I appreciate that. And winning a bunch of random prizes. And why I'm bringing this up is, I've had a couple of complaints recently. And I'm like, you just can't fucking win. You know, you're trying to do these things. You keep the cost low. The arcades give you great deals to keep the cost low so that everyone can have some fun. It's an affordable night out. You got as much chance of winning prizes as everyone else. You still can't win. Case in point, one place I went to not too long ago, somebody came up to me and said, they just closed my bar tab. And I'm like, what do you mean? Well, the bar's closed, so they closed my tab, Mike, okay? Well, they charged me 20% gratuity because they closed my tab. And I'm like, what does this have to do with me? You invited me here. I'm like, wait a second. I invited you to come play pinball. Yeah, but they said you knew about this. I'm like, I didn't hand your credit card to them at the bar. You did. When you hand your credit card to somebody, do you not ask what the arrangements are? They probably would have told you if you're not back in time, we're going to close the account at 20%. And another thing, how fucking cheap are you that you won't give 20%? How much was the bill? 25 bucks. You're bitching about 5 bucks. I didn't say this. This was in my head.
    80:31
    But I'm just doing the math. I'm like why is this my fault? And she goes well you invited me here. I'm like I invited you to play pinball. Oh you're going to be like that. I'm like oh my god. The manager finally threw her out. It was great. I don't care if she's listening. You're an idiot.
    80:48
    Wow. I really don't care. I'm not saying your name but you were acting like an ass. And that was my fault. I'm like, holy fuck. Another one. This one drove me nuts. And good chance they're listening right now. I don't care. I fucking spend a lot of my own money to go to these different places to put on these events. It's exciting for me to see these places. I'm only there a short time. But it's nice to see different people. That's what's so good about TPF. As we know, we've got a lot of people we haven't met before or old friends. Anyway, new friends, all that kind of good stuff. That's what these tours have been for me, especially after COVID. So I go out, and I was told I need to manage my time a little better. I'm like, oh, really? Why? Well, it went too long, and we were rushed there. And I'm like, oh, what could I have done differently? And the suggestion was, you know all those prizes you gave away at the end of the round robin? I'm like, yeah, 24 of them at random. Well, that took too long. I'm like, well, what would you suggest I do? And they said, before the tournament starts, give them away. I'm like, oh, so that makes them go faster if I move it to the front of the tournament instead of the end of the tournament. For some reason, giving away 24 at the start is quicker time than at the end. Is that what it is? You fucking dummy. Like, fuck off. I'm like, are you? I know. And here he is, Cal D'Angelo. I'm just bringing you on right now. Good.
    82:13
    I can only imagine what Carl, Jim, and Bob get, but, I mean, that is a perfect tournament in Indus, but I'm sure they get shit, too. What format are you running now? Because I know it was for Frenzy. Okay, so since 2023, it's just a number of rounds of match play. And so depending on where I am even rounds would be modern games Odd rounds would be classics or EMs The only time I did an all one was when I went to Colorado went to Ryan Wanger's place, who you know Ryan and Cindy very well from when they were in Australia at your place. Ryan's got just tons and tons of great games there in Lyons, Colorado. And we had 64 people signed up. And I'm like, okay, I'll do nine rounds. It's going to be worth a lot of TGP. but we're doing all classics. The place is called Lions Classic Pinball. We're doing all classics, solid states and EMs for nine rounds and then we'll do playoffs because in Colorado, they have the Lefkoffs. They have Donovan Stepp. They have Walt Wood. They've got Ryan Wanger. They've got Snow. They've got so many good players. Zach McCarthy. If we play one modern round, that could take an hour. I'm on vacation. I'm not fucking sitting in a pinball place for an hour around a pinball. Not happening. We're doing classics. It's still good. It still counts. Everyone had fun. There you go. But you still get complaints, oh, why can't we play this? So the people that complain about that aren't the ones who go, oh, my God, I had to wait 45 minutes for this round to start. I care more about that. Go, go, go, go, go. I feel like I used to complain a decent amount at other people's tournaments, but that's why I started running my own, which doesn't make it a valid thing. It's still like an asshole thing to do. But, yeah, I guess if you end up running your own, then you don't need to cover the other ones. But if you don't, then... I listen to advice. In fact, I just heard something new with this league I'm in where we used to play six games a league night, but we'd play everything twice. And I said, you know what, the hosts are saying the nights are going long, and they were 12 games, and some of them were moderns. So we scaled that back a little bit. And, you know, we got some advice, but I asked input of every single person, and would you like what you didn't like? And you can't please everyone, but you can still tweak it to make it better. So I listen. I've got a big event coming up. It is called The Beast. It's at Pocketeer Billiards in Buffalo, New York. Marty, you and I talked about this because you did Melbourne Silver Bowl, and this is a big, big event. And I always remember you saying the thing that makes me happy is knowing that people who came from out of town or came to this tournament or spent their money, they had a good time. So that's number one on my mind. Number one. So this Beast tournament, I've got a main event. I've got a classics event. I've got a women's event. And for those that didn't make the playoffs in the main, instead of having an A-B division, the B division technically is, I've got a three-strikes tournament for those that didn't make the main playoffs. So you've got a possibility of four tournaments on the weekend. Justifies staying over at night on that Saturday night because you've got a chance to play Sunday. It's going to be a lot of work. I've got a lot of people helping, a lot of sponsors and stuff. But I know I'm going to take some criticism. You can't do something that pleases everyone, right? So whether it's game selection, whether it's the way they're laid out, I went there this week to make sure there wasn't any glare and things like that, spacing, Wi-Fi, like everything I could possibly think of. And I've been thinking about it for months, and I've not only been thinking about it, I've been asking Carl D'Angelo, Colin McAlpine, people who run big tournaments, what are some of the checklist things they need to do? So I'm a little nervous about that, but I think my experience of doing all those pinball profile events is going to pay off, and people know I run a pretty tight ship. It's going to be, you know, rules are going to be followed and people will have fun. I think you'll be more than fine, especially if you've now got 25 tournaments under your belt. Yeah. And the right attitude. And, of course, you're not going to satisfy everybody. And, Ryan, the interesting thing that I've found with the complaints is I think when people complain, what they're really trying to do is shift the balance in their favor. and I also think that they think I'm a fucking idiot and that I know that all they're doing is trying to change something because it suits them better and even though they will try to represent the group, it's not. It's one person that's just trying to balance it in their favour. To be clear, there aren't that many people complaining. It's just you can't, especially when you, yeah, I mean, went from running four or five different unique tournaments and now we kind of just have, you know, for the first couple of months of the year, just one league and that's it. and, yeah, it's a commitment to go to all of these things versus just going for one night. Like you said, Jeff, you go there for one night, you do good. Congratulations, you do bad. It doesn't matter. Like, you start afresh, whereas the league kind of, like, carries over. So I'm not sure if we're going to continue it long-term, you know, with the league. We're still just trying it out, and I don't know. I mean, all this was a kind of an experiment to do with all of the changes. We thought we couldn't really run the same formats as last year because they're worth close to nothing because of all the whopper changes. So the bottom line is, if you want to get angry at someone, get angry at Josh Sharp, because he's a massive cunt.
    87:22
    Facts are facts. Hey, man. I agree. I thought... You agree. Josh Sharp is a cunt. Can that be the name of the episode? So I watched the pinball movie. I'm not sure if you talked about that yet. And I was expecting Josh Sharp and Zach Sharp to be... I remember seeing a screenshot or a casting thing like, oh, this is going to be Zach and this is going to be Josh. They were in it for like 10 seconds at the end. I know. And Zach refers to them as Bizarro Zach and Bizarro Josh. Yes.
    87:54
    One of them is really built. Who was it? Was it Zach or was it Josh? I think it was Josh. Josh was quite the chunk.
    88:03
    So let's talk about this movie, right? Because I absolutely loved it. And I remember telling people, oh, I loved it. people would be like, oh, you just love it because it's pimple. I was like, no, actually. I loved it because it was a good film, and I had people that were watching it that aren't pimple people, and they really enjoyed it. So I think it actually just stands alone as a good movie. The only criticism that I've heard, and I know someone put it on our Facebook page as well, was basically, oh, it's fucking more pimple than this fucking love story. I'm sorry. That's fucking his life, you know? And it was an important thing in his life. He made the shot. I don't know what you could do more with what they actually showed. I've seen it three times now. Once at a film festival, once when he came to Toronto, and then another time since at TPF. I'll be honest, I did sneak away. I've already seen it. I've seen it three times. We did the intro, Marty and I, and then I buggered off. I came back and said, hey, wasn't that great? Listen, I just thought earlier that week, I'm good. But the point is, it is a great movie. Austin and Meredith Bragg, when I met them in Indiana, and I want to say this in October, September, I can't remember, October, we were talking about the movie, and these are the writers and directors, and they're like, I don't know if pinball is the best title for it. And I kind of agree. It has pinball in it. It's obviously, you know, the sport that he, the hobby that he was passionate about, but it really is a different story. The man who saved the game? Well, what game? The man who saved pinball? Maybe. Better? Or is that exciting? Who cares? I don't know. Well, if you're going to put pinball in the title and you're expecting to see more pinball, you might be disappointed. But if you want to see a good movie, you'll be thoroughly impressed. Movie needed more pinball and less shitty love story.
    89:54
    So the guy living in his mom's basement as he celebrates birthday number 40. So here's the thing, right? If they made a pinball movie that was predominantly pinball, then you would have the pinball community watch it, and I need to tell you, I need to tell you, it's 10,000, 15,000 people max. That's the pinball community. Sorry, guys. We've had quite the discussion about the bubble. So just living in the bubble, the pinball bubble. It's very consuming. It's intoxicating. It draws you in. You can feel bubble famous is what we call it. and what I guess I want to say is that if they'd made this movie all about pinball, 15,000 people would watch it and that's it, and the Bragg brothers make no money. Whereas if they make it actually about a story that most people would be interested in, then you've got a wider audience. So we joke about that comment that was said, and I heard that a lot from people at TPF that had watched it saying, oh, I just wish there was more pinball in it. Well, I don't know. Don't play pinball. Yeah, watch Carl DeAngelo's thing. Right. Yeah, I went back, Jeff, and listened to your pinball profile episode where you interviewed the directors, and they made a lot of great content in there, but there was one comment they made kind of admitting, like, hey, we're not pinball people, but we think that was to the benefit of the movie. And thank fuck they weren't pinball people. Yeah, I agree. Because it would have been a shit movie. Like, everyone kind of says, well, most people say the same thing about the movie. like they're surprised they actually stand up I watched it with my eight year old and I couldn't believe I was like waiting for her to leave like I wasn't I didn't strap her to the bean bag and say don't fucking move like you can't you have to watch this movie with me like I just started watching it like hey do you want to watch this movie it's about the guy and she's like no not really and then she started watching it and she just sat there the entire time so if it can hold the attention of like an eight year old in this day and age of TikTok and just dopamine releases all the time it's a good fucking movie Get her to watch Godfather next.
    92:10
    Full of, by the way, fiction. Pulp fiction. Oh, hell yeah. Double bill. There's six hours. Daddy, what's a gimp?
    92:20
    Oh, that's awesome. The people that want more pinball on it, here's where the pinball part is. If you know Roger Sharp, you know that that movie was perfectly acted by both the young Roger and the old Roger. You're like, oh my God, those are Roger. Oh my God. Especially, because I've got no young Roger as a reference. But old Roger, when he first started talking with the mannerisms, I just went, holy crap. And that's what even Zach said when we interviewed him at the showing. He was like, that was really bizarre that they just absolutely nailed the current version of Roger. Dennis Bucicaris is the actor's name. You would know him from Better Call Saul. He played Kim Wexler's boss when she left HHM. But the one thing you were talking about, too, about you were expecting Josh and Zach in there. They filmed that movie during COVID. And there's two things. One, they couldn't really go to the set when it was filmed, I think, in New York or New Jersey. That was part of it. But the other part of it was, well, we've got this actor playing my dad. So it would be weird that we are in it. When that's not our dad, so that's why they did the stills. Actually, here's a little Easter egg for you. When I saw the movie in Toronto, Roger was sitting beside me, and he goes, I'm in the movie. Do you know where I am? And I go, yeah, at the end. He goes, no, no, no. And there's a cameo of him in the movie. Did you see it? No. No, I didn't notice it. He said, don't tell me, because I'm going to watch it again, and I'm going to look for it. I'll say, by the way, it's not even like a, he's not in the background. He's not like part of a crowd. There's two people on the screen. He's on the right side. It's on for two seconds. It's kind of a montage thing. I'll just say that. Okay, fine. Cool. Go find it. Okay. The person who played Ellen, she's pretty famous as well. She was in Teen Wolf for years and years. Crystal Reed. Yeah. And by the way, sitting beside my wife watching, I'm like, wow, every time she comes on, when she smiles, I smile. Yeah. Loves me some dimples. Yeah. That's great. It was really good. I got quite emotional. I didn't get, like, there was nothing really to get upset about, but I did get, like, happy tears just when things happened that were just like, oh, my God. And I yelled out. I'm like, oh, my God, oh, my God, the shot, the shot, the shot's about to happen. And then I accidentally sat on the remote and turned the TV off. So that actually happened. It was terrible. Wait a second. Marty, Ryan, you both have seen the movie. How did you see it in Australia? VPN. What's that? What? I don't know. Virtual Private Network, where you can actually say that you are in the U.S. and then you can watch it in the U.S. Oh, okay. I just bought it from Microsoft. That's definitely how we watched it. Yeah. How'd you get it, Ryan? Yeah, I just clicked on the Microsoft website and got it for 24 hours. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know. It's available. It's available in Australia. I didn't know that. That's why I'm asking the question. I'm not assuming you pirated anything. No, no, definitely not assuming. No, never, ever. be the last movie that I would pirate. Would you pirate? You wouldn't copy a car? What's the commercial, Marty? You wouldn't copy a car? You wouldn't steal a car? Oh, yeah, the copyright ones, yeah. If I sound a little punchy, a little tired, speaking of long movies like Godfather, at least that one captured my attention. I saw John Wick 4 today. And you love Keanu, don't you, Marty? Yeah, I do. I haven't seen any of those, but I really do want to. I think I'll enjoy them. I don't think I've seen any of them. Maybe part of one. I mean, basically, he's on a killing spree. It is easier to count the number of words out of Canu's mouth. I'm not saying he's a bad actor, but it's easier to keep total of the number of words he says in the movie versus the number of kills. I don't want to spoil the movie. There's not a lot of dialogue.
    96:15
    It's almost three hours long. Why are they making three hours-drawn week movies? Is it actually three hours? It was two hours, 49 minutes runtime. Why? And I told my son before, I said, I'm taking a nap at some point during this movie. Just fill me in when I wake up. I did. 94% of running tomatoes. What? It was fun. I mean, leave your brain at the door and, you know, watch a bunch of killing shit. So there's the double bill, okay? You've watched Pinball with Your Daughter, I think Pulp Fiction, and then John Wick 4. John Wick. Oh, my gosh. Parent of the year. Ryan C. How about a new pinball segment called Whores of Pinball? I was thinking before about the people in... Wait, I've got a follow-up. It's not that bad. It's not Marty's Broccoli Adventures. It's like how many people work for more than one pinball company? Because that was kind of unheard of a couple of years ago. But now you've got David Thiel. He's doing work for American Pinball. Yeah, he did Queen, some GTF.
    97:21
    There's Christopher Franchi, arguably the biggest whore of them all. Listen, Franchi, I don't endorse or condone what this asshole is saying right now. We love you and stuff. He's going to get upset. At what? At calling him a whore? The guy hasn't had a game out in five years, I think. Four or five. Munsters was the last one. When did that come out? You come back, buddy. You come back with a vengeance. I don't care if you use seven machines. Scott D'Aneti? Is he still involved with Spooky or not really? Can we call him Pinball Whore?
    97:55
    Jeff, how about you? Pinball Slut. Free agent mole. What does that have to do with anything? Well, yeah, so how many companies has Jeff done voiceovers for? Because what you're saying is if it's two, you're a whore. So how many is it been?
    98:14
    Yep. Whore! So, anyway. I just want to finish this by telling you this piece of news. I have got a movie update for you. Okay. Because on the way home, I didn't get any sleep. It was a 17 and a half hour flight, and I had the worst jet lag I've ever had. And it was just so uncomfortable. So, I spent that time watching movies. I got to watch Flash Gordon, because it was just one of the things that was there. Wow, that's a terrible film. Can I just say? but if you took every scene and you squinted your eyes, it's almost like you're watching a Lady Gaga film clip. If you ever watch it again, just look at it and go, huh, she stole all her fashion from Flash Gordon. But that's not what I'm talking about. I want to tell you that I saw a Will Ferrell movie. Hopefully a good one. Guess which one? I hope it's Anchorman. Is your first Will Ferrell movie? No, no, no, no. I've seen others. He saw Roxbury. I hope it was Anchorman. It was Anchorman. It's great.
    99:18
    Oh, my God. It's fucking hilarious. Are you being serious? The fucking flute scene. The Anchorman gang war. Oh, my God. A whale's vagina.
    99:33
    It's just stupid. I fucking loved it. I'm not even kidding. You're not kidding. Okay, good. Because it is near and dear to my heart. Just pinpointing his mouth exercises. The Human Torch was denied a bank loan. That kills me every time. Unique New York.
    99:54
    What's his name? Lonalin? There's just so many throwaway lines in that thing. Paul Rudd has my favorite line in the whole movie, and it's just so stupid, but it just makes fun of the drama that news people think they have to have. And they're like, we're going to go down to the San Diego Zoo right now where Brian Fantana is here. Because remember, the panda was pregnant. And we're going to go down to Brian Fantana. And all he does is his head's down and he leans up. He lifts his head up and looks in the camera and goes, Panda, watch. It fucking kills me every time. Watch out. It's gold.
    100:28
    Honestly, I'm glad I watched it. It was very, very funny. Yeah. So there you go. All right, let's go. I think we're all going to bed. Not together. That's episode 69. What? Spoiler alert. We're going to leave you with... Thanks, Ryan C. It's good to talk to you. Don't wait a year to come back on this program. Don't invite me with 10 minutes to go. Like, hey, Ryan, what are you doing? I'm out with my kid. We're about to record. Can you do it? No, I'm out with my kid. Three days notice I gave you this time. I'm not going to ask you next time, Ryan.
    101:02
    Well, I didn't want to cut into Jesse J's show, so I didn't want to have you on too often. Anyway Always an open invite You come back whenever you want Just not episode 69 That's made for two people There'll be no guests on that show We will leave you with other guests People that stopped by TPF to say hi And Ryan you have yourself a good one Marty take care Where can people reach us? Final Round Pinball Is it? I don't know Holy fuck You know I don't know That's your one job You had one job Ryan knows what it is This is so sloppy every single time. You guys have no fucking idea what you're doing. Just, like, do what Ron does, and he's like, go to this website, and all the links are there. Like, no one... Okay, so no one goes to that website. No one goes to my website, so I... Listen. No one actually fucking emails us or does anything. It doesn't really matter. It's finalrampinball at gmail.com. It's at finalrampin at Twitter, and it's finalrampinballpodcast on other socials. So you can not contact us at all those places. That is a good point. We didn't get many emails this time. Should we collectively say, what the fuck? If you took a weird photo, like a spy photo of Jeff or Marty at TPS, or if they're in the background, like crop dusting or doing a fly up or just whatever, just send it to finalroundpimble.com.
    102:27
    All right. Oh, I totally was letting bombs go at TPS, but that's not a thing. Okay. What do you eat, Jeff? You cropped up. Ever since I met you, you're like, Hi, I'm Jeff. I like to crop stuff. No. What do you eat? Payne, that's the key. The key.
    102:48
    The key is always have one in the chamber. He always says that. Always have one ready to go. All right. It's a skill, buddy.
    102:59
    Okay. Ryan, later. See you. We'll be back with another episode soon. Don't forget to sign up for The Beast. Join us at Pocketeer Billiards for four tournaments in Buffalo, New York. It'll be a lot of fun. That's it. I'm Jeff Jules. I'm Matt Robbins. And apparently I've already left. I'm Ryan C. Bye. See ya.
    103:21
    Darren Quill just made a huge mistake at Texas Pinball Festival. He came up to Marty and me at the Haggis Pinball and said, I'm a big fan of the show. And I said, well, now we turn it on you. You're going to be on the show, Darren. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the impromptu allowing me to be with you. It's great to see you guys. Honestly, it really is, together. And you to travel so far and you to just be everywhere. So that's great. He is everywhere. He's everywhere. Oh, the censor right in front of people all the time. Get closer to the mic, all right? I know you're not a professional. I have to bring that to the podcast. But anyway. Hey, you're from St. Louis. Great pinball area? Yes, it is. CP Pinball has about 80 machines at it. That's probably the most popular, but a lot of other places as well. Okay. Yeah. What's your favorite game? Right now it's Fathom. Yeah, there you go. There you go. But, you know, you guys have to show more stuff. That's all. It's coming. You want to know the next few? It's going to be... Oh, I'm out of words. I know it's going to be... I also don't know. It's still good. People have been asking, I'm sorry, well, what do you want? If you want that, you're going to be happy with what we're doing. Yeah. I heard you kind of break down every single machine that's out there and which ones you would ever do. All right, let's put you on the spot. You're obviously a pinball guy, Darren. If you could have three remakes of any Bally games, what would they be? No, I can't do that. One. It's not one you guys like because it's gorgeous, but it's Lost World. But it's not a great... Marty loves that game. I love Lost World. I mentioned that last night how much I love Lost World. I mean, it's almost phantom level artwork. I love it. It's beautiful. I love it. And with new rules and better rules. I know. Think of what you could do. But even if Marty did the rules, you've got to keep that in mind. Back off. Good point. All right, Darren, thanks very much. Thanks, guys.
    105:01
    Aaron Davis is here at TPF, and he has the nerve to say he likes flying around. You could get beaten in places like Texas today. You know, I came all the way down here. We canceled our booth at the last minute, and I don't even know what to do with myself right now. Well, you should have a booth here, right? Fast pinball. We paid for a booth. It's just our trailer got stolen. We didn't have time to get down here, so I'm just here helping out wherever I can. We're in the Haggis booth right now. Fathom has our electronics in it, so I'm like living vicariously through the Fathom Pimmo machine here. Oh, very, very nice. I know Marty's been busy. The funny thing is people come up over here, Oh, how much is it? How much is it? I'm sold out. Get in line, champ. Oh, that's great. I'd never met Marty before. This is what I learned. It's disappointing, isn't it? What do you think? He's convincing me that it's not his voice in the game.
    105:46
    It is not my voice! Oh my God, every time he's right up the side. It is not my voice. You know what? It is a stereotype, but really, all Australians are assholes. I mean, it sounds the same. I have never denied that. Hey, Marty. It's all love here. Marty, I know you once pretend to run shows and maybe, oh, I don't know. What was it, Melbourne Super Bowl? Yeah, championship, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, you haven't done that in a while. I assume because you're lazy, but this guy right here, Aaron, he's a big guy with Northwest Pinball, right? Yep. Yeah, our Northwest show, we want to get people up there, spend time together like thinking up cool stuff thinking up new ideas and build cool things you know and that's what like we can do up there it's just closer to my house I can drag all the tools out there drag out all the projects out there just like deep dive into projects it's harder to drag that all out of here I hope Marty's listening to this because you know he's so selfish but he could be a generous person like you Aaron there's got to be a direct flight from Australia to Seattle like come on up beautiful in June in the Northwest alright well good luck in June and thanks for stopping by yeah absolutely We're trying to get an interview here, but Marty won't shut up. Marty, get over here. We've got a bunch of secret handshakes here, and I'm not too happy about it. No, you actually, I've had quite a lot. I'm not surprised at all. People think you're a gunman. Including this person, Steve. Thanks very much for saying that about me, I guess. I mean, you're welcome. Whatever I can do to further the cause, right? Where are you from? Salt Lake City. Now, Marty's been there before. Yes, he has. I thought there was going to be no booze there, but Marty has uncovered a million, and they're not even speakeasy. That's absolutely right. There is more than you'd believe. One of my favorite locations is Porter's Arcade. It's a great barcade. But, I mean, as long as you do it the right time of day and not too much all at one time, we've got some booze. Well, say hi to our friends from Loser Kid, and thanks for pretending to like Final Round. We appreciate it, Steve. Absolutely my pleasure. You guys are the best. It's late Friday night. They've closed TTF. It doesn't matter. Marty, what is that you're drinking? Why are you asking? You know what it is. Cheese. I supplied the cheers. This is Glenn from Nashville. Hey, Glenn Wecker. And our number one fan. We've got two reach-around winners here. Joe Fox. You can't be seeing this same room together, Glenn and I. Two number one fans in the same room. No, no, no. You are the number one. I'll stay in front of you. He is the most dedicated. You're the number one. He pays for it. Let's be honest. Which one do I have to kill? Is that what we're going with? Yes! Live! Live right now! Glenn Wecker. Oh, this is a live murder. How's your throat? Is it sore? Yes. Here, here's a throat. Thank you. What did you want to offer? Nothing.
    108:25
    Okay. I never offered to be in with. You've got Joe Fox, Delaware Pinball Collective. You've got Glenn Wecker, a talent. He helped us sing in the reach around. Marty. That was really good. It was amazing, yes. Sorry I sounded so surprised.
    108:41
    Anyway, these are two fine individuals. They have put money into our pockets. You came to the pinball profile. I did. Yes, you did. I did. Yes. Now, which one lives and dies? And how is it going to be? Well, the sad thing is, look at that chandelier above us. That thing is going to crack any second. You have time to push one of these gentlemen away. So I have a say in this. No, no. Because you're bound to each other. It was the bet you guys lost anyway. I just thought it was a lazy one. Because as Glenn just mentioned, he's given us no money. Oh. And I need money. Not only did Joe Fox give money to Head to Head, as our number one Patreon. Wow. Yeah, no, he did. The best part of it was, Ryan C. left the podcast. I cashed it in and took all the money. Good for him.
    109:30
    Ryan who? Yeah. Dead to us. Yeah, we all know C. Yeah. Let's just keep that one. We know. Yeah. All right, boys. So, Joe, congratulations on that extra life. Glenn, it's been nice knowing you. Wait, that was it? You usually consider more than that. I did. That was the thing. It's not 1 o'clock in the morning after working for 48 hours. Anything you'd like to say at Glenn's Jewelry? No, thank you very much for not giving me any money. Oh, well. Good to see you. You had a chance. We're out of here. Can I have that throat box in his back?
    110:02
    He's already squalled it. Yes, you can. Fish it out.