Well, hello, and happy Halloween. This is your old pal Christopher Franchi from the Super Awesome Pinball Show, and I have dug up a special spooky rerun of the Super Awesome Pinball Show featuring none other than Elvira herself, Cassandra Peterson. And as an added bonus, Elvira artist Greg Ferraris, who recently retired from Stern Pinball. And speaking of spooky, we'd like to thank Spooky Pinball and Cointaker for sponsoring this special rebroadcast. So without further ado, please come up to the lab and see What's on the Slab, a special dug-up Halloween episode of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Thank you. Hello, kids, and welcome to the super awesome pinball show Halloween Spectacular. Halloween Spectacular. What is special kid? Elvira, Cassandra Peterson. Elvira are the great grandkids too. And now, welcome your three favorite performance, Christopher Franchly, Christian Lines, I don't like his name, and Jeff Parsons. Go, go, go, go, go. Hey guys, what's up? You ready to talk some pinball? It's been a while. Hell yeah. Let's do it. It's the super awesome pinball show Halloween spooktacular. And I'm feeling spooky. I look foolish, don't I? Not any different than you normally do. It's been a crazy week, guys. I know you guys are all still recuperating from the tailgate party, and we'll get into that. Oh, will we ever. It's been a week. I have nothing else to talk about but that party, because if anything else in my life happened during that time, it was overshadowed by that fantastic party. It was amazing. I was not prepared for what I saw. I refuse that. Chris and Melissa Marquette know how to throw a damn party. And this shows you, people, if they were at the first one, they have to remember that there was like a week in prep time. And it was a last-minute decision to make that a party open to the public on the first party. This shows you what happens when they've got time to plan something out. And it was amazing. Oh, the stories we have to tell. We should start, though, right, with a huge and sincere thank you to the coin takers, right? We're throwing this party. They promoted their business and obviously our podcast as well. They're our sponsors, but they are, you know, far and away above that for us. You know, they're awesome friends. They're great people. and holy crap, they throw one heck of a party. Yeah. Let me just say three words about that party. Apple pie moonshine. You've been converted. My God. I was counting that like it was orange juice. I was like, why do I feel so tingly? It was like a Slurpee. It was in a Slurpee machine. And oh my God, right next to the, in honor of the Big Lebowski, they had the white Russian Slurpees as well. But, you know, we're jumping the gun talking about the party. Let's talk about Franchi's ride in with Borg. Well, that's what I wanted to ask, man, because you took a long, huge road trip with this guy. It was like a dude road trip. You picked him up. I talked to Eric before you guys left, and I'm like, oh, hey, you ready for the road trip? And he's like, oh, hell no. It's way too long of a drive. I'm flying in. But you and Borg, you did it all. So how did that go? Wow. Well, I'm going to preface this story by saying, Mr. Borg, I love you. You know I love you. You're a dear friend, and I will always love you. I may say things in this story that are not very flattering, but I mean them in a very humorous way. Let's start off with the fact that I had coughed for three days after because of his smoking in the car. Oh. Now, Borg needs to learn how to smoke in a non-smoker's car. because I said, just make sure you got the cigarette out the window. And I would look over. I'd be sitting here like, I'm like, what the hell? I look over, and he's got a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and he's like flipping through his phone. I'm like, hey, get that over by the window. Like the whole inside of the cockpit is filling up with cigarette smoke. So that was a bit unfortunate. I had to scold him a bit. But we had a blast driving in, actually. We were talking about, God, he was telling me about turtles and how he saves turtles. He goes and digs up these eggs and incubates them, and then he lets them grow to a decent size in a tank that he has at home. Because if they're little baby turtles. I thought you were talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. No, no, no, no. And then you went off way off-engine. Yeah, actual turtles. No, actual turtles. He's telling me about how he captures these eggs and incubates them. Because, look, when the baby turtles are so little, they're like, other shit will just eat them. You know, so he lets them grow up to a decent size in his tank, and then he sets them free and all that. And I'm like, oh, you know, I just love turtles. They're so cute. I like turtles. So that was a charming little Borg story. Oh, God, we talked about music. We talked about everything. I mean, we had 14 hours on the road, you know, between the ride there and the ride back. The funniest thing that happened, fucking Borg. So we get our rooms. We're on the second floor. and when we checked in, we checked in late at night and we had one of those wise guys behind the desk. So he's joking it all up about everything. And we asked about breakfast. You guys have breakfast? He goes, oh, if you want to call it that. We got bagels and Pop-Tarts and coffee. And, you know, like he just sells it like as like, but I'm not sure if he's telling the truth or not. I'm like, all right, whatever. So we're at our doors. We have separate rooms and we're looking at each other and Moore goes, let's get a nice breakfast tomorrow. We'll, you know, get up and we'll go to a nice restaurant and get a good breakfast. And I'm like, all right, that sounds great. I mean, I don't want a bagel or a Pop-Tart, you know. I hope you guys sit down like gentlemen and have a breakfast. So we go to bed, get up the next morning. I'm up at like 6, and so I'm farting around, killing time. And like around 8 o'clock or so, I text him. I'm like, you ready to get some breakfast? Crickets. You ready to get some breakfast? Crickets. Hey, Borg, are you up yet? Crickets. Like, you can't still be sleeping. And one thing I learned on this trip was if you want to get a hold of John, call him. Do not text him because apparently he hasn't figured out, like, his phone doesn't ring or something, whatever. So he didn't quite get my text in time. But I finally get a hold of him. Do you want to get breakfast? He goes, oh, I just ate. He took full advantage of those free Pop-Tarts. I hate when you make plans with someone and they just throw the monkey wrench in, like, right at the time you're expecting to leave for breakfast. Oh, no, I just ate. God. Pop-tarts for you. So I'm like, all right, well, I can just grab something on the way. You ready to go? I was going to watch some TV and take a shower. Okay, John, I'm going to go to Target, and I'll call you when I get at Target. So I get at Target. Are you ready yet? Nope. Oh, man. Or he's going to stick to any sort of itinerary. He's just going with the flow. I see Borg as a guy who goes with the flow. He's a free spirit. He's an outdoorsy kind of, yeah. So I'm like, all right, well, I'm going to go to Cointagr. So I drive to Cointagr. It takes 15 minutes to get there from the hotel. And I get there. I'm not there 10 minutes. Borg calls. I'm ready. Oh! Oh! Got to go back and get him. So actually, that was not the funniest part. The funniest part was about the breakfast. So I'm skipping ahead to after the party. So the next morning, we all have plans to go get breakfast. That would be the coin takers, Chris and Melissa, Roger and Kato from the Pinball Brothers, Borg and myself. So I get up. I'm ready. I got all my stuff packed up, thrown in the car, and I went to the breakfast area just to have a cup of coffee and wait for everybody. So I'm talking to Chris on the phone. I'm drinking the coffee and blah, blah, blah. And he goes, all right, well, I'm pulling up at your hotel right now. And I said, well, we're just waiting on Borg, so you want to come in and sit down with me, have a coffee or something if you want. So I see his electronic supermobile drive by the front of the doors because the breakfast area is right by the glass doors. And then I said, yeah, just coming through the double doors there. And I hear, he's like, the door's locked. And I'm like, I'm looking right at the door. You're not there. And you're not supposed to pull on the door. They're automatic doors. You're at the wrong door. He's like, am I? And then I see him walking by. He's on the other side of the driveway. And he's passing the doorway. I'm like, stop, stop. I go, turn your head. He turns and looks at the other part of the hotel. I'm like, no, the other way. And he turns and looks at me. I'm like, see, I'm waving. I'm right here. And he goes, dude, you're in the wrong hotel. We had been eating breakfast in a different hotel the entire time because Borg didn't realize that when he walked out the side door, he was walking across the parking lot and into the Holiday Inn, not the Quality Inn where we were staying. So we had been eating free breakfast the whole time on Holiday Inn, and we weren't even a guest there. You guys beat the system. Wow. But anyway, so yeah, it was a good time. We had a good time going to and fro to the party, but I guess I have to talk about the VIP party because you guys weren't there. Yeah, I hear. I didn't get in until like 11 o'clock. It was so late. Well, I want to tell you about that part of it, but Franchi, I need to know when Jeff was in a travel nightmare and I was driving home after like 48 hours of music festival, you were at a VIP party with a live band and crab legs and lobster tails and all these super celebrities. So what went down for the people who couldn't make it, including Jeff and I? Yes, live band, Cody and Joe, I believe were their name. It was funny because there's three people, but the bass player apparently doesn't count. So great entertainment. These guys set up. They had like this bank of pinball machines, and then they set up right in front of that. So their stage set was pinball, which was cool. They played all night. They were fantastic. Even Steve Ritchie got up and grabbed the guitar and played a couple songs. That was weird. I didn't know that he did that sort of thing. That picture you took of him playing and you posted to our Facebook page looks like something out of Rolling Stone. I mean, the lighting is perfect. His hair is perfect. It's big and large and in charge. Is Ritchie perfect? Yes. But let's talk crab legs. Have you ever seen crab legs the size of a human's arm? I have not. That's what they had. I don't know what planet they got these crabs from. He told me the budget for the crab legs, and it was a shite ton of money. So I'm assuming they were amazing. Yes, four figures for people, you know, without getting specific. Four figures for the seafood. And if you want a detailed critique of the crab legs, you can ask Mr. Eric Minyer, who filled up his plate with these giant crab legs and then went back for more. He's got to maintain the protein to his calves. Yes, that he was showing off. So anybody who didn't make it missed the Minyer Cav Show. Oh, I never checked out his calves. I don't think I've ever said that about anybody. That could make the blooper real, Jack. He was in his glory eating those crab legs. It was insane. And then we had, well, let's just say we had Roger and Kato of the Pinball Brothers on the twos. Honestly, if I was going to go out and drink with any pinball duo, and I wanted to just, like, relive my frat days and my college experience, it would be those two guys because they can party like no one else. I can't. You know what's funny is whenever I look at them in the back of my head, I just hear they just look like the dudes that are just always at some fancy nightclub where you can't get in unless you're on a list. That is true. They party one night and they design killer pinball machines by day. Yeah. So the VIP party was, you know, it was kind of limited. Steve was there. some stories could be told about steve let's just say he was very late to the party the next day that's right there some people thought he might have died yeah yeah we were texting a lot and we didn't hear back and we were worried when me and john were leaving to go back to the hotel i was supposed to bring eric and steve with me so john and eric are in the car and we're like well where's steve is he coming so eric gets out and And he comes back and he goes, well, let's go to the hotel. And I'm like, well, what happened? He goes, well, I walked up to Steve and I said, we're going to the hotel. And he said, see ya. I guess he wasn't done yet. But not a lot of people, you know, a couple of coin takers are really good customers. So there was maybe 15 people there. It was a very kind of a private affair, but really nice. You know, it was relaxing. You know, you could just hang out and there wasn't a room full of people. It was kind of a calm before the storm, you know. But the food was amazing. We'll get to the food when we talk about the next day you guys are there, and we can all praise the almighty Zach the Meatman. Well, you know, that night while you guys were partying it up, I was driving home after two days of partying with some good friends at a Firefly Music Festival. I drove home. I got home around 11 p.m., and that was just before Jeff and his amazing girlfriend got into town. Ding dong. And then bright and early the next morning, we drove up to the tailgate party, And despite all the debauchery at the VIP event, everyone was there pretty much ready to go, except for Steve Ritchie, which we kind of had him on. But yeah, he rocked in a few hours later, so no worse for the wear. But man, this bread and the layout of this place was incredible. We had about 300, what, 300 to 400 people there over the course of the day. Every game you would ever want to play, including a beautiful Big Lebowski, two aliens. But you never got to play the aliens. I never got on that thing. It was always a lot. That's the thing, Jeff. When you're at a pinball thing like this and you're socializing and you're having so much fun, when it all ends, you're like, shit, I forgot to play games. That's why you needed the VIP party because it was like nobody was on those games. We were having a blast. Well, if the Newark airport didn't suck so bad, I probably would have been there on time. Yeah. Jeff had a rough go of it, as did a couple other people. We heard some horror stories about traveling in that weekend from Jared Gines and Jeff. and Michelle. I mean, you guys had it rough. Delay, delay, delay. And it's like, now we're not going to make my connection. And I'm like, you know, OJ Simpson running through the airport jumping all over everybody to get to where I need to go. It was crazy. We were worried we would have to drive out two hours to get you and then drive back, you know, that night at like midnight. But fortunately, that didn't play out. It actually worked out in the end. But man, for a little while there, my anxiety was through the roof. I'm not going to make this. But you guys did make it. What a party, man. They said three to four hundred people. I don't think we could fit any more people in there. I think they were at their fire code limit. There were people actually... There's a lot of space outside, too. Yeah, and there's people actually tailgating. Yeah. You know? We called it a tailgate party kind of as a joke, I guess, for lack of a better name, because it's kind of like around football season and all that, you know? But, yeah, people were taking it to heart. You know, their tailgate pulled down and lawn chairs and hanging out. The first thing Borg did when he got there was explore the woods, like, you know, Like the free spirit he is. Yeah, I saw him walking into the woods. I'm like, what, does he got to go pee or something? There are bathrooms in here. He's still fun to hang out with, and he's just so laid back. He just shoots the shit and, like, lives life without, it seems like, not much worry. Like, the guy just enjoys life. So it was cool to hang with him. Eric Meunier, probably one of my favorite pinball people of all time. It's like hanging out with a friend from college when I'm with that guy. He kind of schooled me on Toy Story and showed me how to play it. And Godzilla, too, actually. He had played it, I think he said, two times before the tailgate party, and we started playing it, and he, like, GC'd it or something. The first time we played it, the guy is so skilled that pinball would miss him. I didn't know he was that good. We played Kiss, and I kicked his ass, and I got the grand champion. Wow, he got pissed. He was like the equivalent of hold my drink. I mean, he sat there until he beat it, and when he beat it, he fucking crushed it. I had $105 million, I think, and he crushed it by $270-something million. Yes. But he sat there until he beat it. He was not having it. So, good on him. He does have some skills. And there were other people, right? Some of the guests were all famous outside of the ones we've already talked about. Jason Knapp was there. He's the amazing editor of Knapp Arcade. Great to meet him. Did you guys read the review he wrote? Yeah, it was nice. Wow. Except for one part. He said that he destroyed me on Godzilla, which he did. And every time we play, I play pinball with him two or three times now, he freaking beats me, and then he goes on Nap Arcade and he talks shit about it. Oh, smack it on. Jason, I am going to take all of my tilt-bobs and put them back in my machines, and I am going to Rambo montage, or whatever it is, like, get this... You're the best. Yes, yes. Get my skills in check, and then I'm coming for you now. Audiences love grudge match. You and I. Are we talking rematch next year at the tailgate party? Yes. Okay. There we go. We need live streaming. We need streaming. We need to get Jack Danger to come down and do play-by-play. Yes. We're throwing it down. You really hit it in public. I'm cool with that. We have an official date, by the way. I'm going to jump ahead so that you can officially challenge NAP to the rematch or the grudge match, whatever you want to call it. And I am going to make boxing posters for this. Nice. The profile of you and the profile of him, you know, looking at each other with the pissed off face. It's going to be September 16th, 2023. That is the Cointaker Super Awesome Pinball Show Tailgate Party No. 3. Love it. So there you go. So you've got to show up just for that, people. Sign up. Sign up, guys. I will. If it's not for the pinball and the people, it is for the moonshine, the apple pie moonshine, and some of the best food you've ever had in your entire life. Zach is part of ZBBQ. That's his company. He cooks food for festivals. He's hired by lots of places to make food. This guy makes the best barbecue you'll ever eat. By far. The best ever. It's un-freaking-believable, that food. And everything that they had out, I missed the pierogies. Apparently there were pierogies there. So I was pissed. I didn't look at the full spread. They had those buffet counters, you know, where you scoop food out of the bins. They had like two of those filled with all kinds of other stuff. In addition to hot dogs and hamburgers and steak sandwiches and steaks and all that other stuff. It was nuts. But you know what? Just like at the end of all the G.I. Joe cartoons when they say, what did you learn? I learned a valuable lesson at this party. I don't like people. And that's not the lesson I learned. that's not knowing is half the battle i was just gonna say that in general i always say i hate people i have a thing on my phone that says i hate people i have a coffee mug i don't like people and when i go to expos i tend to keep to myself people come up and they'll talk to me and i'll talk back but i'm not very talkative i'm not rude i just don't get into conversation i'm the same way unless it's somebody like you guys obviously i would you know talk to you but like just strangers that come on listen to your show or i love your artwork or whatever i'm not rude i'm just not super chatty but at the show when I saw all this love that we were getting and all these people that had drove and traveled you know I'm like you know what I'm gonna sit down and talk to these people I had a table there was some artwork and all I just kind of let it sit there and ignored it and just talk to people and you know I've heard all about you know how great the pinball community is and all that but you know hearing it's one thing experiencing it is another thing was so fantastic to talk to all these people such nice people and such a cool community and I was I I was so glad that I did that because that's not me. I mean, for years I've been very introverted. And to get to talk to all these people and compliment our show and compliment my work and all of that, it was just, in addition to all the food and everything else, it was just such a good time. It was such a good, positive thing. And there was no tournaments going on. There were no seminars going on. It was just a hang. It was a pinball hang. Dude, you were holding court at the end there for a while. You had people all around you. talking left and right. That was cool. I had a great time. You know, God, again, we can't thank the Marquette's enough. So nice. But I'm just going to say, if you guys don't make, not you guys, but listeners, if you don't make the trip out next year to this party, you're really missing out on something special. It is really cool. Our name is attached to it because they're our sponsors, but we're not really using it to promote the show. Obviously, probably most people there were listeners, so we're not gaining any new listeners by doing this. It's just sort of another way to give back. A certain podcaster is always needling me, saying, you should charge for your show. You should charge for your show. And I said, the people who listen to our show are the people who gave me a career in this business, and this is my way of giving back. So it's all just a big family of fun. The event was super positive, and it was a great time. And there's all kinds of other stuff. Should we talk about the prizes that were given away? We definitely should. But I want to rewind a little bit and say that while we like to promote the show, obviously, through this, this event, as much as it is about the podcast, is way more about Cointaker in general. Like they are throwing this to give back to the community and give back to the people who buy games through them and really show them a good time. And they spent ridiculous amounts of money on this thing. And it was all for free for everyone who came. And I'm sure that even if they put a price tag of $15 per ticket next year, we will get way more out of it than what they charge. Oh, yeah. They gave away a pinball machine. They gave away a freaking pinball machine. A brand-new in-box Jack this Canyon. Translites. Franchi, you gave away two or three huge pieces of art. Yeah, framed canvases. Yeah, people walked away with some seriously awesome swag. Yeah, it's cool. T-shirts, a special edition Chalupa shirt. People won that. I walked away with a drink ticket I didn't use. Because you were getting free drinks, Pars. Damn it. I can't complain about that. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Let's just say you might drink more than your tickets worth if you go to this event. And we all did. Yeah. We definitely all did. It was a great fucking time. Definitely not to be missed next year. One other big part of the party that we didn't touch on. You know, Frenchy, you were showing off a lot of your wares, right? I mean, hopefully you sold a bunch of stuff. Like you said, you were off kind of holding court, and there were tons of people who wanted to buy your stuff, and you weren't at the table, so we kept dragging you back to sell stuff. But one of the things that you brought with you was a sneak peek at the next American Pinball title. That's right. And it wasn't supposed to be revealed to the world, but Tommy Floyd from Nitro Football took a little sneak peek and took some pictures and posted them online. Well, all right. No, hold on. He took a picture of my table, not realizing that he even captured that. And when Cointaker called him, he promptly took it down. But not before Mr. Jason Knapp saw it and blew it up, you know, and went, oh, look. And then he promptly took it down as well. But I will say this, because there's already shit talk going on. The people who have seen the preview piece of art were all extremely excited. They said that they absolutely loved the style. And there wasn't, I mean, you guys saw it, and you guys have seen more art than that. You're in the inner circle of trust. So you know what they didn't see. They saw a couple of space mountains and a rocket and a logo, and there's Barlow flying around. there wasn't a lot to see but they loved the style and just uh there's a lot of comments like i've never seen a speaker panel that detailed before right like people usually don't focus on putting a lot of effort into the speaker panel you know there might be a logo or something you know but not a whole lot of stuff going on so the reception to that was amazing and i don't think anybody was blowing me either i think they just really liked it so if you hear any shit talk out there just fucking hold your breath and wait until you see it because i guarantee that you'll like it and i can guarantee that now based on everything i've heard in here one person bitch so no it's refreshing it's it's a new new style that we haven't seen in a long time and uh the piece that we got to saw at the tailgate party was was really cool but it was just you know it's just the tip of the iceberg so there's yeah good stuff to come yep most definitely and uh who knows what we'll have next year if we can get the timing right you know yeah you never know because we were supposed to have the whole cabinet for that came there but because the timing got changed with that had to get bumped but you know honestly i think people are going to use this for a springboard for a lot of stuff next year after seeing the success of this show i think there's going to be a lot more cool shit happening next year that involves like companies it's a concentrated pinball show like instead of going to pinball expo for four days you come to one day at sunbury pennsylvania and And to meet all these personalities, you get to play tons of new pinball machines. And like all pinball shows, with a lot of industry people, some secrets were definitely revealed. So I can't wait to talk about those. Yeah. I wonder if Steve let any cats out of the bag in his drunken stupor. I wish somebody was recording that because I wasn't there during the VIP party. But I'm sure some secrets were dropped. Yeah. So anyway, great time. I feel like I'm rubbing it in at this point. So definitely don't miss the party next year, next September. And I think that's all we can really say for our week from pinball. That really consumed it. Have you guys got anything else? That's really about it. Yeah, we loved having the Parsons at our house. It was at the, what did you call it, Franchi? The Nudge and Tilt Bed and Breakfast. You too can enjoy Christian and Sarah Lyne's Plunge and Nudge pinball bed and breakfast. Enjoy the bedside refrigerator. Any fridge. Jeff and Michelle were here. We had an awesome time. We didn't have enough time, unfortunately, because they had to leave the next day. But we took them out to Chocolate World. We rode the chocolate ride with the singing cows. It's like a small world for chocolate. It truly is. Singing cows. I think Michelle was in her element there. Oh, my gosh, she was. She was loving it. She didn't even go to the tailgate party. I guess she didn't realize how far it was away from where she wanted to go. So she didn't come by, but she went to brew pubs. She went to shopping. She got a spa that she found. She was all, I mean, she was just living it up and loved it. So we'll definitely be coming back. That's awesome. Love to have you back, man. Sweet. Well, let's take a look at the news. And this just in, more crazy pinball bullshit with the WPIN Action Pinball News Group. Well, Frenchy, kind of in the news, I wanted to ask you a little bit about a few things. One is, there's a rumor floating out there that you were involved on the art for a rumored game, Pulp Fiction, from CGC. And people are reporting this as fact, that you are the guy doing the art package for this game. We don't even know if this game exists, but if it did exist, can you confirm or deny? I can confirm that I did not do it. There you go. I cannot confirm nor deny that the game exists, but I can definitely deny I did not do the artwork on this game. I've heard people say it like it's a matter of fact. Correct. And so, wrong. Sorry. But, yeah. So, no, not true. So before we get into James Bond, You also posted a picture on Facebook with two complete art packages for games that never actually came out. One of them was Superman, and the other one was Batman 87. P9. So you have complete art packages for these two games. I think people have seen them before, but you put them out and you said, you know, franchisee artwork that sells games. Are you pretty much giving up on these properties as ever being made into an actual game? I'm not telling. Okay. But, yeah, I just put that out because I had it done. I was sort of reaching a lull where I was wrapping up some jobs and looking for my next project. So I just kind of did a little promotion. That's why it said Art That Sells came. So it was like, hey, if you've got a job coming up, call me up. I'm available. But then, yeah, it came to bear that somebody contacted me and said, I'm not going to say any more. I feel the more I say, the more hints I'm throwing out. So that's the deal with that. Oh, man, fingers crossed, because they're both awesome themes. Yeah. Oh, easily. Yeah. All right, well, let's jump into the big news. Let's jump into Bond, James Bond, and talk about what you guys think about the new release by Stern Pinball. Jeff, when this game got revealed, you sent us a link to a game that I had never seen before. I thought this was the third James Bond game because we had Goldeneye from Sega, and before that we had a James Bond from Gottlieb. But there was another game that you sent us that was totally random. It's like a joust game. It's called 007. Two players, opposite sides of the machine, and you play against each other. And despite being called 007, the play field is kind of more of a soccer field, and there are like these Bond girls all over the soccer field. It's super, super weird. I don't know if it even should make the list of James Bond games. I don't think it actually counts. It doesn't, but it's great to put it out there. Hey, here it is, guys. What do you think? So this is the third or fourth James Bond game that's ever been made. So what do you guys think? Let's hit first impressions on art. What do you think, Christopher Franchi? On art? Well, thank God. Skittles stuck in my throat. I didn't know you were going to go to me. Sorry. putting the Skittles down. The art, I really like. The only criticism I will say is I don't like the backlash for Dr. No, but I know what they were up against, and everybody's blowing a bunch of shit. They should have done this, should have done that. I saw a million posts on Pinside that said they should have hired Franchi. Number one, thank you. That's flattering. I appreciate that. But they did not have the ability to do that. Now it is true that my artwork was used to secure the license but once that happened it was made clear to Stern that they could only use assets from the movie posters So their hands were tied They did the best they could which I thought Kevin O did a fantastic job I even called him up and told him, man, you're taking a lot of heat, and I'm sorry for that because I think you did a fantastic job. I love the play field. It's got that kind of retro throwback feel. Not so much in the art style. Well, yeah, I guess in the art style, too. But in the way, you know, it was a very sensible layout as far as, you know, thinking along the lines of old school James Bond movies. And he utilized the assets well. You know, is it, you know, is the one side being a collage of posters ideal? Obviously not. But when you only have so much choices, you've got to settle on something. And I really like the one side being like a big blown up, you know, piece of artwork of like James Bond and some funky flying device and a bunch of, you know, the scuba ones. Really cool. I love the limited edition with the scuba art. And Kevin even did, you know, people aren't going to appreciate this because they don't know it. But he had to go in and retouch all of that stuff because it was either real nasty looking when you blew it up that big or it had like halftone dots in it from being printed material. so it had all those dots and he had to go in and it's not an easy task to get rid of that and still maintain the detail of the art so he had a bitch of a time with getting that art package done let's just say he did a lot of work beyond what anybody would do to do an art package and I think it shows for what he had to work with I think he did an absolutely fantastic job and I think when you look at those games it just pulls you into that world you know so what more could you ask for i mean your back glass was so clean and so so cool and it really emphasized all the cool features of bond and you know just the fact that they were limited to the poster doesn't have that creativity so i think a lot of people really liked that about your work did you do a cabinet as well or did you do a place no that back glass wasn't even done it was sort of uh you know i was working on it and joe kamiko was like give me it we need it so i I had to hand it over unfinished, so I'm not really happy with it. There's a lot of stuff that didn't get done there, but the major elements are in it. But, you know, it is what it is. I would have liked to have done it, but I'll tell you right now, if that would have happened to me, you know, okay, you're on art, and then all of a sudden you can only use movie posters, I would have faked my death. I would have done anything to get out of that job. Do we have any idea why the owner of the Bond license would say you can only use posters? I mean, it seems kind of odd to me. Some people just have severe control over their property. And I have heard that about the people that own the James Bond lights. In fact, all the movies are going on to Amazon this week. And there's an article that says that these people are very, they like the control of everything. So that may just be what it is, I guess. Yeah, I wouldn't expect any cool new collector's edition art covers for those DVDs. I'm sure it's just a movie poster stuck on a Blu-ray box. Well, you know, the poster collage thing worked for Guns N' Roses. I think that's the coolest of the three art packages for that game. And I like it here. I think it beats, like, having just, like, 007 on the side of the cabinet or something like that. Yeah, totally. But the only thing that really stood out for me as a negative with the art package was the color choice on the pro. Now, I don't know if the Dr. No movie poster was that color yellow, but, man, that really stands out. I don't know, kind of in-your-face color choice for a pinball machine. But I like the color of the premium and the LE a lot. And I do think that if you stuck Dr. No into a lineup, you know, it wouldn't really stand out that much because you would have the big yellow sides of the cabinet be obscured by other games. The poster for Dr. No had a yellow background. It was all yellow, and then there were like these figures that were in full color. So, yeah, the yellow was a strong color in the advertising campaign. So that's why that choice was made. So is it the one movie that's on one side of the cabinet and the other side is the posters? Yes. Okay. All right. The art from the left side of the cabinet ties in with the back glass. Okay. The back glass is specific to a movie. Which is interesting. You know, somebody brought up, and it didn't even hit me, that they didn't use Goldfinger. I know. One of the most popular ones. The strongest one, yeah. Because Thunderball. That was your back glass, man. And that would sell the license. So I'm surprised they didn't go with that. Is it maybe likeness rights or something like that? I don't know, but that's easy to Photoshop out if that's the case. If it's an actor, just get rid of it. I don't think so, though. I don't know. I don't know. Let's jump to the playfield, guys. I think it looks like a throwback to some of the early 2000s turn playfields. It's tough to go back to that style, you know, the Wheel of Fortune or some of the other early 2000 playfield art packages. When we see what Zombie Yeti can do and what Christopher Franci can do, But I do think with the retro feel of the cabinet and the game itself, that it's kind of a nice throwback to the pinball play field as well. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, definitely. What do you guys think about the layout of the game itself? A couple things that stuck out for me. I kind of like the habit trails that go right side by side. In the trailer, they've got like two balls just kind of like traveling together. And it's just, I don't think it's ever really happened on a game where you had habit trails, like almost like a highway for the balls to go down. I just think it doesn't really do much for the game, but it's just a cool effect almost because you don't see it. Yes. I think Gomez has some really cool stuff with ramps and with water forms. He always has a really random angle that you have to get onto the ramp with, and this kind of double ramp on the right side of the play field in the middle of the game definitely has that feel. I'm curious to see how that plays. I like the three flippers. We've given him a hard time when he's been on. I know. He only has two flipper games. Hello. He's always very defensive about that, and he said, hey, my first game Corvette had three flippers. Yep. And so maybe we pushed them a little bit to go to the three flipper game. Three is a magic number. We'll take the credit for that. Let's just take the credit anyway. Yeah, we did that. You're welcome, George. This game would have sucked without our ideas. Guys, the mechs on this game are amazing. Like, just looking at this the first time, I was blown away. It felt like a throwback to the 90s games you've been clamoring for, You know, just a really packed play field with really cool toys. The rocket ship, the Aston Martin building in the back, the EJC, the Bond on a wand. I mean, all this stuff. Bond on a wand. Bond on a wand. I don't know who came up with that. Mick on a stick, Bond on a wand. It wasn't me. I didn't come up with that, but I'm fully using it because it is a great descriptor. I heard that one. I'm like, that's brilliant. So, yeah. Anyway, it's really good. And Mike Viniker on rules, right? We haven't seen him do his own thing. He's been involved in a lot of rules packages, but he's never actually been the lead rules guy. So I'm excited to see what he can do with it. and it's got the film theme songs. Insider Connected is going to have some unique, like, bond assignments, I think they're called, where you get little, you know, assignments and you've got to play them out. That's a cool way to kind of bring it into the game. What do you guys think of the price of the games? It's gone up quite a bit. I'm sure that license isn't cheap. Yeah, games are getting well. I mean, just license inside. Games are getting steep. Yeah. I think some, I don't want to say less fortunate, but, I mean, people with lower incomes are starting to get priced out of this hobby. Yeah. And that's not just new games. Yeah, I bought my Captain Fantastic for like $1,200, and somebody told me I can get like three grand for it. I'm like, what? I just bought it a couple years ago. If you hate it, what the hell are you holding on? Sell it and get $3,000. Sell it, man. I have to. I've got some games hate relationship with that game, and you know it. Yes. Well, because I love to look at it. I hate to play it. That's just it. I love the artwork and the nostalgia feels, you know, but that's it. I've got to have a back glass and say, will you sell it, Bob? Sorry, the backlash I'm missing. I got a house full of nostalgia fuels. I don't need that one. What's behind me? Yeah, true. There's just some right there. I feel like we're getting closer and closer to this feeling now. I don't know if the price of the games are going to be justified if you go even beyond this. And if you ask my wife, we're way past the point where it's even reasonable to buy these games, especially at the highest price point. I realized a long time ago I'm never going to own a pinball machine. I mean, hopefully at some point, you know, the prices will come down, but it is what it is. And I do think that there are a lot of great locations that continue to pump these into their lineups, you know, despite the price increases. Talk to me when gas goes below $2 again, and then maybe I say, maybe it might happen. Nice. But gas is not going back down to $2 again. And then you've got the Bond 60th edition by Keith Elwin, which we haven't really been able to say yet. It is confirmed. It is confirmed. We've seen what we think is the real deal. It could just be a prototype, but there are some pictures of it. It's a single level. It's got every bond ever, and it's supposedly a market price, very similar to the Beatles Diamond Edition franchise that you're familiar with, where the distributors get these games, and they can put whatever price they want on them. Yeah, get ready for a shit show. Get ready for a bunch of people bitching, in other words. That's going to be tough. You know, the problem is that puts all the dealers in a bad situation. Because if they find out that, like, you know, Joe Schmoe's selling theirs for $25,000, think about it as a capitalist, as someone who's got to pay bills, you know, for a living. If you have one and someone's selling theirs for $25,000, you're like, well, if I get $25,000 for it, you want to put, you know, and then everyone bitches at you. You know, it's a no-win situation. And unfortunately, that's being put on the dealers. because they're not saying that's being presented as a way to help the dealers, right? It's like, hey, this is our gift to you. You can set the price to whatever you want and make a profit. But is that a gift? Is that a gift? I agree. It's a double-edged sword. The profit is a gift, but the backlash is not. And you can lose customers because of that. If you try to, like, dig in on one thing, you're going to lose a lifetime customer because of that. You know, it's a tough situation to be in. I do not envy them whatsoever. Right. Distributors like the coin takers, for instance, they generally sell their games at MSRP. They don't try to market them at any higher. They don't try to make a profit on the profit that they already get. So it's got to be somewhat uncomfortable for them to have to choose a number, right? Just pick any number and see what you can get. If I recall, they were real reasonable with the Beatles to the point where they were kind of like leaving money on the table with the Diamond Edition. So I guess if you're looking for one, you might want to call them up. Maybe I'm kind of sucking the dick of our sponsor, but that might be financially the best way to go, you know, because I can't say the same for all dealers. I'm not going to call any out, but yeah, they're good people. Get your pinball machines from CoinTaker, damn it. I will suck their dick. Okay. All right. Well, there was another new pinball revealed moving on beyond Bond with the Spinal Tap game. Have you guys seen this game? What do you think? I thought it said spinal crap. Yeah. No, not spinal crap. It's garbage. Is this price correct? $9,500? That is the ass kicker, yes. It's $9,500 for what compares to be a Montgomery Ward's Bonzi pinball machine. Yeah, there's nothing going on in this play field. For $9,500. For $2,500, $3,000, maybe. Yeah, it's ugly. It's garbage. I don't, you know, and I'll address it too. I don't like this guy because he talked a bunch of shit about Americans and how he doesn't need us and all that. And then when he realized he does, then he kind of tried to backpedal on all that shit. It's like, no, you don't get to backpedal. You said all that, but that is not affecting my opinion of this hunk of shit whatsoever. Garbage. You can't put little guitars and plastic drum sets and shit in here and go, look, it's a good game. Nope. Yeah, there's not a whole lot going on. I feel like the topper is pretty wild. It looks like a possessed gazelle from what I can see. Well, that's actually pretty accurate. The band had that as a big stage prop that would lower down in the middle of their show. So that's fairly accurate, actually. But that doesn't make it a good game. That doesn't have anything to do with the game. I have to base my decision on this game is strictly on impressions of a layout. And looking for a gameplay video for this game so I could talk about it, I came across a homebrew for a game that someone had made for Spinal Tap. And I felt kind of bad because the homebrew looked cooler than this. Yeah, trying to find any details on this is like trying to find the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah, there is some gameplay from an Australian, I think, pinfest, where they had the game and they played it. But I talked to some people who actually played it, and they weren't impressed. Better than Thunderbirds, so that's one positive. But maybe not, definitely not worth $9,500. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. This is strictly entry level here. What was that, Frenchy? That Barlow farting? Yeah, it sounded like a... Oh, it was probably my chair squeaking. Oh. It definitely sounded like something else. Can you hear that? Yep. Yep. Yep. That is not me continuing to fart. If I get something on a podcast, I better get a better chair, huh? All right, so enough talk about that one. Or, you know, as they would say in Spinal Tap, you've seen enough of that one. Let's move on. New arcade location. Hey. Hey-o. Yeah, Rob Burke. You know, he was on our last episode. Chris, you did a great job interviewing them about the Pinball Expo coming up in October. Thank you. But one thing that they didn't talk about on the show was that Rob Burke is opening a new pinball arcade. Yeah. And it looks really cool. It's called Past Times, and it's going to be in Girard, Ohio. And it's going to have his huge pinball collection, which is like 350 pinball machines, going into this location. He's sharing his collection with everyone, which is amazing. Christian, he's sharing part of his collection. This is not the entire thing. That's crazy. The one man owns more than that. But, yeah, he's selling games there. He's going to have jukeboxes, arcade games. He's going to have a restaurant. This place is going to be awesome. So if you live in Ohio or if you can travel there, check this place out. He's done a lot of good for pinball, and he's just going above and beyond yet again with another cool place to go. Nice. Sweet. And it's not too far from me, actually. I want to know where Girard, Ohio is, but Ohio is right underneath Michigan. So there's that. All right. That does it for the news. Up next is our exclusive interview with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark herself. The two amazing co-hosts that I'm with on this episode are there for the entire interview. I unfortunately couldn't make it, but it is an amazing interview, so enjoy it, and I'll see you at the end of the show. The Super Awesome Pinball Show. Simply delicious, no matter how you slice it. Mmm, it does go well with the chicken. Brought to you by Cointaker in lovely Sundry, Pennsylvania. Now that will win you by sponsor! This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new full-size authentic Stern pinball, Chicago game, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball equipment, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Coin Taker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. This is Eric Menear from Jersey Jack Pinball. You're listening to the Super Awesome Pinball Show. I would say welcome to the jungle, but... Now, back to our program. and now ladies and gentlemen the super awesome pinball show halloween spooktacular is proud to present an exclusive interview with cassandra peterson also known as elvira mistress of the dark we'd like to take a moment to thank scott marcus for helping to facilitate this interview And of course, Cassandra for taking the time out. And now, enjoy the interview, folks. On this special Halloween episode, who better to invite on the show than the sexy spookstress herself, known to most as the horror hostess Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She starred in multiple movies, TV specials, had three of her own video games, six music albums, her own breakfast cereal, a 3D amusement park ride, and has been involved in a million other fun projects and products. But the reason she's with us today, three incredibly fun and sought-after pinball machines, Elvira Party Animals, Elvira Scared Stiff, and Elvira's House of Horrors, please welcome to the super awesome pinball Halloween special, the woman who learned how to cook fish in a dishwasher by none other than the master of horror, Vincent Proce, Elvira herself, Ms. Cassandra Peterson, you're welcome again. Wow, thank you. That's quite an intro. Now I'm a spookstress. I love that. A sexy spookstress. Sexy spookstress. It's hard to say that fast five times. Well, you're in good company because I'm one as well. Oh, all right. I don't know. I think I heard Jeff Monning over there. Yeah, I'm not buying that. I'm turning my camera off and lying. I'm very amazing. Anyway, hello, how are you? It's almost Halloween Yes, it's that magical time of year for you Do you look forward to this time of year or do you dread it? A little of both Halloween has always been my favorite holiday since I was even very young Mainly because my mom and my aunt owned a costume shop And so I always had the best costumes every Halloween When there were contests, I won And when I went to school, I'd have this fantastic, you know, homemade costume, and all the other kids would be in those dorky plastic masks, you know, and the plastic costumes you got back then. Right. You know. The old Ben Cooper things. Yeah. So I was always, that was my time of year to shine, you know. So Halloween really stuck with me, obviously. And luckily I was able to get a gig as the Queen of Halloween. Hello. Welcome to the United Kingdom. Of course, yeah. Now all those people that scoffed at you for having the fancy costumes, you can tune your nose up again. Right. And say, not only did I have the fancy costumes, but look at me now. Absolutely. So, yeah, I look at Halloween, though, now as a little bit of fun, which I love, love, love Halloween, and with a little bit of dread because I pretty much work 31 days in a row without a break. Right. So that's tough in any career. Right, definitely. Well, you know, first of all, before we get this interview started proper, I wanted to congratulate you on 20 years with Teresa. Am I correct on that? Yeah, 21 in February. Oh, 21. Well, yeah, February. Coming in February, so I was right. Yeah, you were right. I was telling Jeff before we started, I said, you know, that's impressive for regular people, let alone a Hollywood couple. So true, yeah. But it is. So congratulations. Thank you. I didn't think about it that way, but you're right. Wow, that's a damn long time. Yeah. Sounds like maybe a little bit of regret there. No, no. I was just thinking, I got divorced from my husband after 25 years. I'm going, oh, my God, I hope I can hang in there past 25. I hope 25 is not the cutoff date. Right. And let's not add all those years up because that's starting to sound scary. Holy crap. 25 years, 20 years, damn it. Yeah, do not add those. Yeah, I got married once. It lasted 10 years. I'll leave it at that. So I can go, well, I'm like, I don't know, what, 40 right now? Sure, that sounds good. I got married when I was very young. I was a child bride. Yeah. Yeah. We were from Arkansas. I was only 12. Yay! Okay. 12? No, I'm kidding. Oh, my God. I'm just making up a bunch of crap as I go along. that's fine that's fine that's that's that's part of what we expected that's what the interviews here about right sure sure yeah well Cassandra you've had a ridiculously interesting life so there's so much that we could ask you but of course we're going to concentrate here on pinball whether you know it or not you've got a huge fan base in the pinball world and your games are all highly sought after people love all three of them were you familiar with pinball before you started working on your first Elvira game or was it something that you just kind of knew was out there or what was the deal with that no i i love pinball really a lot just playing it i didn't know much about it and i'm really not that good at playing it either but i just love doing it's my favorite sport that and ping pong uh i'm very sporty i'm like sporty spies i used to be like in the early 70s i used to hang out at this little fisherman's bar with my boyfriend who was a lobster fisherman in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Arr, matey. And every single day for like a year after he got done fishing, we'd go and play pinball for hours and hours and hours. And it made me a little better back then. Now I've forgotten everything. But I was really hooked on pinball. I loved it. So getting a pinball machine in my likeness was like, honestly, I tell people it's like winning the Academy Award. Not just once. Three of them. You've done three. You've done three of these things. I know. I could believe it. I mean, after the first one, they said they wanted to do a second one. I was like, what? What? And then the third, holy crap. Yeah. Well, you're in good company because I think, like, you are tied with Batman. Holy penis fly trap. With three games. But Star Wars succeeds you with four. Oh, those rat bastards. So, hey, but number two of all time, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I wouldn't complain. That's pretty good. I want to be number one, though, but okay. Well, you're number one in our hearts. Well, yeah, so like we said, there have been three games now, Elvira Party, Monsters Scared Stiff, which were ballet games, and then Elvira's House of Horrors, which is a Stern game. Dennis Nordman has been on game design, and Greg Freres has done all the art for all three of your games. I love those guys. I do. We love them, too. I see them once in a while. We run into each other at conventions, or if I go to, in the past, Valley or now Stern, I run into them. So they've done an awesome job. I'm very, very happy that I got to work with them again. Yes, definitely. I'm working with Dennis on a project right now, and he's a very unique designer, and I believe it shows. Can you remember when they first approached you to do a pinball machine and, you know, what was going through your head at that time? Oh, my God. Well, it was in the 80s, I think. was it? Did it come out to end of the 80s? Yeah, the first one did. What was going through my head was, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, they're going into a pinball machine. I was completely freaked out. Like I said, I was a big pinball nerd just playing them and I couldn't believe I was getting one. So that's all that was going through my head. It was yeah, whatever you can get, do whatever you want. Anything. By the way, I did check it because I wanted to make sure it was right. It's actually 1995 that the first one came out. 95? All the years roll together. I don't know. Yeah, when you get this old, you go, I don't know, it's 60s, I don't know, 90s. Okay, yeah, 95. That was pretty early in my career, though. I'd only been doing Elvira for about, well, by then, 15 years. Now I've been doing it for 41. Yeah, that's amazing. I was just thrilled out of my mind to get one. It was really well received by the pinball community and the players, and you got to do what they call in business call-outs where you're doing audio, saying things to the player as they go along about what to do and kind of even taunting them a little bit sometimes. What do you remember from the experience of actually voicing the game and your part there? That must have been a lot of fun. Well, yeah, voicing it was really fun, and they came up with all the little call-outs that I did. I added a few of my own, but they were pretty sexy and funny. I mean, there's some that I actually couldn't believe they were getting away with, you know. This thing is huge. Whoa, dude. I guess they had like a GP-rated one, voice track, and then they did an R-rated voice track that people could choose depending on the location. So there were some pretty risque kind of lines that I was getting. I don't know. How's your head? Then, you know, some people got it. I don't think the kids did. But one of the really most fun things they let me do was put little shout-outs, again, into the back glass art. I got to add names of people and things in there. And if anybody has that machine and wants to go check it out, for example, my ex-boyfriend that was the lobster fisherman who turned me on to pinball. Arr, matey. He's on there. It says, Yo Trav. His name is Travis. Oh. So he's on one of the little gravestones. I hope that wasn't, I wasn't predicting a future because he died right after that. Ooh, that's unfortunate. No. Oh, jeez. Yeah, no, he's not. But he's on a little gravestone there. I have a little thing in there that says something about, hi, Philly and Dale. That's my mom and dad. Oh, nice. I'm holding the little trident with the hot dog on it, and it says, I heart smarty, which, okay. My ex-husband's name was Mark. I wish I could erase that and take that off. If you have it at home, if you have that pinball machine, do me a favor. Take the glass off. Use the Sharpie. Accept that part. This is my heart, Margie. Okay? Jeff, get out your cinder block eraser. It's kind of funny you say that because I don't know if you knew this or not, But with the release of Scared Stiff, I believe it was, or one of the games, they had a sticker you could put over your cleavage. Just so it wasn't showing as much for the younger crowd, I guess. Yeah, brilliant idea. That never works. Stick to your little. Yeah, who's sticking that on? You're not looking at boobies again, are you? No, Dad, I'm not looking at boobies. What were your parents' names again? Dale and Philly. Dale and Philly. That sounds like a country-western duo from the 50s. That's awesome. I kind of like that. But, yeah, yeah, so I have them on there. And, yeah, a few other little things. Oh, it was Karen Skipper. I put my kitty cat, Hecate, on there, the black cat that's next. My cat was not black. It was dark brown. And I believe if you look at that, you'll see the cat is more like dark brown. Oh, okay. Because I sort of insisted on that. She was a particular breed called a Havana brown. And I gave them photos, and they drew her very, very lifelike. I mean, very much how she looked in real life. I love all these Easter eggs you're giving us. This is great. Yeah. I know. Tell me all the little secrets. Speaking of the back glass, that spinning spider that we talked about earlier, did you have anything to do with that, or was that just a concept brought to you? That was a concept they brought. I thought it was brilliant. And actually, not 100% sure, but they did have a spinner. it could have been, you'd have to ask Greg or those guys about it it could have been my manager saying instead of just a plain old spinner let's make it something spooky but then again it could have been those guys who came up with it but in either case we loved it because yeah it could have just been a plain old spinner you know? Yeah, yeah, that's what I love that, to me you can't beat that backlash, that's just, that's what pinballs are about, it's a shame they don't do them like that anymore Now it's all LCD screen. I know, I know, which has its perks. I mean, on my newest pinball machine, I really, really loved it. I got to make all these little videos where you're actually commenting on the videos. But I have to say, I have a soft spot in my heart for Scared Stiff. I love the new one. I love the new one. I have one here in my house, and I play it often. But I don't know. Scared Stiff was, I don't know. Maybe if I had to choose only one, I might choose that one. I totally would. That's my favorite of the three. Yeah. If I was to buy one, that'd be the one I'd get. You know, and you bring up an interesting point now. You did video for the new one, but I was curious. I know some people, you know, some actors are pretty weird. You know, like Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman, you know, like never coming out of character to the point where he irritated everybody on the set. Now, when you do Elvira, can you just, you know, verbally, vocally, can you just slip into that? or does it help you to be all made up and dressed up? I have to admit that when I do put on the drag and I put the makeup and wig on, I get a little more sassy, I must say. But I'm not a person who, I'm not a real actor, so I don't say, oh, I must remain in character as Elvira. I usually go back and forth. Now, there are things when I'm dressed as Elvira and I'm at, say, a public appearance, I try to stay an Elvira character. I do stay an Elvira character the whole time. If I go on a television show as Elvira, it's very challenging because no matter what they ask me, I have to respond as the character. I mean, you can't just drop character in front of a bunch of people. If I'm on the set of a TV show or movie, I feel free to go back and forth with the people who are doing it. But yeah, there's some sustained Elvira moments that I've been through. I don't know if I could keep going like this for the next three hours. That's what she said. Yeah. So in 2019, you did House of Horrors, the third game in the O'Rourke series by Stern. And some people think it's just amazing still by Scarestiff. It's my favorite. And it's a great game. It really is. And we mentioned this with the, you've got the screen now. And not only are you on it, but you also have a selection of movies that are like B-movie hits that you might have shown on your old show. Did you hand-select those yourself, or how did that process go, which ones were going to be used? I did. I hand-selected them. They were movies that I was familiar with and that I thought had the cheese factor we were looking for, and I had hosted all of those, so I had some little jokes lined up. They came up with great stuff, but I had a few jokes that I added. So, yeah, those are movies that I specifically picked and even recommended and suggested clips from those particular movies. But they did the job pretty well themselves, let me tell you. I don't know if they needed my input that much, but I felt good about all the films they had. The hard part about those films is the quality, because they're so damned old. Yeah, exactly, yeah. A lot of them are very dark and, you know, a little more difficult to see on the pinball screen. But still, I love that they have those clips, and I love doing new material around them for the machine itself. It very well done It amazing Yeah they did You had a part in it I had a part in it My manager even did Scott Marcus he came up with some ideas about the side of the whole machine itself and different art aspects. So it was a group effort, but obviously they did 90% of the work. Yeah, I got you. But it's nothing without you. I'm just going to be honest. All right. You know, we really kind of hit everything that we really wanted to talk about I think we need to spend some time on your new book and your website, your new boutique, which I know you guys have more class than that, but shouldn't it be Elvira's Boob-tique? Oh, yeah, we've got a lot of class over here, that's for sure. It should be Elvira's Boob-tique, but yeah. And it's for the kids, too, so it's Boo-tique. Yes, Elvira's Boob-tique. If you go to Elvira.com, you can see right there all the stuff that we have in the boutique. But there's Elvira everything, as you know. I mean, you know, there's baby clothes. There's adult clothes. There's makeup. There's purses. There's shoes. I can't even remember all this stuff. But we have a lot of people who do a really good job on those things, and they're all there in the boob teat. I'm giving you that for free. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I never thought of that before, so I've never talked to my mom. And the other thing is I'm very happy and proud to say that my book, which is a New York Times bestseller, by the way, my autobiography is coming out this October in paperback. And we have three alternate covers on it and also 32, count them, 32 new images that the original hardcover did not have. So it's a fun kind of not only read, I hope, for people. It's kind of heavy. you'll learn a lot of things about me that you may not have even wanted to know, I'm afraid. Does it have the Tom Jones story? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You've got that. A lot of details that you haven't heard, too. I haven't read it yet, so I can't say this is the best part, but tell people the name of the publisher. Hachette. Oh, Hachette. Oh, I thought it was Hatcher. Hatchet. It did sound like Hatchet. When I first saw it, I thought, oh, Hatchet. No, it's... Yeah. But, yeah, the book has been doing really, really well. I'm so happy to say. And I hope everybody out there can pick up a copy. It's called, by the way, Yours Cruelly Elvira Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark. Well, thank you for mentioning that. There you go. You brought up the title. Yikes. Yeah. I need the title. Yeah, coming out this month in October. So look for it everywhere. Very good. Well, Cassandra, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us this time of year. give our pinball folks a little something spooky to get their flipper fingers on and we wish you all the best and success. Congratulations on your new home by the way. I heard you recently moved to Oregon. I did. It's quite a switch after 48 years in Hollywood. It's almost like real life. That's a good switch though. It's beautiful over there. It's raining right now and guess what? And the thing is I've never seen rain in 48 years so it's pretty interesting. alright well have a spooktacular Halloween thank you very much for coming on the show thank you guys really appreciate it and happy Halloween and now here's a bonus interview with Stern Art Director Greg Freres as we focus on the three Elvira games Greg brought to life with his special style of artwork and what it was like working with the Mistress of the Dark Greg Ferrer is a legend in the gaming industry, creating art packages for some of the best games in pinball, like Medieval Madness, Fathom, Monster Bash, Wizard of Oz, and all three Elvira games. He joined us way back in episode 14 for a great deep dive into his past, working at Valley Williams and JJP, as well as his present career as the art director at Stern Pinball. So definitely check that out if you missed it. Today, he joins us on our Halloween special to deep dive into his time working on all three of the highly sought-after Elvira games. What secrets will be revealed? Let's find out together. Welcome back to the show, Mr. Greg Freres. Hey. Hey, something. There's some clapping. It's a matter of time. What a decent action. Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you. Well, first things first, you've been in the pinball and gaming industry for over 40 years, but in doing research for this interview, we noticed that on September 4th of this year, You just cleared your 10-year anniversary joining Stern Pinball. So congratulations. Does it feel like it's been 10 years? No, not at all. The last 10 years have gone by pretty quickly, and it's kind of amazing because I've lived my pinball life in decades, so to speak. So the first decade was pretty much Valley, and the second decade was Williams Bally Midway. And then there was a gap, a slight gap, And then I now serve another decade. So it's pretty amazing. That's awesome. I am not doing that follow-up. All right, well, I'll do it. So outside of the opportunity to work with Franchi, is there anything else that stands out as a highlight in your last 10 years? I did not write that. Wait, give me 10 more minutes of laughter. and then I'll answer. The amazing part of it is the resurgence. That's been the most amazing part of this whole thing because in 2009, let alone in 2000, who knew pinball would get to this point where it has such an amazing resurrection, you know, compared to where they were in the early 2000s. And it's just that ride that we've been on to watch, you know, this amazing growth. And not just for Stern. Everybody's gotten involved and, you know, some better than others. But for sure, that's been the most amazing part of the 10-year journey with Stern is just this amazing exponential growth that's gone on in the pinball industry. Yeah, that's a great answer. We'll get into more of your work at Stern when we work into our questions about House of Whores. But we wanted to cover all three Elvira games. So for now, let's jump way back to the late 80s. New Coke, Madonna, Michael Jackson. And you started to work on a game that would kick off one heck of a trilogy, Elvira and the Party Monsters. How did that idea for a game with Elvira initially come about? Well, Roger Sharp was our head of licensing at the time at Williams. And we hadn't been, when I say we, the people from Valley hadn't been with Williams all that long just yet. And so when he brought it up to engineering and said, hey, there's an opportunity to work with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, anybody interested? Both Dennis Nordman and I had kind of worked together on a project at Valley called Party Animal. And at the time, Elvira was doing Coors beer commercials for the Halloween season, yeah, Sandy's and all that kind of stuff. And so Dennis and I talked about it and said, you know, she's been a spokesperson and kind of in that party atmosphere. Maybe she would be interested in doing a game whereby we bring a party atmosphere to the theme of the game rather than just standard spooky Elvira hosting, you know, movies and stuff like that. Little did we know that, you know, we would eventually get around to that. So we said, yeah. We raised our hands and said, we're interested. And Roger said, put some concepts together and let's see what happens. So that's kind of how it started. I can imagine you guys like Horseshack on Welcome Back Home. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It was kind of like that. But I looked more like Cotter than I did Horseshack. And Greg will be sending us his 70s photo album to post on our page to coincide with the show. Well, Elvira is still an icon today, but in the mid to late 80s, she was everywhere. How did you approach her, and was she receptive to the idea of you doing a pinball machine right away, or did you have to sell it to her? I believe that all happened through Roger Sharp, and once we came on board with concepts, She was seemingly very receptive to our direction, and there was no pushback, and we began to work on the concepts, sketches, and stuff like that. I still have a framed piece in my basement, kind of like a memorabilia thing that I put together of little snippets from the production of the game and stuff like that. And I've got actual sketches and stuff that I did because we didn't know that this was going to become a trilogy, you know, years later. We were just, you know, we thought this was going to be a one-off thing, the ability to work with her. So, yeah, she was very receptive and very, very easy to work with and fun to work with. Cool. I mean, you had worked in a number of pinball games by the late 80s. But outside of Harlem Blue Thotters and the Rolling Stones, this was kind of one of your first licensed properties. And it seems like Elvira games are unique from an IP standpoint in that you had a lot of creative freedom with that type of game. Is that true? And was Elvira involved in deciding kind of the directions of the party monsters and the game itself, or was that all on you guys? It was mostly on us. Again, we would do sketches. We would send her progress updates of the play field layout and stuff like that. And she basically approved from afar. and we would move forward with artwork or, you know, different things for the play field. playfields in the 89 were a little simpler back then. The amount of toys, you know, Dennis had found these finger puppets that we ended up calling the boogeymen and we tossed that over the fence and said, hey, we're thinking about making these little guys a feature just for some laughs. And, you know, she accepted that. And so, yeah, she just approved things. She did get involved. She did ask for a few things on the back last, like friends of hers, her husband at the time. She wanted to give a shout-out, you know, like Easter eggs on the back last. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Travis was her friend. Mark. Yeah, Mark. Mark was her husband. Yeah. She had told us in the interview we did with her the other day that one of the people that she knows that she put on a tombstone passed away shortly after the game was released. Oh, wow, man. Yeah. It's like kind of like... Friends of sorts, I guess. Yeah, unfortunate. But yeah, she went through and she told us about her parents and all the different things. She had you guys sneak into the back last. Let's see what you've got on that. Do you want to kind of jump into some of the references on there? Because, you know, like Chris and Jeff said, they had seen a little bit of what those were with Elvira and she had told us a little bit about it. But there was a few things on there that we hadn't talked about with her. Obviously, we know about Nerdman's broken ribs because Dennis broke his rib during the development of the game. He broke way more than that. Oh, really? What else did he break? He had a major dirt bike accident, and he went head over heels, ass over appetite, whatever you want to call it, at probably 65 miles an hour. And he got banged up real bad. In fact, he spent a majority of the rest of the development time in the hospital on morphine. And Mark Panaccio was our programmer at the time. And he and I would go visit Dennis in the hospital with the latest rule updates that Mark and I were coming up with, mostly Mark. And we would pass them by Dennis. And Dennis would be like, ah, sounds great. was that why she was involved in Jim Patlaw and the design because they kind of filled in the gaps they filled in a few gaps it was mostly designed it was just updating like some whitewood stuff just just for to get it ready for production it was minor stuff that they touched but we wanted to give them credit only because Dennis was you know incapacitated for about three months of the project so yeah he got hurt really bad he broke his femur and they had to you know they had to reconstruct his femur so it was bad but he made it back in time for the uh trade show in september that year and uh he was on a cane and in a cast on and stuff and but he made it to vegas for the trade show and hobbled around with a cane but uh yeah it was it was crazy yeah other items on the grill include schweiz blood sausage and jimmy's frog legs mystery score i have to assume that jimmy's frog legs mystery score is a reference to jim patla who helped on the game design but who is the mysterious schweiz so we would um we had a vendor a printing vendor in wisconsin he i can't remember the name of the town but the representative after we do a press proof he would take us to Schweiss, which was a bar and grill, and they made their own sausage there, and it was fantastic. This was years ago when I still ate sausage. I try not to eat sausage anymore, but once in a while. But anyway, we definitely would go there. It was like a, you know, thing that we would have to go to after a press booth, so we just wanted to give them a little shout out. I think we ended up giving them a back glass or something like that, just so they knew that they were appreciated. Because of your reluctance to eat sausage, is that why you're rarely seen at pinball expos because it's a sausage fest? No. That was a dad joke. Oh, it's scratchy. Did they bring me in just for this stuff, Greg? Comic relief. Perfect. A swing and a miss, though. I appreciate it. We think that on the back last, Dennis is the werewolf and you're the vampire. Is that correct? No. I'm not anybody. They're not anybody. Jim Patla is Dracula. Okay. Yeah. And another artist at the time at Williams, Tim Elliot, is the overstuffed Frankenstein pizza delivery guy. All right. Did you just choose not to be on it yourself, or was that just you weren't cool with that? Yeah. I just don't do self-portraits. Okay. That makes sense. Well, let's rapid-fire through a few more Easter eggs on the back last. So the moonshine being poured into the cauldron by the skeleton is by Chateau Glick. Is that a reference to a person? A friend of mine, he refers to himself as Bud Glick. I don't know why, so I just threw that on there for his entertainment. There's a heart with SH plus QH. What's the story behind that? Hmm, SH plus QH. I think that might be from Elvira. Yeah, I'm not sure. I can't remember, but I believe that was one of her requests. Do we miss anything else, Warren? Or maybe a team member. I can't remember. Sorry. One of the wildest things that I remember from this backlash is that it came with a modesty, quote-unquote, sticker. That was a sticker with some black lace that you could put over Elvira's cleavage on the backlash so that sensitive eyes wouldn't be offended. How did that come about, and were you involved in that decision? Sure, I was involved. It came from sales. So sales and marketing came to us, mostly sales, and said, hey, we've got some customers out here. They love the game. You know, they really want to put it in their campground, their family-oriented campground, and they feel that it's inappropriate for campground use. So is there a way that we can do something to the artwork that would make it more family-friendly? and we went back to sales and said, well, do you have any ideas? Because the only thing I can think of is to, you know, cover her cleavage with some kind of a, you know, decal or something like that. And they're like, that's it. Let's do it. So we did it. We sent them out to distributors. I don't know how many of those things ever got used on actual games, but that's it. The rest is history. I wonder how many of those needed to be replaced because they got peeled off. Well, but remember, it's a Translite, so it sat behind the glass. Oh, it was a Translite. If they did it properly, they would remove the Translite, put it on the Translite, and then put it back in the game. However, I'm sure somebody is going to just go, ah, just put it on the glass. And then, like you said, it would get removed. I've actually seen some stickers that make it more revealing rather than less revealing. at certain expos and that sort of thing. I've seen that too. It's kind of funny, though, that Elvira as a package, you know, as a game itself, there are so many sexual innuendos and double entendres and things like that. Like, it seems silly to me that that one sticker would fix all of that for a campground space. Yeah, I mean, I think part of that too is when you have a game on location, way too often you can't hear the game anyway. So any innuendos, and really the first game, Party Monsters, really didn't have as many innuendos as Scared Stiff did. Scared Stiff was a completely different animal when it comes to that. Well, we're going to move on to Scared Stiff next, but we're going to wrap up Party Monsters. But I would be remiss if I didn't ask you first about the Vegas release of this and the shenanigans that may or may not have taken place at said event. Anything that you'd care to share? Anything that's arable? Oh, I mean, yeah. It's all arable. I mean, shenanigans would have been fun, but I wasn't there for those if they did happen. But it was a great event because it really brought the spotlight back to pinball. We stopped the show with her appearance on the floor. Everybody lined up in advance to get her autograph. And when I say everybody, I mean that line wrapped around forever. And she was a good sport and stayed at our booth probably for at least two hours, took a short break, maybe longer, maybe three hours, until this line finally dwindles down. But the greatest part of the show is the game itself won Best New Equipment for the trade. And it was the first time that pinball won Best New Equipment over video games in like seven years. So a special moment. Everybody listening right now is going to expect me to ask this question, so I'll ask it. By equipment, do you mean the pinball machine or Elvira? Right. And now let's move on to a game that's heavily sought after by collectors and might have the coolest back glass in all of pinball. It's Elvira Scared Stiff. We didn't see this game until seven years after Party Monsters. What made you, Dennis, and Valley want to give this property another shot? It started with Dennis and I first. We felt that because she was so fun to work with on the first project and so easy to work with as far as a license goes, and the first one was well-received, and we felt that we didn't meet sales expectations. Back then, you know, they released X amount of games, and they seldom, if ever, went back and released more games. So it was one of those things where we felt it was short sold and we could do better. So we went back to sales and said, hey, we think we can do this again and do it better and capture a part of the audience that maybe didn't get in on the first round. So it didn't fly well with sales and marketing. Roger, again, went after the license, and he said, yeah, she's interested. But our sales department was a little reluctant. But we put together kind of a package to show them and to the direction we wanted to go. And, you know, they, again, were still reluctant. And I think our CEO said, how about if you do something with the backbox that brings part of the game up into the backbox? Because in Europe right now, there are these quasi-gambling games that are just stomping all over pinball. And maybe if you guys do something that brings the game up to the backbox so that when you walk in a place, you see some movement, you see some lights happening up there that help attract the player over to the game other than just a lit back glass. You know, why don't you think about it in those terms? And so we did. We kind of went back to the drawing board, and that's where the idea for the spinning spider came out from that experience with sales and our CEO. So we did that and brought that back, and that's the one that got us, you know, the job, so to speak. So we went forward from there. So games like Circus Voltaire, Terminator 3, and others have added interactive mechanical features to their backlessons. But I believe that this was the first time it was ever done in any pinball game, correct? Yes. Oh, I would love to say that it was the first time, but there have been a myriad. And I'm no pinball historian by any stretch, but there's been a myriad of games. Even Bad Cats, I think, was the first time. Oh, yeah. I think the reason we asked that, Greg, is because on the flyer it says it's the first interactive backglass, mechanical backglass. Whereas there were others, and even some EMs had some features in the backglass that would move and stuff during the game. But none of them were interactive. Yes. Okay. I'll buy that. I like that. But the fact that we tied a game feature into the back glass feature, the spinning spider, and brought that to the player by being able to stop the action of the spider in order to achieve an award. So, yeah, that could be the first time that you actually interacted with something in a backbox. Now, in our interview with Cassandra, we did bring up this back glass. And by the way, I would like to congratulate you on the world's greatest back glass ever made. In my opinion, the scared stiff is hands down the best art and gimmick-wise and everything. So winner, winner, chicken dinner, Mr. Greg Freres. But she said, we were talking about the spinning spider, and she said that she's not sure, but to ask you, she said the spider may have been her manager's idea that originally there was just like sort of a pointer, and he said, can we make that something spooky? But she said she wasn't sure. She didn't remember. Yeah, I can't recall exactly if it came from her side or our side, but let me just clarify a little bit. So Dennis got heavily involved in the backlash to the point where he pushed me to turn it into this diorama. And it wasn't until we had the idea for this interactive feature that the diorama made complete sense. So we could separate the foreground, the middle ground, and the background, so to speak, into this diorama. And so it was not an easy task. And it was one of those things where when Dennis waved his hand and said, let's do this, I was like, you know, because it was just like, okay, but hang on, because it's going to take me a while to figure this out, too. So I think in conjunction with what Cassandra said, you know, we may have had something. But I really believe we started with the spider web idea up there. And, you know, it just made sense. And then, you know, for the play field, you know, you have a spider hole. So, and when it falls in there, you know, there you go. And look up. Stop the spider. Right. Now, do you think Stern is probably one of the few companies that still has a decent amount of real estate left on the back list? Do you ever foresee something like this ever being possible again? Do you think it's just going to be trans lights? Never say never, right? I would hope that we could keep anything and everything open to suggestion and move forward if everything worked out for it. So I hate to say that, no, we're never going to be able to do that, because, of course, there could be a very good reason to add something like that to a modern Stern game if possible. So I would never want to say that, you know, that that's not going to happen. You had mentioned that, you know, within games these days, you have a fixed bomb in Bill of Materials, and adding something to the back glass might take it away from the play field. So you have to really weigh the pros and cons of adding something like that. But certainly, you know, as you said, if something really, really called to you and you thought it would really add to the game experience, I could see that being really cool. Yeah, I mean, the build material, it does control a lot of the design process, but you just never know. You know, it's like, let's keep an open mind, I say. Okay. Scared Sif brings a lot of features from Party Monsters, but also adds a lot of new ideas. How did you approach the design and the art for this game? Yeah, that's a great question, and I'm trying to think back to 1996 right now. Hang on, this may take a while. I think once we got to a point where we had the backbox feature tied in, Dennis wanted to dress the thing up. So, you know, when we had the skull cave from Party Monsters as a destination for the block mechanism, we wanted to take that to the next level. And so the skull cave kind of became the Boney Beast ramp, you know. We just wanted to explode that idea and make it something bigger and stronger. So we started dressing up that ramp with these bones and stuff. And our sculptor at the time had an intern working with him. And we said, so we want to kind of put this skull at the beginning of the ramp and then have all these ribs kind of follow behind it. But that skull has to be something unique. It's got to be something that doesn't make sense in our world. So this sculptor went back to his intern and said, hey, give it a go. See what you come up with. And this kid came back with something that was like, oh, wow, that's unique. It's definitely catching your attention. Yep. So we loved the tusk idea and the double tusk idea and everything about it was just so unique. And so we were like, yeah, let's go with that. The ball lock mechanism, we wanted to do something a little bit different. So the stiff in the coffin became the ball lock, you know, instead of just shooting it in the cave. So we just kind of looked at everything. We wanted also in the design process to bring Elvira back to the movies that she's so, you know, so well known for and her hosting of movies. So the whole idea that you've now, you've had the party at her house, but now you've been invited into her home to watch a few movies. And we kept the movies kind of generic and kind of went with riffs, so to speak, on classic old 50s and 60s horror and sci-fi movies. And just kind of built on that instead of going after exact movies like we did in House of Horrors. So it was kind of fun to come up with, you know, kind of more generic ways of doing the movies and then building that up to becoming, you know, Scared Stiff. So we saw this progression and we wanted to go with it. And I know a lot of people that are hardcore players felt that the game was shallow and too easy to get to Scared Stiff and beat the Scared Stiff mode. But we were also trying to win more players over to pinball at the time because pinball in that part of the 90s was kind of falling off. So we wanted to simplify the design process and simplify the game mechanics so that a person that may have never played pinball before could walk up to it and fairly quickly understand that this relates to this and that relates to that so that it's not so hard to understand. and they feel they could get further in the game pretty quickly and feel like the need to put another quarter or 50 cents in, whatever it was back then, we could get them to do that because they felt they had gotten just that far. Now I want to get even further. So that's kind of a gimme for most pinball design. But in that frame of time, we really were trying to get players to either come back to pinball or start playing pinball if they've never played. I've got to tell you, Greg, that's still happening today because here where I'm in Portland, Maine, there's a big arcade. Scared Stiff is one of the games, and a lot of people, that will be their first game because they can easily understand it. You're catering to a different audience these days with pinball. It's the home use that wants deep rules. But this is very simple and accessible to everybody, and this is really how some people are taught. hey, here's how you play pinball. And we've seen our league in the area just grow exponentially just because of this game. Yeah. No, I was going to say the same thing. We made it a point to that that was one of our biggest, you know, ways to go. And even to the point where Larry DeMar stepped in and said, hey, some of these features may not be deep enough, so let's put a little extra effort into a couple of these features. and I think one of them was the leapers, the frogs. We got to a point where, you know, you hit every frog and then it blows up into a slightly deeper feature and it just becomes a frog mode at that point. So, you know, as simple as we were trying to keep it, there were still influences that pushed us to, like, no, let's add a little bit to this to make it more interesting. The humor in Elvira games has always been great, but the call-outs in this game and the stiff-o-meter are so good. Who does the heavy lifting when it comes to writing these jokes? Is it you, Nordman, or does Cassandra add a lot of flavor to this? For Scared Stiff, it was a team effort. Once we figured out the name, so that was another thing. We had trouble naming this game. At first, it started out as a haunted house game, but then once we put the backbox feature in and decided that, okay, she's going to be hosting, you know, from her bedroom, you know, these movies, a stack of movies on the bed and stuff like that. We felt like, okay, we could open this up to be a little more risque. So once we came up with the name, and then I think Mark Wehner said, you know, we were trying to riff on the Party Zone game. It was the Rocket Meter, and we wanted to put another meter in there to show progress in the game. And Mark Waino, I believe, was the person that just at a meeting said, why don't you just call it the stifo meter? And we were like, there's no way we can do that. He goes, yeah, there's a way. Just do it. It's a stifo meter. Wow that interesting So anyway it became the stifo meter And then from there or stifometer depending on your accent But we went in that direction, and then it was just everybody chiming in for, you know, the rest of the speech calls and stuff. So between Dennis and I, we wrote down hundreds, and our sound guy, you know, he came in with a bunch, and we just had fun with it. We threw it over the fence to Cassandra, and she read the script, and her comment to Roger Sharp was, I'm not sure if this is for a pinball game or if it's some kind of a movie, but I'll give it a go, you know? And she did some ad-libs herself, of course. She's always good at that, but it was definitely a group effort, and the rest is history. Once we got to Elvira's House of Horrors, we decided that we were going to rein it in a little bit and not go completely to that side because times have changed a bit. Right, right. Before we jump into that game, just very quickly, I saw the Backglass doesn't have quite as many Easter eggs as your previous game, but I did see the Corn Man from Mars, which was the Attack from Mars guy, as one of the DVDs. And you had also mentioned the rumor that the stiff-o-meter faces were not actually your elementary school teachers, as one article had reported. But are there any other funny stories from the game or from the artwork that have Easter eggs tied into them? Yeah, what's with the corn man from Mars? Corn man from Mars. Yeah, so we used to have a whiteboard in the art department, and it became a place for mostly Pat McMahon, one of the other pinball artists that worked in-house at Williams. It became a place for him to vent some of his ideas and frustrations and do caricatures of co-workers. And when Doug Watson worked on Attack from Mars, the first game, not Revenge from Mars, but Attack from Mars, we noticed that in the structure of the Martian itself, his pectorals looked a bit like corn. Just the texture that Doug chose. And so Pat did this amazing caricature of the Martian with crows chasing after him through a corn field and pecking at him to get to his corn pectorals. So we played that up on Revenge from Mars, and I totally went in that direction. and once I ended up putting Corn Man from Mars on one of the videotapes in the back glass, I really riffed on that when we did Revenge from Mars. Simple. We mentioned earlier that A Nice Condition, Scared Stiff, is one of the most sought-after games for collectors these days. How was the game received when it was first released in 1996? I think it was, again, I've got to think back to 19— let me go on the Wayback Machine here for a minute. Give me some time machine sound effects here. Again, the pinball world was in the midst of rockiness, so to speak, for lack of a better term. The market was a tight market. So we, I think, for the most part, it got a great reception at the trade show that we had it at in Dallas. We had Cassandra back there to help support the project. The people that played it, you know, you've got to remember, this is pre-internet. So we didn't get any feedback from anybody except at a trade show or if we would go see the game on location somewhere. Yeah, but if you consider the feedback you get these days, it's maybe not such a bad thing. No, you're right. It's not a bad thing at all. I prefer the feedback we got at trade shows because people had to talk to you face-to-face. And if they had ideas, it was helpful feedback because we were dealing with mostly operators and distributors face-to-face. And they would play a game, they would play many games, and especially the operators. And if they had valid feedback, we would take that back. And, you know, if the game wasn't quite finished yet, we would have time to accommodate any good feedback we got from operators, you know, as opposed to today's feedback is an all great feedback. People don't even play the game and they're bitching, you know, so what good is that? But I think to get back to the question, one of my proudest moments of Scared Stiff was the fact that our peers within engineering were some of the first people to say, why are you doing another Elvira game? You've already done an Elvira game. Why do another one? The first one was good. It's like, you know, it doesn't seem like you need to do another one. But the fact that we pulled it off and it was a step in the right direction. And we went from segment displays to dot matrix and made use of the dot matrix. And then I think we proved our peers wrong within the engineering ranks that, okay, give us a little more video and a little more sound and we can do great things. You know, the fact that we had more room for speech, which led to, you know, everything that you hear. I think that helped greatly to make the game what it is and to give it the legs that it's had all these years. All right, so now let's move on to the latest in what many people consider to be the greatest Elvira game, House of Horrors. The game was released by Stern Pinball in 2019, 26 years after Scared Stiff. A lot of things have happened in pinball since then. You didn't have a lot of audio at first, then you had more audio, now you've got video. You'd mentioned on your Stern Insider podcast that Norman had done some recon on Pinside to see if there was an interest in Elvira again, and that you had even approached AJP about making a new game in the past. How did the start whole line at Stern to make the Elvira House of Horrors happen? That was quite early when Dennis put that out on Facebook to see if there was an interest, or was it on Pinside maybe? So quite a bit of time had gone by, and I mentioned to George when I first got to Stern that, you know, it would be great to, you know, put some band back together, And we think we've got another game inside of us for Elvira, another, a third game. And I said, the passage of time that we've got, you know, a lot more technology available to us, I think it makes sense. And especially after we crossed the bridge from dot matrix to video, you know, full color video, it made even more sense. And when Stern approached her and we found out that not only were they interested, but they were interested in using the compilation videos from her show. And that, you know, most of those, if not all of those movies are public domain. And we could use snippets of video to help build the theme of the game. It just was a no brainer at that point. and at that point Dennis and I, we knew that Lyman always wanted to do a Haunted House themed game and so it made complete sense to, hey Lyman, are you still interested in a Haunted House theme? Yes I am, and so we riffed for a bit but we stuck to the Haunted House theme and then just went from there, so I don't know if that answered the question, but yeah Totally This turned out to be Lyman's last game, too. Yeah, unfortunately. How did adding Lyman to the core team kind of change the way you guys approached creating an Elvira game? I mean, he is a legend, and you know that his games are going to be coded exceptionally well. So was he there from the very beginning in terms of the planning process? Absolutely. To the point where, for a hot minute, Dennis wanted to take a slightly different direction with the theme, And Lyman was telling us, no, stay to the original plan. Haunted house, it's going to work. You got to do a haunted house theme. And then from there, it was just bringing it together with some of his ideas, some of Dennis's ideas. Obviously, if it's going to be a haunted house theme, you know, Dennis was totally into doll houses for a while and building a witch house at one time. and he wanted to bring some semblance of that miniature to the playfield. And I was like, yeah, that just makes total sense. And, you know, in hindsight, I love that toy on the playfield. It is such a centerpiece. It becomes the castle that was medieval madness. It harkens back to that time. And I think that's kind of what people appreciate, the fact that Lyman wanted to bring jackpot lights back to the playfield, you know, instead of just generic pointers that award you a jackpot and you get it on screen. Lyman was adamant about, no, no, no, we've got to go back and put a dedicated jackpot insert into the playfield for all the shots where you can get a jackpot. And we were like, yeah, of course, that brings us right back, you know, to the 90s. Let's do it. And we got, you know, beat up by engineering a little bit because we had too many answers. We called a few of them back, but for the most part, you know, just the idea of bringing that house into the mix. When we thought about the playfield design, I sat there and said, maybe there's some kind of contraption that's in the middle of the play field that helps the player, like on Scared Stiff, understand where they're at on the game, you know, where they're building their progress, you know. And I said, maybe it's some kind of a still or something that's in the basement of this house that we can kind of, you know, take all the elements of the play field and bring it together in the center of the play field design and create this contraption, you know, and just help the player understand where they're progressing and how they're progressing and what they're building to, what they're leading to. So, again, Lyman was totally on board with the whole stiff-o-meter and stiff-o-meter and getting that idea built back into this game, but on a new level, on a different level, and on a much grander level, you know? And so that became the build-up to, you know, the whole Gappa Angry. Gappa Angry! You know? And from the beginning, that insert, that big insert, we knew was going to be one of the big events of the game. And when we watched all the movies, it made sense for that mode to be, you know, the build-up to Gappa Angry. So, yeah, it was fun to build. It was fun to work with Lyman one-on-one. Unfortunately, he just came off of Batman, and he had just come off of the same type of game where it's snippets of movies, snippets of TV show at that, you know, for Batman. But he was willing and very able, and he does that work himself. He went in to each one of those movies, and he and I dissected them and said, okay, these are the best moments from those movies. And he went in and literally grabbed every one of those snippets and then built the code around, you know, each mode, each haunt. He did an incredible amount of work on that, and just I couldn't be happier. And I kept having to convince him that I was more than happy with the way the game was being developed and how the thing was going. You know, it was just amazing. Greg, there were 26 different movies listed in the article that I read that are included in this game. You know, did you and Lyman sit down and watch all of these movies? Absolutely. Multiple times in some cases. We had to, right? We had to find out what the stinkers were, you know, to avoid. We had to find out what the strengths were. And Lyman knew from the beginning that he wanted Night of the Living Dead in there. And, of course, that's the big kahuna for that compilation. And it made sense to, you know, focus on that. So that was one of the first haunts that he put together because that was his favorite movie from the compilation. and then we basically, after watching every movie, we then rated them like what made sense for the game, you know, so we would let the cream rise to the top, so to speak, and we came up with a top 10 list, you know, and then we didn't know, well, how many, you know, based on how we're going to build these haunts, we didn't know exactly how we were going to, you know, how much of these movies we were going to be able to bring into each haunt, so it became quite a task. So we got it down to where the house has like a limited number of windows in it. So at some point in the design process, the house was the key factor in our limitation of how many haunts there were going to be. And then other movies would make their way into snippets of other portions of the game. You know, instead of just devoting a haunt to one movie, we had other features of the game that would have pieces of different movies in there. And then it got to a point where I started watching movies just for the fun factor. So, you know, when we came up with Drive Me Crazy, you know, as an Orbit teacher, I just started looking for movies that had car-themed, you know, snippets. And I told Lyman, what if we just do something, you know, that has car snippets in it? It was like, awesome, make a list, and, you know, we'll chase that, you know. So between Lyman and I, we worked very closely together. And, of course, I know Lyman's strengths, and we worked well together, and it was an amazing experience. I'll never forget it, and it is so sad that we are where we are today. but he also left behind an amazing game too. Absolutely. And there's a big hole left behind that cannot easily be filled by his quality of work because I don't think it will ever be matched. I mean, he was the king, and I don't think his passing can dethrone him. And I'm incredibly jealous that you got to sit down and watch 26 B-movies with him. And, you know, two dudes on a couch having fun watching movies. That's really, really cool. And I don't think we watched all of them together, but we did see a couple of them together. And then we realized it would be better to, you know, sit back and kind of watch these when we can and then bring our, you know, collective brains together and go, you know, this makes sense to focus on this game. And, you know, and a lot of people are like, well, but the Backglass has all these movies on it. But I don't see all of them in the game. Well, kids, here's the thing. The Backglass was designed first. Game was designed later. And so we kind of stuck with the Backglass as it was because as the game developed, I got to a point where I needed to spend more of my time developing the play field art or developing cabinet art. And so, you know, things don't always work in logical progressions. and this game for sure because Lyman was so busy with Batman he wasn't totally available all the time to be on this game full on right from the get-go. So, you know, it was kind of a Dennis and Greg show to get the play field figured out and Dennis got that going and then there was a lull and then Dennis had to move on and, you know, reluctantly but he wanted to stick around but he needed to go and make a living. So, you know, so then it became, okay, once we're ready, then Lyman and I will, you know, kind of move it from there. And mechanically, you know, Tom Copero was our mechanical engineer. So, you know, between Tom and I, we moved all the mechanical stuff forward and got that rolling. So it was an unusual situation only because Dennis was working outside the company. Lyman wasn't ready to rock right when the play field was. And so, you know, it became an unusual design process, to say the least. And this game was a big departure for you at Stern, in the sense that instead of focusing primarily on the art production, not only were you doing the art, but you were heavily involved in other areas as well, writing scripts and doing video work, for instance. Was it a nice change of pace, or was it really difficult to juggle all of these jobs at the same time? It was both of those things. It was refreshing to dive back in, literally off the high dive, and be not only involved in art and design and production and all that stuff, but to be part of the full design process and help not only for art's sake, but for speech cues and all that stuff. And when we brought the idea to Chuck Ernst of how we were going to take the video elements and tie them together with what his team was capable of doing and then taking video, the biggest moment was when Cassandra, when her team said, we could go in a studio and film her if you guys think you can make good use of that. And we were like, can we? So at that point, that's when we went to Chuck Ernst and said, hey, so if we get specific video footage from Elvira, let's say she's sitting on the couch, can we blend in that video with your 3D artwork and make it look as seamless as possible? And he goes, yeah, yeah, let's bring in Paul. So Paul Chmanket comes in and I tell the whole story to him and he goes, oh, yeah, we can do that. I was like, you're serious? He goes, yeah. And then back to the technical stuff, I said to Chuck, I said, and that's not going to take up too much memory or anything like that? And Chuck was like, no, we should be able to just spit out like, you know, AVI's and save it as a movie and play it back as a movie. So it was like, cool. So we got the thumbs up from Cassandra's team, and we wrote the script. The script was a little bit too much because I wanted to be able to have enough content so that you wouldn't hear or see the same lead-ins all the time, right? And Lyman said, well, we can always do a button push, and people can leave and go back to gameplay. I said, yeah, I know, but I said it's nice to have a good variety to start with. So when we went back to Scott and Cassandra, we kind of got pushback, a big pushback, and said, you've got to call this script down. This is too much. So we did and went into the studio, but we got everything shot that we needed, and it worked out great. And when Chuck's team first put that couch scene together of her sitting in it when you fly into the house, and she's sitting on the couch, and she introduces the haunt, I was just blown away. I was like, that's exactly what we had in mind, and it worked so amazingly perfect. Couldn't have been happier. It's like when you first see your play field after you've done the artwork for it, and the first playfields come in. I've been doing this for 40-some years, and to this day, if I have something to do with a play field or anybody has anything to do with a play field, and the first time you see that thing printed and then built up with all the plastics and everything, There's just still nothing like that. And just seeing Elvira on screen in a situation that we put her in, it was so exciting. And I just knew that this was a first, another first for Pinball, where we took, you know, a specific video and melded it with our assets to make an amazing piece of footage that was interactive with gameplay. Just couldn't be happier. I can't remember. Did Elvira retire before you shot video with her or after? That's a good question. Because I'm thinking maybe you might have the last time she's ever in her Elvira character. In doing the research for this, I feel like the retiring and this game were basically at the exact same time. Yeah, you might be right. I feel like the story you just told, Greg, is why we do this podcast. I mean, that was such a cool part of your history and part of the development of this game. And it's so different than 1989 when you could get, you know, a couple of call-outs from Elvira. Right. You have basically full motion video and all of these cool effects, and you're working in 26 different movies, and there's no space limitations. That's so cool. Yep. No, it's all of that just in a nutshell was such a, I just felt like, okay, if, if, and I'm saying if, that was the last game that I ever touched, couldn't be happier. That's cool. Awesome. Well, I'm glad you said that because I have a question that's not on our list that I wanted to ask you. Wild card. He's always got a wild card up his sleeve. You know I'm a big fan. I've told you that several times, and it was so great to see your art again. And I was so happy that you were able to, you know, complete the trilogy. If it ends up just being a trilogy that you were on all three games, that's an amazing achievement, and it's fantastic work. But I'm wondering, ever since the introduction of, you know, the whole Photoshop art packages, and then you had Jeremy and Dirty Donnie come back, and they kind of, you know, introduced the element of old school artwork again, where, you know, they made that, you know, something that was, you know, acceptable, and people really responded well to it. Do you foresee yourself, Elvira aside, ever stepping back up to the plate and doing another game? Good question. And the mediocre answer is, I don't know. Right now, my role is art director for the printed material, at least. And I enjoy doing that. I enjoy working with everybody that we've worked with, yourself included. It's fun to be the kind of middleman between, you know, what a team starts with and what our amazingly talented team of artists can do for the game. It's fun to work with new people and kind of guide them as best I can with my years of experience and watch them grow and watch them get frustrated, you know, and all the things that comes with doing pinball artwork. Because, I mean, everybody's got to know that, you know, when you're a freelancer, there's a lot of different projects you could be working on. But pinball is unique. Pinball is not easy for many reasons. You know, it's one of those things where in my current role as art director, it's important for me to be able to continue to oversee all the projects and make sure they're timely and on budget and whatever else comes with it. And then the follow through of the printed material and stuff like that. Although I have great help, you know, from that regard with Stephen Martin and Justin Freight, who are my two in-house guys that do the heavy lifting for not only the production artwork, but for the marketing stuff, the marketing-supported artwork and stuff like that. So, but yes, if the right project came along that made sense, I would love to do another project. But at this point in my career, there's plenty of talented people out there that are adding their mark to the pinball world. And, you know, that's where I see it. You know, they're doing a great job. And I enjoy what I do. And I continue to enjoy what I do. So, you know, but it would have to be a very special project to devote, you know, that kind of time to. because it is a major time sink for me, especially because I have other work happening at the same time. Well, you know, Gomez goes and designs a new game every once in a while, so hey! That's up to the plate, that's for sure. So like most during games, there were three models of House of Horrors, the last of which came with a piece of Elvira's famous sofa. Was that something Cassandra thought of, or did you guys suggest it to her? No, no, that was all her. You know, Scott told Jody, our licensing guy, hey, we've got pieces of the couch that we retired. So if you think you can do something with it, part of the, you know, package for, you know, one of your LE games, he goes, try to work that in somehow. And so it became part of the COA, so to speak, Certificate of Authenticity for the, I think it was the Signature Edition. Yes. And my wife joined in and helped cut each individual piece of couch fabric into smaller pieces. So did you get a piece to put into your framed Party Monsters art that was in your basement that you had mentioned earlier? I might have kept a couple of pieces from my smart phone. Have they made it in there yet? No. But, yeah. Well, you put it all out there with this game, and you didn't think you would ever want to make another Elvira game. And we talked earlier that Cassandra Peterson had also officially retired from the character. So your team was able to create, you know, one last incredible game together. Do you have any final thoughts on your time working with Cassandra, all the great games that you, Dennis, and, you know, many others have created over the last... She had a lot of good words to say about you, Greg, when we talked to her. Oh, how nice. How nice. Yeah, she's an amazing person to work with. You know, the fact that we did a pickup session, this was a great story. So Jerry Thompson, Stern's audio guy, one of Stern's audio guys, had his rig with him at Stern as he does for audio capture and had it in my office. And since my office doesn't have any windows, we brought Cassandra into my office, set up the microphone, and I will forever remember her sitting in my office recording the speech cues that I wrote. It was just an amazing experience to work with her. And then just to kickback with her and, you know, one-on-one with Jerry and everything and getting stories from her firsthand, you know, it was just so much fun. And then she was going to be at Expo for the unveiling of the game. And I said, hey, when we get up on stage to talk about the game and stuff, would you be interested in doing like a little shtick, you know? could we possibly do something together? I said, I got this idea because we're going to be doing gargoyles on the topper eventually. I said, could we do like a little shtick called Between Two Gargoyles? And she goes, I love it. She goes, tell Scott, send him the questions that you have so that I can see the questions in advance. And yeah, let's do it. And I was like, ah. So, again, the fact that she is that much fun to work with and that she's open to suggestions from a guy like me, you know, just amazing, you know, fun. That's the last word is fun. She's fun to work with. Well, I'm just going to say if anybody from Stern is listening to this, this man deserves a raise because he is worth his weight in gold. I've worked for many art directors, not just in pinball. and it is such a welcome opportunity to work with you with the knowledge that you have and the background that you have, the history that you have. All of that comes into play, and it all has such a value to what you do and to the people that work with you. I think you deserve a raise, and you are my hero. Get a towel for that man. I know that these games are only some of the many you've worked on in your career, but I know they're a labor of love and they hold a special place for you. They're a perfect mix, I would say, of gameplay and humor and, of course, fantastic art. So thanks for making them for pinheads like us, and thanks for coming on to our show for another great interview. Thanks. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks, Greg, and have a happy Halloween. And that's going to do it for episode number 38 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show, also known as the Super Awesome Pinball Show, Halloween's Boobtacular. I want to thank Cassandra Peterson for joining us, and don't forget to check out her website, Elvira.com, or specifically Elvira's Boutique.com, not Boobtique, and also check out her book, Yours Cruelly, Memoirs from the Misuse of the Dark. I'll tell you what, man, I am buying that book because like you read in the intro, she has done so many incredibly interesting things in her life. And, you know, just researching this episode, I learned that before Elvira, she was a lead singer in like two Italian rock bands. She's been with Elvis Presley. She spent a few years as a radio DJ. So she's got some really cool stories to tell. So check that book out. Well, as I mentioned in the interview, it's worth it just for the Tom Jones chapter. That's all I'm going to say. No hints whatsoever. Check out the book. So they heard the story, and I'm a little horrified. Yeah. You know who didn't hear the story? Christian, because he wasn't part of it. Rubbing that in. I'll rub it in, but at the same time, I'll say I'm very sorry we couldn't work that out. So it could be because I knew you were looking forward to it, and I feel bad. But we had no choice, and you were missed. Hey, look, you were here for better than ever, dude, so there you go. That's true. Listen, I was in the middle of a Tony replacement when you guys were doing these amazing interviews, and I was a little bit jealous. but you know we've interviewed some really cool people on the show and there will be uh hopefully next time and you were improving someone's life so true forgot that but you know hey i know one interview you will be sitting in on who comes up next the one and only and probably the best guest we've ever had on our show mr george gomez he's going to be on the show talking about james bond the development process for the game and all of the secrets that you want to know so So tune in for that. This is going to be basically his approach to design, not like, so what happens when you shoot the ramp boys? We are not going that route. I could give a fucking shit. Find out for yourself if you want to know. I want to know his process for design because it's so unique. So that's what we're focusing on. So we probably won't talk to you folks before Halloween, but I can't guarantee that. We might sneak George in before that. But until then, enjoy this as your treat from us to you. Have a safe and happy Halloween season. Don't eat too much candy corn. Happy Halloween, everybody. See ya. Bye-bye. This has been episode number 38 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. The contents of this show is copyright 2022 Asshat Radio Productions. Barlow, we're on the air. Now that was a fucking pinball podcast, folks. That's how you do it. That's why the Super Awesome Pinball Show never won a single Twippy. Thank you very little. On the other hand, we never bought five-for-a-dollar votes from Brazil either.