you'll be speaking to the head-to-head people on the house find us on facebook email us at head-to-head people at gmail.com Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 47 and my name's Martin. Are you with me? It's Ryan C and I am sick of interviewing stern employees. I thought we'd change it up a little bit this time, Marty. Yeah, not quite a stern employee, but might as well be. So, Roger Sharp, the guy who saved pinball. This is not him, but one of his sons. And not the successful one, the other one. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Josh Sharpe. for real this time, for longer than one minute. So far, I mean, we have to see how it goes. We've got to get to the first minute first. How are you, Josh? How's it going, boys? Yep, we are really good. So, besides obviously being, you know, the brother of someone famous and the son of someone famous, what would you say, in the pinball world, is what you would say your claim to fame is? I mean, I would certainly at this point I'd probably say IFPA-related stuff is what I'm best known for these days. I mean, I try to wear a ton of different hats in terms of dealing with, you know, the Stern guys in development over the years and sort of being friends with all of those people. But really, yeah, the competitive side and increasing the awareness of pinball as a sport. and making changes each year that then gets the wrath of just about everybody. I love the hate. I don't know what it is. We haven't changed things that much in a while. We're due for something major. You're in an elevator, Josh, right? And you're having this conversation with someone who doesn't know much about pinball. And you say, oh, yeah, I'm kind of the head of the IFPA. And they say, what's that? So give us your 30-second elevator pitch on what the IFPA is. I think sort of today it's become like the governing body of pinball as a sport. So, you know, sanctioning events and helping events get started. We're sort of just here as a global resource to try to tie the whole world of competitive pinball together. So one of the questions that comes up that people ask me is, you know, is it a sport really? and I always come back and say, well, if you think dance is a sport, so is bingo. But what's your definition? Why do you define it as a sport? I don't know. I think it's a sport at the highest level. I play a lot of golf and I see so many similarities between golf and pinball that like, I don't know, it just feels so similar. It hits all of those notes. And it's like, if it's technically not a quote-unquote sport, you know, whatever it is, it's scratching that itch for me. Yeah, sorry, what I was going to say was you were saying golf and football. I think, like, they both have balls. The end. But, like, the ability to be able to, I guess, like, you're playing against yourself, even though you're playing other people, and you're not in complete control of what's going on. You know, when you hit a golf ball, it's sort of like you can hit it where it's going, but whether it bounces one way or the other, you know, the world of pinball is like that all over the place in terms of making a shot and then having to recover or missing a shot and things bouncing the wrong way. I don't know. There's just that sense of anxiousness when you need to do something great that feels very similar to me. So, you know, if you're standing over a putt that you really don't want to miss, you know, it strikes the same nerves as, like, having the ball on a flipper and needing to, like, shoot that scoop to tour the mansion or whatever. Yeah. My sort of, my answer to that, besides the whole darts thing, is I say, well, it is a physical activity. There are competitions. There's elite players. and if you practice, you get better. Therefore, it is sport-like. I like sport-like. Yes, if people don't want to call it a sport, it's definitely sport-like. But, I mean, there is definitely, for anyone that's played Pinburgh, and I think, Ryan, are you coming to Pinburgh this year? No. Mark, you're coming to us? So, like, it's, like, the endurance part for people that aren't aware, you know, it caught me on the first Pinburgh where it's just like, good lord. I mean, standing on a chair for 10 hours in a row is probably a sport at some point, trying to do that. But, I mean, it takes a toll on you, you know, mentally, physically, and emotionally during that entire day. Well, it's kind of caught in the middle now, I think, in that you've got what people would identify as traditional sports. You've now got the genre of esports that's absolutely, you know... That's a great point. Right. That's great. But pinball is somewhere in the middle because it doesn't necessarily get lumped into esports. It's not lumped into traditional sports. So how does it make a name for itself? I think, and I was just, I had an interview with somebody today that sort of brought up a similar point and then tied that into how pinball has been able to survive for so long and how, you know, my thoughts on whether it's likely to survive long-term going forward. And I think, you know, the ability to not be able to sort of put the game in a box and declare it as one thing or another, it's such a unique thing unto itself. I think that's sort of the thing that makes pinball most special and not replicable as, you know, something to do. It's like, it's its own thing. I also think because its origins are in an arcade, and people think, well, arcades are just fun and they're for kids, how could it be serious? Yeah, I don't know. It's like, but, you know, these days, like, there's competitive everything, right? Like, take anything you want. The Rubik's Cube contests are insane. You can go on YouTube and watch these people do it in, like, 8.7 seconds. Like, oh, my God, it's three tenths too late. I'm just done. I'm out of here. But the competitive aspect of a thing, I think, is being exploited a lot these days, and we're trying to help do that out of the pinball space. So you are obviously now the governing body of competitive pinball. Why did you need to set up the IFPA back when you did? I mean, the big thing that was going on with the competitive landscape at that time was these events would just happen, right? Like you would have like Pinball Expo in Chicago and, you know, you would show up and play and then that would be it. And there'd be other random events that would pop up. But there was nothing sort of tying everything together in terms of motivating people to attend more for something bigger. So and then, you know, you take that to the next level with sort of the Internet happening and the ability to, you know, where the ranking system came from was the ability to indirectly compete against your peers from all around the world. So, you know, I might not be able to play, you know, Richard Rhodes and Eddie and the guys in Australia at my local events in Chicago and in the Midwest, and they can't play me, you know, traveling around the Australian circuit. But trying to come up with a way where we could compare our results to each other just gave a way for the sport to offer more to the players. Do you think the current ranking system can be improved in any way? Do you think it accurately represents who is the best player in the world? I think it's pretty good. We haven't changed it that much in a while since we went to... I mean, the biggest change, I think it's now three years ago, where instead of having a minimum value guaranteed for every tournament that happened, We started grading the quality of tournaments based on the players that played and the format that was happening, which for eight or nine years, I would always just say, it's impossible. We'll never be able to do that. Then we figured out a way to do it. For those that are new to it, basically each tournament awards players Whoppers, which stands for something. It stands for something. World Pinball Player Rankings. points. WPR being the one. And your top 20 results count towards your ranking. Correct. And they have an expiry date, so they start to lose percentages of their value after a year, possibly. Yes. Well, you've done very well, Ryan, so far. You've reached... No kidding. Yeah. I remember you talking about it on another podcast. It's a pretty shame. So if they have 75% value and after two years they're worth 50%, is that right? Yeah, and then after three they go to zero. So Ryan, I think he's been very much on his education path since we've been doing this podcast. But one of the things that I remember a couple of months ago he did talk about was he was sort of trying to understand how the different formats are worth certain amounts and the whole TGP thing. So you could probably talk for hours about it, But just for somebody like Ryan, who needs a bit of a... The 10-second explanation of that is, if the more games it takes to win an event, the better judge of skill that event is. So, you know, like, the volatility of the result goes down. I mean, I'm watching the basketball game right now. Like, there's... the series is a best of seven. And over the course of those seven games, it's more likely that the better team will win than if they played one game for all the marbles. Sure. Okay. Here's something that happened last week. So I went to a three-strikes tournament. Okay. By round 10, it was over, round 10 or 11, I managed to go through without any strikes. Damn. Yeah, it is a fluke. All right, so... A bit of a humble brag. Keep going. Yeah. This is my thing. If I lost two strikes at the end and then won my last game, the tournament would be worth more. So I was... That is incorrect. No? Okay. So we have plenty of volunteers that help do what we do, but when we went about doing this grading of formats, a player named Dave Stewart actually went through and computed the expected number of rounds for every player count for every strike. Ah, okay. So, because that was an issue. You know, when we were talking about how we were going to do this, it's like the ability for people to extend matches on purpose. I mean, it was a thing. It was a real thing. So, you know, a 22-player three-strike tournament where, you know, in groups of four is worth the same no matter what actually happens. Guys have almost exploited everything, right? I mean, there's always exploits to be had. We've got 12 years at this, man. There's been a lot of band-aids, I would say, over the years. And we continue to, you know, people try to exploit the way that they... It's the nature of pinball players, right? They do it with game rules when they're actually playing games, and they do it with our rules. Yeah, that's the whole nature of it being competitive, right? Yeah. The most popular email I get is, you know, what's the quickest way for me to get 100% TGP? And my answer is always, if I knew the answer, we would fix it. Because the whole idea is that it's supposed to be sort of equal to time. So there was also an exploit where basically, I guess the more people you have in the tournament, the more the tournament's worth. And I think you mentioned on a previous podcast that people were kind of just, they're at a bar and they would kind of include people that weren't really into pinball and say, hey, play a couple of balls. And they, you know, they would just kind of flip around a little bit and then that would increase the value, but they weren't really pinball people. So you now have, you know, the ability to pretty much, the people that haven't played more than five pinball tournaments. Yes, they're not graded. And that actually came from, there was a tournament in Louisville here in the States, and we saw the results of the mission. This was probably three or four or five years ago now. But, you know, I had been to the tournament before, and it's typically, you know, around 100 players. What you would see out of, I mean, Indisc is bigger than that these days, but a lot of those, like, Herb-style, normal, pump-and-dump type stuff is usually around 100 players for the bigger regional tournaments here. and we got a result, and it was like 384 players. And I was like, oh, my God, what did they do down there? This is amazing. Like, you know, how did they – Kimball's on the out. Right. Oh, my God. They gave away, with an entrance into the show, one free tournament ticket. Right. And then they also put – I forget whatever the newest game was out at the time, but they put that in the tournament bank, and the only way for people on the show to play this game were they just had to go in the tournament bank, and they could play the new game and then leave. So you had all these people that literally just played their one free game on the new game and left. So also in the tournaments as well, if the ranking of the actual player, does that contribute to the overall value of the tournament? Yes. Yes, it does. So every player has a value associated with them that they, if you think of the points available in a tournament as like a pot of water, like everyone has cups of water with different amounts of water in it. So someone like Raymond brings the most water to the table. And it works its way down based off of there's two metrics that we use. One is where they're ranked in the world, Whopper-wise, and the other is our ratings metric. So is ratings more, like Asa said, there's people in Australia that never travel, they don't play in big tournaments, so they could probably never have a super high ranking. But is rating, do you think, the more accurate representation of where someone is? Like, Raymond's one on both, right? So he's the best player. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why we have, you know, we keep that stat, because we think it's a good stat. And it's based off of, you know, the whatever, Glico, Chess algorithm that we're simulating based on our tournament results. but you know there's whatever there's four Aussies in the top 20 in rating and I do think it does a good job of of showing and let's just call it the potential skill level of a player I mean there are there are ways and similar to chess I mean I've I've read enough about like people in chess won't take certain matches against other rated people because they only stand to lose and stand nothing to gain. So you can game the system a little bit that way by, you know, if I only played in local events here in Chicago where I was the best player by far, my rating would just continue to go up. So, you know, most of the time, at some point, you know, good players put themselves in situations of playing other good players, and then the metric, the good thing about the metric is it's pretty volatile. So unlike Whoppers, where it's sort of your career performance stat, you know, the rating can move. I mean, I've seen Elwin, you know, sort of quit a tournament and leave and finish, whatever, 60th out of 64 people. And his rating dropped like 200 points, which goes from like first to like, I don't know, 300th or something crazy like that. And how about the last one, the rating efficiency? Efficiency percentage? What does that mean? So that is, if you go to a tournament and it's worth 100 points and you earn five points at that tournament, then your efficiency percentage is 5%. So what it does is it looks at all your events. It takes the total Whoppers that you earned and divides it by the total Whoppers that were available. Okay. So how many Whoppers do you steal from a tournament? Right, so like Jordan, who's at 60%, you know, I mean, that's pretty phenomenal based on how the formula of our distribution works. I mean, that's like he's finishing in the top three of everything he plays, most likely. Pretty much what actually happens. Right, so it's like, you know, what does that mean? Does that mean that he would come and win Papa? Like, no, but like it's certainly, it's a metric that certainly shows like this kid is obviously good enough to be winning where he's playing. how that translates to where you fall in the true world only really happens when we all get together, like we just did in Toronto, and you actually get to play each other. So that's probably one of the, I'll call it criticisms, but maybe a challenge, and it's something that does rear its head on the Aussie forums from time to time, is the Australia versus America or rest of the world equality. And I get that, but someone like Jordan, for example, he, and it probably does reflect the real story, right, in that he does win just about every tournament that he wins. So because of the standard of player underneath him, he doesn't necessarily probably get the maximum amount of whoppers that he could get. So the challenge for us is really how we get more people into it and how we get players better, I guess. Sure. I mean, for us, there's always been, the debate has been, and you guys in Japan and New Zealand, I mean, you're the perfect example. The argument used to be Europe against the U.S., but now sort of Europe, the Europe scene, when you take into account all the countries and sort of treat them like states in the U.S., like a player can get to number one staying in Europe, and a player can get to number one staying in America. like there is no way a player is getting the number one staying in Australia or New Zealand or Japan it's just the disconnection from the rest of the world just makes it really hard so you know over the years the question that's been posed to us is should the system change to accommodate someone like Jordan being able to reach number one without leaving Australia or the way I look at the system is at some point rankings are rankings the goal of the system is really to motivate someone like Jordan to want to step up and play the best of the world. And so it's like having that carrot of like, hey, dude, if you really want to be known as an elite, elite player, you're going to have to come and face the other great players, wherever that ends up happening. Whether it's in Europe, whether it's in America, whether we all come to Australia, at some point it's going to be those meetings that take you to the elite level. Yeah, but in America, you have, because of distance, you have access to so many more. He doesn't necessarily. And also, being a young kid, he's got to pay for his way as well. Right, right. No, it's true. It's valid. It's valid. Shifting the whole system to accommodate people like that has been an argument that it's like at some point it's better to, and easier for us to say, sorry, Jordan, than explain to the world why this kid most people haven't seen is the best player in the world. And, like, not Jordan, but, like, Peter Watt has been used as an example for years. Yeah, that's right. He won't travel. That's right. Right, exactly, exactly. So, you know, should the system be rewarding Peter and trying to find a way to push him up into the top ten? And it's like, you know, it was part of the reason why we created the Power 100 rankings, which does recognize someone like Peter on, like, a global level. Yeah, for sure. Is the maximum Whoppers you can get without, like, any percentage boosting for Mage Circuits, is it 100? Is that where it tapers out? It is 107, I think. It's 32 base points, and then 50 get added through, like, the ranking, the Whopper value add, and then 25 get added through the rating, you know, pool add. So there's an additional 75 points available based on who plays. Yeah, I thought it might have been kind of unlimited depending on how many people you had there until I was just kind of like clicking around on the IFA website, and I noticed that like the 64-player tournament for the, you know, the World Championships that just happened, you know, last week. Yep. You know, Raymond Davidson got 128 points or whatever it was. Yeah, something like that. So, you know, he beat 63 other people, but they're pretty much the best of the best. Yeah. Colin MacAlpine last year beat 799 people, whatever it was, and he got just like 10 points more. So does that mean that those other 730 people are kind of so insignificant for a player of the caliber of Colin MacAlpine or you or Joshua Keith that they don't really add any more difficulty to the tournament? Well, they definitely don't because the formula uses the best 64 players add water to the pot. So, okay. That's why. Exactly that, actually. You got it. You got it. Where you'll see something like Pinburgh is like, if you go look at Collins' results, see what the value of second place at Pinburgh is versus the value of second place at Toronto. Ryan, don't look that up. Well, I knew it. I'm clicking. I'm curious. So while I ask this question, so it sort of comes back to, you know, when you started IFPA to now, and you'll see where I'm leading this, it really is about the growth of pinball, and I'm bringing it back selfishly to Australia because we still want to grow it. Talk about the growth of the IFPA as far as competing people over that time. Yeah, I think, I mean, do you guys have a chance to read what Dennis wrote up from the Classic Gamers podcast. So, like, that was enlightening to me. Like, he had reached out to me to, like, send him a bunch of data. It was like, here you go, man. Here, go nuts. And, you know, it's, I guess it's easy for me to miss that sort of being too close to the data. Obviously, I check it out and the numbers go up every year. But, yeah, the double-digit percent growth that we've continued to have, I mean, I can remember, you know, the first rankings I put together were 500 players and thinking that if we could ever get to a thousand players like man we're gonna it'll be hookers and blow from there a thousand players crazy I'm sure anyway but and it's like when it when it goes from a thousand and it's like two thousand five thousand tenth and at some point it's like I have no expectation anymore right so you know we're about to hit 60 and it's like okay like like we're not really celebrating anymore because it's just like there's no stopping. Like, I don't get it. 60,000 people that have ever played in a tournament or played in the last three? Okay. That's the forever stat. That's not the active stat. Okay. What is the active stat? And is active anything in the last three years? Is that what you class as active? Yes. The, oh, God, where? I used to have those numbers. I don't have them anymore. Go read what Dennis wrote. I think it's somewhere, and Teolith actually just brought it up, but, like, I think already this year. Yeah, of course not. I don't. I think there's 10,000 active players this year so far. Okay. Or it's somewhere, like, between 8 and 10, and last year there was 12 or something like that. So that's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to find out really more about the growth in the Australian scene, whether you've seen that being on par with the rest of the world. Certainly. I mean, the IFPA has been around, you know, whatever. My iteration of the IFPA has been around, like, longer than the Australia scene really started. Like, you know, it sort of existed the same way that, like, it did in the States in, like, the early 90s, where just, like, these events sort of happened. But I can remember, you know, working with Dan in sort of just getting the IFPA established down in Australia. And, like, you went from, like, we have, like, our country list or whatever, and Australia went from nothing to, like, the second biggest country in terms of people. Right. And so it's been amazing. And I don't, I mean, probably Dan or Luke would be probably better to talk to as far as feet on the ground out there. But, like, you know, I had a chance to talk with Mitch and Grant. Those were the two guys that came out to Toronto, I think, to represent you guys. Yep. And it's like they were talking about their respective areas, and it's like it's insane. It's the same thing that's going on here. It's just nuts. You know, people starting events, more people coming to events. A little bit of a later start, but, you know, the reason why I guess we do a podcast as well is that, you know, the pinball scene in Australia was always big, and I guess it was around the world. But, you know, when you had the slump and, you know, a lot of countries, particularly around in Europe, they sort of didn't really have pinball. Australia always did. It was always part of our culture growing up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and Mark is here too. I mean, you guys are definitely a big part of the business as well. Yeah, that's right. So, I know you don't work for Stern, but when are we going to get a Stern Army? That's a great question. question. We broke the barrier and got Canada in since a couple of months ago. It's on the agenda. We have to be careful. The things that we do with Stern Corporate, direct with the players, there's definitely some... Anytime you go around distribution for anything, there's chances that that distribution gets upset about what you're doing, you know, whether that's the Stern Army, whether that's our rewards program. You know, there's a lot of issues that come up of, like, hey, why are you dealing with my clientele directly? Like, we'll handle that. So in Canada, for a while, we couldn't do it in Canada because the distributors said that, like, no, we'll handle this. And then, of course, they wouldn't. But at some point, it's like, we're just going to do it because nobody else is doing it. But fortunately for you guys, you know, AMD is great down there. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm semi-surprised they haven't started just doing it themselves. But, you know, maybe there's a way for us to, I can talk with Zach about bridging the gap and getting the Army through the AMD guys down there. Because they're sort of so, they have their finger on the pulse, probably better than any other distributor around the world. Yeah, they're already sponsoring a lot of major events. Yeah, it's awesome. They're sponsoring the prison open and donating a couple thousand dollars to that. So the whole rewards... Yes, I think, right? Yeah, yeah, they sponsored that as well. So the rewards program. So I'm ranked outside the top 1,000 players, right? But if I happen to make my way in there, what rewards are available to me, Josh? So it's sort of a roving list of games that are available, and there's special IFPA pricing related to that that I can't speak to on air, but people are welcome to email and ask. And similar to, like, I know distributors can't post pricing. They can email people privately or talk to people privately, so we're sort of set up in that same mold. So does it basically make IFPA a distributor for the top 1,000 players in the world? Kind of, yeah, kind of. Except that, like, I don't have profit. So really, it just goes to Stern directly. Okay. And did anyone from around the world take up on that offer besides people in the U.S.? It's very rare because the most popular question is, you know, hey, what's the pricing? And the answer is always like, oh, my God, this pricing is amazing. The second question is, hey, so can I include this game on, like, the next truck that's going to my distributor? And my answer is like, no, that's where the deal gets really shitty for you. You have to ship the game yourself to wherever you need it to go. Directly from Stern? Directly from Stern. So it's like FOB Chicago to fuck all, wherever it's going. And for a lot of people, it ends up costing the same. I mean, that's why the distributor pricing is so high, because then you have the import duties and taxes and whatever that outside of, you know, I have seen international people ship the game to somewhere in America and deal with it later, that, you know, outside of doing something, you know, shenanigany related, I don't know. Or, I mean, the only way that I've seen that I could see it work is if, you know, Dan and Luke reached out to everyone in Australia who was in the top thousand and said, like, hey, guys, this is the rewards purchase day. Get your order in, and then we're going to do a container together. Yeah, okay. Let's do it once I get in the top 1,000, guys. You can spearhead it, man. Spearhead it. But obviously all these things, like I said, I'm in the rewards program. They really are there designed to promote more pinball. You got it. And promote people to play more pinball. So that was going to be, taking that aside, really, it's actually the tournaments and what we call comps that are really the best way of doing that. But my question is, I don't know, there's so many different scenarios I can give you, but if somebody's starting up a new tournament and it's aimed at getting new people into the hobby, what's the best format for that versus somebody that's established that a large group of people, what's the best format? What advice would you give to people on the types of formats that they use? I think it really depends on your audience. And it's the most popular talk I have with people that are just like, you know, what's going to work best for me? And it's like, I can't tell you that. You need to work it out with the players that are showing up, especially when you're talking about the local level. Yeah. Like, I've made changes to our monthly format here over the years just based off of input from the players. in terms of what they would like to see. So, you know, I know that for a while we would run, you know, a standard, like, double elimination bracket, and the same players that were not as good or the new players, you know, would play two games and leave, and that wasn't as fun. So, you know, with Match Play software that's now available, you know, doing something where everyone gets to play for three hours or the Flipper Frenzy type format where it's just constant play. I mean, I think those are by far the best. Because especially when someone is just getting into playing pinball, like, they probably just want to play pinball. You know what I mean? I mean, it's like, so just keep them going. And I think, I mean, I think that's a huge turnoff, too. And you've sort of seen the backlash of the, like, unlimited Herb style of the Pump and Dumps where, you know, yeah, you can play a lot of pinball, but you end up just standing in line far more than you play pinball. And, you know, for a lot of the newer people who are, like, I don't mind standing in line. I'll get my tablet out, watch the movies, do whatever, talk to people. Like, you know, it's just a part of my weekend, and I'm used to it. But for those people that are eager to play because they're sort of new into it and it's just very exciting, like, there's nothing. And it's just a killer to be standing there sort of twiddling your thumbs, jumping up and down, like wanting to play and not be able to play. So you introduced the selfie format. That was you, wasn't it? Yeah. It was Nate Shivers and I after a podcast with no notes that we just started talking. Imagine that, fellas. Well, that was introduced. I actually ran a selfie league. I think it was probably just over 12 months. It was freaking awesome. You then sort of had to, as you tweaked the rules because people were then exploiting it as well. Has that sort of cooled off that format or is it still pretty popular? I think it depends on, like, our monthly event here is still a selfie format. So for us, we treat the selfie portion a little differently. So instead of it being like everyone qualifies and then like unless you're in the top four, you're not winning. like we do a regular like three strikes type of event but based on the selfie qualifying portion we award prizes we award extra strikes you know we do a lot of like fun stuff with that but you know what would happen is if people couldn't get out and play during the month you know they weren't eligible to show up for the finals because it's it's as if they never even qualified you know so you know we got rid of that restriction in terms of you could just show up and play the night of the final. But if you want to win some cool stuff, and fortunately Stern is 10 minutes from our monthly play season, Zach brings some fun prizes to give away. And it keeps people motivated to play, you know, in the selfie league and snap their pictures just at a chance of a lot of the stuff we do is like random giveaways, too. So it's like as long as you submit at least one selfie score, you'll be eligible for the prizes. So finding ways just to, like, for us, you know, the motivation there is location pinball earnings, right? So outside of just letting people play, it's also, like, how can we get people, you know, who are operating these games more money? Well, so the other format that sort of did go through some changes was the pin golf format. Yeah. Has that had an impact on the number of pin golf tournaments there are? no we thought it was we were going to kill it mostly is that what you wanted to do because no no but like we definitely wanted to make it what we were finding is you know the biggest exploit there you set your target scores for your pin golf to like whatever like the alright the challenge on Adam's family is to shoot the chair ready set go done alright ready go So for us, it was like people were exploiting it with easy courses. And it's like, you know, they were hole-in-ones-a-thon. And you could play nine games in ten minutes. So for us, we wanted to make sure that a game of pinball was as equal to a full game of pinball as you could get. So that's where sort of the grading of the course difficulty came into play with the new pinball rules. I thought that most people would tell me to go after myself and just not run pin golf anymore. And certainly when we announced the rules, people were posting like, great, death of pin golf. Thanks, FPA. You guys are great. But we haven't seen it. People that sort of really want to do it follow our rules, and it's fine. Is it hard to marry up a format that is fun to eagling a lot of points for people that are serious about tournaments? You know, like, there seems to be a lot of people saying that the heads-up format is the most fun, the most nervous, the most exhilarating they've ever felt playing pinball. But it's worth, like, it's the hardest one to organize, and it's worth nothing. It is worth nothing. Yeah, I mean, I would be surprised if at some point, you know, do we make an exception for heads-up formats to be able to sort of grade out better. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if we did that someday, you know, if we really decide to want to push that format going forward. You know, we've only done two ourselves as far as the big one, and I think we're sort of still figuring it out a little bit. But it's also, it's really hard, like, to organize for people that, like, don't have the same game. I know the Slam Tilt guys keep getting the same random old games that they can now do this, but they haven't, right? So it'll be interesting to see if people actually do it or not. Well, how about something like a five-minute game? I was talking to our good mate Jeff Telles about this just before, and he said that Bob Matthews was talking about it, and it's a really exciting format to be televised, and, you know, you'd be able to kind of know roughly how long a tournament's going to take if you said, you know, see how you can go for five minutes and, you know, your best score in five minutes is the score that you get and then hands off. You know, you can run those tournaments now, right? You can, sure. If you only play one ball, you know, you're getting nothing. You're getting a third, pretty much. And I guess, I mean, that just goes to show, like, I don't know, there's the purity of like what pinball is about, right? And you talk, like even if you talk to like the greatest, the great players that played in Heads Up, and it's like, oh yeah, that was awesome. I mean, it's not real pinball, but it's awesome. And it's like, so at some point, like, is it real pinball? Is it not? Like, I don't know how it all comes together yet. So look at one for five minutes. Like part of pinball is being able to play as long as you can if you keep the ball in play. You know, just the nature of the game. Yeah. I mean I know like sports like soccer have never really changed I not sure about baseball and basketball and that kind of stuff But you know as something to look at have a look at cricket and how that changed over the years It used to be five days of playing and they actually still have that format, and it's like the purists are like, this is real cricket. You know, you have to find out who the winner is in five days, like the same match. And, you know, it was in the 90s or something, they introduced one-day cricket, and it blew everyone's mind, like one day? Like, what is this junk? and it was still like eight or nine hours long, right? And then people got sick of that, and now they have 20-20 games which are over in about like two, three hours. Oh, wow. And the growth of the sport based on that has been like astronomical because people can take their kids to it. They're like, I can take my kids to this. I know this is getting a bit off course with pinball, but what I'm saying is that you can still keep the old formats, but these kind of like radical changes, everyone thought they were stupid until they become more popular and then it just becomes part of the whole sport. Yeah. I mean, I think, like, back in the day, you know, a decade ago, like, the gauntlet format was sort of that one-off, like, wow, this is so much fun, but not real pinball format. What was that format? I think similar to pinball, but you'd have like a challenge on each game and it would be like ready, set, go and you had to play through the gauntlet of challenges and then once you got through them all, the stopwatch would stop and you'd be done. So it's like clear all target banks on Stargazer and then run to the next game and start three banter rooms on Adam's Family, run to the next game and if you didn't do it by the time the game was over, you'd have to just stay there and keep going. Or hit a certain score on a game and then keep going. And it was fun. They actually set it up. They used to be the Papa After Party event back in the day. Yep. So they would physically... The games wouldn't even be near each other. So it's like, get 50 million on Adam's Family. Run to Fast Draw. Where is it? I don't know. There's 400 games here. So people are just like running to get to the next game. It's a obstacle course in between the machines as well. Oh, my God. Maybe like an American Gladiator. Do not pass. So, I would say. I think, you know, with all these formats, I think, like, we'll obviously, like, we'll take them as they come, as they get more serious. And I think the more people we see want to go to these sort of, like, not standard three-ball game formats, you know, we'll take it under advisement. and if there's a way to push those, like, I can't. Isn't that the whole chicken and the egg thing, though? Like, you have to support it to be able to grow it? Kind of. Like, I was talking to the guy who runs Matchplay, and I was like, hey, if you, like, added the whole Super Enzy format, I know it would be really hard, but, you know, that would help grow the format, because then you think, like, people always ask me, like, how do I do it? Oh, I go down with the spreadsheet. That's true. But he was like, oh, but how many people, like, how many people play the tournament? Like, well, they're not playing the tournament because they don't know how to run it. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. I think that probably gives a little bit too much credit to Whoppers. I don't know who runs events strictly for Whoppers or not, but I'm also someone who's been playing plenty of years before a Whopper existed. So the events that I run here, I'm more concerned with, like, I want to be home in three hours. I don't give a shit if it's 20% PGP or 40%. I don't care. I'm not going to be here until 2am. But that's like me, right? But I don't know if other... Well, I'm trying to do both at my time, man. I'm trying to almost knack a national weapon and get the shit out of my house after five hours. Just in relation to all the changes that you've had to make and arguably the most controversial, let's bring it out. Oh, the dollar. Dollar gate. Here it is. Dollar gate. Is Australia getting dollar gate as well? I don't know. I'm pushing for it. What do you guys think about it? What do you think? I don't mind. So there's two things, right? For us, obviously, we are going to have a hell of a state championship series this year. For everyone that qualifies as getting paid, there's the whole benefit there of that happening. But the secondary benefit is, like, it's sort of weeded out the riffraff of people that would just, like, I'm going to run 78 tournaments in one night to get my players rated and to do this and to do this. You've got to be careful about that. We mentioned this, Josh, and we got in trouble for it, so, you know. There's a lot of people that play in Australia over 100 tournaments a year. Sure. Sure. Other, you know, yeah, let's get people rated by. So, like, right. So, which is kind of an exploit, right? So, like, it sort of helps self-correct an exploit unless that community is willing to pay for it. But I think, you know, the other thing that we did by, you know, we did a top 20 for at the state level as well of your events where that's new for this year. So, I mean, if you played in 100 events last year, you can count all 100 and sort of point your way in. I think what we've seen is a lot of these weekly events or daily events or whatever, players are more concerned about, I don't want to win 1.52 times. I'd like to win 10 points five times, and then it doesn't fill up my resume. So there's a lot of self-balancing of weekly events that now report monthly. So it's not a dollar a week. It's a quarter a week. And, you know, the whopper situation with that is now everyone's seeing bigger points per submission, which is good because their events are capped now. How does it work in Australia? So when I run a tournament at my house next year, right, say I get 20 people, I have to give $20, so $1 per person, to the head of IPA Australia. They forward it on to you, I'm guessing. and then sometime during the year, all of that money gets kind of tallied up and a percentage of it goes towards a state final. So are we having that money? Are we having like a Melbourne state final? No, we haven't. We've got sort of majors in each state. So there is Melbourne Match Play, which really is our yearly... But anyone can go into that, right? But anyone can go into it. Look, in the US, they have state... I'm ranked in the US and Canada. because I played one tournament in those places. So is it the top people that are ranked in that state? The way that your ACS works is you guys are pretty much just doing it at the country level. So I remember talking with Dan and setting up the ACS, and it's like, you know, do you guys want to do, you know, state at the state level? So you have, like, I don't know what your states are. What are your states, boys? It's not a thingy. That's a series. Yeah, QLD? What the hell is that? Queensland. There you go. I see the calendar submission, so I know, like, the abbreviations. But, like, you know, I remember talking with Sam about, do you want to set up, like, the Queensland, you know, series? And then it's like, no, because I guess some of the activity in some of the states where it is way lower than some of the others. But, like, I could see... But that was also, like, six years ago or whatever, when you guys were far smaller than you are now. I'd love to do that. That'd be fun. I was looking at the state finals, you know, when you did... whenever it was the most recent one, and I was looking at down per state, and I won't necessarily name them, but there were some states where the two top people... Arkansas. Say it. Arkansas. No, it was actually Utah, because I'd just been to Utah. Oh, okay. But what I noticed is that the top two players for Utah weren't necessarily up with the top 100 or the top 400, 500, whatever it is. But the fact that two people from Utah still get to compete in the national championship, right? One. It's only one. It's the champion. So it is the one. But there's obviously all your different states. That's still a cool thing for that particular state. It is. that they're represented, which can then promote to get more people into it, right? See, I think for taking it to you guys in Australia, the ability for each state to guarantee participation in whatever sort of national final that you guys would have, I think does far more to motivate play within a state versus I imagine that you guys go through a lot of state-to-state comparisons and it's like, oh man, we can't keep up with Sydney. Yeah. It's Queensland. It's QLD. QLD have like the, you know, not 90% of the top players. What but why is the misstrate? The argument that happened in the U.S. years ago, it's like, if I don't live in Portland, Seattle, or New York, I'm fucked. And it's like the rest of the country is just like, oh well, too bad, so sad. And I think, you know, Australia, you guys have the same thing. you have these pockets of, like, where competitive pinball is really happening, and then you have a whole large amount of the country where it's not. And it's like, well, how do you pull these people in? And that was probably the greatest, that was probably the greatest, I mean, talk to them, both of them. Okay. I think it's really valid. Like, I know that, like, this guy, like, I remember North Dakota joined the state championship series, and this guy, Dan Stephanie, who, like, I'm pretty sure the first time that they were in it, they had no events with rated players. So the state rep emailed me about what to do because everyone was tied at zero Whoppers for their stand-in. And it was like, oh, my God. It's like, I don't know. I didn't think about that. So, you know, they ended up having, like, everyone show up or whatever. And they played. So the winner ended up coming to Vegas for nationals. And it's like this unrated player who's ranked whatever, 40,000, 20,000, something crazy. And he was he was awesome. And it's like I remember talking with Zach and it's like, this is why we did the FCS. Like, this is amazing. This guy who plays in whatever the four tournaments a year in all of North Dakota, you know, to qualify, won his state championship, came here. and he, like, got through a couple of rounds, and it's like, who the hell is this guy? It's Dan Stephanie. Get out of the way. And he's been back a couple of times. But it's like that moment was so awesome for me to see. It just reinforced, like, we've got to be able to reach, you know, these areas where it isn't as developed. You almost need to – it's more important to reach those areas. Like, Seattle and Portland here in the States does not – they don't need the IFPA's help, right? Like, before we came around, they had 800 events a night. They're just crazy. But it also helps when people have a rating for, you know, when you keep on drilling down ratings, like, oh, my gosh, from 1,500 in the world, but I'm 30th in Ontario, you know? Yeah. So I'm competing against my local people to try and climb that ranking. I had a guy last night at our monthly tournament who he's probably, he's been playing for, like, five months, and sort of just starting to like peek around our site. And I was sort of taking him through it. And it's like he didn't know what he was ranked. He was like, oh, my God, I'm like 10,400th. And then I was like, oh, dude, you're also 74th in Illinois. And he's like, no way. And like I pulled up the standings and he could see how many points he was away from like 50th. And, of course, it's like when you're looking at that level, it's like very doable goals, right? He's earned like 1.8 Whoppers. And it's like, dude, if you can just get to four Whoppers, you'll be in the top 50. It works, man. It does. Every time someone comes to my tournament, I've only run like three or four, but every time someone comes and it's the first time they're ever playing, once I get an IFPA number, I message them and I say, check it out. And sometimes they don't even know that they were going to get a rating. And they're like, oh, my gosh, I'm rated like, you know, they usually end up like 29,000. I think that's like the starting number. Get like zero. And then I have a million questions, and I try to answer them, but that's why I'm asking you all the questions, because I don't know half the answers. But it works. It gets people curious, especially like IT people like eat that shit up. Yeah. Oh, you guys are fortunate, too. Like Luke and Dan down there are awesome. They're two guys that whenever a calendar, like pretty much anything from Australia, Adam Becker and I just don't even review. We just approve it. Because those guys. Yeah, just send it on over. We just gave it all in. But, like, those guys are so just on the ball with everything that we're doing. It's great for you guys. So expanding into, you know, states down there, I think is a great natural progression for you guys. Yeah, exactly. We're going to corner Luke this Sunday, Marty. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. Done. All right. It's time for a New Age Legends Crack Ryan Awesome Puzzle. So, Marty, are you sticking with the – This is basically a quiz show for pinball. Marty, this is your chance to win your first one. Yeah, for sure. Are you staying with Go to the Wall, Marty? Go to the Wall. Josh, what's your call out? Oh, my God. I don't know. I should have thought about this. I have so much time to think about this. Come on. We'll go Whopper. Okay, awesome. That'll work. Love it. I'm going to keep reinforcing that to all of your listeners so they get obsessed. Whopperitis. Of course, we're just here for the Whoppers. Okay. And, you know, apologies in advance. Most of these questions are really stupid. Okay. Good. In Creature from the Black Lagoon, I've been playing it all week, what is the maximum value you can lock in for your first shot? Yes, Josh? Oh, I don't know. Forest. No. Okay. I'll fix the question so Marty can answer. No, no, no. You're out. You're out. Marty, in Creatures of the Black Lagoon, what is the maximum value you can lock in on your first shot in Move Your Car? Oh. Come on, Marty. This is a gimme. Come on, Marty. I honestly can't remember. I'm going to say two and a half million. No, it's eight million. Okay. Same unjust. Same unjust. I think when it's about 2.9 million, it's probably worth it. Correct. One point to mine. In Whitewater, right? Whitewater pinball. You can only move the spot river ladder in the inlanes and outlanes in one direction, left or right. Whoppers. Yes, Josh? We're going to go right. That's correct. Josh won. Ernie Hudson did a call out for two pinball machines. Name them. Whoppers. Josh? Ghostbusters and Congo. That's correct. Come on, Marty. Oh, don't say that. Keep it going. All right, Marty, you played this game possibly in the last two weeks. This is a little cliche. I'm going to get it. If that's the question, I'm not going to get it right. Yeah, the answer is correct. I did. Point to me. Okay, in which 1981 belly game is murder being committed on the back last? Whoppers. Josh. Fathom. Oh, wow, that's good. I had like two follow-up clues just in case. I can remember being three years old and asking my dad, why is that fish being murdered? No, I'm kidding. If you're playing Attack from Mars and you complete three of the lanes and your three eggs hurry up the middle, how much is the payoff? That three legs hurry up. Wobbers. Yes. 500 million. Yes. Come on, Marty. It's still possible to draw, Marty. I'm not even going to answer that, but I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to wait. You can get it wrong first. Go. On the... Marty, you get this one right. On roller games, what are the... Where do you go for the wall? What is the tagline on the flyer of 1996's Tales of the Arabian Nights? This is a multiple choice, okay? A, totally like Aladdin, but without the licensing fees. B, made by enigmatic pinball designer slash inventor John Popperduck. C, your wish is granted. D, world on the glass. Go for the wall swing. Yeah. I feel like it should be B, though, right? At this point. Yeah. Model slash actor. All right. Which was the first production Williams machine that used the DCS sound system? I know you know it, Josh. You can pause the interview. I don't know if I do. I don't know if I do. I mean, I can take a guess. Indiana Jones? Yes, that's right. All right. I'll go with that, please. All right, Marty. This one's for you. For sure. Describe to me what you need to do in the Hobbit mode, one ring. The what? There's a mode in the Hobbit called one ring. What do you need to do with the post? Go for the wall. Hit the right one. Yes. Is it right or left? It was the right back. Okay. Okay. Done. Is it the right ramp because you guys are in the southern hemisphere? No. In Indiana Jones, there is an Easter egg inside the video mode that involves the Michelin J frog. What is the score payoff for getting that? Go to the wall. I'm going to say 20 million just because. Oh, Marty. Go. That's it. Is it really? Nice. Yes. All right. She's on five. Marty's on three. There's one question left. Just want to make it... Ten points. It's always the most ridiculous question at the end. Yes, it is. Okay. Which... This is a multiple choice, so you've got to wait until the end. Which term best describes popular pinball podcaster personality Jeff Heolos? All of the above. I was just going to say... Make them great. I hope they're fantastic. A, Canadian bully. B, a no-soul ginger. C, a super nice guy. D, bubblegum butt. Or E, all of the above. Go for the wall, E. Yay, money winters for the... Brilliant. Unbelievable. Brilliant. How many boxes did he get for that? Oh, God. I'll ask Luke and Dan. We'll give you some advice. With you in on this and not having a great rating yourself, it's probably worth fuck all. So let's talk about... I want to talk about your opinions on modern games because... Oh, that'll be fun. Yeah. Okay. No comment on all games. Josh works for Raw Thrills, right, and is run by Eugene Jarvis, who used to be a guy who worked for Williams, not Stern, back in the day. Who said he worked for Stern? I was just like, what? I forget what podcast I was on. I was just like, whoa, I've got to go ask my boss. What the hell's going on? That's me, not a Twippy award-winning podcast. What was his first iconic games? Was it Defender and Robotron? Were they his? Yes. Yeah, awesome games. I've never seen a picture of Eugene Jarvis not smiling, but you work with him, Josh, so he does not smile, right? It's not like you've got some kind of facelift. I don't know. He's a pretty happy dude. He's fantastic. And the language. Everyone at my work would be fired in any normal job 11 times a day for bad language. And that all starts at the top. You know, when I'll hear Eugene, you know, he goes to the pinball circuit, you know, similar to the pinball designers a lot of the time. And it's like, I just wait and cringe to watch the video, because it's like, the first thing you see is a bunch of kids in the audience, and the next thing you see is like, oh my god, the words that they are learning. Well, I mean, raw thrills are kind of kicking ass at the moment. Well, I mean, it seems that way, because when I go to a time zone, and, you know, that's like the redemption centers. Yeah, yeah. And I bring my kids, I get the vouchers for unlimited play. The game that they're most gravitated towards is... Giraffic Park. Cruising U... No, that's... Oh. That's fucking shit. No, really. My kids are really young girls. Yeah. Cruising USA, and it's like... It makes them feel like they're amazing, they're laughing, they're having fun. It doesn't matter if my kid comes like sixth or first, when it takes that picture at the end and she just screams and says, oh my God, that's the best. Yeah. So it's... I don't know where I'm going because I just wanted to tell you that. I also just want to say thanks to Raw Thrills, because when you go into these centres, which are effectively gambling for children these days, at least Raw Thrills have actually got skills-based games still in these arcades. Wow, skills. I mean, very loosely skills. No, I think, well, here's the big thing for us. Like, it's always important for us to provide entertainment. So, I mean, we see plenty of games out there that tend to lend themselves towards the, you know, gambling-ish type of nature and not provide entertainment. So even our redemption games, we want to make sure that we're giving you, like, regardless of the number of tickets you won, like, you also had a kick-ass time playing the game. So our philosophy is definitely centered around that, where other games, whether they're cranes or whatever, the nickel pushers, that are really just out to get your money as fast as possible. We definitely have not gone that route on purpose. So your latest game is like a Halo Rails shooter? Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah. We can, we're supposed to start building, next Monday starts sub-assembly and games out the door for Dave and Buster's the week after. So work is insane right now trying to, it turns out if you have 99% of the parts you need to build the game, that is an epic fail. Can't do anything. So there's a lot of parts on that game. It's insane. You guys made that massive Pac-Man shooting thing as well? Yeah, the World's Largest Pac-Man, and then we did Space Invaders Frenzy, the same screen. I played that one in Canada, sorry. I was playing with Jeff Giovas, and he was like a little kid playing that game when he beat me. We had no idea what was going on. There was just LEDs just, like, flashing in our face. And it was pretty epic, those machines, though. It's that game. Yeah, that game, and obviously this is a pinball podcast, so we can all talk about Ruffalo stuff forever, but, like, that Space Invaders game was, there were seven different games that came before that that were all terrible. And my boss, who's the COO of the company, like, literally, we had come out with Jurassic Park that's been really great for us. And the guns, especially, that one of our mechanical engineers, who used to be in Pinball, actually, but he designed the gun, and it's just, the feedback you get from the gun is amazing. and our COO was like, hey, take that big screen from World's Largest Pac-Man, go get a 2x4, put two of these Jurassic Park guns on it, and just put up 30 Space Invaders, guys. Let's mow them down and see how it feels. And it was, like, the greatest thing ever. And it was before we did, like, all the respawning and stuff, but just, like, the most basic iteration was, like, just the initial, like, Space Invaders screen where all the aliens are up there. And you just, like, you mow them down while the gun is just shaking in your hand, and it's like, I think we got something here. So you, okay, bringing it back to pinball. Yeah. I remember hearing, it's an amazing thing, isn't it? I remember hearing on a podcast somewhere, and I can't believe I can always say this now, like I heard on some podcasts, I listen to so many, it just matches all into one. I literally, so like in Toronto, I had whatever, like five days off of not listening to podcasts because I was like busy organizing the events. I literally could not get my podcast catcher up to date. It's like they just keep coming. I have like 58 things to listen to. It's crazy. So I remember you saying that you were somehow involved with JJP and score balancing on Dialed In. You told them to make multiple worth less and modes worth more, and that's what makes modes worth playing for. So what's your capacity with all of these pinball companies? Are you kind of like employed or do you just do it out of your heart? Yeah. I mean, a lot of these guys, like you guys talk pinball every week. Like I talk pinball every day. And a lot of the people that I know have just, you know, through my dad have been in the industry. You know, a lot of these people, like Dwight has known me since I was a teenager. You know, Lyman's known me since I was a teenager. And now 25 years later, they're still in the business. Like, these are relationships that I've had for a really long time. So, you know, I think the ability and, you know, stretches, obviously, Zach at Stern now is a little bit more of an official capacity. But, like, even back in the day, Zach and I would both, you know, go into Stern randomly and, like, you know, talk to Lonnie, talk to Lyman, talk to Keith, you know, play their new stuff and give our feedback of things that we liked, things that we didn't like. I don't know. Like, some designers value our opinion more than others, and we like sharing our opinion just because we like talking about it anyway. So anything we can do to make every game better, you know, I'm all about that. Well, one of the things that you did say, and I won't obviously directly quote, but it was something that sort of kind of just stuck with me. The question was, you know, do you still play for fun? and yeah someone like took that sideways I heard that too and was like I don't enjoy playing for fun that's what I found it like it was kind of like I enjoy the competition side of it but not really the fun side of it that's not true I enjoy the fun that is not true yeah because I also see you when you know when you've been on some of the dead fit streams when he's you know releasing the games for the first time you're having a hell of a lot of fun oh yeah no pinball's great Like, certainly getting to play, like, a new game is, like, still one of the greatest things ever. You get, like, sort of the, I don't know, it's like a first date or something. Like, the butterflies of excitement. We don't get that anymore. By the time we play it, we've seen, like, Elvis. It's three months old. There's already, there's features removed from what we promised. Like, things just keep happening. Yeah, we don't get to complain about early code. Yeah, like, my dad still, my dad feels that way, too, when he gets to play a game for the first time. and he's felt that way since, like, the 60s. So it's an amazing feeling. But I love playing everything. Like, I will go play a game in the basement for fun against nobody. So clearly there's not a whole lot of competition going on against myself. What have you got in your basement at the moment? Oh, God. 30 games. What's the newest one? The newest by year or the newest purchased? Not AFMR, the other newest one. Batman's my newest newest okay Iron Maiden coming when I can get it yeah and what's your favorite is it still Cyclops it is it is that is amazing I got to play that for the first time at Puppet last year I played it for many years on a digital version on visual pinball but I finally got to play it and it really is living up to its hype it is a fun game it's yeah I love it Well, there's... And I'll go down and play it, and it still kicks my ass. It's like, it's just... Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy good. Crazy good stuff. So since you're kind of, like, working with all these companies on testing new pinball machines, what are Deep Roots games like? Are they pretty good? Because I saw they said they'd be reaching out to top-level players, so... What can you tell us? I haven't seen it yet. I'm looking forward. I'm looking... I keep waiting. I'm refreshing my email, like, at 5. That's five over and over again. Well, again, if I was Jeff Teolas, I would point out that they said top players. Oh, come on. Jeff Teolas? You mean Robert Miller? Leave that to him. Okay, so let's go through, I mean, some of the newer games, and I want kind of like your opinion on them. Yeah. So, Houdini. As much as I can without upsetting all the people that make it. Yeah, for sure. Houdini? Houdini? personally I'm not a huge fan of it like I understand the people that think the shots are too hard or whatever like I don't know if they're too hard or not but I don't find them particularly satisfying I guess is the best way that I can say it on a hardware level is that where you don't like it that much or software I mean a little bit of both I know that Josh has mentioned, like, people think the game's a chatty Cathy, and I'm definitely one of those people. Like, I think that it talks a lot. And I think, to me, and this is obviously just, like, personal preference, for me, I'll use the term world under glass, there is something to, like, when I shoot a left orbit on a game, I don't want to feel like I'm shooting the left orbit on a pinball game. I want to feel like I'm doing something, you know, in the universe of the game that I'm playing. And I find that, like... Do you think that's sound-related, then? I think it's, like, explicitly for Houdini, it's like the rule explanation takes me out of the theme. So when the narrator's telling me to, you know, shoot the left orbit followed by the right ramp, Like, that has nothing to do with Houdini, magic, you know what I mean? It's just like it takes it into, like, pinball rules, not Houdini rules. So it's like, you know, like if I'm talking about Adam's family, like people still to this day, like, say, shoot the chair. They don't say shoot the soup. You know what I mean? So, like, there's just something to tying it to the theme that I feel is missing. Okay. Dalvin. I think it's great. I think it's really great. It plays a little long, but it's good. TNA, I think, is also great. The package that Scott did is just like, it's so unique. Love it. It's great. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Have you got either of those two machines? I do not. I do not. If someone said, you won a tournament, you get one of these machines for free, you can't resell it or anything, so it's just like you're just getting the machine. Which one would you choose over those two? Because they're vastly different, but people put them in the same category as great machines. Yeah, I would choose Dialband. Okay. Yeah, okay. And what about Supreme? Oh, I can't talk about that because no one wants to talk about Supreme. We had Jerry on last week, and then he kind of emailed us and was like, oh, he makes a thing about Supreme. I'm like, you give the sounds to Supreme and we didn't talk about it. It's like the hidden thing. I saw there was like a Sunshine Laundromat ad. Yeah, they just got... I can't believe it. I can't believe it. That actually, that game is pretty, whatever, the Spider-Man version of that game, which I have played a lot, like, is a lot of fun. Yeah, it's exactly what I've said about it. I played it at Papa and was really surprised at how much fun it was. Yeah, I remember, like, when I went over there and saw it and played it, like, I wrote an email to Gary afterwards, and the team over there was just like, that was, like, my expectation level, because I played the previous ELG or whatever, home level game, the Transformer Avengers one. Yep. And it's like, it felt like a toy. And it's like, I show up to this thing and it's like, the shots are good. It feels like a pinball machine. Like, there's rules here that make sense. It's like, this is pretty awesome. Yep. Agreed. How about Alien? Never played it. Oh. Kind of disappointed. I have never played it. Or not. Should I not be disappointed? It's a fun game. We played it. It's all right. I'd like to get my hands on one sometime. Iron Maiden. Awesome. Game-changing. Fantastic. Amazing. Like, the one... Iron Maiden is the one game, probably for me, since, like, Lord of the Rings, that... that I can remember going to play a Lord of the Rings at a test location over and over and over again. And it's like a 20-minute drive for me, which was like I was used to growing up with an arcade down the street. So for me, driving out 20 minutes each way to go play a pinball game was kind of a pain in the butt, especially with games at home. And Lord pulled me out often. And Iron Maiden's the first game that I'll go over to Stern and I'll usually spend more time, you know, back in engineering playing the new stuff. Like, I will go there to play Iron Maiden. And, like, it's been a while since a game has pulled me that hard to, like, I just want to play Iron Maiden some more, so I'm going to sneak over there on my way home. Do you think that's because it's kind of the brain from Keith, who is a tournament player as well, and arguably has played as much pinball as you to create that experience from that world that you've got? I think it's exactly that. I think that, like, my personal opinion, I feel like good players make the best games, like, rule-wise. And, yeah, maybe I'm biased, because that's the circles of people that I hang out with, but I feel like nobody knows pinball more than Keith before he even designed anything. I mean, the guy knows every rule of every game. He knows stuff that's in the code that the programmer that wrote it doesn't know. Like, that level of knowledge is insane, and he uses it to make a game that hopefully would pass his own test as a player. we all benefit from it. Yeah, for sure. I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you that a really good pinball player it doesn't necessarily have to be a tournament player but I guess it kind of goes hand in hand will generally make a better game or a better rule set than someone who doesn't play that much and I guess an example that I don't know what I'm saying. It's hard, right? It's hard to poo-poo anything. Well, I don't want to poo-poo but Like, there's something that really annoys me in pinball, and, like, you'll want to say it's, like, skipping animations. Like, if I don't want to see something, then I want to make the choice of double-clipping and not being able to see it. And Keith P. Johnson and Lyman Sheets, on every single one of their games, allows me to do it, and I thank them for it, right? The only thing that you can't skip is, say, like, the castle blowing up, and I think on Metallica you can't skip Sparky, but I think there's a menu option if you want to enable that, possibly, but I'm like, all right, I need a two-second break. That's fine. there's something like say you're playing Ghostbusters oh god I can give it say there was a programmer named Swite Dullivan go on this is the thing when I shoot like say you're in Looping Supers right I want to see it's the same jackpot every time but I want to see what that jackpot is it does the whole really cool super jackpot kind of payoff I don't know it's what they call it in pinball programming like the fanfare whatever By the time the score comes up, you can't look at it because the ball is at your flipper. When the snack bar is open and I get a hot dog, I want to see how much it's worth, but I just see the guy's stupid face and then give me a hot dog, and then I've got to look back down because it's too late. Do you know what I mean? Like little things like that where if you play the game nonstop, well, one, maybe you wouldn't care about it because it's just a score and you kind of look up and the ball's over and it doesn't matter. but for me I kind of want that excitement of seeing what I just got. It's hard. Yeah, it's hard. I know I can remember with like playing X-Men the first time, and it's really hard when you're, whether it's like sound cues or like call-outs especially, the time frame that you have to work with based on the movement of the ball is nuts. So I can remember, like, I think it's like in X-Men, like Storm's talk, like, for 14 minutes when you start her motor. I'm like, I am Storm. It's going to rain. Slight chance of showers. You literally, you shoot the side ramp, and it's like, I can remember talking to Wason, and it's like, dude, you have like .7 seconds before the ball's back on your lower left flipper shooting something else. And it's like this lady is talking about the Carl Weathers for like an hour and a half. Like it totally ruins the moment. So it's like it's so weird how like you have to be able to give that experience and do the full boat of like the whole experience, cut it off and be ready for the next experience. It's so hard for programmers to be able to like cue all that up and make sure you have something that's like entertaining in the in the fraction of a second. yeah it's well as I said the more people you play the more little things annoy you and you know kind of like not to do that right and it amazing how like it sort of a thankless job because it just feels right when it right but when it wrong it just like it sort of like austin powers you just like mole mole there a mole on your face there a mole it just it stands out so bad when it does go bad but jerry thompson mentioned that last week with the sound this is like if you don't notice the sound and you're just having a good time then i've done my job i just never want you to stop and say, what is that? That is like a disgusting sound. All right, what else have we got? What other new-ish games are there? Guardians of the Galaxy. Better now. Yeah, it really is better. I think I was not a huge fan when it was the carbon copy paste from the previous, you know, colored arrow target practice game rules. I think where it's ended up and, you know, a lot of what Mike Vinacourt has done over at Stern, he's been a blessing over there in terms of helping all the design teams out with rules help. Like, it's great now. There's a lot of personality there that, I don't know, I feel like it's almost a shame that the bloom was off the rose on that game before it got to this place. I mean, if this was, and, I mean, obviously Stern is still trying to get to 1.0 at launch as the dream, and, you know, Iron Maiden was pretty much there. But if Guardians came out at, whatever, 1.01 code for the first, you know, JetFlip stream, like, there's a lot of cool shit in it now. Do you think JetFlip, what JetFlip? What? I was trying to sneak one in there just in case. Well, so you've got Batman. You said you've got your Batman machine. Clearly, you would have to be happy with how that coding has progressed. Oh, yeah, it's great. It's awesome. And, like, sort of knowing where Lyman was going with it, it's sort of the in Lyman we trust motto that so many people have adopted. But, like, yeah, I mean, he's just following through on the vision that he had, and it's still getting there, but it's great. I love it. Last one, Star Wars. I'm sorry, you guys were cutting. You guys were cutting. You guys were cutting. Sorry. It's all right. It's okay. It's okay. This is what I want to kind of talk about, because on one of the pinball profiles you've been on with Jeff, you kind of said, and you kind of have this argument about it. Was it the action button? Yeah, about the action button. You said, like, just leave it there and don't touch it. Yeah, yeah. Did you say that you do that, or is it you just give me that? I do that. I do not move it around. Okay, so hypothetical situation. It's 2018. Fast forward, like, seven weeks from now. You're up on stage in the finals of Pembroke. You're there with your brother, Zach, Keith Elwin, someone else. Choose a random good player. Jordan Treadway. Jordan Treadway's there, okay? Just destroying it. and the last game is on Star Wars, and you need the full points to win. Now, it is going to be absolutely 100% impossible to beat any of those guys if you don't move around that multiplier. That's not true. That's not true? No, you don't have to do it. What's it like? What kind of massive scores do you get on Star Wars without moving around? 10 billion. 12 billion. Like, whatever. Whatever billion you want. You just have to go... I mean, the big hyperspace hurry-ups that you get at 40x happen when you set it and forget it, because the shot that ends up being multiplied as you get up to 40x is that collect shot. So how about modes, though? I mean, if you're in one of the mini-wizard modes, each one of those shots, if you've got a 40x on it, is half a billion. If it's not 40x, it's like 20 million. So two, three shots, and you've lost out on $1.5 billion. I guess. I mean, I find that very rarely in a match is it a battle of everyone getting to these wizard modes. So you talk about all these potential lost points. It's like usually getting to the wizard mode is a win. You know what I mean? So it's one of those things where, you know, yes, I could have gotten $24 billion, and I said I got $7 billion, and I won. For me, it's far easier for me to focus on, like, let me get through, you know, two of the, like, planet wizard modes for a game and play them well and play good, you know, victory laps. And as long as my shots are on the big three, there's enough shots on all three. I forget what multiplier where they start to reduce from three to two to one shot. But, you know, there's a lot of play where those three shots have a lot of action on them. Okay. Enough that I feel comfortable leaving it there. do you think, I mean, like the whole multiplier thing obviously is making its way into more and more games. And it's been around forever, but it seems to be getting a lot more attention on the new games. Do you think there should be some kind of like hypothetical, you know, like limit? Like, you know, a shot should never be more than this much X, because it just kind of like splits the game up too much between elite players and non-elite players. I don't know I think the idea of like there's a balance to risk reward that if the reward can get too crazy and the risk isn't there to sort of go along with that and it's easier for elite players to get to a much bigger reward compared to their other competitors I think a game can break down there so I mean like it's it's relatively, I wouldn't say easy, to get to 40x all day on Star Wars, but it's not that hard. You know what I mean? You can do it by accident. Someone could be flailing during multiple and it happens. So, like, I do see issues there where, like, a casual player can beat another casual player from flailing better and having, you know, these shots worth far more. I do, like, if there was risk associated with needing to complete certain things to get your multiplier up that test the skill of the player better, I think that's warranted and valid. You know, I think, like, something like the in-lane shot multiplier on Walking Dead, like, you can build it up to 8x, 9x, 12x, whatever you want, as long as you're willing to avoid it and skillfully play it and then execute it on a shot that's worthwhile. Like, I think those moments are excellent. For sure. I mean, it could still happen. I mean, my biggest shot, multiplied shot ever was, you know, two, three years ago in Walking Dead when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was 300 million something shot, and I'm like, I've never done that again. They're even trying to do it now. But, like, obviously, like, there was a rhyme and a reason to why it happened. Of course, of course. Even if you didn't realize it. Yeah, yeah. So, obviously, people have got to start innovating with rules, and I think they're all pretty subtle. I think one of them was, you know, the random pop bumper rewards and now you've got all the multipliers. I understand that people kind of need to introduce new things to machines or do you just think they've just got to get it balanced perfectly like what keeps them with Iron Maiden? Or something like that with TNA, for example. Yeah, I think, like, balance is the most important because, like, a lot of your features are rendered irrelevant if they're not balanced well, except for, like, the people that, I mean, I've had this joke with Lyman at Stern over the years that, like, you know, there's some amount of the community where score is completely irrelevant, that, like, you just don't have a score in your game. It's just completely objective-based, and people are looking forward to, like, I want to finish this, I want to get to here, and that's fine. But, I mean, to me, the heart of pinball is it is a point-scoring game. So, like, I feel like the rules have to follow, you know, balancing the points appropriately across those rules, or else they're not worth playing. And then you could have the greatest rule ever, and it's like if it's worth complete shit, that it's not worth playing no matter how fun it is. But it also comes back to what you were saying before. It's not just about the rules and the points and what they're worth and what your score does. It's also how it's integrated into the theme, right? It's got a meaning. To me, that is, for me, the most important thing. So, like, finding a new way to do, like, we're doing reverse multipliers. Nobody's ever thought of doing whatever. It's like all that stuff is like fine and geeked out or whatever. Yeah. But I think the magic of pinball is when something makes sense with the theme. And I think a lot of like those, that's why I think the love affair with those 90s Williams games exists. I mean, I've talked about it a ton in the past, but like a game like Twilight Zone, that is a lot of people's favorite game of all time, the rules of the modes are ridiculously stupid. Like, if you just wrote down the rule, but, you know, I mean, like, explain to me Clock Millions, the mode. Keep on hitting the corner. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Right, so it's like, you know, can you imagine if, you know, you start your Iron Maiden game and it's like, you know, aces high shoot this one target as many times as you can it doesn't make any sense and whatever but it's like in twilight zone specifically for that mode with the clock that's moving and that's the value of the shot and the sound it makes when you hit it it's just fucking brilliant you know what i mean like like i love it and you see if you can hit it two or three times in a row and And it's like, quit playing with the clock. It's just so tied into the theme. It makes the stupidest mode in pinball brilliant. Yeah, Williams sounds like that whole 90s era. You can talk about some of the turd games they have, but they're still fun. I'm not calling Junkyard a turd. I don't mind Junkyard because it's the dumbest theme ever, but it's still a fun pinball game, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's just they find ways to, I mean, you can poo-poo World Under Glass, but it really, it is the truth. I feel like games today, kind of from all the manufacturers, have lost that a little bit. And I feel like there is a bigger focus on the actual rule that's being played and the rule needing to be cool versus the tying to the game itself needing to be cool as well. Well, that was the whole thing with Keith doing this. Before he came out, and everyone obviously knew that it was him doing the machine, a lot of people were saying to me, oh, you know, it's going to be really all about rules and scores and all that kind of stuff because he's a tournament player. but when it came out he actually thought about all that other stuff as well yeah i would say well it's right it's great when you see like the way that the modes tell a story through the shots that you're trying to make whether it's like you know the the shots that are like drifting towards the center i think it's like rhyming the ancient mariner is that where it's uh like you have to drift the boat on or off course or whatever and it's like like that's great that's great because it allows like an emotional attachment to the mode and I think like that that makes the longevity of a game and how you feel about a game far more positive. It's like if I ask you guys like, you know, explain the rules to me for Fester's Tunnel Hunt for Adam's family, I think you guys could both do it. I don't know. Probably. Hit the three tunnels. Right, so like, if I said Explain to me Klingon Battle 1 From Star Trek I can explain it easy Hit the red shots Right, but it's like What are you battling? What if you're in multiple bodies? Do you hit the red shots or the red shots? Did they explain the latest update? No Finally Yeah But like, to me, that's where Star Trek failed to me. Like, I have no idea the difference between destroy the drill, Klingon battle, save the Enterprise. Like, I don't feel like I'm saving the Enterprise when I'm playing the green mode at all. I understand that. I was actually having this discussion yesterday with Bruce from the Sand Hill podcast about, you know, what could they have done in the update that's just come out? And I said, have more away mission modes, because they are actually, you know, defined and unique to the actual machine itself. Have those go up to level 2 or level 3, or when you're in level 2 modes, enable away mission modes for that as well, because that's where it becomes more than just hit the random colored target. Right, right. There's actually, it's telling a story a little bit. That's correct, or the spinner, all that kind of stuff. And that was what was different between that machine and the likes of those belly widens of the 90s, is that the modes would be specific to a part of the machine. So why has that happened, Josh, if pretty much the Bally Williams team, that they all got kind of made redundant, then moved over to Stern? So what's the disconnect there between, like, you know, Steve Ritchie making, you know, Game of Thrones and Star Wars, and, you know, like the same people doing kind of rules and this and that, but it feels so different? I don't know. I wish they knew maybe yeah I don't know I don't know I think I mean I don't know how the teams interact today I mean you know you have outside consultants on sound and on art a lot of the time and like also just the design period like I don't know if they have an incubation period long enough for everything to sort of present itself in a game I know that like if you talk to any of the old Williams people, you know, they'll reference, you know, when the game was at the bottom of the stairs. And it's like the game was out on test amongst the Williams people at the bottom of the stairs, you know, in engineering for long enough that, like, I don't know, I feel like back then the game went through its paces inside and nobody got to see anything until it got flushed out and you had enough people sort of talking about it to make it the best game it could be. Okay. But I don't really know. Yeah, I don't know how people are tackling a thing. I mean, Keith has done it pretty good with Iron Maiden, that, like, it's obviously possible. You know, how does a game like Star Trek get made where, like, there is this not, you know, avoidance of trying to tie these modes to meaning something emotionally? Like, I don't know. I don't know. I guess they also did a lot of original things as well. That's true. That's why they made it easier. Yeah. Hmm. See what Steve Ritchie comes up with next. No comment. Get ready to battle. Are you saying... No comment. Are you saying that Steve Ritchie has retired, Josh? Josh Sharpe says that Steve Ritchie retires on an internet podcast. Steve and Lionel Sheets have both retired. Oh, my gosh. Is it time to play Slam the Top 100? Very quickly. Okay. I've got someone coming to pick up my Hobbit. Okay. You sold your Hobbit, Marty. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah. Josh, would you like to be on one of our teams, or would you like to battle me and Marty? I'll be on one of your teams. Too much pressure to battle you guys. Okay. One is me, two is Marty. Please generate a number from zero to two. I don't get to hear the voice? Is that a done and post? Yes. Oh, there we go. There it is. No, it literally takes like five seconds for it to start talking. Oh, okay. All right. It's so ridiculous. One. Yes. You're on my team, Josh. Okay. All right. Josh and my number first. Please generate a number from zero to 100. All right. Three. Oh! All right. Iron Maiden. How do you guys do this without, like, you've only pulled one number. What happens if it's the same number that you've already done? We just do it and you never know because we edit it down. You never know, yeah. It actually hardly ever happens. You get to that one time where it was like 10 in a row or something. All right, Marty, you're going to be up against Iron Man. Yeah, I'll do this for sure. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Coming right up. 66. Oh, almost a number of the beasts. Well, they're related somehow. Kingpin. Have we done that? I think we have. No. All right. Kingpin Capcom's Kingpin? Correct. The one that I have played so much of. That's number 66 in the top 100? Correct. It's only had 26 reviews. All right. Josh, would you like to go first, as in talking about how good Iron Maiden is, or would you like to talk about how bad Kingpin is? Which one? I'll defer to you. It's so hard because I've never played Iron Maiden, but I can talk about how good it is. Are you serious? Neither of us have played it. It's not here yet. It's not here yet. The pros are not in Australia yet? There's two pros that were air freighted down, and that's to QLD, Queensland. They get all the teams. No one cares about it enough to air freight it down to Melbourne. Wow. I'm going to try and trash Kingpin because I know, Josh, you can speak very passionately about Iron Maiden since you've been your best friend behind Jeff Teolis. Okay. All right. So are you ready, Josh? Yep. Yep. I'll give you that a minute. Go for it. So, God created this person who is the best pinball player in the history of all time. And he's been allowed to create a game in his image that perfectly reflects his level and ability as a player physically manifesting in a game design. You have four flippers and whatever the other crap you guys say when you don't know what to talk about. But the game is just perfection in terms of shots leading to things, rules being designed around the geometry of the game that exists. It's just the hardware and the software of the game, you can tell that it's been done in tandem. and it's very rare for a game to ever be sort of conceived that way. I got nothing else. All right. That's good. That's that good. That was good. That was really deep. Yeah. Yeah, that was... I need to wipe my eyes. I got a little emotional. Tears of a winner. Okay, Marty. Yep. Your time to talk about how cool Capcom's Kingpin is. Here we go. I've got this. You ready? Yeah, go for it. Okay. So the first two things I'm going to talk about are design and art. And maybe some sound. But Mark Ritchie, his greatest achievement as far as a layout goes, and the art by Dan Fugawoka. He's known for all the Capcom machines. The art on this is fantastic, right? And it's so good that that's why it's being remade. The game design and shot flow is solid. The theme integration is excellent The artwork is atmospheric The back glass, I would say it's eye-catching And the colour choice is fantastic as well The colour choice Yep, absolutely I reckon some of the design and animation It's very reminiscent of Big Bang Bar We love that This game is fantastic And I'm really pleased that it is being remade Okay Thank you, Marty All right, my chance to rebut and talk about how Kingpin sucks. All right, Kingpin. You want to talk about eye-catching art, Marty? The side art of Kingpin has to be one of the ugliest arts ever, and it's because it's grey. Who makes a grey pinball machine? No one ever except for Capcom. And they were probably going to change it, but they fucked up and they pulled the plug, and it's being remade, and they didn't even think to change that. They're just like, okay. You know when you do Photoshop and it has a default background color and you're like, I'll fix that later. That's what they did, right? The new Ellie artwork, I won't talk about that, we'll talk about the old one. The rules on this game are very, very, very basic. You can literally just start every mode at once, kind of like The Simpsons, but not good. Steven Bowden got to the wizard mode in like 15 seconds. Sorry, 15 minutes. Yeah. Cool layout, but Kingpin is no Iron Maiden. That's my case. Marty, at times a bag, you're $13,000. Yep, okay. All right, go for it. So, Iron Maiden, the music is just terrible. What a terrible theme for a pinball machine. Oh, yet another rock band. Boring. Uninspired. Just, you know, too easy, too simple. It's a game by numbers, you know. There's no toys. Come on, we all need toys in these games. It's... Is that all you've got? That's all I've got. I mean, the music is terrible. I think he's it. He's a horrible guy. He's terrible. That's all I've got to say. Here he's not even good at pinball. It should have been Archer, right? Exactly. Missed opportunity. Archer is a far more popular thing. Down the irons. I'm trying to help you out here, buddy. It's got rules. Shot. It's a flow monster. Sure, sure. It's got good, what was the word? Good bomb price or something. You've got six different mechs. You've got good bomb value there. All right. Cool. So we'll put that up on Facebook. It's a hell of a profit maker for someone. That's what makes it so great. All right. So we'll put that up on Facebook in a couple of days. Marty, you've got someone coming over in a sec to pick up your pinball machine. Correct. Josh, it's probably way past your bedtime. That's an understatement. Any more questions, Marty? No, that is it. Just thank you so much for coming on finally, the extended version. Really appreciate it, man. an hour and 53 minutes more than last time we appreciate it Josh we'll chat to you soon yeah thank you sounds good take care guys so there we go that was Josh Sharpe finally on our show for a considerable amount of time he's our first repeat guest Marnie what a great honour what a great honour well done Josh so this week in the Star Trek update threads on Pinside, everyone was kind of arguing. Not everyone, but everyone seems to think that when people are arguing on the internet... Never, never, never. The whole Khan thing, people say he sounds like Kai. And I've seen this video posted for like three years, and I have never once heard Kai. Ever. It's like that whole... It's Laurel Yanny. What do you hear? Do you hear the N at the end? I have only ever heard Khan. But I know it's Khan, because I know it's Khan from Star Trek. It's Khan, the wrath of Khan. Khan, Khan, Khan. You're Khan. Ah, yeah, but I guess people are thinking that it's being clipped, like, halfway through. Like, ah, I don't know. I guess we could just, like, insert the Khan call. I can download the ROM, and I'll email it to you, and you can just repeat that on loop at the end of the show. Would that be a good way to send everyone off? Sure. Give me some more editing to do. That'd be great. So, Supreme Pimple Machine. We had a bit of a ruffing with Supreme this week, Mike. We did happen to have some Supreme apparel on the weekend with us. Yeah, we'll get to that a bit later. But there's now one in Sunshine Laundromat. So there's two of these machines to play on public location in the entire world, and they're both in New York City. I know. I think that's cool. Right on the rounds. Well, as we know, I don't know whether it did sell, but there was one that I saw that was going for $75,000 US. So I think it's kind of cool that Sunshine Laundromat, not that they ever would, but they were going, you know, we're going to spend this money and it's going to go on site as opposed to we're going to buy this and flip it for a squillion dollars. Well, what they'll do is they'll make $75,000 in profit, right? And then they'll sell it for $75,000. Like, none of these people are going to say, hey, when you send me pictures of a machine, can you show me the shoot-a-lane? They don't give a shit. They don't know what they're doing. As long as it's white on the side and it has the logo. Okay, guys, guys that restore pinball machines, right, you're slaving away, you know, you've got the most anal customers ever, right, you're hating life. Just make a fake Supreme Pinball machine. find the star, what's it called? Spider-Man Home Edition? Yeah, find one of them and just fucking paint it white, just throw a couple of stickers on there. Yep. That's it. That's like, seriously. That's the easiest thing you could do. Like, no one's ever cloned a pinball machine. I mean, I know there's protection against it, but like, you know, in China, they clone everything because, you know, the intellectual property, they don't give a crap. Yeah. Yeah, so it's never been done in pinball because it's just such a small hobby that no one's ever thought, I'm going to make fake Stern pinball machines. So this is your chance, guys. Make the world's first... But just officially, we are not condoning the claiming of Stern machines and forgery thereof. Just saying so, Brian. Just a joke, guys. Just a joke. Just trying to bring in some lols. All right. What else is going on this week, my honey? Well, you sent a link to me to the Joe Kamenkow interview by Neil McRae. I don't know how long ago that was, but I hadn't seen it before, and it was a great interview. Yep, it was kind of a Skype interview, and then he, I think he pre-recorded it and then published it on Twitch as like a live stream. And I think the way the software works is it records whoever's talking the most. So when Joe Canacal was showing his Batcave, I was like, shut the hell up, Neil. I was going to catch you, you know what, cutting back at Neil. I was like, I want to see this room. So there's things that I'm passionate about in life. And the two main ones are pinball. I don't know whether that's a big surprise for you, Ryan. And the other is exotic sports cars. So, yes, he was talking pinball and it's great. But when he then went into his garage to show his Batmobile, which I wasn't all that fussed about, I'm like, oh my God, look, there's a Ford GT. And I'm like, what? No. No, it's gone. Neil McRae's laughing. I know. Every time he's talking, it's like, oh my God, I just want to see this car collection. It looked phenomenal. And then we were back to him on the treadmill. Yeah, I laughed a bit too much over that, where he just mid-interview is like, if you don't mind, I'm pretty busy, so I'm going to do my workout while he's... Treadmill. Treadmill doing an interview. I just thought to myself, that right there is a really successful person. Yeah, like, there's how many fucking excuses that people have for not working out. This guy is multitasking. He's talking to his assistant or whatever, like, you know, at the same time as the interview, giving you a tour, answering questions and working out at the same time. What a legend. It was just so good. Exactly. well speaking of crazy videos Ryan someone also someone very well known got their Iron Maiden this week yeah he only got a pro what's going on Mr Ed Robinson of Bare Naked Ladies the video was shared on Stern Pinball and it's just another one of those videos like the Joe Kamenko one I just laughed, I know it's meant to be funny but I probably watched it on loop like 10, 15 times and laughed more and more every time. It's basically just Ed just dancing and I think I know why I find it really funny. Well, dancing like Beyonce is what you said to me before we started recording. Basically. Basically. But I think he's also dancing like someone else. Marty, did you watch The Goonies? No. Okay. This is the new age travel shuffle, okay? This is what it's doing. It's Ed Robertson impersonation of a truffle shuffle to Iron Maiden music. I will link that in the show notes as well. It is funny. Well, it's just good to see another person. This is really great news. Yeah, it must be. This is really great news. Another person gets their Iron Maiden. We still have to wait. A couple of new podcasts this week. Any new podcasts? Well, we need new podcasts. So, this week in pinball, as teamed up with Zach from Straight in the Middle, and they're doing their own podcast, so good on them. Yeah, it was pretty good. They basically read down the list of what's on the weekend pinball, which they're allowed to do because they run the website. I know. Do you know, it was really funny because I was talking to somebody, and again, we're going to get to your tournament, but someone on the weekend said, oh, you know, it's really good on them considering, you know, he's the one that gets all the news. And I went, we pretty much put our podcast out at the same time, and we do, you mainly, the same amount of research each week. So I think it's funny. Yeah, I mean, as I said, sometimes we double-check, but we don't have a website. We're not publishing it out there, so we're not going to get any credit for finding Ed Robinson. And Steven Bowden, he's up to episode three. Him and Nikki have a podcast It's called the Meltdown Podcast I don't know how to describe this In my podcast So I'm going to pass it to you I think it's probably A bit surreal Do you know what? Again, I was talking about this on the weekend And I think the best way to describe this is Two people coming together Having a good time Talking about pinball related topics And not giving a shit And the second episode is like a, I don't know how to describe it. It's like a case file study of like a pinball machine that was found. And then the third episode is kind of like explaining what happened and stuff. As Steven Bowden said, there can be never too many podcasts. Like no one ever complains that there's too many YouTube channels. It's just, it's pinball content. So we'll link that in the show notes. I have no idea where this podcast is going. When I speak in pinball, they're going to read pinball news. The Meltdown podcast, I don't know what they're going to do next. So that's interesting. So talking about you speaking pinball, shall we steal some of their content and talk about their public vote of the top ten designers of all time? I thought maybe instead of just reading through the list, we can give our favourite games from the designers in the top ten list. Okay. Okay, what's your favourite Keith Elwin game? Because he's at number 10. Well, my favourite Keith Ellen game is probably Archer. Yeah, I'll go Archer. I made it, not so bad. Number 9, Barry Osler. You basically got Doctor Who or BSD. And you're doing other games, but... You go first, to buy me enough time. I'll go Doctor Who simply because of the toy mech. I just love it. I love the three-level playfield. I wanted to say Doctor Who, but I just feel he has got a lot more games than just that. So, you know... I think it's what he's known for is those two games. And I think he even said in one of his interviews, they're the two games that he's the most proud of, I think, so... Yeah, okay. I'm not a big fan of either of those machines, so... But, you know... I'm just passing on his other, like, 70 games. But, okay, so I'm looking at his back catalogue, right? And he did Gorgar. Gorgar is one of my absolute favourite games. There we go. There's your answer. So, you know, what else has he done? He was doing, he did, like, the Pinbot and Jackbot. That was him, wasn't it? Yeah. Space Shuttle? I love Space Shuttle. Time Fantasy. Was that him? It was. with the acid snail. So, I mean, surely he gets it. That was, yeah, that was his experimental period in his life. All right. Number eight, Scott Denisey. Scott Denisey. That's a hard one. The number eight designer of all time. Yeah, well, yes. Total Nutrient Annihilation. Move it on. Enigmatic pinball slash designer number seven, John Papadiuk. Now that's My favourite game of his Is World Cup Soccer Okay I'll go with Circus Voltaire Even though Theatre of Magic feels ten times better To shoot, I love the flow of that game I love the ridiculous Nature of Circus Voltaire Because there's nothing in that game Makes sense You're bashing the ringmaster The check that's on the on the back glass. There's a ball just sitting there on the play field. There's a popper. There's a popper that shoots out of the play field. It's crazy. Number six. I was just going to say, I would also say that I think Theater of Magic is probably his best game. You know, Tales of the Avianites is also good. It's just, for me, I think World Cup Soccer just hasn't lost its appeal. The other games, I think I'm sort of, I've played them enough and I'm kind of done. Okay. Yeah, I think World Cup Soccer is what people attribute as the best kind of tournament game, and I guess tournament games are the ones that have the most legs outside of the collector community. Yeah. Number six, George Gomez. Really, I think it comes down to really two games, and that would be Lord of the Rings or Monster Bash. And? You like Monster Bash more. Come on, just say it. If you had a Monster Bash and Lord of the Rings side by side, and you said, Martin, you can only take one of these home. Which one do you think I'd take? Monster Bash. No, Lord of the Rings. Okay. Lord of the Rings, because Monster Bash, I've done it. I've seen it all. I've got to the end. Thank you. Got the ribbon, went home. Lord of the Rings, there's a lot more that I could do. Like, when I say a lot more, I mean something. Like, actually learn the rules and play it. So, I reckon Lord of the Rings is his best game. Yeah, I can't argue with that. Number five, Mr. Dennis Nordman. Alien, Demolition Man, Whitewater, Scared Stiff. What else have he done that's popular? Dr. Dude. Great game. Indy 500. I would say, well, Wonelly, Big Juicy Melons is also good. Do you think when they talk about melons they're talking about boobs? No, they're not That would be rude, wouldn't it? It would be I'm going to say my favourite of his is Indianapolis 500 Really? Yep, love it How often have you played? Did you even play that the other day at Dave's house? Yes, I did, a lot Okay In fact, I probably played that the most out of any game I've always had a soft spot for Indianapolis 500 I like it I like the rules I like the layout the geometry I like that game Wheel of Fortune, Pirates of the Caribbean, Blackwater is probably one that people like the most, I guess. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's pretty close between Whitewater and Demolition Man, but I'll give Demolition Man purely on the rules, even though people will say that the rules on Whitewater are better. With the Claw Disableds, I like the rules that are on Demolition Man. So when I was at your house on the weekend, I would have played It was when everyone was having lunch I'd already had my lunch And I sat and played Demoman For that entire time So I think it was about half an hour And do you know what? I've always been really down on Demolition Man I've never really got it I've always thought it had a really awkward layout I didn't quite get the rules But do you know what? After half an hour playing, guess what? You still don't like it? I fucking hate it Why? I don't like it I don't like Do you get the rules? Do you understand how to get lock freezes and stuff like that? Because a lot of people don't. Just so you can quiz me now. So the lock freezes are the right in lane. But how do you activate that? So the ball goes... I don't know how to light the right in lane, but once it goes down that right in lane, you've then got to shoot the left ramp to get a freeze. And the more you do, that's the more balls that will then go into multiple, right? Yes. Okay, you have to hit your stand-up target to lock freeze. I mean the first one or two will be lit for you already right Right okay Yep And access claw is MTL up top MTL yep that right Yep And that also your bonus multiplier and it multiplies your combos so you can just sit there and shoot combos all day long. Yep. And that can be the game that you really want to see. I did, I will say, I did actually enjoy it more than I have before, but that's still not saying much. I just, I don't think it's a bad game. It's just not something that I really like. It's good for an average game. I don't speak about Demolition Man like if I paid 10 grand for it, it be an amazing machine. I love it because it's my cheapest machine and it's the one that I can have almost the most fun on. Good bank of luck. There it is. Number four. Mr. Borg. I'll go first on this one and it'll be a really boring answer because everyone's probably thinking the same thing as me. I will go coin toss between Metallica and Walking Dead. I'll go Walking Dead. Simply because I probably like the software more than the layout. I think the layout is shit. There's nothing to the layout. Which is weird because it's a John Ball game. And the layout on Metallica is better, even though it's a fan layout. I despise that you plunge into the pops on Walking Dead. I might be in the minority here, but every game that there's a skill shot that puts the ball on the flipper, like Attack from Mars or Metallica, even if it's not to my advantage, I will still do that because I want the ball quicker than not winning the ball. See, I would have thought that you would have said Tron. Oh, shit. He made Tron as well. Okay. I forgot. I forgot. Okay, I changed my answer to Tron. I haven't done much research. This is some shitty filler segment, okay? This is not the real concept. That was Josh. No one's even fucking listening anymore, okay? Everyone has turned off now. So for me, it's an interesting choice. It's between Indiana Jones, Avatar, or Big Buck Hunter. The battle of the tiffids. Or Tales from the Crypt. They're all great games, mate. So, look, oh man, he's done some great games. He really has. It's really hard to say. I would say, only because I've been on record saying that I think it's the best machine that Stern have ever made, I would say Metallica, but The Walking Dead, you know, it's neck and neck, really. They are both fantastic games. But he's made some other great games as well. Aerosmith is fantastic. If that was a better theme, I would have loved that. A better theme like Kiss? Because if you like the Kiss, the Aerosmith layout, and you like Kiss more than Aerosmith, then you've got your game. No, I think Aerosmith was a correction of Kiss. Isn't that unfair for everyone that owns Kiss, though? Is Guardians of the Galaxy a correction on Metallica? Hmm. No? No, not really. Okay. No, but as we've said many times, Aerosmith does not play anything like Kiss. It doesn't. No, it doesn't. At all. Yeah. And Guardians doesn't play anything like Metallica or Iron Man. I mean, we had this massive fucking talk when the game got released, but, like, it's the same shots, but they feel different because they're not associated with sound. Like, getting fuel, like the double-scoring shot on Metallica feels amazing because of the sounds. Getting whatever it is on Guardians of the Galaxy feels like nothing because of the sounds. Yep. I still would say that of all of John Borg's machines, I would pick Avatar over all of them to own. Like to pay for it because Avatars are really cheap or to just get for free? To get for free. Oh, fuck, mate. To pay for because they're cheap. I was about to say, if someone says, do you want to walk and get premium or, I mean, walk and get anything or Avatar for the same amount of money, like you just get it for free, you would choose Avatar. You would choose Avatar for a week I'd say, what was I fucking thinking? No, I'd pick the other one, sell it, and then buy an Avatar and an Indiana Jones. Okay. Number three, Mr. Brian Smiling Eddie. He has only released three people machines ever, The Shadow, Medieval Madness, and Attack on Mars. And people put him at number three, which is insane. Man, pressure's on him to release this next game at CERN, whenever it's going to be. Can you imagine if it's just an absolute turd? Like, oh man, you fluked it three times 20-something years ago. He is also co-credited with doing Black Rose as well, just letting you know. Yeah. Let's just ignore that. Okay, so of the two great machines that he's made... Ha, ha, ha. Did you go shit on Shadow this weekend, Marty? It's a terrible game. It's a terrible game. It's terrible because it's hard? Is that what it is? Yeah, no, you know, I want to spend more time And in fact, when I come over to your place The Shadow is one of the machines I go to the most Because I want to understand it I want to get a feel for it There's not much I understand You start modes, time multiple, battlefields Yeah, some of the shots are a little bit awkward, that's all Sure Okay, so Attack from Mars or Middle of Madison Attack from Mars for me Yep I go Attack from Mars as well I've mentioned why before Number two, Mr. Steve retiring soon. He was ripped off. He should have been number one. Star Trek, just say it. It is Star Trek, yep. Yep. I will go ACDC just to be different. Really? Yeah. If I like the layout of that, I mean, how can you not like a Steve Ritchie layout on pretty much any machine, right? But it's no fear 2.0. You know, you said that Aerosmith is a better kiss with the corrections. ACDC, I feel like it's a better No Fear in the terms of the call-outs. He almost has repeated call-outs that he does on No Fear. I just love him just talking shit and just telling me I'm crap when I miss the song jackpot. I don't know. It's a cool game. So what's great about Steve Ritchie, right, is that in recent times, like those games, he's been able to pull out some great hits. But, you know, back in my day, you're ready for it. So back in the solid state, for me, and that's where I get my main connection with Steve Ritchie, you know, some of my older favourite games like Firepower and Black Knight, I love those games, right? Yeah. Flash. I love Flash. But they don't necessarily great games by these standards and I think competitions have sort of made some of those games unplayable because there's so many exploits. But he just had some great machines throughout the years. Number one, drumroll. Mr. Pat Lawler. Patrick Lawler? What's Patrick for? Patrick Lawler. Okay. Okay. Of dialed-in fame, CSI, Shrek, Family Guy, NASCAR, Grand Prix, Ripley's, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Monopoly, Wizard Blocks, Naked Gophers, Safecracker, Adam's Family, Roadshow, Twilight Zone, Funhouse, Whirlwind, Earthshaker, and Banzai Run. You go first. You know, everybody knows, I am not a Pat Lawler fan. Okay. I will easily go dialed-in, even though Twilight Zone and Adam's Family are, I think, really fun games to play. The four-way combo in dialed in to lock a ball is one of the greatest things in pinball. Left ramp, right ramp, up the middle, side ramp, and you locked your ball. It feels exciting every time. The common theme here, if there's a game that you can get some good flow and it means something, then I like your game. Yeah, and I would say that dialed in, I think, is my favourite Pat Law game for precisely that reason, in that it doesn't necessarily feel like a traditional pat roller. It's not so stop and start. It's really good flow, and the shots just feel magic. But you hate Twilight Zone and you hate Adam's Family, don't you, Arnie? Correct, as well. So they were never in the running. But, you know, I've sort of said that I have, you know, sometimes a bit weird taste when it comes to... You like Funhaus, don't you? No, yeah, I don't mind it. I like Earthshaker. Whirlwind then? You were talking with your best mate Keith. No, I really don't like Whirlwind. I see. As you know. Bonzo Run. Get the ball to the top, matey. I'll tell you which one of his games that I've had the most fun playing in real life. Safecracker. Where did you play that? I played that at a friend of ours, Darren's place. He's got one. And I think he's playing it. Yep, Dirty Daz. And, you know, he had like 20 machines. And I just kept coming back to Safecracker. Safecracker. It is. It's a really fun, interesting game. Did you win the token? Yeah, I did. Did you stop playing after you won the token? No, I kept going. Because the group was playing as well. I just think it's one of those things where when you've played a lot of pinball, sometimes it's nice to play something that's different that actually still is enjoyable. It's almost like that top bit is rigged, right? If the game wants you to win that... Yeah, of course. That doesn't have to feed the entire purpose of pinball? Like, that makes it into a gambling device, pretty much? Maybe if you want to be that guy. But if you don't want to be that guy and actually just look at it as being a really quirky play on traditional pinball, then you'll be a happy person for the rest of your life. All right. So what are you saying about to treat pinball less seriously? Yeah, I just think, you know, don't let certain little shortcomings ruin a game completely. Yeah. Is that a segue into the Slam the Top 100 as well? Well, it is. Just before we do go into Slam the Top 100, just wanted to give another shout-out. We did speak about it before, about the big Southern Hemisphere pinball championship that's happening. so go to Aussie Arcade and know that there's a thread on Pinside as well about it 100 players all fighting for dominance of the Southern Hemisphere that is every single country in the Southern Hemisphere you will dominate Wow, that's a lot of countries man. It really is a lot of countries, not just Australia and New Zealand right? It's everyone. And it's at Dave's place and if you ask Dave nicely he pretty much lets you sleep underneath his dimmer machines Yep, pretty much. You don't even have to ask nicely. All right. So, Slam Us Up 100, we did it last week. We recorded the Josh interview a couple of days ago, so we wanted to just make sure that Ghostbusters couldn't make a comeback. And lo and behold, 102 votes. Is that the highest amount of votes ever, Marty? By about 20 votes, in fact. I'm really upset that I chose that GIF, okay? So, basically, I chose a GIF. I couldn't find... I searched for about 10 minutes. This was late at night, at like midnight. I was like, cis lady, weed alien lady, even just alien lady. And it's just nothing similar to the Barracora kind of theme. And so I put Janet Garcia, who is a Instagram model. So basically, booze and gum is really what won the day. And let me just allow me to have my delayed rant. Because you had a rant last week, right? Here is my rant about this completely and utterly rigged slam the top 100. Because 71% of the vote went to Barracora, a machine that most people have never even seen nor heard of. So I'm just going to, you know, maybe just bring out a couple of call outs. I think that lady is hot. Go for Barracora. Next person said, I voted purely for the gift. Another one said Wrote it only because of Ryan's ranting So okay, there you go Next one says Picture speaks a thousand words The next one, hi Scott Says I love Ghostbusters and Marty Thank you And have a pro But Barracora and Ryan C win in a tough battle Based on these gifts only The next one says It's the gift Ryan You win Another one Okay, we get it. We get the point, Marty. What I was saying is that I felt like my rant about Ghostbusters was so good that I could have won regardless, but I fucked up by using that gif, and now I will never know. But the end result is I still win. Do you know what? I think if you had actually, in the spirit of Barracora trying to find a female fish, if you happen to find a picture of a female fish with its guts completely Slash and blood and guts all over the side of a beach, rotting with seagulls picking at its eyeballs, it's still going to beat Ghostbusters because people do not like Ghostbusters. So your rank was for nothing, mate? All I'm saying is it was an unfair slam the top 100 because of that gif, but it was always going to be an uphill battle. Ryan, last week we announced our Star Wars competition, and we have just been inundated with so many entries. Basically about one million entries, but we're just going to play the top five. Just the top five for now. We definitely didn't receive just five entries. Nope, definitely more than five. Definitely more than five, but we don't want to bore you guys with inferior Yoda things. Okay, the first one is from Aaron. Here we go. Fear leads to anger Anger leads to tilt Tilts lead to suffering Many tilts I sense in you That's really good Every other voice is funny I know Good day Ryan and Martin It is me Yoda That trans light would look badass in my swan cut So I decided to enter your contest. I will teach you the Force so that you don't tear your pants when moving heavy objects. Number one on the top 100 Star Wars should be Yoda rules, bitches. Again, I love the effort the people have gone to. Oh, here's one from Pinside PC. Casey. Oh, that nuisance. Won't go away. This is Pinside T.D. This is my Yoda impression. Sorry, losers. This one's gonna win it all. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. And suffering leads to Australia and this shitty podcast. Hey, why does Frank Oz have his hand up my ass? I'm a freaking Jedi Master. That's it. I'm done. And me the fuck off be with you. You know what the best thing about that is? The only part that he sounded like Yoda was when he was clearing his voice, preparing to do the Yoda voice. And then he just... I love it. Okay. Next one is from Andrew Clark. Jeff, my name is... I don't get it. You know, you know. Name, Jeff. Oh, okay. Just give me Jeff and Bimble. Oh, my gosh. Okay, and this one is my favorite, and it's because every time this guy emails Andrew, and we met him on the weekend, Marty, I feel like he has access to our chat logs because everything that we find funny during the week, like that whole Keith thing, we made like a 30-second joke about it last episode. We've been emailing each other, like messing with her non-stop, just saying Keith. Just for no reason. And I don't know if you find it funny, but I'm finding it funny. Anyway, with that in mind, here is Andrew's Yoda entry. Ah, Imperial March, you will sing to the sound of Keith. Keith is too easy to beat Keith is too easy to beat Ah, talented you are Bam Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith So who is leading, Marty? Is Keith in the lead or is it PBO overtaken by Keith? Yeah, I think right now Keith is probably still in the lead So well done, Keith so who's the winner Marty? I think it was Keith Keith is the winner for sure thank you Andrew you win finally you got robbed on the part for the Caribbean here is the redemption and yeah we still have to dial in maybe we'll do that next week we'll make it super easy we'll just be like send this in your something and we'll choose a random winner rather than show us how talented you are. Just, you know, just press the button and you might win. Okay. This week in pinball. What have you got to do, Marty? Well, let's talk about what we got up to this weekend because you had your tournament this weekend. Yeah, I had my, I called it Raging for the Queen. Yeah, because it was the Queen's birthday today, so it was a public holiday here in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. We both played extremely well. Oh, my gosh. First and second. That's exactly what we would want to have said. Yeah, I don't know what happened. QB, you know, Steven Bowden's got his pen ready, you know, for excuses about why we didn't win. I managed to finish 12th, but that was just by flicking the last game. Marty, how did you go? Do you know, I actually don't even know what my final number was. It was like 18 or 20 or something. You're flattering yourself, Marty. I think you came 24. Yeah, something like that. Out of about 34 people. So, yeah, I came up to you because I was never in your group and I was kind of struggling in the lower groups. I'm like, oh, Marty must be battling it out at the top with the bigwigs. And then I kind of saw your results and it was like last, last, last. And I went up to you and I said, what's going on, Marty? Why are you feeling so bad? Yeah, you did. Yeah? Is that the end of the story? Well, yeah, this is where you give your Steve Baden excuse. So, it's a very simple excuse. I was actually ill. But, I mean, that's an easy excuse, but here's the funny side of it is, when I was playing, it was, I had blurred vision, and I was, like, fumbling some of the easiest shots in pinball. Just really, like, the brain fading, flipper not going up, you know, button not going up. It was just crap stuff. and I was probably about, I don't know, three or four rounds into it and I just went, do you know what? I am not in any state. I am just going to have fun. So I even took my headphones out and just decided to just play and it was fun. But you still played shit. Oh, but I still played shit because I was... Because I said to you, the day before, so the Saturday before, I didn't get out of bed the entire day until getting up to go to your tournament. Okay. So, anyway, and I'm shit-ass today. But I sold you on because that's what I do for pinball. I got two excuses that I can pull. One is, at the start of the competition, Mick, actually, I should have mentioned his name because what he did is totally illegal. Someone just randomly gave us some Supreme stickers, and we stuck them in our clothes and I immediately felt superior to everyone in the room except you, Marty. And I thought that would improve my game. But then I kind of felt like everyone was peasants and they wanted to steal my money and my clothes and everything. And that's why I played bands. My other excuse is I'm fucking horrible at organising. I get stressed out when I have to organise too much stuff. and well but the pizza thing was done after round three and I was I was still like playing shit afterwards it's very hard to get into the groove of of playing well in pinball and when I couldn't get into the groove the entire day I kind of thought about you guys at pinball I'm like man can you imagine like like not playing well for three days like not getting into the groove like that would be miserable yeah it would be yeah so I've got to like somehow figure out how to had to snap back into not being crap mode. Yeah. Look, I just took, for me, I just took it as it was an off day. I spent, therefore, more time talking to people. Yeah. You know. I find it hard to do. If I'm in the middle of a game and I'm trying to think about how am I going to play my second ball or third ball, I feel like I can't talk to people properly. Like, there's that guy, Andrew, who flew down from Sydney to play in my tournament. and yes, I did talk to him and had a good chat, but I've got like a million little things that are going through my head, so I'm not sure what I seem like to him, but I was thinking about the pizza, I was thinking about the next tournament that I'm running, I was thinking about making sure that everything runs smoothly, about what I'm going to do on my third ball on Lord of the Rings. I can't concentrate on more than one thing at the same time. That's right. So I think if you remember when you first saw me at a tournament, you went, geez, you're really stressed and you're really serious and you're really uptight. And it's like, yeah, that's because I'm focused. So that's what you were like. This tournament, I was just chatting to everybody. I was like, and people were coming up and going, God, you're not playing well today. I'm like, I don't care. I'm actually now just having a bit of fun. I've thrown the game and I'm having fun instead. And that was good. Yeah. So that was won by Richard. He won his third tournament in a row. I'm not sure when the next one will be held. I'm going to have a bit of a break and just re-energize because, man, running tournaments is the most draining thing. I actually don't even know if it's any everyone's just like oh we'll just find a location and run it from there and I don't know if it's any easier kind of just rocking up and running it or to do with moving machines around and testing machines but it's exhausting like I don't want to play pinball for a couple of days I don't want to walk to my pinball room so you know let's flash back to before you did your first interview and sorry your first interview your first tournament and this is not a told you so moment But I remember saying to you back then, and I think it was when you were doing like a Flip Friends and all that kind of stuff, and I said, don't underestimate how taxing running a tournament is. They're really quite, they are. I was more energized back then. Like, I just, it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me, and I didn't even get to like play pinball almost the entire week leading up. So there's like, there's no practice, there's no anything. And it's just... But running a tournament, when everything goes well, it's fine. You can relax. But as soon as the slightest thing goes wrong, you've got that in your back of your mind that you're trying to fix and coordinate whilst you're trying to play as well. I don't deal with the road bumps well. Like, there's three or four people ringing me on the day, sorry, I've got diarrhea, I can't come. I'm like, cool. And they keep on talking to me for five minutes about how they have diarrhea. I'm like, all right, I've got to go. Like, I get it. and then two people kind of don't rock up on the day and I ring them and they're like, hey, I told you, like, I'm away on holiday. I'm like, you didn't tell me and you paid for the event. So, like, you know what I mean? Like, things like that and then me not including someone and then, you know, taking out machines and Steve Leach not working again. And then the piece of the buckle. Well, I can tell you now, every tournament director that is listening to this podcast right now is saying to you right now, Ryan, That happens every single tournament. But the only way to, in my mind, for me to not get affected by it is to not care, right? Like, for me, caring about how it's run and everyone kind of having the best time that they can, I have to sacrifice my sanity, my happiness for it, right? Yeah, but so does just about every tournament director. They have decided to become a tournament director because they want to run it a certain way, and they want it to be done perfectly. And so that's why there's that additional stress. And then you know what it's like when you're thinking everything's right and then all of a sudden you get a stuck ball or something goes wrong, two balls go in the shooter lane and you've got to make a ruling. It's like, oh, shit, I just, this was meant to be fun. Yeah. I mean, I guess the proof is in the pudding with, like, say, Luke. Like, yeah, Luke runs a couple of comps around Melbourne every month and he hasn't been performing too well. and when it comes to mine, he doesn't have any responsibilities. I mean, he was doing some tournament directing as well, making some calls, but he came second. And he said, yeah, I love doing this. Like, I just rock up and I play and I go home. Yeah, exactly right. I guess just a summary of it is being a tournament director, it can be a bit of a thankless job and it's a lot more stressful than people give it credit. There's a lot that you've got to organise. There's a lot behind the scenes. So good on you for doing it. It was a great tournament. I actually had probably the most fun I'd had at your tournament. Yeah, just don't try and come first, buddy. Yeah, I don't think it's a thankless tournament in the sense that everyone has told me that they really appreciate that I'm doing it, but it doesn't make it any easier if it doesn't come with a, hey, I will order the pizzas next time, or I will help you move all the machines and move them back in. As I said, people still did help out, But I guess I need to delegate more than come do it all myself. Anyway. Absolutely. Moving on. What did you get to, Marty? I mean, in the Josh interview, you said that someone was coming to pick up your Hobbit. So Hobbit gone. Was that all a built? Yep, it is gone. So a good friend of the show, Dave Hashman, a friend of his, was looking to buy some machines. So he became the middleman and managed to buy it off me and picked it up on whatever the day was that we recorded, with Josh. So, it is gone. And the Game of Thrones will be going back to your place soon, I'm assuming. Whenever I can be bothered coming to get it, yeah. Yeah, correct. So, I've got a very, very specific pinball-shaped gap in my line-up. So, I want to get a new pinball. Because obviously I've got... Besides Iron Maiden. Well, Iron Maiden, and just as a side note, Iron Maiden will be coming with 1.0 code. Oh my gosh. This week. Amazing. You got it right, Marty. You pre-ordered the machine no matter what, and you struck gold. So far, so far I have struck gold. And you know what Josh Sharpe said about it as well, it's a bit of a game changer, right? But what I want is, so my lineup will be Wizard of Oz, Star Trek and Iron Maiden. Huh? Okay. You know, playing devil's advocate here, why would you buy another machine when you have Iron Maiden coming? Is it purely for streaming, or is it literally like you just want to have four machines? Streaming. I was about to say, because as if you're not going to be glued to Iron Maiden playing that non-stop. And then you're like, okay, today, instead of playing Iron Maiden, I'm going to play Avatar. I know, but it's either that or, you know, because I'm not going to be able to stream Iron Maiden eight nights in a row. I'm going to be then, right, now I'm back to Star Trek and Wizard of Oz, which are the only two other machines. So what I guess I'm saying is the fourth machine, I'm going to have the rotating door. Okay. Why don't you do what I do and just put your hand up and say, hey, give me three pinball machines, guys, and then people can just use you as storage. Yeah Okay That's an even better idea Guys If you're in the Melbourne area Or anywhere in the world And you would like me to store your machine And have it streamed And in fact You can come on the stream as well There's a payment Oh my gosh I have got a perfect place For your Pimong machine And I can tell you There's a couple of things That you're going to be guaranteed One It will not be Handled badly Because I don't tilt my machines And B Because I am terrible and I mean terrible at fixing machines, I will not lift the play field, so nothing will go wrong. Unless something does break, and then you won't fix it. Sorry, no. I'm ruining your pitch. Yes. Please give all of your free demo machines to Marty so he doesn't buy some shitty game. Or is it your shitty game? But then he'll gladly accept it into his house. But no, so I'm looking for sort of a machine that's... I want it to be in good condition, but I don't want a new inbox. because I don't need a recent Stern, I'm looking for an older game, either a solid state, early D&D, or... Could have been Big Back Hunter, man. Sold it for less than five grand. Yeah, that would have been great. And it could have been Pirates of the Caribbean, Stern. Sold for five grand this week. No, I know. Anyway, so they said... Also, speaking of code, Star Trek got code this week. Now, we didn't guess that. Haven't we mentioned this three times already? Well, because it only came out this week. Okay. I'm not talking about with Josh and then before with the Khan thing. Okay. Let's talk about Star Trek again. What do you want to talk about, Marty? Just the fact that we said last week that, you know, with the Vault Edition, that there's a chance that there's going to be... We knew it was coming. We were part of the beta testing team. Come on, Marty. Just let them know. But I still haven't updated my game with it because it just didn't really feel that different. I haven't updated my game because I didn't want to muck around with it before the competition. It is back in my house finally. It's been in my garage for about a month. I will update it and I will beat you to Enterprise and Mock Money. Yep, you probably will. Cool. So that was my week. How about you? I got my Quicksilver next week. Oh, wow. Did you ever? Oh, my God. It's immaculate, 10 out of 10, mint condition Quicksilver. No, I warned you. It's quite the opposite. I warned you that it was in very rough condition, and you were like, no, I don't worry. Everyone was just like, yeah, yeah, you know, it's not that bad. And then everyone just looked at it and just kind of laughed on the weekend because, I mean, I guess everyone laughed because my machines are in pretty good condition besides maybe Sea Witch and, you know, even Demolition Man is probably my worst condition machine besides that. And this is like a non-working project, so, with the wrong color. It's spray-painted green, like the machine needs any more green. The side cabinets are green. There's like a membrane kind of like screwed onto the back. A quick shout-out to the people that helped me get it. I didn't mention their names last time. I didn't want to jinx the whole process. When I rang this guy, he had a whole bunch of people that wanted the machine because it was fairly cheap. And he said, I need it picked up today, and he was in another state. So I rang my mate, Dave McKinnon, friend of the show. He said, I will help you out, Ryan, but I can't pick it up today because I don't have pinball transport. But in the same sense that he says, I know someone called Doug who does, and he lives around the corner from me. So he rang him. And this is before my last competition. Within 20 minutes of my phone call, he was already in a car with Doug on the way to pick this machine and he paid for it in cash on my behalf while the bank transfer cleared. And then he saw the pinball machine at his house, Doug, until a guy called Matt. Hello, Matt. We've been in before at the about event last year, Marty. Matt was coming to Melbourne to do a pinball swap with my mate, Nima, and he said, would you like me to deliver your Quicksilver pinball machine? I said, sure. How much do you want for it? And he said nothing. I'm on my way anyway. I will deliver your machine for free. Which is just, we talk about it all the time in pinball. There's a couple of bad eggs that people concentrate on, but 99% of pinball people are amazing people. And yeah, I got that on the weekend. Nima got his dialed in. Matt got a TNA. Everyone is happy. When I have the energy, I will start working on Quicksilver to first make it work make it flip and then decide what I'm going to do with the condition of the machine because the the back glass is coloured in it's uh it needs a lot of fucking work and honestly I thought I was one of these people that thought that you were exaggerating going oh it's not going to be as bad as he says and as soon as I looked at it I just went what on earth have you bought the ball that was in the machine half of it like literally 50% of it is pure rust and it has fucked up the play field something shocking. Like, there's little dots, white dots on the play field and I thought that was just kind of like dirt. And when I was at the competition, I was kind of wiping it and I realised that was like small chunks of the play field. I ran my fingers, because the glass was off, obviously, and I ran my fingers on the play field just to feel how much the inserts have lowered. Yeah. You've got a lot of work ahead of you. Yeah. But do you know what? And someone said, oh, you know, he doesn't know what he's good in self-imploring. And I said, but Ryan's the kind of person that will take this as a challenge, and you will actually learn new skills by doing this one up. Or I will just give it to someone else to do it for me. Jeff. My name is Jeff. No one knows what we're talking about except for like the 20 people. Yeah, it's one of those things where if someone, if you buy a restored machine like this for like $5,000, everyone's like, oh, well done, pat you on the back. But if you buy it for a grand and spend like $2,000 doing it up, everyone's like, oh, you know, like, yeah. It's just no one can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I guess. I played the last game on TNA before it left, and I easily forgot. I know I had that kind of that one month where I talked about how good TNA was, and then I stopped when it left. If I don't play a game, I just slowly, I forget how good it is. and I think, oh, yeah, TNA, like, no big deal. It is a fucking amazing game, and I got to react to seven on my one and only game. And I'm sad now that there isn't one ten minutes away from me. I mean, they're going to keep on making them. People keep on buying them. This is a forever pinball machine. Spooky said, you know, there's one day they were going to stop. They won't stop. You know, they might have to order in batches of 50, but they'll keep on making them because the demand is going to be there for a long time. Just like dialed in. Anyway. Yeah, absolutely. So, just last thing on Quicksilver, Marty, did you notice that it has penises all over the playfield? No, I didn't. I was looking to Ron and Bruce, and they were talking about me buying a Quicksilver, and then Ron kind of explained the rules. I was like, ah, cool. I didn't know that you can track the lanes to hit the spinner, and now I don't need an alien star. That's the reason why I wanted that game. And then I looked at the playfield, and there are penises all over the place with money. I'm leading it up right now. Okay. I'll just wait. Here's some sinking music. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Are they, though? There's one that is a dildo. It's a proper-sized penis. Really? Why does that kind of look like a penis? Where is your mind? It's not my mind. It's Ron and Bruce from the Slam Tilt Club. Well, there you go. Now, all you had to say was Bruce, and I would understand. No, I think it was Ron. Ron, I thought better of you. Really? Anyway. Okay. What's in the mailbag, Marty? Nothing. Besides our million Yoda entries, nothing? Nothing in the mailbag. There was one thing that was in there last week that we forgot to mention, and it was the, we talked about, well, I talked about how curl curl, why the double words, why not just curl. There's no plural in the Aboriginal language. Aborigines are the people that we, they're like, you know, the Australian version of the Indians that you guys sold land off, we sell it off. Well, I mean, the English did, I guess. Right. and there's no plural you can't put an S on the end it's like crows so it's cro-cro is wogga wogga so that's what the curl curl is and that's what Andrew Highway is investing all of your hard earned money on there you go that's a fucking awesome story and part of this email there's about five people that emailed us this one person emailed weird towns in Australia I know we're three hours into the podcast, but there is a place in Australia called Chinaman's Knob, was it? I don't have it in front of me. There's a place in Australia called Chinaman's Knob. How great is that? You're done, buddy. After three hours, you're just like, can you please stop talking, Brian, so we can end the podcast? I thought they were still sick. Okay. That's pretty much it. There's a couple of other emails, but three hours in. I think we're freaking out. If you do have an email to send us, you can reach out to us at headtoheadpinball at gmail.com and we will maybe read it out if we can be bothered after three hours. Reach us on headtoheadpinball.com, Twitter, HHPinball, Facebook, just search for Head to Head Pinball, Instagram, all that jazz. Follow us, stalk us, but not in a weird, creepy way. Just socially stalk us. That's about it. Alright, thanks everybody for listening We will do this all again next week Just for you Ooh, who have we got next week? Who have we got? There'll be some clues coming up, I'm sure So well done to everybody that guessed That it was Josh Sharpe this week Well, Stacey Borg Well done That was impressive, that was like a five minute guess Not bad at all Alright, see ya Bye Con! Con! Con! Con! Con! Con!