Welcome Welcome to Wormhole Pinball Presents and part two of our podcast series we call Arcades Across America. I'm your host, Jamie Birchall of The Wormhole, and let's start off by welcoming back to the podcast for his third time, all the way from Cottage Grove, Oregon, my co-host for today, Coe from Quarter Drop Park. Jamie, welcome. Thank you for having me. A pleasure. I'm glad to be in the wormhole virtually. Yeah, no, it's awesome. You're a wormholer now, and we appreciate it. Thank you so much. And from Seaside, California, near Monterey, California, probably one of the most beautiful places on Earth, actually. Matthew Talley and Carrie Carmichael from Lynn's Arcade. Welcome to the Wormhole Guys virtually. Really appreciate you. Thank you very much. Very happy to be here. Let's have some fun. Yeah, let's have some fun. That's what it's all about. Our goal here is to showcase arcades across America. And then Coe and I are going to pick your brain as non-paid consultants on what we're doing here in Houston. We're not getting paid? No, Coe, you're not. Our 14,000-square-foot building that we are in the process of renovating, and it will have about 125 pins. That's a 2026 initiative. And then, of course, the Quarter Drop Arcade in Cottage Grove, Oregon. and that is Ko's establishment that he is opening next year on his birthday. Congrats, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. To both of you for taking on building an arcade. My God. Oh my God. It's exciting though and so we're going to really pick your brains because I think when you're sitting here and you're in Monterey, which is just unbelievable. I got to play golf up there and I got to play Cypress Point, boys. Oh, nice. Cypress was a good course. Hard course. Very hard course. Does everybody here golf? I like golf. Yeah. Carry golf. I mean, I used to golf. I'll go out and golf. Yeah, I don't go very often anymore, but I do. I was actually a good golfer until pinball ruined my entire life. Yeah, I'll do that. A single-digit handicapper, like mid-single-digit, like playing golf. Yeah. drums yeah you know and uh i actually shot 88 over there not terrible from the test it's great um oh dude i birdied 16 man anything after like hole five is like everything's cantilevered like there's no like flat fairway it's insane so it's like if you don't remember how to adjust to that shit yeah oh real quick and we're not we're not a golf podcast people don't turn off right Okay. But 16 is over the Pacific. And it's a par three 245. Okay, on the tips. And I hit driver, I knocked the driver down, cut it in there had a 20 foot putt uphill and I walked it in like, anyway, no way. Real quick. First time I ever went golfing, I got a hole-in-one. The guy who owned the course happened to be on his little cart behind me. He saw it. I was in the newspaper. Very first time I was ever golfing. Not a good golfer. This was a fluke. But it happened, and I was in the newspaper, and that got me hooked. Never should have played again, Coe. Exactly. Just put them down and walk away, man. Yeah, that's it. I wouldn't even have played another hole, Cary. It was just one of those weird things that just happened. All right. So let's start with the guys from Lens. How long have you had this arcade in absolute paradise? Five years. Five years. August 1st, 2019. Wow. Yeah, opened right before COVID. Just in time. Had to close down for COVID, but made it through COVID. But, yeah. We've been running League for 10 years, though. So we had started League before we opened the arcade. And that's kind of what built us up into wanting to actually take it public and, like, share our passion with pinball to this area. After seeing the response from League and the 40 people that would show up every single Monday at a little spot we call The Office out in Salinas, then it got just so big. Like, there was so many people in there, you couldn't move. We had to like each your way to like get to the games. And so we were like, well, maybe we should think about possibly turning this into an actual business as opposed to just like a clubhouse. So it's great. Yeah. I bet people are going to be interested in some of the inner workings of Linz. Do you guys use like the free play model or coin drop or like the card system? Free play. Free play. Yeah. And how's that? What's that look like as far as like come to the door and how much you pay and all that? 20 bucks for the day or 10 bucks for an hour. Okay. And then we like, that gives us the opportunity to do like Tuesdays is we do $10 Tuesdays because it was our slowest night of the week. So we're like, let's make it 10 bucks for all night. And that started building up the Tuesday model. And that gets like more families kind of coming out on a Tuesday night and hanging out because it's cheaper. Yeah. Makes sense. But then, yeah, like Friday, Saturday, it's like 20 bucks for all night, but people are still wanting to go out and have a good time and drink some beer and play some pinball. Is the beer a big part of the arcade? As far as profit, is that the biggest piece of the puzzle, having that bar? It's actually 50-50. Interesting. So people are playing a lot of pinball. Yes. And drinking a lot of beer. Just beer, or do you have spirits? Just beer. We did beer only. the license was much easier to get, and we didn't have to add a kitchen. So we didn't have to do, like, hot food. So if you do beer and wine, you have to actually serve hot food to be all ages. But for whatever reason, in California, beer only, you can have, like, packaged chips and nuts and snacks and still be all ages and still serve beer. And it's like, all right, well, we like beer anyway. So we have 131 different cans. So everything's in a can that blends. So we have two coolers back here, like four doors. Three of them are all beer. Hard seltzer falls under beer, so we can serve hard seltzer and sour. And then we have a whole door of non-alcoholic as well. So a bunch of different waters and sodas and all that kind of stuff. I'm really close to Ninkasi. Do you guys have them? Yeah, Ninkasi. We don't actually carry Ninkasi, but they're good. They didn't can for the longest time, though. They do now, though. No, they do, though. I just saw that the other day. Hop Valley. Those are my two favorite kind of local breweries. Great stuff. Really good. What makes up the bulk of your collection? It's pretty well diverse. He's really done an excellent job of making sure that what's on the floor is constantly rotated through, I guess you could call them eras, really. You've got the solid state of EM. at five and five ish. Yeah. Right now it's the re EMS that are in here at the moment. We usually have a greater percentage of EMS. EMS are great to keep around because then you really do get to see that everyone gets to see the generational growth of pinball. So it's a good, it's a good way point to have and to have enough of it for people to recognize that it is important to go and play them. But that mix and then the Valley Williams nineties, maybe we got to say, get in there. Not right now. And then the stern section is always revolving because we do pick up all the new sterns. So they end up replacing an older stern, and then that goes to the warehouse to get cycled through. So we have one Stooky and one Jersey Jack. So you have a warehouse. How many pins are in the warehouse? We have 40 here. I think we have 60-something in the warehouse. Okay. So you're rotating. You have 100 pins that you're rotating in and out of length. Yeah. Do the EMs perform well? Like, do people play them a lot? Because I have one EM in my collection. I wasn't sure if I wanted to bring it to the arcade, because I don't know if the maintenance required for it is going to be worth the quarter play that it gets. I think that the maintenance on those are generally, as long as we've got it in good operation before it gets in there, it'll only play better. Those switchers are going to wipe off each other, and I think we're going to get to a place with most of those games where we're not going to have that. The one issue is if something gets loose and the switch now is activated and that coil burns up and there isn't that kind of a brain to keep that around. But don't worry, you'll smell it and you'll know where to go. Yeah, right. Yeah, EMs perform really well and people play a lot of them and we get a lot of people like that's the fun part about here was having those generations come in and having like the older generation come in and be like, I used to play this in high school. And like I used to see this in there and see it at the pizzeria down the street. and then you get the little ones that have never seen a pinball machine before in their lives so it's cool to see you know what people saw different places because of the all the eras of games that we have that that's great i had a really nice old couple i've been remodeling a building for the quarter drop and i was in the window painting some trim and a really nice old local couple came up and they were i don't know how old they were 70s 80s something and they asked if I'd have pinball. And they proceeded to tell me how they grew up playing pinball. And then in the 70s, they had a pinball machine in their home. And they were just really excited to have pinball locally in the community, and they can't wait to come play. I was like, wow, that's incredible. I hope that they appreciate, you know, Jaws as much as whatever it was that they had in their home. And they will. They're going to find that appreciation. Their curiosity is going to get the best of them. They already enjoy pinball, and they already know. and you're going to find more people like that, which is the great part. Totally. Love it. Do you guys have a central list of all your machines? Like, do you have a database, or is it just in your head? It's mostly going out to the warehouse and going like, oh, yeah, shit. Got to pull that down and work on that one. That's right. Yeah. It surprises me every time I get in the back and I look around and go, shit, we got a ton of games back here. My reasoning for asking that is we're actually – we talked about this on the first podcast, Co., is that we're building a database because we've got 220-plus pins. And because we have a central location that we call the vault, we want to collect as much data as we can on an access database, if you will. and then whatever we want to do with that information, it has to be good information in so that when people come to the museum, we could do something like a QR code at Wormhole East or even at the Wormhole, which will then come on Cosmic Princess and explain to people what Cosmic Princess is. That's awesome. Yeah, and then what we're going to do is have a little tech section there, and the tech puts their tech code in, And then you could see a list of all the problems that we've had with this particular machine. And when was the last time we did a coil or when was the last time we did any of that? We have iPad at the bar. So when problems arise at the arcade, you just click on a button. It takes you to a Google form, lets you know what the game is and what the issue is. And so we have data. It's not organized in any way, shape or form. It's just a list of like everything that I fixed over the last like two years. But it is there. Now we can maybe format it in a way to get good information on each game. Because we're starting, Matthew, we thought, you know what? Let's do it right now because we're in the infancy, right? So let's just create this. It's just an access database. It's not that big of a deal. We've got guys that can do that. It's the data. It's the data you want. That's very good data. But looking back on it and knowing the history of this machine and what it's been going through. And the history of how we acquired it. I think that would be really cool. Yeah, for sure. I actually do catalog that on all the games that I purchase personally. I catalog at least that much information. And I put it out on IPDB also. So you can find the serial number and see that I don't name names. I just name cities and states. Yeah, that's really cool. And so we're just going to centralize all that into either a wormhole app or the wormhole website. Right. I just have a little spreadsheet that I created. So every time I buy a machine, when I bought it, how much I paid, what its value is. And then I have a section of what I've done to the machine as far as work and then what needs to be done to the machine. and I just keep that all in a spreadsheet so that I can look back and say, oh, okay, I replaced the power supply in January and, you know, look back at that. Well, you're doing the same thing we're doing, right? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, it's really smart. We'll see if we stick to it. That's the key. That's the hard part. That's the hard part, sticking to the plan. You start with a great plan and then kind of deviate. especially when you have as many machines as you guys will have at the museum right yeah while the challenge is you know sometimes when they're coming up from europe is what you know when we unbox them when we unfold them what kind of shape are they in yeah you know because these rare machines you know sometimes they come they're not so much beaters but you know there might be some like Io Moon came which is a really rare machine and the cabinet is all beat to hell so we got to replace the cabinet but the pen itself is brilliant it's like protected in this shitty cabinet yeah we have a Bushido that we're trying to get working another like weird rare Spanish game that we can't figure out so I might be hitting you guys up about how I can get this thing to get working because it's a super cool game but Is that like a Sonic game? No Inder It was their last Manufactured game and the first with a DMD Wow That's cool I'm not familiar with that one I'm going to show you an Inder later We're going to play a little game with you guys Oh nice And I think I put an Inder in there for you Nice So social media is Pretty crucial to the arcade business marketing yourself online and um i'm curious how you guys look at social media and how you utilize that to help you with lynn's arcade we pretty much post everything that we're doing like through through the week so we have monday night league we have tutorial tuesday ladies league on wednesday strikes on thursday and then if we have anything over the weekend we'll post like what we're doing over the weekend as well. So if we have a bigger tournament or whatnot, we could be a lot better at it. Like we could do more. Like we were in the beginning, we were posting photos of all the new beers that we got that week and like what's fresh coming in the cooler. And it's just kind of gotten so busy. It's like, that's now like another job to be done. It's a job. It's his own job. Yeah Yeah It insane Like how and then to be creative of that often is very tough So I did it for six years seven years just for Monarch Flipper Pinball and then also for Lin Arcade And then I've recently just kind of passed a lot of it off to Nikki. And now I'm trying to get back into doing it as well because I'm starting to get my creativity back where it's like I posted the same photo of someone playing a pinball machine. It's like it gets in your head. Sure. like to keep that creative stuff going and then uh but i think it is important you know you know getting your followers up and having having people know what's going on at the arcade and where are you guys posting the most these days it's instagram facebook instagram facebook yeah like those are the two that we do we don't do any of the other ones do you live stream on twitch regularly do you have like a schedule that you follow we every monday and then there is a schedule So Monday we have League and Tuesday Tutorial Tuesday and Ladies League. Those are all definitely streamed. Okay. But that piece, I think that that's in all social media, that's the engagement that is so very important. So while we're producing information for what you could do to engage with us, we're not – it's hard to break through that wall and get that engagement. But Twitch allows for that if we were able to ascribe someone to sit here and do kind of what we're doing here on our Twitch stream. And we have that because everybody wants to play. Nobody wants to sit. And so who do you find to sit is a whole different person. It's someone that may have an appreciation for pinball, but may just have an appreciation for talking to a screen. whatever that role may be for someone. So if we could get that piece going, then that engagement I could see being very beneficial, and then that engagement could then cross to other platforms like in an Instagram where go here to do, and that piece can go back and forth. It sounds like you need a Jamie. Yes. We're giving free consultation, so do you give free consultation? It's my turn now, I guess. I think it's fortunate that I suck at pinball so that I can then stream quicker. Don't we all? In a 3X, right, guys? I can go, well, Jamie's out, time to pop the stream up. I don't like particularly streaming unless I have that engagement, which is why my streams don't start until I'm out. or like last night we did a stream um which was our 3x and i lasted to the final semis so then we started the stream and i was able to get some more people and then run and run over but i think you guys do a phenomenal job of having like a hostless stream it's not easy to do well thank you because it's definitely a worry of ours being like oh my god like there's no one actually interacting we do have to chat like at least on the rig next to the game and we get a lot of our players actually looking down and reading and being like oh hey what's going on yeah cool and it's like you still kind of get interaction but it's not like someone commentating and like being there the whole time different streams right yeah totally different do you get pushback by anyone that doesn't want to be on camera and then they realize there's a live stream going on has anyone ever expressed It's been uncomfortable. We've gotten that comment, but it fades quickly. We do have it on the door. We have a be warned sign. And one of the things is we record you in every way. So, I mean, if you're coming into the facility, you should just know that that's something that we're going to be doing anyway. But those that have had any kind of issue, it was rather small and they got over it. The most we get is like, you go to put the rig on someone like during a tournament and they go, oh, no. Yeah. But like that's. We have two rigs. And so, you know, we'll throw the double rig thing up. And now I've got eight people pissed at me. Yeah. It's just like this is part of the thing. Like, why did you pick my game? I'm like, because I want to pick on you. That's why. There you go. Get used to it. This is what. You know, John says before each tournament here, we get on the mic and John Spade says, we stream at the Wormhole. And he has a spiel for everybody. Right. But if they don't feel uncomfortable, we do have circumstances where I'll avoid them. You know, but the room cam is going to pick them up. And I don't have the software that Coe and I have talked about where it could blur people's faces. that's my dream is like if I'm at the quarter drop and I'm open the arcade's being streamed overhand overhead camera shots the rig the whole thing and I can switch between the cameras and like basically people can just be at the quarter drop virtually but there's the privacy concerns that I have if kids are there and you know parents don't want the faces of the it's all understandable stuff um so i'm trying i'm looking into some software that will use ai to blur all the faces of the people and i mean it's pretty cool if you can pull this off i mean it's pretty cool yeah and you've got a test case for this because we want to do it we would love to do something like that at wormhole east you know and then when i'm building a wormhole east it Looks like I'm building three rigs there for our major tournaments. Because with 125 pins, I mean, I need three rigs, right? Well, yeah, probably. Or 125. No. I'll tell you, if you ever want to watch a really unbelievable stream, it's Flipside Memphis. Have you ever seen them? I've poked through, but what aspect of it? Spend some time watching what – and that's David Yopp from Yopsicles. right right and he uh either as a partner or owns uh flip side memphis and he has three cameras over every machine one for the player one for the play field and one for the uh score and he can through a button giant stream deck right oh yeah yeah go to his 32 games or whatever how many he has. And so there's never any dead air. He is my... We are always toying with this idea, but the idea of having 40 times 3 on everything, it's just like that and like the wiring, because like to get the wiring to go to everywhere and like all that. And just the cameras. And just the cameras, yeah. It was funny, I was... Oh good, sorry. Michael, the guy who built our rig, He's looking into these 360 cameras I know And then if he can like figure out a way To pull the pieces out of the 360 camera To make it fit into Yeah And so you can put one camera On the rig You can pull the player from one side You can pull the score and you can pull the play field And then you just arrange it in OBS You arrange it That's what we do, we use multi-views Oh okay So the next rig won't have three batteries and three different axoons on it. Because these things right here, for anyone watching, are a real pain in the ass. And they're expensive. But if you could have a HDMI splitter on top with three inputs coming out to one, then you just need one axoon. Oh, wow. For the whole rig, one receiver, one transmitter. Yeah, that's beautiful. I bought the 360 camera specifically for that reason, where I could have it on a tripod in front of me playing pinball, and it could catch me, the play field, and the D&D. How does it look? It looks great. Yeah. Oh, you're going to be breaking barriers over there. Yeah. Yeah. How much is the 360 camera? No one cares about this. $500, I think it was. Well, that's cost prohibitive, though. Yeah. Times $120. But I was just at the right place. You have three cameras instead of like this is one camera for 520. Oh, that's true. The three cameras. Yeah. It's funny because I was at the arcade today and I was thinking about this. I was looking at that brick wall I made and there's two columns on each side of the brick wall. And I was saying, well, what if I put a pipe from one end to the other and then the camera rig is on the pipe and I just slide it? then it's like a really easy way to slide the camera from each machine. Cause it is cost prohibitive to do that, you know, to have one, every machine. So I might be experimenting with that. Wow. I have the shower rod curtain idea. I like it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it is. He's really, and that's pretty VA. We had the, uh, the crazy idea of doing the, like, I was watching football and the kickoff went off and like the camera, like followed the ball. And I was like, why don't we do the wire? fly it around like you could just go over whatever game you want just like can you like how much is that shit i know we had a guy come in and he's an engineer of course right and he goes uh above the 76 sign is a uh air conditioner vent all the way down and he's like let's rig a mobile camera and you can control it via robotics and i'm like what are you doing yes there's 50 people tuning in I mean what are we doing we're not making money on this I make no money you know so it's just fun it's just it's become a hobby of mine is streaming right in the podcast so that's I just fall into it and so but I love what you guys are doing you're doing a great job thank you so much thank you we're very fortunate in Houston that we live in a major metropolitan city, right? So getting a large amount of people to come to our establishment shouldn't be that hard because we're in 7 million people around us. How have you built Lynn's Arcade to what you have done? I mean, how did you get this organic growth? It's just incredible. What was the first site that you posted on when we started League? Oh, meetup.com. Meetup.com. Okay. We started league at Angelina's Pizzeria in Salinas. They had four pinball machines, and there was me, Carrie, and Nikki, Carrie's wife. And we just were like, we want to start a league, so we're going to start a league. And then we just started playing. And then slowly he put it up on meetup.com. I went to Pinside. You can use Pinside to find the map for where everybody is. Send everyone direct messages. Pinballowners.com, same thing. you can kind of reverse find out where some folks are. And so just used any avenue we could to communicate that we started a pinball league. And it's funny because we keep finding people and they keep finding us. So I don't know. And you talk about social media. Our advertising is, I mean, not prolific. We don't have a very large footprint when it comes to getting us out there. It's all just word of mouth. It's just and maybe that's why we keep finding such neat people because neat people started. I don't know. just it keeps networking to more and more folks and started small, very soulfully and just continued to grow, but never really lost the soul of it. Are people traveling from other cities to come to Lynn's? Yeah, we're getting a few, we get a bunch tournament wise too. Like we get from Bay Area, Arizona, Portland, Washington. Okay. Yeah. People show up because they want to play here. It's pretty cool. So that's vacationers that come that have made us a reason to go on a week vacation, which is really neat to see. I wouldn't have thought that that would be something that we're providing. But I kind of agree when I travel, this is where I would want to be. And I do travel and I go to places like ours and like yours are and will be. And that's I don't know. Lucky that you've got you've just done an amazing job. And I know this is what Coe wants to do. Right. and he's building is building a destination spot. You know, there's not a lot of people in Monterey, California. And to get people to come out of town and that live there in that community to support you has just been amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, League is the big proponent of that. Like League is what makes like – and our League is like – it's like 90% fun and 10% competitive, you know. We are exactly the same. You're not having a good time man Why are you playing pinball I've seen you guys at TPF like your tournament The Space City Open What was it last year when They were playing Jackpot or something and they hit the Jackpot to win and like The whole room just erupts You never see that at a pinball tournament Ever I won't stream it unless it's fun I'm dead serious You know unless we're having fun like last night we had a 3x we're bland or music i'm not going to be able to post any of that shit because of copyright we didn't give rats we were just having an absolute blast yeah and you know we have this thing no a-holes here and i think you guys have the exact same vibe when you build a vibe that's all-encompassing for any type of people you know and just come in, let's play pinball and have a ball, it explodes. Yeah, that's the vibe thing. And that's where we get complimented a lot on our league and our tournaments. And we just had a gentleman here for the quarterly that we put on, and he was like, I've never played in a tournament that fun, like where I had a great time. Everyone was super cool. And, like, even if they had a bad ball, they were still just, like, high-fiving and, like, having a good time. yeah because it's just pinball man like it's just it's a game it's supposed to be fun yeah exactly people take it way too seriously sometimes and it's like now we yeah we try to chug that off and be like no yeah we're not fun and they're being serious especially for a 3x on a monday right right like come on now dude you're gonna get 15 whoppers you're gonna win everyone here is always the top three people are always in the finals all the time I mean, just relax. My goal is just to get there and just be happy. And so, yeah, I love what you guys are doing. You know, electric bat, same type of great vibe, right? Formal, same type of great vibe. How many people do you get for league? Between 40 and 50 every Monday. That's a lot. For us, it seems like a lot. Every now and then, we'll get up to like 60. 2,500? Square feet? Oh, 2,760.1. Substantial size. It's a good size. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I finally figured out a configuration to get 40 pins in here. I maxed out all my power. Yeah. It's good. I can still fit 70 people and everyone's playing and it's not like super crowded. So I finally figured out my final layout after five years. Does each outlet have a dedicated breaker to it? No. Not each outlet, but each section has breakers. Each section of the arcade has its own breakers. Are they 20 amp breakers each or bigger? Yes, they are all 20 amp breakers. We had to break up the 50 amperes and put in 20. There was welding in this building before, so we were able to use some of it for that purpose. I just got done doing this with the quarter drop, so it's on my brain how to set up an arcade perfectly and how to have electrical all done. So yeah I don't know how interesting that is to most people But I think it is No but it fascinating because of all the electricity Yeah it a lot We had to do it too And then we got so many of the conversion boxes for some of the foreign games oh geez what what are power bills looking like you're got both wormhole and uh at lens if you don't mind sharing numbers like that i think we're like 1500 or so a month okay yeah like not super nutty but still you know a lot yeah a lot of money That's actually helpful because I have no idea. I was guessing that my power bill would be about $1,000 a month. Yeah, you're going to be in that. Right in there. Yeah. That's about right. Okay. That's about right. We're not open as many times as everybody else. So when we're bumming about, it's usually just us. Right. We have three days, and then once or twice a week we have corporate events. So we're not burning it. But it used to suck because our front wall back there was just a hot zone of windows. Oh, geez. Oh, dude, we'd have 60 people in here, and people were melting. And then the odors, it was just awful. So we shut the wormhole down for a month and a half and redid the entire front wall. Oh, wow. Just like, no, no more of this shit. No more of this. This is amateur hour. You can't do this. you do have ac in there don't you oh yeah but it's just constantly pumping because i live near the equator you guys live that's true it's a little different paradises and so i'm really lucky too because my building is in between uh several other cement old over 100 year old buildings it's all you know 20 foot ceilings and they're all concrete so i'm like right in the middle of all that so it stays warm in the winter and you know cool in the summer, even without AC, although I am having AC anyways, just in case. But yeah, I think the energy consumption won't be too bad. It is interesting as you build out the place, because Matthew just said he did a final layout. I still think he's wrong. There's no final layout ever, I don't think. But he's continued. I mean, he can shake, but he's really refined this, but over five years, right? And with each of those moves, though, it required the power to be dropped from a different place. Some locations changed, right? So as the arcade continues to evolve, you then also get to evolve with it with, oh, no, utilities come here now. That's where that breaker goes now. You guys have nothing but pinball? Is it all pinball or do you have any like coin-op arcade games? All pinball. All pinball. Yeah, we're 40 pins. And, you know, we go back and forth on bids, you know, just to round out and kind of get a different clientele. But every time I think about it, I'm just like, but I love pinball. Like, I just I know it's just so hard that I love playing video games, too. But like. But I love pinball. Like, I don't know, it's just like there's something about it definitely is taking over the gaming for me. and you know traveling around and working with marco and going to all these shows and teaching people how to like work on their games and all that and i'm like this is my my passion and my hobby so like i can't like going into vids i'm like that's going to be a little bit later probably like if we had more space like i'd put video you put i'd put more pinball you would like it would be more pinball but i would try to find some like like we had the opportunity at one point to take over other things, but it fell through. COVID did us no favors. We had the ideas of the skee-ball and the pop-a-shot things and the video games and sit-down racing games. There's all the stuff that I love to play, too. And then I know it's just going to have been canonized by pinball. Well, if you put in a bowler or whatever, it's not moving really quickly. So much space, too. So much space. But I like those types of coin-op games that are the multiplayer, kind of like you get in pinball, the social aspect, right? Because you have one person that can be active on the game and others can be communicating. Or you have all four of you or eight of you on one team in a co-op mode. Those are the features that I found most interesting and I really was hoping we could bring into this space because I thought it would complement pinball well. maybe a gauntlet right X-Men Turtles all the like four player games Killer Queen, an indie game, eight players Killer Queen was like I have had the most fun playing Killer Queen with random people I walk up and there's four on one side and three on the other so I just walk up and I'm going to jump in and they're like yeah then you're like talking shit to people on the other side that you don't even know they're all laughing with you it's just like it's just like all of a sudden you got three new friends it's like i just got a galactic battleground that's a two versus two retro space shooter oh yeah it's kind of like you know you got two people on each team and you're just smack talking to each other and trying to take out the other spaceships it's pretty fun what's that tabletop one that had the castles and all the four corners yeah uh warlords warlords that's another a really fun one to play with like with all four people it's like you're just like again you're just like talking mad shit just like trying to like yeah kill each other's castles it's so cool it's rare and expensive though it's like a five thousand dollar cocktail cab every time i see it i'm like i'm playing this let's go friends let's do this yeah it's so good uh out of the three cities that we are showcasing tonight you guys are definitely the biggest group of hipsters okay compared to so my question is what hipster trends will we be seeing in houston in 2025 that you're already seeing there now and maybe cottage grove what do you think 2030 for you i don't think the hipster trend is going to make it that's what i'm saying 2030 so what new haircuts phrases clothing what do we have to look forward to coming to houston oh gosh my eyes glaze over my ears when they start talking. I don't know. I'm not hip. I don't know how to hang out with all this. Yeah, I have no clue, man. Like, I don't, yeah, same. I'm not paying attention to what other people are doing. I'm just playing pinball and having a good time. Like, we try to bring a good time, so I have no clue, man. I got no hipster. Well, that beard is pretty hipster rocking. Oh, thank you very much. This is just comfort level. I don't like to shave, so like just go to a barber every once a month and There you go. Yeah, but you've got to – I think you – do you put some dye in the middle or any of that? No, dude. This is all natural. All right. I don't know. I'm just – I dye mine gray. Yeah, Coe's got that nice gray in there. Yeah, for sure. It's got to be who you are, bro. What's it like, Matthew, working for Marco, and how long have you worked for them? I've been working with them for a year now. So I've been going to shows for a year constant. It's been a lot of fun. I love going and helping them create the environment. I'm really excited about going to Expo and seeing all the X-Men that Stern's bringing. And, like, going to Portland this week or next weekend is going to be really cool. And just helping them create the environments. And then I'm really fast at setting up games. and so I can help them blast through that portion as fast as we can so we can get everything set up and ready to go. But it's a great time. The people there are amazing. Love working with all the Marco crew. They're dope. I love Emoto. One of my favorite things is, Ko, seriously, when you go to TPF or Houston Arcade Expo is watching Marco work. Oh, yeah? It's like a clinic of putting together these massive areas of pinball machines, the Marco Booths. And they're just massive. Yeah, and all this creativity on the Booth design and stuff, and then to be there to help, like, accomplish her vision. And then when it's done and you stand back, you're just like, this is insane. Like, how did we get this into two palettes? Like, it's just incredible. and then they rock while they're doing it they're the only ones that have music and they're rocking when they're doing it's so awesome i love and i don't want to hang out i want to hang out with them so bad but they're working right so i can't if you're hanging out you're working with us let's put it that way like if you're in that area like hanging out you're you're grabbing something you're putting stuff together you're helping out you're having a good time doing it and like that that's the best part about hanging out with that crew well congrats for working with them they're great thank you yeah and uh you know we all we have the wormhole booth at tpf and hughes arcade we were talking about houston arcade we're all bummed yeah yeah marco's not going to be there they haven't been there for two years now two years this fortunately yeah yeah yeah and that was one of mark's uh favorite shows too like uh mark uh mandletort it was like eastern was one of his favorite shows and so was uh golden state so hopefully we can get marco to come back to both of those because he loved those hometown shows. Getting Marco to come back to those would be awesome. Is it because Houston and Expo are so close together that they're not going to both? No, it's just... There's other reasons. There's so many shows a year and there's so much money in a budget. What are you going to do? I would say it's got to be an insane amount of work setting up a show like that. Just moving one pinball machine to a different section and area in my garage is like a project. I can't imagine like hauling a bunch of machines in the truck and setting up a booth. And I mean, my gosh, what a nightmare. Yeah. Jamie, you guys bring in like wall panels and shit. Oh, man. Your Houston booth is so sick. Our Houston and the TPF booth. And the TPF booth. That's what I saw. Right. We just sit in storage. but we bring this booth, right, that looks like the wormhole. So we have these panels that we put up that have pictures of the wormhole, so it looks like you're coming into the wormhole. Very cool. And then we bring some pretty rare machines. Like for Houston, we're bringing a Magic Girl. Oh, wow. Oh, shit. That's been upgraded from the guys from the Netherlands. Have you heard of that story? No. You have, right, Carrie? Anyway, so these guys from Netherlands took a Magic Girl and finished it. Oh, my gosh. Made it actually work. Made it actually work. And redid the code, redid the magnets, did everything. And then they sell this kit for the 20 other people that have a Magic Girl, right? It's not a very prosperous. It wouldn't seem like it was a good move. Because I don't think it was that much, right? and they sent a kit to us. And we have two engineers that love the wormhole that said, we'd like to do this. And over the course of a few months, they upgraded our Magic Girl. Holy shit. Congrats. How many upgraded Magic Girls do you think there are in the world? Oh, there's like five. Yeah, there might be three. I saw one on YouTube being played, an upgraded one. Didn't they have one at Expo last year? Yeah, I had one at TPF. I think that's where I saw it. I think it was Expo last year. Yeah. And so we're going to – yeah. Those are the newer ones, and they brought one old one. That's what Tim's telling me. Tim's in the background, my producer, telling me. So we're going to bring ours to Houston Arcade Expo. That's fantastic. Thank you for sharing. That's the kind of stuff that is neat to get shared. not everyone knows the history or the bad news about the history of that game but to get and to get it to folks is so neat i mean that one that one's more of a labor than of love than maybe even shipping something from across the ocean and fixing a cabinet that that one is like re-engineering something that was just never engineered properly that's and it wasn't because that game was so custom made by Zidware that it, or Deeproot, whatever the hell they were, they made, like, mistakes. There were so many different, like the owl would be pointed wrong or different things. So, and then every, the kit doesn't, it's not like here, here's a kit, install it. Some of the things don't work. And they had these real engineers, and one of them works for Barrels of Fun, so he had a lot of fun. Yeah, nice. So we were able to really get that done. We actually put a YouTube post on it. It's actually a pretty cool YouTube video that we made of fixing and upgrading the Magic Girl. So we're going to bring that. And I think locomotion. Oh, cool. So that should be pretty cool. All right, let's play a game real quick, Coe. Okay. We're going to play a game called Do You Know This Pen? All right. These are five. I want to go one, two, three, four, five, six. Six pens. So we're going to see if you know them. Do I know them or do we have them? You know them. You have them. You've played it. You've ever seen it. Okay. These are the six games that I'm going to choose here. I want to see if I can know how to share this stuff. All right. Let's see if I know how to share this. All right. First one. Zacharia Blackbelt. Mm-hmm. Played it on my VPN. Has anyone seen this or played this? never seen it never played it seen it on the interwebs because i i needed to cook complete my dojo right because we have a uh the bushido and then the other black belt yep look how cool that that was that's a really we wanted to complete the uh the dojo collection and the art on that one is super neat uh it's super cool and you and you have that and you have that right i don't know if we have that we're not talking about that yet. Oh, that's the second phase of this? All I'm doing is showing you some really cool pins. This one is called Fight. What? No, I haven't seen it. But it is a Playmatic. Evil Fight is a Playmatic 1980 machine. I like the artwork. I've got one more for Evil Fight. Are you ready? I do. Here's the back glass. You've got to see the back glass for Evil Fight. I like to load up my virtual pinball machine with a lot of the more rare stuff that I'll probably never own. So, like, that's where I play Black Belt. Play Mad Evil Fight. All right. Let's do the next one. That photo was taken outside. There was a garden gnome. What are you doing leaving these rare games outside, man? We need to preserve these. The others need to play them, no? These are regular photos on the Internet. All right. Have you seen this? Whoa. Sonic. Sonic Star Wars 1987 I know I clicked through those at one point this just doesn't seem familiar what was it in Australia was the other Empire Strikes Back Star Wars game gosh whatever that was manufactured by at the time I'm going to show you one more did I show you Brave Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did we count to six already? this game is fast and fun all right i got two more i'm going to show you this one here it goes like how we set up pinball brave team what brave team is an inder 1985 i like the helmets okay and i show you just trying to get this captive audience to want to go to Wormhole Because we will go I mean, we were already going to go. I know you're coming, but here's the play field. Oh, that is freaking awesome. Isn't that awesome? All right, one more. This one, I only have a picture of the play field. I only have one picture of it because it's so rare. It's so cool. People that want to see these probably should check out the YouTube channel. All right. What? Was this the conversion kit? This is Geiger 1984 Dark Rider. What the hell? Dark Trek conversion kit. Only $150 made. We have the whole kit. What? That's the game. We have the whole thing. All right. So, yeah. These are ours that we're going to be showcasing at. Holy shit. At the Wormhole Inball Museum. Let me book my plane ticket. Those are just, in all seriousness, I know this sounds pretentious, those are just a touch of what we have in our collection. Yeah, every time I see you guys at shows, it's like the stuff that you're bringing, and I'm like, how did you get this and then get it to be so nice and works well? I'm like, I'm always impressed. That's going to be the secret sauce at the Wormhole. takes that's going to be you're absolutely right we're very lucky that we have texts that are geeking i mean geeking on these things right and one of our texts is constantly posting on pinside like hey help me and then the pinside community has really been helping him try to figure out how the hell do you fix you know a playmatic evil fight right who has this knowledge in their brain like, whoa. And they're doing it. So your Ender game that you had shown, does it have a whole mess of relays operating it as well? Because the DMD of Bushido, which is the last of the Ender games, it still has a rose of relays that run the thing. It's not a... I would be lying to you if I knew what the hell you were even talking about. Okay, but it's really interesting that they were blending so much technology in Ender. I can understand why they went out of business. it made no bloody sense. All right. We're going to go into hurry up. Our last bit, we've kept you long enough. Our last game is called the hurry up. And really what it is, is rapid fire question and answer, but co is going to get to play this time. All right. Okay. So ready. You're ready. And I don't really have music. Yeah. It would be really cool. if we get more viewers then we can pay for sound effects I can you know maybe just do it in post it'll be fine I have an editor and an intern named Ryan Gregg so Ryan that's what I want okay Co rarest arcade or pinball machine you'd love to feature at the quarter drop arcade I'd love to feature um man eater 1975 fiberglass cabinet looks like a shark steven spielberg had one in his office after he made jaws super cool rare amazing looking cabinet looks like it hurt you if you played it uh lynn's arcade most played machine at lynn's right now ron tron i mean overall, like to date, we've had Tron a long time, so it's got 30 plus thousand games on it. I mean, Deadpool and Stranger Things Deadpool just got back to the lineup, so not fair. Stranger Things took over Deadpool. They were kind of battling for most played otherwise. What's the machine that casuals gravitate to the most? If we had World Cup Soccer, it'd be that. We took it out of the lineup right now, but yes. World Cup soccer was definitely the most for the casuals. I've been thinking about getting Stranger Things because I thought people would really like it. They play it a lot because of the theme. The theme drives that one for sure. Theme-based stuff, the newer Sterns actually play really well, even for folks that are used to playing older games, or were originally playing older games, John Youssi them find the themes. So you'll see Jaws get played a fair amount from folks that played in the past or didn't play. Godzilla is getting beat up now that we brought it back to. That's getting played a lot. That's really smart that you rotate those out. I know this isn't the hurry up, so let me get back to it. Question for the group. Action button, yes or no? Yes. yes maybe he was like peer pressure it has a lot of features sure what about you Jamie do you like the action button no Star Wars is the worst machine ever because you gotta just go you gotta be in your 20s to play Star Wars it messes my brain up for sure I like it in Jaws Yeah, sure, that's easy I can do one or two You know, give me a missile On 007, I'll shoot it I'll hit it Give me Star Wars, you ruined it The action button Well, the Revenge of Jaws, I thought that's what you were talking about Because in the Revenge of, you do have to tap it to chop it Yeah, that's fun too That is such a great one That's my answer, I like them now Alright, because Jaws Revenge is a pretty cool mode It's so cool Amazing. All right. I changed mine too. Lin's Arcade. Most annoying tourists. Whale watchers or golfers? Golfers. Yeah. Got to say golfers. We have a whale watcher in our league. I kind of support our whale watchers. Golfers are annoying. Can be. It's actually not even. It's not either of those, man. I'm talking about you two. Not talking about you two. Other golfers. Different people. Yeah. It's not even those, though. It's the car week. When we get car week, it's those people. It's like a week of car shows. Yeah. And those people are annoying as hell. They're all so much money. I was going to say, the more money, the more annoying, I'd imagine. Yeah. So we get really cool golfers in, and we get really cool whale watchers in. But sometimes we get cool car people. But for the most part, they're kind of all dicks. just kidding not all days no no no they're great just don't be open that week right what Pandora or Spotify station co will you be rocking at the quarter drop oh the custom made quarter drop Spotify playlist that I made nice are you going to share that with people you should totally share that yeah it's got everything from like movies like Robocop you know the theme of robocop and then it's got 80s classics of course and like tv jingles and stuff i've kind of intertwined what you think of like when you think of 80s arcade vibes and nostalgia into one playlist same question for lynn's you guys rocking any music when you're playing all the time it's uh everything really honestly it gets mixed up on a daily we don't have any playlists that's been curated it's it's we usually just do pandora and take a station one day and kind of run with that for a while and depends on like weekend days too like during tournament stuff like we'll have a kind of a mellower like 80s 90s kind of stuff going on and then we'll kick it up a notch into like some punk rock later on and then when we do like the late night thing we're throwing like the daft punk station so it's all like house music and like get everybody re-energized so they can get to midnight or 1am when we're done playing in our psycho all-day, all-night tournaments. Does Normal have music? You know, we don't. We hadn't, but last night we started to rock and put on a playlist. Was it Creed? It wasn't Creed. It wasn't Creed. If you haven't heard the story of creed i went backstage and i met mark termani again and mark's a fan of the wormhole and a huge pinballer so check out the music on twitch all right buddy uh that's tim uh hood here he was talking in my ear half the podcast so hard to concentrate sorry about that uh no but we did we tried it last night and what a different dynamic it changed right you know normally we have it but It's low. Last night we rocked it, and it was awesome. You know, between Ozzy and Black Sabbath to all the way to Creed. You know, my sacrifice. So it was Creed. Ow. Oh. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Linz RK, where can people find you guys? Seaside, California. Where can they find you online? Instagram, Facebook. to get on Marco TV every now and again doing Pintech Live, working on games and stuff with them. And then you'll find us at all the shows that we can get to. People need to go to Pintech Live because it's a really great stream. It's a great stream, and I have no problem pumping that up as a non-paid sponsor. They're outstanding. Yeah, they do great stuff. Like the Phil's from Phil's Pinball back in North Carolina, they're awesome. I've been working with them at a couple shows and like got to meet Phil and dive deep into some games and his knowledge is super good and then who else does she get on there she gets a couple other people on there but it's a lot of fun yeah it's very informative it's really great and if you're in the pinball hobby you should definitely watch them on Twitch it's outstanding I think her last one she did was with Ernie who is a homebrew guy and so So he's doing a bunch of like homebrew stuff. And this year at Expo, they've actually gotten up to 30 confirmed homebrews will be at Expo this year. So that's like the biggest showing of homebrew games ever. They're exploding, man. Did you think everyone just sat in COVID and all the engineers went, shit, I want this and I want that, and they just did it? Yeah, I think they were like, we could build one, sure. Yeah. With Fast coming out and Fast Pinball's board sets that you can just buy, and it's just like a kit, and then you can start wiring and coding with their boards, and it's not expensive. So Ernie and Aaron do a lot of stuff at the show, too. They'll be actually in Atlanta at Southern Pride. They were actually sitting there wiring a game at the show and coding at the show, like talking to people as they were doing it's like so dope like so it's they're really trying to get people comfortable with the idea of like building your own game is it's a lot of work but it's also like it's fun to you and it's you're passionate about it you can do it it's not super crazy did you get to real quick did you guys get to play saw that's yeah dude the white or though I really like Glenn, and he did the music for that. And wow. Yeah. Oh, this game is the music. Yeah. The coding, it's really unbelievable. Scary as shit. I've heard you talk about it. I want to play it. It sounds amazing. Saw was good. Friday the 13th was really good. Really good. Our favorite, just because he's our hometown dude, is Boys Night Out. like so joel actually lives in marina and he's been building this game uh over the last few years and he's brought it to the arcade he's taking it to san francisco he's taking it to santa cruz and put it in different bars and it's super super fun um he's finally getting to the stage where he has like all the artwork on the play field and like ramps that are being built and so it's getting to that like stage of i'm gonna buy one no kidding yeah i'm pretty excited about that oh man that's awesome you love to hear those success stories i hope somebody buys saw because it's pretty ba yeah i think that would actually maybe do really well yeah i'm still waiting for my mad max pin somebody out there needs to make it no did John Youssi the one in uh australia someone did make oh i haven't seen it they rethemed a uh high speed two oh perfect you put the shifter on the left side because that's where they shift in australia yeah and then like the redid the sounds on the car so it sounds like Mad Max's car from the movie. The interceptor? Yeah. Did they do the first movie? The second movie? Yeah, you can't put Thunderdome in it. I think it's just Mad Max. The original Mad Max. I mean, if you did a home pin on Thunderdome, you're totally just making a terrible mistake. I think you're wasting a lot of time in your garage. Thunderdome has moments that are brilliant. As a whole, it's It's a little rough. He said, no, it doesn't. It has Tina Turner. It does, though. Yeah. Tina Turner, she's amazing. The video was good. All right, Coe, where can people follow you and your progress on the Quarter Drop? Quarter Drop Arcade on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and then quarterdroparcade.com. And, of course, you can follow Wormhole at wormholepinball.com. Updated website will be out in probably about three or four weeks. And then Wormhole Pinball on all the socials. Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you, dude. It took an hour of your time. I really appreciate you, Kerry. I really appreciate you, Matthew. Co, of course, co-host. Lynn's Arcade, Seaside, California, Monterey, one of the most beautiful places on earth. And, you know, I always joke I've got to go to these places, but I am going to be going to California in a couple years. And I was thinking about doing a trip all the way up. Nice. Some really cool places. And definitely during league night I'd love to come by. please do would love to have you I can't wait to see you at Expo are you going to Expo? I don't know I have work responsibilities that may actually take me to Chicago that exact week on accident maybe I don't know I'm working to see if that works that way but Matthew you're going I'm going I'm not bringing Nikki she's coming out there Thursday at least two of us from Lens will be there I'm going Tuesday Oh nice Because we're a glutton And then we've got the whole Houston Arcade Expo the week before Yeah you guys are going to say I took two weeks off I was so tempted to do both And I just thought about it Because I have Portland Next week I'm doing pinball at the lab this weekend Portland the weekend after that And then it would have been Houston and then it would have been Expo So it would have been Sounds like a dream Oh fuck dude I'm like I need to breathe in between like good lord well thank you guys so much again for Wormhole Pinball Arcades Across America my co-host Ko thank you guys so much for being here we really appreciate you no worries Ko nice to meet you man absolutely same thank you for having us remember our stupid phrase that I end every podcast with but it is important don't be an a-hole alright just don't let's just play pinball and have fun 100% alright God bless you guys thanks so much see you then