The Pinball Network is online. Launching Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. All right, Tom, you ready? Yes. Perfect. Travis, are you ready? Yes. Hit my intro. And now, winner of the Oklahoma Pinball Championship Award, A guy so nice, he didn't send the award back to ask them to spell the word Oklahoma correctly on the award. You know him. You love him. You can't live without him. Please welcome a guy that sometimes has all the machines turned on in the background, Travis Fury. Boom. An intro. Wow. All right, here we go. Let's actually do a good intro. How come Joel doesn't have an intro? That's a great question, Tom. Here's our intro. We're three guys who like to talk and ball. So we feel like we're the class of our days. We're totally driving down the talk and ball. As we call on ourselves. Triple J. Triple J. Triple J. We're triple. Triple J. All right. I mean, that's a good intro right there. That's a solid intro. Travis, what did you do to get that? What? I'm just kind of dabbling off on the side, all right? I understand it's triple drain, but, you know, I got jealous of Tom with the Tom Talks. Okay. And he has, like, all these intros. So I just said, you know what? I'll get the man himself, Marc Silk, and I got an intro now. So you asked Mark. I mean, in a roundabout way. Oh, okay. I didn't know if Mark was like, hey, Travis, I'm such a big fan of you and your voice. Here, I made you this intro. Absolutely. Yeah, Mark did that, and then Keith Elwin is making me my own personal pinball game. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, and Raymond Davidson is going to show up and teach me how to play pinball, private lessons. Yeah, I just – I get it all in pinball, guys. Raymond's like, oh, Travis, I love everything you do. How can I make you some rules? Oh, it's great. Yeah, George Gomez is taking me out to dinner here in just a couple of days, so that'll be excellent. Oh, there's a lot of name-dropping going on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on. Please do. Okay, yeah. I mean, I plan on going to Australia at some point, and Marty, he's going to take me around, and I'm going to help him create the next game after Fathom. Oh, okay. I mean, phone's just ringing off the hook, guys. I don't, yeah. I'm surprised you can fit us in. Tom, we're lucky, man. Do you know who we're with? I know. I got to hang out with him the whole time at Cleapin, too. Yeah. You were able to give him a room to stay in. He has graced your house. That is true. That is true. I am honored by that. Well, to all the listeners, I don't know. I mean, we have the Keith Elwin of Pinball Segments being Tom Talks, and we have Travis. So, I mean, what more do you want? And triple drain, I know, first off, apology, it's been quite a while since we've had one of these. You know, life gets in the way, and we had one scheduled a little while ago, and something came up with Tom last minute, so then Travis and I fumbled our way through our own, but that's not triple drain, you know, so that ended up just kind of being this double drain, dual drain podcast. We were supposed to record last night, but Travis's entire house blew away with a storm. True. Yeah. Oklahoma. He was texting us with constant screenshots of Carl Weathers reports, and he's like, see this red area? That's where I'm living right now. Yeah. But here we are. We made it. We are recording. It was horrible, guys. I couldn't do a podcast with you guys. I couldn't play PC games with Carl. It was horrible. I'm living in a stone age over here. I don't get it. So Travis without the Internet is just a sad, sad man. is what I'm hearing. Correct. Have you ever been to Oklahoma, Joel? No. Why would I go out of my way to visit Oklahoma? Imagine being here in Oklahoma. No. Okay. All right. All right. Well, welcome. Here we go. People love personal intros. They love it. They want you to get right down to business. So let's dive in. We have some real exciting stuff. This is Godzilla's. Godzilla's have hit locations like just a few days ago. And even our good friend Zach Minney is complaining about he doesn't have his yet. But we have somebody here on the podcast who not only, well, he doesn't have his yet, but he's played one. He's actually put significant time on Godzilla. So today, Tom, this is the time for you to shine because I can't talk. Travis can't talk. We don't know. We don't have any experience. So let's dive in here. Tell us. I know there's some really good stuff there's some not so good stuff but just dive on in we'll start with the good so Godzilla most of the game is extremely extremely well done it is fun to shoot it is super fast I'm speechless you're speechless perfect review right there excellent speechless playing it Speechless talking about it. Perfect. That's correct. Let's start then. Let's just start at the beginning. So the plunge, right? That plunge is a weird plunge. It kind of goes across the play field. There's a skill shot to kind of loop it behind that flipper. Tell me about that feeling, that first plunge. Did it go at all where you thought it was going to go? No. No, but by the end, I was able to pretty consistently plunge behind that upper flipper once I found it. But I believe there are other skill shots, obviously. I didn't have a lot of time on the game. I probably played maybe five or ten times at the most. But, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty cool shot across the play field trying to hit that. Do you have a favorite shot? Do you have a shot that just made you smile the whole time? uh actually the uh the mecha godzilla spinner was pretty cool oh okay the uh the shot just to the right of it which is the scoop that is a hard shot at least for me it was uh i don't think you can backhand it but i did not try it you know how travis a couple episodes ago was talking about Mando and how scared he was of it. Yeah. I should be a little more scared of this one, I think. Not scared at all. I'm ready. I've had so much time on Mando. I played Halloween so much, I own scoops now. Whatever I do, it's scoops. It's tricky with that pop bumper just to the right of it. And it took me a while to find the scoop for some reason. What does the scoop do on the game right now? because I know it's not completely coded, obviously, but what is its main purpose? So if you hit both of the ramps, you can start a battle with one of the monsters. And then there is some type of reward where you get help from Godzilla's friends, like Mothra lights a ball save on the left side. I'm not sure exactly what all the You're talking about like the light outlanes and 2x scoring and add a ball Sure Like that, some of your allies Sure Sweet, alright, we're on the same page, let's keep this train rolling Alright I started a few of the multi-balls Obviously the main one where you shoot the building, the Godzilla multiball Mechagodzilla Mechagodzilla, it looks like you have to rip that spinner There's three spinners in the game That sounded like Tom Tom just gave a sigh right there Do you not like the Mechagodzilla? No, I like the Mechagodzilla It's his favorite shot Oh, well, I heard him sigh Was it just you got tired of naming off the multiballs in the game? That's just life That's what it was Okay. You said, so the right, I'm pretty sure to start Mecca is you have to rip that spinner enough, and that, like, charges him up, and then there's, aren't there some targets next to him? Yeah, there's two targets just to the left, off to the side, and then I believe you have to hit the spinner again, so all three of those shots are lit. Those targets to the left, can you, because they're kind of on the side, can you hit those from the left flipper, or do you have to use the upper flipper, like the side flipper? I can neither confirm or deny those that because I just don't have enough time on that game. You didn't use the floating flipper, did you, Tom? I did. I did. I actually used it a lot. I eventually did the Insider Connect. I was able to loop it five times. That was one of the achievements. Nice. Oh, so was that pretty cool when it popped up? Were you excited? it was an actual thing where you're like, oh, this is cool? Yeah. The whole bar went nuts. It doesn't pop up until the end of your ball. What? I bet it popped up right when you did it. There's a little chime. Yeah. So there might have been a chime, but honestly, you know, the game was on location. And Tom was locked in. Yeah, I was about to say, Tom is just so focused. Can I talk for Christ's sake? The sound was really low, so I couldn't hear a lot of the game audio. I mean, when Tom plays, it's like he's experiencing the ball in slow motion, so it's just so hard for her to consume that stuff. Yeah, and Travis is acting like his mic's muted. Yeah, that's cute. It's muted. I just unmuted it. I didn't mute myself. So I could talk, thanks. So, Tom, you drained your ball, you know, after what, like 45 minutes, and then you were just flooded with achievements. Is that how it went? That's what it seemed like to me anyway. So I was able to see the achievements at the end of the ball. Yeah. That's what I remember. And every time, it's just everybody in the bar just was like, holy cow, he did it, guys. Well, this was at District 82. So the owner of the escape room who bought the game is allowing District 82 to borrow the game for the week, which was really cool. Dave Oshufsky is the owner, but it was really cool of him to do that. That was pretty sweet. Nice. Nice. Very cool. All right. So overall, though, you're saying – so like Laser Los. I actually watched Laser Los stream Godzilla for, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes the other day. And he said he was really struggling with that upper loop, which is hilarious because when I watched Keith do the reveal stream, Keith was just nailing that loop. Boom, boom, boom. It seemed like a very fluid, a very consistent shot. So to hear somebody like Laser Los be like, I don't know how he's doing that. You said you were able to loop it five times? Yeah, I was able to do that just on one game. But it was difficult to find the shot at first. But then once I did, I kind of locked into it. So is it a comparable shot to any, like another loopable shot? Like I know obviously Turtles has a very kind of a looping shot up there. Iron Maiden does. Well, actually all Keys games pretty much have like a looping shot. Would you consider this easier or harder than anything? I would say it's similar to Iron Maiden, but probably maybe a little harder. Well, maybe that's a good question. Do you think this game, the way this game shoots, if you want to go ahead and rank Keith games, where would you put this on shots? Oh, God, that's tough. I like it better than Iron Maiden. I like it better in Jurassic Park. this is just how it shoots just how it shoots and it's I don't know between Avengers and this I think Avengers it's easier to find the shots on Avengers this one's I would say a little more difficult but as far as like unique shots this game definitely has it in my eyes yeah it definitely looks cool I literally pulled up my phone here. I'm trying to, on Insider Connected, I'm trying to find your name here, Tom, because I want to see what you achieved. Sure. Do you have it? Are you sharing that with everybody? Yeah, it's Fox Cities. Okay. Everybody go follow Tom. There he is. Oh, a little piece of pie here, huh? That's a piece of cheese, Joel. Oh, wow. You can tell what I'm thinking about. All right. So, everybody, hold on to your seats right now because Tom here has 70, 7-0 player XP, 7-0. He has 10 achievements with only two plays. So, that's what I can see. Does it show me your achievements? So, maybe this is a good way to transition to that. Insider Connected, overall experiences on Insider. What's your overall experience on Insider Connected or thoughts initially? Well, first, it wasn't good. and that was just because we couldn't get connected. So the owner of the game, this is kind of funny, they set it up at District 82 and one of the people that was there, who was Matt McCarty, ended up using his Insider Connect to start the game and play the first game out of the box. Well, this just so happens to register the game to Matt. Okay. So then you basically have to register the game to get your Insider Connect to work. So they had to contact Stern the next day, which was Friday, to get that all resolved, I guess. But they did, and we were able to use it on Saturday. So I'm on the phone happier, and it actually shows. You can click. I can see apparently you scored 224 million points. But one thing I am seeing here is I'm not seeing any little green stars. All the little stars are white, which means that you are not playing on a verified machine. That is correct. any idea how you get a verified machine so my understanding is uh and this may not be true so consider it a rumor but i believe you have to be in the stern army to uh as a location and technically district 82 is a stern army location but um they it wasn't their game so it wasn't set to that location so to speak. Here's what I wonder because I don't think we had this verified the other day when we were talking about this if you have an achievement that is not verified can you repeat that achievement and get it verified? Is that how it works? I would assume it would. I would think so well that's a great question because Yeah, if you go play it at a location that is verified, you would hope that when you do it, you get it verified. Yeah, I didn't think it would lock you out. I don't know. I mean, we did a stream the other night, and Travis was on it, and it was Travis and Craig Bobby and Dennis Creasel and myself, and we were just chatting pinball, and Dwight Sullivan actually showed up in chat, and he answered a bunch of Insider Connected questions for us. So there's a few things. I know we talked about Insider Connected. One of the things that I think kind of upset you guys was the fact that if you play on an unverified machine, a.k.a. your home machine, you only get half the XP. Well, Dwight said they changed that. So instead of half the XP now, you get full XP, but if you play on a verified machine, you get double the XP. So isn't that the same? It's all how you want to look at it, right? I think that version of it is so much better than telling people at home you get half of the XP. It's like, how do you sell a product to somebody? You're like, here, it's $150, $200, $300, however much it's going to be. And you're like, and guess what? You only get half the achievements. Yeah, or it's more of a, hey, guess what? You got all the achievements at home, but if you can do that on a machine that's not yours, It's not set up the way you tweaked it. It's on location. We're going to treat you for that. So every game, if you look at it, they've only released six games right now with achievements. All the achievements, and Dwight confirmed this, as of right now, every game can give you maximum 2,000 experience points. So that would make sense that if you achieve, basically if you achieve everything that you see normally, you would get 1,000. So if you had the game at home and you got all of them, you would get $1,000. But if you do all those things on location, you'd end up with $2,000. There's one major caveat to that also, the fact that there are achievements that are exclusive to a premium LE model, and there's no achievements that we're aware of, at least as of this podcast, that's exclusive to a pro model. Yes, and we talked about that. There was already questions, so like Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park has a start goat mania achievement. Well, the only way you're doing that is if the Jurassic Park has the topper. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. There's topper achievements, too. Topper-specific achievements. And it's like, okay. And then, like, turtles. Turtles has half-shell challenge achievements. Well, that's like a special mode. So some locations don't even have that enabled. So there is going to be some interesting thing here, especially if you're like, okay, I have to be on a premium or an LE. So like in Turtles, there's a glider mode and that mode isn't in the pro. And Dwight said in chat, he said, yeah, the goal there is like we want people at Expo, you know, to be like getting them points, you know, where or an Expo or some sort of convention, you know, where people actually bring some of the higher models. So it's going to be this, it's almost like a treasure hunt of like, it's kind of cool that one of my local pinball places, Tappers, downtown Indianapolis, they buy all premiums. So I'll know that, cool, I can get some, like, if I want to complete turtles, I have my turtles here at home. Well, there's a handful of achievements that I can't do here. Well, I can go to Tappers. They have a premium. But that's their whole goal, right? They want people to go out and experience these things. Do you like that, that there's premium LE exclusive achievements? It doesn't really bother me because I have premiums and LEs. He's an elitist. He's an elitist. Yeah, I forgot. Wait a second. Do you see the machines behind that, man? Yeah, Tom's pulling out his phone right now and ordering the Jurassic Park copper just so he can get that achievement. I don't mind it at all. I mean, I'm a completionist, but at the same time, it's nice to know that there has to be a little bit of an effort made. And I guess for me, since I do travel to different conventions and expos and go to all these places, it gives me a reason to go find those games and go play them. You know, I don't mind that. I could understand why it might upset some people to have a game at home if it's a pro and to know that you can't actually even get to 100% at home. Like even unverified, you can't get 100%. I can't. The pro, my low-grade pro models here at home. Somebody else can do that. I mean, I get it. I mean, I kind of wish that they wouldn't have done that. I think there could have been a better way to be a little bit more inclusive to all the buyers or all the adopters of all models. But at the same time, I get it. You kind of give a little bit more incentive to somebody if they have a premium or LE. So I guess it just comes with the territory. But it's also, for somebody out there, it probably is a hard pill to swallow to spend $6,500 to $7,000 on a pro wherever they're at. Yeah. And you can't even get all the achievements at your house. So get over it. Yeah, one of the other TPN streamers, George Fisher, don't panic flip. He's known to rotate games in and out, in and out. So he's actually had a Turtles Pro, but right now he's tempted to buy a Turtles Premium Rally just because he hasn't experienced the Premium Rally. Ooh, I wouldn't do that. Don't let him do it. I feel like, though, George is just that guy that he's going to get hooked. So he's going to start buying back innings. George, George, George, don't do it. I know I get called a stern shill a lot. You look at my emails, I get called all the time. I'm telling you right now, I would not do it. I had an LE and my damn glider broke down like every other day. I probably replaced it at least three times. That glider is just so unreliable at this point. I would not recommend anybody to do that. If you've had a pro on a Ninja Turtles and you're thinking about going up to a premium, You're going to be, like, really upset once that glider just bricks out because it's basically just like a pro all over again. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't do it. Well, it's worse because if it breaks, then it won't stop the ball. It won't. Well, it will if you have to take off the glass, and then you manually put it in the middle, and then you just disable it. You either unhook the wire below, and, I mean, that's what we had to do. It just basically bricked out the whole. And that was one of the selling points, too, of premium LE. is the glider mode or whatever you call it, the glider hurry up. So it's really disappointing that there's still reports out there that something like that's happening. I know we got a little bit off track, but, George, we wouldn't be good friends, good pinball friends if we didn't have one of you have that. Well, I think that's fair advice and sound advice. I know I've heard that from other premium LE owners. Yeah. Oh, that's fair advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's fair, yeah. which I think you guys would be happy that, yeah, I just recently hit a sub goal with streaming, and I was able to have a new emote. And so one of my new streaming emotes is just the words, that's fair. So that's you guys right there. Yeah. So anyways, I like that idea, though. I mean, if you really get hooked on achievements, And that really kind of may be that thing of like trading games with your friends, you know, like, hey, you want to borrow my turtles for three months so you can get some achievements here and I'm going to borrow your whatever stranger thing. So I can try to I don't know. I think I do think there will be people that really get into this. So there'll be others that don't care. So as we were talking and using the Insider Connect, we were thinking of things. somebody had mentioned, I think it was my friend Chris, you know, wouldn't it be cool if they allowed you to do some timed things? So like, kind of like a heads up kind of tournament where you try to reach an achievement in a certain amount of time. Yeah. Joel, do you want to tell them? They're going to do that. And there's already, there's already achievements that do that. So like hurdles. So Dennis was giving me a hard time because when we streamed this the other night and we were chatting it up, I dove into Turtles because I know Turtles. Everybody else on that stream knew Turtles. But Dennis was giving me a hard time that I – we looked at every Turtles achievement for 45 minutes. As soon as Dwight showed up in chat, Joel just fanboyed. He's like, we're going to look at Turtles now. Why would you not? Like, it makes sense. We got the guy who made all these achievements ready to answer questions. So, for example, there are achievements for every mode. So there's eight episodes in Turtles. So there's three levels to each achievement. So one of them was window shopping. Window shopping is the Bebop Rock City mode. So starting the mode, you get an achievement. That's pretty easy to do. I think it's worth like five points or something. Completing the emote, four. Completing the emote is worth, I think, 12. Yeah, 12 points. So that's completing it. But then the last step is 20 points, and it's completing it in 20 seconds or less. Now, I'm actually watching Travis sign to Joel this stuff. I knew these. I knew these. But Travis, yes. It's amazing that you both know all this stuff. Well, it was just the other day. But, yes, that alone, though, is very – I like that a lot. Like, that is something where I can start up my game and it's like, all right, I'm focusing on this mode and trying to get a game plan of as soon as it spits out that ball, where do I need to get it? What's my, you know, what shots do I need to hit in what order? Because 20 seconds is not that much time. And that's all eight episodes. So that's pretty cool. Like, that's a timed thing. There's also lifetime achievements. So keeping track of one of them is, like, how many slices of pizza you've eaten. so every single time you hit a pizza target so it's just keeping track of that so over time at some point in time I don't know how many it's like 250 slices or something it's like boom it gets something that's the gluttony for the gold four points Joel there was a few other things because the glider mode was one there was something that dealt with pizza toppings and you had to have mushroom but you can't get mushroom in the pro That was the Sullivan Supreme, I believe. There was, I mean, there was one, this is really challenging, which is, so there was one of them where it was complete eight modes, complete eight modes. That's a challenge. So you have to not start, but complete eight modes. But there was one that it was complete four modes, but you have to end the mode on a different turtle shot. So to complete a mode, you have four turtle shots. So, like, in your head, you have to keep track of that. Like, oh, I'm about to finish mode one. I'm going to hit Leo. And then when you go to finish mode two, I got to make sure I hit Raphael. So there are some pretty intricate achievements here. You're not just going to stumble into them. They have cooperative achievements also. And I was kind of wondering, I wish we would have asked this because I was wondering if that would carry over from player to player. Because one of them is completing two consecutive weapons or weapon combos. Another one is complete three. and then the gold one is complete four consecutive weapon combos. I thought in chat, Ray Day was actually, Raymond Davidson was in chat as well, and he said something about there was a discussion about whether or not you would have like a timed period to potentially achieve this. So it's like if you've completed two of these today but then completed the other two tomorrow, then it would give it like they're talking about how do we help, you know, because some of these achievements are not easy. No, that sounds very difficult. Now, this is actually pretty entertaining. So I mentioned earlier that every game, 2,000 possible points. So Travis here brought this up, that in the Jurassic Park achievements, the final achievement, which is what's it called? You're talking about the final wizard mode. The final, final wizard mode. When dinosaurs ruled the earth. When dinosaurs ruled the earth. So, Tom, I don't know if you know, but how many points, how many achievement points do you feel, if you achieve it, if you've done it, if you've done the final wizard mode in Jurassic Park, how many achievement points are you going to get? If you had to guess. You just got to start it. Start when dinosaurs rolled to Earth. 25 points. Close. Very close. Oh, yeah. It's five. Five points? It's five points. You guys are shitting me. So that like a major accomplishment Five points for that I think Keith just sits there and he must get to that final wizard mode like every other game He like well yeah five points So, Dwight, we reacted the same way. We're like, what in the world? You know, we thought this should be like this massive reward. Like you've done something that nobody's done. But Dwight said like, yeah, but almost nobody's going to get there. So it's actually kind of more entertaining that if you truly are that achievement hunter, That's trademarked probably. But if you are that person that is pursuing achievements, if you look at your total, like I know Travis Murray, this would keep him up at night. If you looked at his total and he saw that his total for that game was 1,995 points out of 2,000. Got to keep going. And you got that. You got those five points left. You know, you got to. Yeah. I mean, keep in mind, I'm probably going to be actually 1,985 because I will never buy a topper. So I can't get goat mania. So, yeah. Yeah. But I think that's pretty clever. And I think, Travis, you had said in the stream that there was some video game. It was either you or Dennis said there was some video game where when you start the video game, you get four points. But for you to complete it, 100% complete it, that's how you get that final one point. So you have all these people out there that have however many points. It's like 999, and they cannot get that final, final point, which is essentially what Keith did with the Dinosaurs Rule the Earth. Now, are they supposed to have some kind of downloadable modes, like added features? There's some wording, and maybe, Travis, you know the exact wording, but it's supposed to be if you are an Insider Connected member, that means you pay for it. Gotcha. There's some wording that basically said, like, exclusive game content or something along those lines. Yeah, the wording is such that we kind of expect it to happen at some point. But I don't think that they're doing it at launch. They're going to wait for a little while. But I would be absolutely shocked if it doesn't show up at some point. But my whole thing with that is I hope that it's not something that necessarily takes over the game. You know, because I don't mind DLC most of the time. But at the same time, though, the way that I interpret DLC is based off console gaming or PC gaming, which obviously isn't costing us $6,000 to $10,000. So I don't know. To me, if they're going to do something like that, if it's the way that we're kind of thinking it is, because, again, we don't know this for sure. It's just the way that the wording is. It indicates that it's highly probable this will happen. To me, if you get an LE, you should have access to everything that's ever on that pen, and it shouldn't cost you an extra dime. I agree. I think that if you get an LE, that should happen. Of course you agree, Tom. Well, I mean, your pen, it's $10,500 MSRP. Yeah. And so to me, that's like, it's obviously the top model. There's no way that something that's a part of the game code-wise, that those adopters should ever have to pay for, in my opinion. I understand if you want a location to pay for it off the pro or premium, it is what it is. But if you're an LE adopter, I personally think that should be added on with it. And I think that that could be a selling point too. If you're going to go up to 1,000 LEs, let's face facts. Even though pinball is at a high point, eventually it will cool off a little bit. Eventually you might have some of these pins sitting out there for a while, but you need ways to get the consumer to get your higher-end model. And to me, that's an easier way to do it. But, you know, we're still kind of teetering on that gray area, though, that you're paying for a model with a different mode on it, but it's happened before already with Tron. So that multiband was on there. So, I mean, there's precedent for it. What if – so, like, right now, I know we're talking a lot about Turtles, But right now, before you start Turtles, if you hold in the flippers, you can play a normal game. You can play a cooperative game. You can go half-shell challenge. Or there's an option to go to final battle. Final battle is not the end-all, be-all wizard mode. But what if they did something like that where it's like, okay, if you are an inside and connected member, now you have the ability before you start a game to hold in the flippers. But now if you want to go straight into Turtle multiball, you could do that. or you want to go straight into team up, you could do that. Something where it allows you to experience modes, you know, where you can pick and choose or practice these things or Mando. Like, yeah, let's skip. There's three big wizard modes and then there's a fun. Like what if would to me it's if insider connected is what it's 30 bucks, $35 a year. Like if that, if you know, it's like you are that person. So now you have the ability to step up to a game and kind of pick and choose what you want and practice things. But, like, that wouldn't bother me. I think that's pretty cool. You're now selling me on this, Joel. Yeah, I mean, yeah, for $39.99 a year, I would be all in on that. The ability to choose a mode from right out of the gate or choose a multiball and just get to practice. I mean, Tom, us as tournament players, I know Joel, he still won't pop his cherry on that and show up and play tournament. But for you and me, though, that would be awesome, right? Oh, it would be fantastic. because you could set up different scenarios and different ways to practice. And I think something like that would be actually really genius. I would be willing to pay extra money for something like that to be able to train on different pins because even if you were able to go do that on location to enter your profile, then it recognizes that you're a paying member or something like that. And, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if Stern's thought of that, but, man, that's a potential moneymaker right there. I think a lot of people, especially tournament players, would pay that. Just focus in, hone in on things. Now, the challenge would be the cost. So I know like half-shell challenge, half-shell challenge on turtles, that's something that an operator can decide to turn on or off. And in my mind, I was like, well, why would you have that off? Well, the reality is it is an endless ball save mode. So theoretically, you get 60 seconds to hit a shot. So you could put somebody that's awful in front of that machine, and they could spend quite a while at that mode versus if they just stepped up and played a game, you know, if they suck. So that's the only thing I would think of. I mean, would you have a problem with that? How would that work, though? So if you hop on location, and let's say it is a you can hop right to a mode. Well, if you shortcut straight to that mode, when the mode ends, do the flippers die, and that's it? you experience that mode or do you like keep playing? I mean, it has to cost a credit or it has to cost something, right? For an operator to enable you to do practice like that. Yeah. I don't know how that would work on location. Maybe it would have something to do with the time thing that they have already implemented into the machines. I forget what that's called exactly. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? It's like a time ball saver to where you can. Oh, so maybe it's a. It's slipping my mind, but I know it's in there. So it would be like target ball time or something like that, or target ball save time to where each player can still play it whatever X amount of time, and you're guaranteed that your ball saver will allow you to get at least that much time on the game. When the location in Schaumburg Gameworks had a Mustang when it came out that was set for pin redemption, so you get tickets out of it, it was set for two minutes and you basically just played the game for two minutes, trying to, trying to get as many tickets as you could. So, I mean, that was, that was pretty cool. I mean, you could do something like that where you just time somebody and, and you play out that mode or whatever. Well, yeah. You were alluding to. Or, or yeah, as soon as the mode's over. So it's either you drain or you beat the mode. It's like, Hey, you beat it. Your game's over. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's different party modes that you could do, too. It's kind of like the formats that I think Papa used to do a long time ago, where you could have like a two-minute drill. You could disable one flipper to where you're only playing a one-flipper game. I mean, there's all kinds of different, you know, quote-unquote party modes you could typically do, just depending on how the software would do it. It would make it fun at home, at least. I'm not sure how that would work necessarily on location, but heads-up tournaments are getting very popular and I think because Stern is kind of pioneering that and it showed up on ESPN I could see that becoming a much bigger thing for tournaments. Maybe not necessarily for whopper points but for money I could see that legitimately becoming the next big thing for pinball. Wouldn't an operator be happy with that? You're putting in your money for a couple of minutes and people are competing. I mean, it's better than a 30-minute game. Absolutely. I would love to do that because then I guarantee somebody like Andy Rosa or Luke Nahornia can't beat the holy shit out of my pinball game. You know what I mean? Yeah, that would be great. I mean, to me, time stuff, it's just different. I'm not a huge fan of it myself after playing it in, what was it, pin Slash because Carl had those those challenges. And I'm not a huge fan of it, but I recognize that it's something that's different and that's probably more exciting for people to watch. Correct. You know, and I'm sure there's a lot of people that enjoy playing that as well. So I think with that experience in mind, I would I wouldn't mind seeing other people get to experience that. And I truly do think even though it's not something I personally enjoy, I recognize that it's probably going to become very popular very quickly. Well, so I know last time we talked about Insider Connected, both of you guys were like, I don't quite know, and a lot of it was based on whether or not it was verified or not, but you guys were both saying, like, I don't know if I can justify buying these for my games here at home. But as tournament players, just that functionality alone, would you consider paying, let's say it's for a retro kit, I'm going to be optimistic and hope it's like $200, not $300, Well, let's say it's $200. So, Tom, I see behind you, you got an Avengers there. I know, Travis, you have one as well. If you could jump into practice modes. So, $200, you throw that in your apron, and then you have your $39.99 a year for Stern Insider. Would you, like, now that you can – it's new content, but it's not new to – it's not exclusive content. I don't know. Would you – is that something you'd consider, or you're a little more interested in it? Yeah, I'd be a lot more interested. Yeah, I would. If we had the ability to practice, I would adopt it for sure for home. I prefer that even more than the achievements. If it's just achievements, I'm still not convinced I would get any for at home. I probably wouldn't. For location, most likely I would. I would consider it. but if I had the ability to basically control my practice sessions and be able to control what I'm working on, and at the same time, that enables me to learn that rule set at a much quicker pace, yeah, I would probably adopt it. Now, what I'm curious of, if you buy the, I guess if you have to get a kit, right, is that kit just for that particular pen, or can you take that to other pens? Well, I think theoretically there's exclusive art for these kids. Okay. So is there anything stopping you from taking – I would guess no. I doubt there's going to be exclusive art. I doubt the node board that's needed to add that to Avengers is a different node board than what's going to go in Led Zeppelin. Somebody just sold one for $500. bucks. So, I mean, if it's not exclusive, I could see myself getting something like that for at home and just changing it out with the older games. I could see myself doing something similar to that just because those games are going to keep showing up in tournaments, even if the code updates don't come there. There's always something new to learn and there's always a different strategy to learn on these games. So, yeah, I could see myself doing that. I don't know if it would be the best use of money, considering how much it would be. But, you know, we're also in this hobby that just costs stupid money, too. So at the end of the day, it's kind of like money in, money out. So, Joel, you as a streamer, you know, if you could do heads-ups with other streamers, would you be, like, all in on that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I was part of, so once again, don't panic flip George. and Fliptronic, Jordan and Becca, they did a heads-up battle last week, last Tuesday night, and they did it on Stranger Things. And so every time we do it, it's like, okay, what's the goal? What are we trying to do? Well, the first person to start telekinesis multiball. And it's like, all right, well, what shows that? And normally you have to see an animation. But what would be really cool? And here we are. So I've got to give George props because the way that he gets this stream together, my audio, I'm in Indiana, Jordan and Becca are in Texas. He's in Colorado. He's pulling in multiple video feeds. We're trying to use Discord to communicate. We're doing all this stuff. So there's always a little lag. There's always a time delay. It's not a big deal. This is just for a entertaining stream. But something like Pin Slash, there were multiple times that they had to review video to show, because of delays, who actually finished first. Well, if there was something like this, where it was more everybody scroll through, everybody select. all right, we're doing telekinesis multiball, ready, go, or start at your own, it doesn't matter. It's just as soon as it's over, if the game knows that's what you're trying to do, everybody's doing the exact same task, and then at the end it spits out a number, right? It's like 45.8 seconds, boom, done. And that could be something, you know, even an entertaining thing of, hey, this week, you know, on Pinsider, I know the Insider Connected now has a forum section. It's like today's this week we're battling it out on whoever can start telekinesis. It's just like registering for pin Slash. I mean, those guys had got battle royale. They had done all the math and all the calculations are like, theoretically, you could start this in what, like 11 seconds. So it's I mean, people would commit and dive into some of these challenges. So I'm with you. I mean, we have people that listen to this. I know, Ray Day, you're listening because you listen to every pinball podcast. I know we think we're smart people, but there's a good chance somebody else at Stern has already had all these thoughts. But this is obviously an idea we're throwing out there if it happens to be new. And I think it would justify. People would pay for this, right? And I know there's other people that are like, I don't want to spend any more money. These should be things that if I bought the game, I should just have access to this. I don't want to wait two years for it. I want it now. Yeah, this is an Insider Connected exclusive of, yeah, if you're a premium member, you now have these options on Insider Connected Games. That could be pretty cool. Or, I don't know, just thoughts. Well, you know, I mean, it's just the way that the hobby is right now. Even if one person won't spend money on it, two other people will. I mean, that's just the way it is right now. And speaking of which, something that's coming out here pretty soon, or maybe it's already out, people are probably going to spend money on that. Don't you think, Joel? That's a solid transition here, and I see what you're doing. He's setting the ball up on the tee. I'm about to swing, but before I swing at this, I want to say, Tom, is there anything left with Godzilla, your overall experience with Godzilla that you want to wrap it up with? Well, the only thing I wanted to add was we had some problems with the magnet. Basically, the Newton ball magnet, whatever you want to call it, stopped working after like a couple hours of play. So it was definitely overheating. and it got to a point it just wasn't working anymore. But that's something I think that Stern's going to have to address as far as, I don't know, coding or whatnot. Well, I think we all know that magnets are a mysterious and very under – nobody knows how they work, right? So I hope – magnets are magic, right? So I hope that they, I don't know, the Stern engineers can figure out a way. I hope it's a coding thing. I mean, I will say by watching the streams, that magnet is used a lot. It is definitely a core component to the game. It's not just a wow factor of like, oh, you do this, and then boom, the ball catches. You know, like Sparks' multiball. Like the ball, oh, it caught it. You know, this is used. And I don't know if this could have been a... This could have been an isolated problem for this game. Maybe it had a bad magnet. I don't know, but that was just one of my main concerns. Other than that, the game's awesome. Do you think Pin Monk is going to now, instead of a flipper cooling kit, there's going to be like a magnet cooling kit? Wouldn't be a bad idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would say overall it definitely does seem, everything I've read and seen so far, It seems like from a design standpoint, Keith has just crushed this game. I think, Tom, you're reiterating that fact. Oh, yeah. It's awesome. It is awesome. It's awesome. Awesome. Very cool. Well, Travis, once again, this is exactly how segment transitions are supposed to go. You're supposed to start it, then talk about something else, and then come back to it. So I see the balls here. We're going to roll with it. New things that are coming out. We are recording this on a Monday night. There are rumors that tomorrow there will be a new pinball machine behind. There are facts. Facts. Okay, we're committing to facts. I'm committing to the fact, yes. That there should be a new pinball machine revealed tomorrow. And that is, I mean, absurd, first of all, because Godzilla just came out. But this is not going to be a normal pinball machine. This is going to be the home pin versions, the pins. So there's supposed to be a new the pin or home pin game revealed tomorrow. And the rumors on the street are that it is potentially designed by Jack Danger. So there has been a lot of Jack has talked about streaming less because he's working 10, 12-hour days. So it's very clear that he is doing some sort of full-time job. He's also shown pictures and whatnot. Like, it also seems almost very clear that he's working. This full-time job is at Stern. So I know Jack has an animation background, but yet he's also had multiple streams of designing his own game. And also at Pinball Expo, they're showing that he has a seminar. So it's, what's the seminar? It's him and, what's the guy's name? Wason. Wason. Him and Wason. So it's Jack Danger and Wason's new project. So it's, what is this project? I think things look to be lining up, and what's dumb is this thing's going to come out, this podcast. It will be out after the actual reveal, so we're not going to pull a final round and act like we actually know. We don't. This is a complete guess at this time. But what is that? I mean, what are your thoughts? I mean, do you guys care that there's a new pin coming out? Do you care that it's Jack that's potentially designing it? What, yeah, what are your thoughts? I care any time a new pin's coming out. But Mr. Elitist over here, you would actually buy a home pin? I'll tell you what, the Star Wars, the home pin is actually really fun to play, I think. Cool. So where is it in your game room? I don't own one. Sorry. If it doesn't have powder coat, it doesn't touch the floors. I've never played one. I have never played one. I haven't actually had a chance to play one, but what I heard is some distributors are saying they sell crazy well, and I thought it was the exact opposite. I thought most distributors were, like, having problems getting rid of them. No, the Star Wars one just sells like hotcakes. To my knowledge, speaking with various distributors, they cannot keep it in stock at all, and that was even before this whole ordeal. I mean, and that could be a big part of that is that it's just Star Wars, And let's face facts. The people that are buying home pins aren't necessarily big-time pinheads. They might be somebody that's just into the theme. They see it. It's within reason for them to pay the money that's out there for it. You know, and there's just, to me, it's just a different demographic that's buying these. But in terms of being excited about a home pin, I mean, I can't really say I ever have been. And I don't know if I will be here. I'll be curious. I'll still look at it and still, you know, judge it and still want to play it whenever I see it. But in terms of just being excited about it, I mean, it is what it is. And that has nothing to do with the themes, with the potential designers, coders, or anything like that. It's just, for me, it's not something that I would ever go out of my way to play on location or get at home. So it's kind of like, you know, it just, I don't know. It's just kind of there. It's just maybe I'm just a pro elitist. I don't know what it is. Question for you, Travis. Do you think you'd ever see one in a tournament? Only at Expo. Didn't they have Star Wars there? Yeah, they had Star Wars there. I mean, one time. Most tournaments are going to be on location, right? And if you can't pay to play the game, why would a location ever open? Exactly. So it's just, you know, I mean, it is what it is. as long as they sell and as long as they make distributors money and it gives whoever's working on this pen, it gives them the proper experience. I mean, you know, to me, it's probably the best thing to have come out after a Keith Elwin Godzilla because we talked about this a few weeks ago when Godzilla was announced. And I even said this, I would hate to be whatever designers coming in after Elwin. Yeah. And especially after this one, I would not want to be that person. So, you know, Stern hinted that this particular home pin is going to have a unique design. So that's kind of where all the rumors are starting to swirl that it could be Jack Danger, but we don't know that for sure. But all we know is that it's supposed to be a unique design or at least a new design. That's not typical from the home pin layouts they have. So I'm curious to see how it stacks up against other home pins. I would have to think off the top of my head, I think it should be a pretty good looking pin with all things considered. I don't think Stern would tout it. And I don't think Stern would put it out without it being ready. But this is pretty much the perfect time to do it, though, right before Christmas, right at the beginning of quarter four. They're all going to sell. So, I mean, why not push everything back to 2022 so you just have Godzillas and you just have this home pin? I mean, they're all going to sell regardless. Well, that's what I was trying to think of. I mean, I know most of us listening, you know, typically feel bad for Zach many on like a daily basis. You know, being a pinball distributor is very hard. He's made it very clear. So just nothing but sympathy for Zach, right? So I know that's sarcasm for anybody who's not picking up on that. Christmas time, like I was trying to think about that. Like, I mean, I think a lot of distributors every other year are like, hey, if you want to get a pin for Christmas, you got to get in those orders now. Well, the reality is, even if you want to get in those orders now, you're screwed. There's nothing anybody can buy right now for their loved one for Christmas. That's the only thing I can think of with this home pin is it's going to provide potential. You know, maybe distributors might actually be able to get a few of these in stock. They may actually be able to have them on a shelf for a time being. So when that random, you know, non-pinball person reaches out and it's like, hey, we're thinking about it. We want to buy our family a pinball machine. at least he'll have something to offer, right? Because that's the market, would be my guess. Because let's say right now Zach Minney, he said on the pinball show, and once again when this podcast comes out, it'll already be revealed, but we don't know that right now. So let's say it is Jurassic Park. Well, if the three of us want to buy a Jurassic Park game, we're going to buy the Jurassic Park real pinball machine. Not like not not that fake shit. And I do know Jordan Fliptronic. He loved he loved the Star Wars art so much that he thought about buying a pen, the pen, the home pin version of it, just because he wanted the art in his house and he knew it played fun. And he thought it would be more fun than the real Steve Ritchie Star Wars pen. So there are some people that love theme so much that they would consider it. Knowing Greg Bone, Mr. Jurassic Park himself, if there was another Jurassic Park pen with a different design, he'd probably buy it, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, no doubt. If the home pen's coming out, it's going to be a theme that will move units. They're not going to waste a lower-tier theme on something like this because the reality is it doesn't really matter what the design is for this pen. What matters is this theme. The theme is 100% everything for this type of product. So it has to be a high-end theme. And I know we were kind of talking back and forth what it could possibly be. And the more and more I think about it, the more that Jurassic Park just makes sense. There's something to do with that. Because I think it's too early to do Mando because Star Wars is still out there. And I know that they're still producing Star Wars homepens as well. So I don't think that they would do a Mando. I thought maybe possibly Avengers, but honestly, I mean, I'm a huge Avengers fan, but let's face facts, Jurassic Park would move more units compared to each other. And there's a new Jurassic Park movie coming out next summer. So it makes sense. Do you think they would ever do an exclusive theme, though, to a pin, the home pin version? Well, I mean, they have before, like heavy metal. Well, okay. Okay, not crazy expensive. Whoa, Nelly. Yeah. Would they ever do a budget-friendly version that wasn't exclusive? Like Dennis Creasel joked around that he thinks it's going to be My Little Ponies. Are you talking about like a budget-friendly, what do you mean non-exclusive? Like that. That's what I mean. So like heavy metal was what? Those were like $8,000, $10,000. They were crazy expensive. So the point of these home pin versions is they're supposed to be cheaper. They're the affordable. If you go to Stern's website, these are the affordable options. Like, that's the drop-down. Do you think they would ever have My Little Ponies? Do you think they would do a My Little Ponies affordable option but not three-person? First of all, I think it's adorable, Joel, that you're saying the affordable pinball option. Isn't that what it says on their website? Stern Pinball. What do you think the home pin's going to retail at right now? I bet it's going to be $5,500 to $6,000, bare minimum. Okay. If I'm on Stern's website right now, games, you have games right below that. I know they're going to say $4,500. Affordable home game. Affordable home game. And if you click affordable home game, that's where you see Star Wars pin. That's the app. So I hope, I don't know. It'll be over $4,000. MSRP is $4,599. They're going to say, okay, so that means they're going to be $5,500, $6,000 by Christmas. I mean, this is face facts. That's what it's going to be. There's nothing else coming out. Just Godzilla and this. Nobody's going to buy anything from Spooky because they're all spoken for. I don't know if American Pinball is coming out with anything. You know, Jersey Jack, they got Wonkas, and those are over $10,000. I mean, I don't think we're going to see these, even though Stern is saying $4,500. I think a distributor would be insane. The price is any lower than $5,500. Oh, boy. Honestly, because they're leaving money on the table. And if you're a distributor, right, and you have people canceling orders right now because you already had to go up in price, right, for your other Stern stuff, there's people that lost orders because you've got to make up that money somewhere. Well, that's the other thing that sucks. I mean, you're talking about a home pin coming out, and yet people have been waiting like five, six months for games to be built. That sucks. hey we got we got to keep this this train rolling we don't care about the people that want the games right now we need to make the games for the people that don't know that they want the game yet okay well they said that on the podcast that it like what if so what if you have this was Zach Sharp right This was on Pinball Profile no it was on Final Round when Zach Sharp was on there He said, we know we have, this was all hypothetical, but let's say we know we have thousands of Mando orders that are out there, but we don't have parts for Mando. Maybe they're waiting on ramps. Maybe they're waiting on, you know, the Grogu sculpt or something. So do we stop the line and not release Godzilla because we're waiting on Mando parts? Or do you go ahead and move forward with Godzilla, which they ordered parts for that a year ago? That's why they have to keep this constantly moving. So the reality is they probably ordered parts for this pin eight months ago, a year ago, and they're sitting there ready to go, and they've got to keep that line moving. And I can only imagine the logistics that go on in the background here with Stern. Like, the issue isn't, hey, we need to keep the, you know, we don't have enough sales of this game to keep it moving. No, they've got sales galore. It's just, do they have the parts prepared and ready to go? It's a good problem to have. For sure. So, okay, going back to your question earlier, Joel, you were talking about a one-off game. Yeah. Such as like what? You're just talking about just a theme on its own that hasn't been a theme on the adult-sized pins. Well, yeah, my thought is if the point of the pin, the home pins, if the point of that is for non-pinball people to get them into this hobby, maybe this is supposed to be more family-friendly. That's why I'm thinking, well, like maybe there is a family-friendly theme. Like I know this, I don't actually think it's this, but if it's My Little Ponies or Paw Patrol or something like that, where it's, let's do this theme. Can we think of a cooler theme, Joel? Well, I get what you're saying, Joel. You really want to buy a pen for your kid. That's what you're saying. And you've got one right behind you right now. It's called Hot Wheels. You've got it already. Now, I get what you're saying, but here's the issue that you run into right now, that the harsh reality is there's not going to be too many 8-year-olds out there writing a $5,000 check. so most likely it's going to be the adults buying the game and i just i don't know i don't know about you guys i love my kids to death but there's no way in hell i'm going to spend five thousand dollars on just a single product for them because of the theme you know what i mean it's one of those things that i think the themes that got to come out from pinball right have to reflect what the adult wants. And then the kid is just going to have to come along for the ride. I mean, that's just the reality of it. I think anybody out there listening that's into pinball and they have kids, you guys understand you want your kids to love pinball, right? But the themes that they love is not your sole buying decision. I don't, if, if there's somebody out there listening that that's what they do, God bless you. Adopt me, please. But I mean, I just don't see that being a buying habit. And I think because of that, say you do have one of those themes, Joel, I don't think it moves as many units as something that an adult can identify with. Now, what I do agree with you on about this, I think if we lean into this a little bit more, I think finding B tier or even C tier themes to where you're running like only about $500, if that makes financial sense for Stern, because obviously we don't know their financials, but I think it would make a lot the sense to run something like that for 500. Like imagine a Talladega Knights, 500 units on a home pin or something like that, or the office or some type of... Yeah, but those would sell out. You know those would sell out. Well, that's the point. That's the point. That's what I mean. You're not clogging up the line. You're making the money that you need to make. I mean, I could see something like that happening that you're saving your A-tier themes to your bigger pins. I mean, I was trying to think about... I mean, at that point, it's, well, what's the bigger goal, right? Because if the bigger goal is we want to get more pinball buyers out there, so it's like, well, let's give them a more home, cost-affordable option. Well, let's also give them a theme that's going to be wanted. So in my mind, it was like, well, what if it was announced tomorrow that Jack Danger just made Pokemon and Pokemon is a pin? Well, the reality is that those would sell. Those would absolutely sell because there's going to be families that would want that. But you also realize that's a whole bunch of Pokemon LEs that they just left. Because Pokemon would sell out. Premiums, LEs. I mean, they would all. So it's like, well, what's the goal? Is it for starting to make money here, or is it to get more people in the hobby? Do you give them a, I don't know. You can do both. It's just too big of a theme. I mean, look at what Spooky did. Spooky showed that you could bring out a theme that hardly anybody even knows about, and you could convince them that they want it. Ultraman. Yeah. Yeah, you could convince everybody that they want that, you know, and that's the theme that was off everybody's radar. So if Spooky can do that, I fully believe Stern could do something like that as well. The question is, is it in their best interest to do that? And I don't know if necessarily it is because, you know, in all reality, you're not necessarily trying to break the bank and make a ton of money by doing that. You're just trying to create new consumers, new potential customers that will adopt your pros and premiums and LEs in the future. That's ultimately what you're trying to do because the customer base for HomePens, the vast majority are going to be first-time buyers. Yeah, but okay. Tom, what do you think? Yeah, that's what I was about to shoot over to Tom. HomePin for Tom. What do you think? No. I don't think it's going to happen. But we know, though, that it's not marketed towards us, right? Right, of course. Well, at least not Tom or me. I mean, two crows aren't even marketed towards Tom. I'll be honest. I actually have thought about buying the Home Pin Star Wars edition. Again, you think about buying everything, though. Well, that's true. That's true. To put in your house or to put in your office? Either or. Are you going to put it in Neil's room? Is that what you do? I don't think that's allowed in my house. Oh, okay. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. I don't know. I think, I mean, it's crazy the way everything is right now and the fact that there is literally distributors don't have inventory. Whatever they announce tomorrow is going to sell. Now, do I think it's going to sell any more or less depending on who designs it? I don't. And that's nothing against the designer. If it is Jack Danger, I don't think – I don't mean this with at all any disrespect to Jack, but I don't think his name actually brings any more sales to this game. Well, no, because nobody outside the pinball hobby, that's very – and that's even then. Like everybody knows who Elwin or John Borg or Brian Eddy is that's into pinball. Not everybody knows who Jack Danger is that's into pinball. That's the reality of it because that's exclusive to Twitch or whoever is actually watching the videos on Stern. But that being said, that doesn't mean he can't get there. So if he is the one designing, it's actually a good spot to be in that he's on a pen, that it doesn't really matter who the designer of it is, so that pressure of that isn't necessarily there. And there may not be that pressure that we talked about, about having to follow up a Keith Elwin pen. So, I mean, this is kind of best-case scenario, get your feet wet, and I'm sure whoever did design it, whether it's Shaq or maybe it's somebody else, Maybe it could be somebody that we're not even thinking of. Maybe it's Ray Day. Ray Day, nice job, man. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? Maybe it's Gomez. Maybe Gomez came back. I don't know. Maybe it's Zach Money. Oh, boy. Yeah. He's supposed to be doing something for Pinball Adventures. Yeah, the funny fact is he does this instead. I don't know. I don't know who it is, and I think it's – I'm excited to read. We'll be surprised when they announce it tomorrow. No, I don't. This is cool. Well, as of this podcast, they announced it yesterday, so we're all not surprised anymore. Remember, we've got to time travel here, even though this is Monday night. Yeah, so we're going to act like we've already seen it. Tom, you're clearly not buying one. Let's review it real quick. We've got 30 seconds to review the home pin. Tom, there you go. it's got some nice ramps and pop bumpers. That are all connected. They all fire at the same time. That was neat. That was pretty cool. Slingshots as well. The animations look great. They're just kind of small. I am shocked by the design. It just blows away the original Jurassic Park from Stern. Unbelievable. I think it's right. Yeah, definitely. one. And art looks, it's there. It's on. It looks great. Yep. It's got legs. It's got flippers. It's got a backbox. Hey, it came out before Raza. That's all that matters. There we go. All right. And Travis is just amazed that Keith Elwin did this design. Wow. Yep. He could. He could. Yeah. I don't doubt it. Okay. Keith Elwin would design a home pin on his bathroom break. What are we talking about right now? The reality is if Keith Elwin designed this, I'm pretty sure Tom would buy it at that point. Good probability. Okay, yeah. If Keith Elwin made the home pin version of Avengers, Travis would get it and set it right next to his own. You know what? They just need to make a Keith Elwin home pin. There you go. It's just a story of being Elwin himself and you have to go to this pinball tournament. I know one person that would buy it and that's Travis his wife Monica. Look at this. First pin she'd allow in their bedroom. That's my plan. Alright, well, it's cool. You know, more pinball is always fun. So I'm excited to see what happens there. But yeah, we have we'll dive into, speaking of more pinball, tournaments. You guys have been playing in them. I would love to participate in this conversation, but this is normally where I sit back and don't talk. So we have one that you've been at, and then you You have one that's coming up. So let's talk real quick about the Klee pin. Klee pin, the two of you guys played that. How'd that go? Travis, tell everybody I kicked my ass. Go ahead. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, Tom and I, we had a great time. It was at Cleveland, Ohio. At least I think it was. Is that where Klee pin was? That sounds about right. Well, we might have been in another town. Was it Cleveland? Or were we in a suburb? Wasn't it, like, Independence, Ohio? Oh, yeah. So there you go. Yeah, so, yeah. Good for something out of this podcast. No, it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was a pump and dump. So it was basically three days' worth of just playing games over and over again, trying to put up high scores on both classics and moderns. And Tom and I, we not only enjoyed each other's company playing and going out to eat and everything, we ended up in the same group. Was it in the modern finals? That is correct, in the quarterfinals. Right. So Tom played, well, we got to give credit where credit's due. Tom played the day before. So this was on a Saturday night, right? You had to play your first round. Yes. And I think, Tom, you had to come back on your last game of Sunhouse. Yes, remember how dejected I was after playing Harlem? Yes. He was bad, Tom. I was ready to hang myself, Joel. Oh, wow. Okay. It was breaking my heart. Yeah, I believe what happened was Tom had – so Tom was the two-seed in his group, which meant that he got to pick basically what position he goes in because the first seed is usually going to pick the game, which that's why I believe it was Rod Lawrence that was in the group. Yes, who won classics. Right, right. So a very good player. And everybody that's in finals, they were all very good to exceptional. They could all play. Let's just put it that way. Yes. Except for Tom Graff on his first game of Harlem Globetrotters, which is fine. So, Tom, I remember this. Tom played Globetrotters, and we're like, Tom's going to rip this up. He's got this and everything. And then he put up like, I don't know, 20,000 on ball one or something. Yeah, it was bad. Yeah. I mean, it's okay. He was just warming up. He just forgot to flip. He wasn't worried about it. He thought the ball save was on. Apparently, Harlem Globetrotters does not have a ball save. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? Right? But, yeah, I mean, I think you had what? 195,000 on that, and then I know you were a little bummed by that, because that was good enough for last. I'm very comfortable in Harlem for the most part, but I was bummed I didn't play as well on it, I guess. I mean, you usually do really well on it. Then you guys went to NBA Fast Break, and I believe you took second on that, which gave you two points. In tournament, do they do NBA Fast break with like shots, like points, or do they do the code where it's thousands of points? It's the NBA scoring. So it's like one, two, three shots. So what is a, I'm just curious, because I had a fast break. So this is actually something I know a little bit, but like, what was, do you remember what your score was? I'm actually looking at it because it's on neverdrains.com. Joel, I can tell you what my score was. Travis blew it up. Oh yeah? It was, shit, maybe I can't tell you what it was. It was 400 something, wasn't it? 400, wow. Yeah, it was like a 25-minute game. Oh, man, I want to get a home. I think my highest score was in the 200s. Yeah, so it was 361. It was huge. Yeah, I got around to the main wizard, or I guess it's the main wizard mode on it. Yeah, did you get a ring? No, so here's the funny part. This was my third time to ever play this, but I knew where the shots were because it's pretty much a fan layout. If you have a fan layout and all the shots are right there in front of you, like I'm good to go on it. But what happened was is I got all the way around to, I guess, playing for a ring. What's that mode called? I don't even know what it's called. For the ring? Yeah. It's a championship game, right? Or it's world champion? I don't know. It's something. Anyways, yeah, it's the very last thing. So I ended up playing that twice in the same game. But you didn't win a ring? I didn't win. Nope. I lost both of them. But you don't get any points for winning a ring, right? No. You're supposed to. According to IFPA, you're supposed to be awarded 100 points if you win a ring. But to my knowledge, I don't think they were awarding it. That's a lot of points to win a ring. Right, because I had somebody come over and ask me, did I get my 100 points because they saw my score at 361, And I was like, no, I botched that both times. So it's kind of weird. Yeah, you're supposed to get 100, but I don't think they were giving that away. Well, you don't know because you didn't win the ring. Yeah, exactly. You don't know if you would have gotten 100 points. It was horrible. So Tom ended up, though, coming back on house, which was awesome, on his last ball. Which was pretty sweet. Yeah, and I don't even know. Did you realize you were coming back there? Yes. Or were you just in the zone? A little of both, but yeah, I knew I had to do the things, which was basically multiball and get the – I had two million lit at Rudy to start the multiball. So it was lit for a million, and then you get a million for starting it. So I know I had two million in the bag there, and then I think I hit the jackpot shot, which is at the trap door. and that pretty much sealed it. There you go. And then, Joel, the very next day, Tom Graff and I not only ate breakfast together, and we were in the same group. We were with – yeah, we got grouped up with Jared August. And Tyler Sutton. And Tyler Sutton, yeah. And Jared, for those that don't know, he's an okay player. He's all right. Just, yeah, he's – So is it – I mean, you guys, I would consider – I'm assuming you consider each other friends. Is it, would you prefer to be, I mean, now you're playing direct, like, would you prefer to be playing with your friends? Or no, you don't want to, because you're essentially knocking each other out. I mean, at a tournament, you pretty much know everybody already. So you're pretty much playing with friends no matter what. Just because you know them doesn't mean you're friends with them, Travis. I mean, you may think you're friends with them, but that doesn't mean they think you're friends. Shit, you're probably right. I got to reevaluate my friendships here in pinball. Well, they know me, so we have to be friends, right? Exactly. No, I mean, I don't mind it. I mean, I don't want to – I root for the people in my group for the most part. Like, it's one of those weird things to where I get more relief if they drain and I happen to be ahead, but I'm not rooting against them. Like, it doesn't – I'm competitive, but if they get ahead of me, you know, so be it. I don't know. I wouldn't be like that in sports, but in pinball, I'm kind of just like I'm rooting for somebody else. And even then, even during Demolition Man, we were actually kind of talking back and forth, our group as a whole, about what's going on with this machine. Because there's a particular, I forget if it's the mystery mode or whatever it is, to where it actually stays in order. So if you can tell that somebody got a certain, I guess a computer award, that's what it was. It would fall under a certain sequence. And so we were all kind of paying attention to that. So that's kind of the way that I am in my groups. I don't mind talking to my groups. I'm not necessarily going to give away rule sets or something like that. But if I know that somebody already has a good handle on the game, we might talk about, you know, oh, this flipper feels like this or, oh, the tilt might be a little tight here. Yeah, Travis was like, Tom, you only need two million to beat me. If you just hit that shot over there. I told Tom, just go up there and just rage tilt on ball one. Show us all he's got. And I probably would have did better had I done it. So what was the outcome then? Two of you guys played each other or were in each other's group? I don't want to talk about it. No, just in the overall, this was classics, right? Yeah, so, yeah. Yeah, poor Tom. Were you in the running in Spider-Man or were you already out of it? No, I took two. I played terrible in Demoman and Jurassic Park. and when Jared played, you know, when he picked Spider-Man, I was like, great. You know, why didn't you pick this first game? No, I remember that now. Yeah, because that was the game that you felt really confident on because you put up an excellent score in qualifying. Okay, Joel, I remember this now because I went to the bathroom. I was like, Tom is just going to crush this. It's fine. Yeah, this is hilarious. So I go to the bathroom and somebody else in my group is in there. And so, you know, we go use the bathroom. It was all three. That's what guys do. All three of you went to the bathroom. Well, yeah. Guys, he's in groups. Yeah, exactly. Then Jared followed us, and he's in the bathroom. So I'm washing my hands, and all of a sudden Tom's in there. And I'm like, what? And I'm so confused right now. Well, I think maybe even then, I think Jared came in right after you. Yeah, that's what it was, because I was so confused why everybody was in the bathroom together, because this is supposed to be a longer playing game. I'm like, what the hell is everybody doing in here? And Tom said, oh, my ball's already over. And I'm like, and you had time to walk all the way to the bathroom, too, because it's down a long hallway. Oh, boy. It's not even close by the playing area. I literally, I think I bricked my first shot, and it just went down. And I was like, yeah, that's it. Ball won? Yeah. I did end up taking second on that, but it was you took first. You came back on ball three and beat my score. I mean, a lot of this, they weren't like super impressive scores, but you had like 51 million, I had 46. Yeah. The weird thing was Jared just had like two god-awful balls, and then he really came back on ball three to take third because it was a weird scenario because if Tyler had actually passed you and got it first, he could have knocked out or at least had some kind of – No, there was a scenario where Jared would have gotten eliminated because Jared had six points. If he would have got zero, he would have stuck at six. No, it would have been a tiebreaker between Tyler and Jared. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. No. Yeah, because Tyler had three points. I'm looking at it right now. Okay, maybe it would be. Yeah. It would be a tiebreaker. Wouldn't it have been a tiebreaker between? Well, no, it wouldn't have. No, I would have. If I would have got a two, that would have given me seven, right? If Tyler would have gotten a four, four plus three is seven. Yeah, Jared would have been eliminated right there. If he took last, he would have been eliminated. Oh, you're right. You're right. You're right. Don't doubt the Oklahoma math over here. Joel, you do the same thing to me. I believe everything you say, Travis. What are you talking about? Yeah, no, you're right. I'm sorry. It's okay. In Oklahoma, we work hard, you know, counting to ten. We work really hard all the way up through the night. I told you, these late-night podcasts, they're killing me. All right. So what was the end result? Well, okay, so I ended up coming back on Spider-Man just because I found the left spinner, and all I did was just hit that like 10, 11, 12 times in a row, and I just caught it. I just kept doing that. It was like the cheesiest way to win, but that was the only safe way to play. So the win's a win, and then, yeah, then I moved on to semifinals where I had Jared in my group again. I believe I had DJ Ryle. Am I pronouncing that right? Yeah. And then I had somebody by the name of Raymond Davidson. Oh, that guy. As our bus driver. Yeah, that guy. He's pretty good. Yeah. He picks Funhaus, and I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to annihilate this. I can't wait. And I'm sitting next to Tom, and Raymond's literally playing Funhaus for like 30 freaking minutes. I think he had like 18 or 19 million ball one, I want to say. It was something crazy. yeah yeah but long story short i end up getting eliminated in that round and i think i got sixth place yeah sixth place overall so you're getting money for that oh yeah a little bit i forget what it was but yeah we got a little bit it was over 10 so you don't it's hard it was over 10 i mean i i think i ended up about 75 in the hole for the entire weekend where everything paid out So I didn't mind that. And then we got to go eat lunch, which was awesome. Yes. That was the best part of it. That was the highlight. Eating was the highlight of the whole thing. Well, the best part was walking to the melt bar. The first time. The first time. Yeah. Yeah. It was you, me, Ray, somebody else was there with us, and Monica. Yes. And so I'm trying to get ahead of this because I know Tom's going to paint me in a horrible light here. But let's just say I don't regret anything. I think I'm still correct on this. Okay, go ahead, Tom. So here's Tom painting you in the correct light. That's what I'm ready for. Here we go. So it's a four-lane street, busy street. And the restaurants cross the street from us right in the middle of two intersections. and Travis was like, Tom, we need to go back to the other intersection and cross. And I'm like, Travis, we'll just wait for traffic. And he's like, no, Tom Graff, we need to do this. So I'm like, so Raymond and I were like, okay, we'll cross and you and Monica can go back. And so like Raymond and I are literally strolling across the street, waving to Travis and Monica, still waiting for the crosswalk to change as we're getting to the restaurant. They don't jaywalk in Oklahoma. That's what I'm saying. They will not jaywalk. No. Travis was very scared he was going to get hit. I don't do that. I'm like, I lived in Chicago and crossed busier streets. I'm like, Travis, you'll be fine. Nope. Yeah, but he can't count on having two. You can't count on having two working headlights in a car in Oklahoma. So, you know, those cars will sneak up on you. So, Cleapin was fun. I'm glad to hear you guys survived. Awesome. So that was the tournament that was done. We'll go ahead and plug away now. I know, Tom, this is your baby, but you've got a big tournament coming up. This is everybody's baby. Starts tomorrow. Let's go. Go ahead, Tom. Sorry. That's okay. Pinball Super Series at District 82 Pinball. So we're going to have six tournaments over four days. I am going to stream it on my Fox Cities Pinball channel starting at 5 o'clock Central on Thursday night. On Twitch. On Twitch. Thank you. And there are going to be a lot of good players, Travis. You included. Yes. I am going to be there. and there's going to be some other people there. There are actually 22 top 100 IFPA players going to be there. Wow. So some pretty good players, yeah. I mean, I would just like to inform all of them right now, I plan on winning all six tournaments. So I'm sorry you guys made the trip, but, hey, at least second-place whoppers will be worth a lot. Six tournaments starting on Thursday. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Yeah. Four days. So one tournament on Thursday, two on Friday, two Saturday, and one on Sunday. Now, you said the escape room was letting you borrow Godzilla. Is Godzilla going to be there for the tournament? It is going to be there. It's going to be set on free play like all the other games, but it's not going to be in the tournament. Okay. So people can, you know, between rounds or breaks, go and play it, which is pretty cool. Very cool. So it's already, is anybody, I mean, people that are listening to this, can they still sign up for this? Or is this kind of already? It is really sold out. Really sold out. Really sold out. Not just kind of sold out. It's really sold out. Okay. Really exclusive, Joel. I'm sorry. I know you really wanted to go to this. I would say, you know, I think Nicole is probably going to let me, but really sold out, guys. You know, maybe we might let, I don't know, David Dennis, if he shows up. Oh, God. Oh, Lord. So in all seriousness, though, if you're listening to this and you're into tournament pinball or watching pinball, this is something that you definitely want to tune into because there will be. Yeah, because there's going to be so many world-class players there that legitimately every group the whole entire time is going to just be crazy groups. You're going to see some pairings that leads to some high-level pinball, some high-level decisions. It's going to be pretty exciting. And I think overall from the point distribution that we saw, first place is probably going to be somewhere around 70 Whopper points, just to give you an idea. Per tournament. Right, per tournament, which is massive. So there hasn't been, at least in America, there hasn't been this string of tournaments together to have this many. I think the closest one that's come to that that was obviously worth a little bit more because it's a major was out at Indisc. and I think they had four tournaments total out there. So I don't think there's been something this big with this many players. Very cool. Do you know what I mean, Joel? Does that make sense? No, I mean, it makes total sense. If you're into competitive pinball and you only have to travel to one spot, you're going to have multiple days. We should have recorded on Sunday and you guys would have been zombies and you'd probably not even want to say the word pinball. I think Travis is going to be on a plane unless his flight gets canceled again. Oh, gosh, yeah. So Travis is actually going to be at your house. Is Travis staying with you the whole time? No, he's only here just one day. Unless he gets stranded on Sunday, which probably won't happen. I legitimately decided to get a hotel that's just a couple of miles away from the place. Because I'm just like, I need to sleep because we're going to be on our feet all day long. Is it a hotel or a B It a hotel Okay I forget what hotel That fair But it is a hotel Yup hotel I rooming with a couple of buddies Dominic Kasich and Austin Trent from Oklahoma One of my Oklahoma buddies He's going to come out there and he's going to Try to do his power stance and play Because he literally does the splits when he plays Oh I'll introduce him to Tim Enders He does the same thing Oh man they could Hit it off That's awesome Well, I will definitely tune in. I mean, it sounds like there's going to be a lot of footage there. So Fox City Spinball, like always, you know, Tom, you kill it with that. So hopefully streaming goes well. You don't drop too many cameras. And, yeah, just don't give Travis any excuse to blame a loss on you and your equipment. That's true. Then you'll be good. Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Well, I think we only have two segments to go. They are clearly the most popular segments of the stream. Are you guys ready to go for triple combo? Triple combo. You guys ready for this? Sure. Yes. All right, here we go. Welcome to Triple Burger. How can I help you? Yeah, can I get the combo, please? Did you want the single, the double, or the triple? I think I'll have the triple combo. Yeah. Are you done? Yep. Go ahead, please. I freaking love that intro. I love it so much. Yep. All right. Triple Combo. I know we had one or two podcasts recently where we didn't do this. So here we go. I know we've had people ask about it. We are going to do tonight, we are doing Triple Combo Deadpool. Deadpool, Deadpool, Deadpool. Everyone's favorite game. I'm just assuming that because it's probably mine. I freaking love Deadpool. Deadpool's just a great, great game. I will go ahead and start off. I do the novice section. So if you are a just beginner player or friends and family come over to play a game, you know, what do they need to know to play Deadpool? Few things. Number one, the scoop. The scoop is how you're going to start a battle. So that's just very easy. You just point to it. It's actually lit. It's red. You just say, yep, get the ball in there. Boom. You hit that shot. you're going to start a battle. When you start a battle, you can select which character you want. So it's either going to be Mystique, Sabertooth, or Juggernaut. And then depending on which character you select, lights are going to be shot to defeat them. So normally I tell people, hit the scoop, pick Sabertooth. What you're going to notice when you pick Sabertooth is the spinner up the middle, the spinner on the left, or the shot on the right, back into the pops. Those shots are going to do damage to Sabertooth. So just, I mean, it's literally tell him, hit the scoop, hit some of those shots, and watch his health bar go down. And once it goes all the way down, hit the scoop again, boom, you killed the guy. That's usually enough direction for them to have something that they're excited to do. I am surprised even my dad, knowing just that little bit, will play the game over and over just to do that. He just wants to see that final knockout punch. So it is a fun, easy-to-describe, fun-feeling achievement. Other things that you can achieve in the game would be Deadpool, little Deadpool multiball, which are you have the three drop targets right in the middle of the play field. If you hit those down enough, eventually the ball will be trapped by little Deadpool. You hit that shot again, you're in a multiball. People like multiballs. And then the last thing to kind of try to get somebody to do is you point to the katana lock shot, and you're like, if you can hit this ball right here, you're going to see that ball whiz around the play field. It goes right, then across the playfield to the left, up the ramp, down the ramp, gets locked in the katana. It's just a really unique shot, one that I think everybody should experience. And if they can hit that shot three times, they're going to be in a multiball. So, unfortunately, Deadpool does not have any, like, additional modes, you know, where you hold the flippers in and you go straight to a mode or experience something. Now, I know Tanya was, Tanya Kleist, the guy that has, is the coder for this, He was very involved with Insider Connect, so I know all of the games. Dwight Sullivan actually confirmed that. Basically, when the games come out, there will be a code update for every game. Obviously, there needs to be code to understand how to use Insider Connect, so maybe there would be a chance that he would add or would add something like that to Deadpool. That would be pretty cool. But otherwise, yeah, that's pretty much it for novice. Just focus on battles and experience those things. So that's it for me. We can dive into wizard mode. Wizard mode is, which one of you is doing wizard mode? I was going to do the wizard mode. All right, Tom, let's hear it. Wizard mode, so how do you complete the game? How do you beat the game? So there's actually three wizard modes in the game, and they all involve Mr. Sinister. So there's the Mega Crackle-A-Dinosaurus Rex, which you have to complete both of your T-Rex and your Megalodon quests and then also play out your Sauron multiball. And that's a pretty cool mode. You've got to hit the blue shots to build up your jackpot, and then the drop targets will come down. You've got to hit the little dead pool to weaken the monster. So that's pretty cool. And then the second one is the clone multiball, which to start that you have to basically complete all the villains. So Juggernaut, Mystique, Sabretooth two times. And clone multiball I don't know a lot about. I think that's just the multiball. You basically hit the blue jackpots. And then the final is the final battle where you have to play out both of the Mr. Sinister modes beforehand and then also have played mech suit multiball. How do you start mech suit multiball? How do you start mech suit multiball? I believe it's 45 weapons. Yeah. Thank you. Weapons are combos. There you go. Weapons are, so a combo shot and Deadpool, just like any other company where you string more than one shot together. Well, you collect your combos or you collect your weapons by hitting the scoop. Um, yeah. So 45, after you do that, as long as you're not in a mode or anything, then that'll be lit. You hit the scoop and boom. Um, boom. That's a pretty, that's a really cool mode. And, and what Tom was saying to defeat the villains. So you have, there's three villains. to once you've, it's lit initially, but once you defeat one, you then have to spell dead on the left side to light battle again. Right? It's dead or pool? It's dead. I'm pretty sure. So you spell dead, then you do your battle again. So it's, you play three guys, and then you do Sauron, multiball. Then the three guys are lit again. You do it again. That's how you get to the first mini wizard mode. And then the other thing is you have your quests. Your quests are lit by you've got to punch your chimichanga card. So you hit the right orbit. Then you have to hit a certain number of shots to fill that up. And then your quests are started at the scoop. That's how you do the shark and the T-Rex. And that's how you get to that Megalo whatever that you said. So it's pretty self-explanatory, actually, to get all the way to the wizard mode. But it's achievable. Some people complain about that. You know, high-end players feel like the game's almost too easy. But I'll tell you right now, I am nowhere – I'm not a Heim player, but I have not beaten this game at all. So, nice job, Tom. Thank you. Travis, I guarantee you're going to talk more about MechSuit Multiball when it comes to tournament strategy. Yes. All right. So, hang on. I got to clear my throat real quick. Apologies. All right. I mean, he did have literally my entire segment and Tom's to do that. We can edit it out, but you're probably not. So, anyways, here we go. All right. So, this is for match play. And I'm going to assume that you have a ball saver on because most people playing this will most likely have a ball saver on. What I like to do is I like to use my ball save time to actually knock down little Deadpool targets. That's what I prefer to do. I know a lot of people will go for the super skill shot. But to me, I think the little deadpool multiball is very important on your opening tactic. I think it's important enough to not worry about the 5 million points that you get for your katana ramp super skill shot that a lot of people go for or even going up top. The reason why you don't want to plunge just for up top on the in lane is because your ball save time will be wasted in those pops. Typically on a Deadpool, the ball will last a long time in the pops, and you don't want to necessarily do that because if you have a ball save and all you're doing is collecting pop hits, it really doesn't do you any good. So that's how I like to approach it. Now, there's a few other ways that you can do it from here, but keep in mind, Deadpool is all about team-ups and mode stacking. Correct, Tom Graff? Correct. What do you think, Joel? Oh, you are so correct. All right, there we go. So, and the reason why team-ups are really important, and we're talking about the Dazzler shot, which is on the left orbit. We're talking about Colossus, which is the U-turn by the scoop. We're talking about Wolverine, which is on the center spinner. And we're talking about Domino, which is on the right orbit. Domino is actually very important. And here's why. Because if you go for the right orbit, you have to hit that shot twice or any of your team-ups, you want to hit them twice to get them fully revved up. and you can bring these team members or these team-ups into modes with you. That will help you complete the modes or they give you various power-ups. The reason why Domino is very important is because, one, it gives you increased scoring, right, according to whatever mode you're going to do. So, for instance, Juggernaut would be the targets, Mystique is spinner, and Sabertooth is pop bumpers, which I'll get to this stack here in just a second. and then it also gives you chimichangas also or gives you progress to the chimichangas which you need to hit I believe it's three in order to light your quest modes which could possibly come into play depending on how you want to approach a pen some people just prefer playing through modes other people like doing the quest I depending on how it's set up and where I'm at in the game I may opt for I think it's a megalodon over a mode if I need to because with megalodon you can just chase blue shots the whole time and just grind out a pretty good score overall. But that's neither here nor there. That's just an opening tactic that you could consider. That's because Megalodon isn't timed, right? Right. You can just stay in it as long as you want. Yep, yep. And you could just grind it out to some pretty big scores. I mean, I've had some substantial, even on tough playing Deadpools, I've been able to get up to 500, 600 million just by focusing on Megalodon because they're still safe shots. You could backhand the left ramp, and you're pretty much safe. You could center spin, live catch, it's pretty safe. Or you can stick with the right orbit, and it's fairly safe. So there are safe shots in there to where you don't necessarily have to always go for a katana shot, which leads to your all locks. Make sense so far? We're good? So far, it's great. Yep. Okay, perfect. So the opening tactic that I really like to do, and, again, there's all kinds of ones. This is just what I prefer. I like using my ball save time to get a little dead pull ready. I like going ahead and getting domino ready, and I also like getting wolverine ready. The big reason why I want to get wolverine ready is because wolverine will give double damage when you're in a battle to your opponent, which means you can complete a battle very quickly. Very quickly. And I just personally like to put up points. Some people like to go juggernaut first during a multiball because you have to hit the dead targets on the stand-up targets on the left to light shots across the play field. Me personally, I like using the Little Deadpool for Sabretooth. And the reason for that, because I can complete that awfully quick. It's going to give me a quick 30 million without really even thinking about it. And then I'm in Little Deadpool and I can just start grinding out weapons. And the reason why I'm grinding out weapons is to get progress towards my mech suit multiball, because that's ultimately where I want to go. Now, depending on how the pen plays, I don't know. if there's no rubbers on and the outlanes are wide open, might go juggernaut, might do that. But for me personally, I feel comfortable playing juggernaut even without a multiball, even though I know I've got to hit the targets because all I'm doing is anytime I'm aiming at the dead targets to the left, I'm nudging upwards at the same time, anytime that hits, and typically that will send the ball actually on the northern part of the drop target. So it stays safe is what I'm saying. It doesn't put the ball out of control too much. So that's the big reason why I do that. Is there a ball save that comes on when Little Deadpool multiball starts in tournament? Because I know in normal play, you can actually start Sabretooth, start Little Deadpool, and not flip. Every time the ball drains, it kicks it back up in the pops. You can beat Sabretooth with only having to hit the knockout shot. Yeah. In theory, you could do something like that. I don't know too many people that choose to do that just because you do have to really trust the ball save. Yeah. You know, but, yeah, typically you could do that. Now, I don't know if I necessarily recommend that in tournament play, but I don't know. That might actually be a viable strategy, though. So feel free to try that out if you want to. And if it doesn't work out, just blame Joel. Yeah, I'll try it in my next tournament. Promise. There you go. So that's how I like to approach it. You know, you could go juggernaut with a little dead pull, and that's perfectly reasonable as well just because you have the coverage of a multiball already built into it. another thing you could do is you could focus on the left spinner. I've seen people do that just because that'll give you your dazzler, which increases Deadpool's health. And it also gets you progress to disco multiball as well. If you get X amount of spins, assuming you're on a pro, if you're on a premium or LD, I think you got to do disco loops first, which in case that strategy would not be viable either. Some other things you could do if you're in a multiball, consider hitting the schnick shot if you want to just because you have coverage for it um it just depends on how the game is playing some people like hitting that all day long some people cannot get that shot to register so i would be paying attention typically that shot there's it's it's almost like a 50 50 chance that that shot will not register for your 2x 3x 4x multiplier whatever the multipliers become so i would say definitely pay attention to that just in case because that's vital information to have. And, yeah, that's what I would say is just focus on your team-ups, focus on knowing what modes you want to bring in at the beginning and go from there. And that's typically what I like to do. Yeah, you're saying your main points are coming from just modes, completing your modes, hopefully having double damage and double scoring going during the modes. But every time I stream Deadpool, people are like, you've got to get that schnick shot four times and then one mode and boom, you've got a gazillion points. I just, it doesn't sound like that's the way to go in a tournament, though. In a tournament, I wouldn't recommend that because that's kind of an all or nothing strategy. If you're doing a pump and dump, yeah, go for it. Because if you screw it up, you're okay. But in something like this, in tournament pinball, you're not necessarily looking at blowing up a pin. It's not saying that that won't have to happen. It's just, to me, it happens as a result because you just put a lot of things together and you're not necessarily trying to blow up a pin. It's almost like you're trying to drive the green on a par five, and I would never recommend doing that in a tournament. I would recommend using your ball one to set it up, to set everything up for ball two or ball three. And if you can get it done on ball one, great. If you can do it earlier, great. And that's kind of what I do on Deadpool is I set things up because I want little Deadpool to be ready. I want my team-ups to be ready. I want to know that I have the opportunity to put up points in my battle mode. So that's basically the key thing. And then the other key thing is anytime I get into a multiball, I really do focus on my weapons because I want to get the mech suit multiball because ultimately, well, backing up a little bit, you want to get to 10 weapons because with the extra ball, if it's turned off, I think in tournament mode, I think it's worth like 10 or maybe even 12.5 million. I forget. It's been a little while. I think that's after 10 weapons too. So that's pretty important. Which is just combos, 10 combos. Right, which is just combos. I believe it's at 10. It's been a hot minute since I've done that, but I think it's somewhere right around there. So that's important to do because that's basically three points. And then at the same time, you get the mech suit. That's going to be worth $5 million per shot. And that's where I like to save my booms for just because I can tack on some stuff. And I will go for the snick shot during that time. My first 10, 15, 20 seconds, that's what I'm aiming for. I'm going to strategically drain out balls. I'm going to get on my left flipper. I'm going to try to get the 2X and 3X because all of a sudden, 10, 15 million, it really starts adding up really quick. And if you can put that pressure on your opponents, it's going to be tough to overcome. I've got to give George and Tanya credit. I mean, there's a shot on the play field, the snick shot, which it's just one shot, one shot. You hit one shot, and it's an instant double play field multiplier. It's incredible. But yet it's somehow it's just that perfect balance of fair. And, like, it is achievable. It's not just random. But it's not a gimme. Like, if Keith Elwin, every single time he stepped up to Deadpool, just hit that shot five times and blew it, like, it's not. It's not that type of shot. It's a satisfying shot. It's probably one of the most satisfying shots in all of pinball. Because as soon as you hit it, it's cool just seeing it. And then you know, okay, I've got a play-filled multiplier going. Yeah. But according to my notes, I'm looking back over my notes, it says that 30 weapons is the extra ball. And I could have swore I've played on them before, like 10 to 20. Yeah, so maybe it's adjustable. That could have been an old code. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between 10 and 20. But, yeah, ideally you want to get to that first set of weapons. Then you want to get to 45. And if, for whatever reason, you can get to 100, great, because you'll have a permanent play field multiplier for the rest of the game. So how many weapons do you just kind of drop your whatever else you're doing just to focus on combos? Like if you see you're at 25, do you just like, all right, I'm going to grind out 10 more and just focus on mech suit? Oh, yeah. Like as soon as I'm at 20, I mean, even my first plunge, I'm thinking of weapons because it's silver power. And the fact is, too, while you're playing through the modes, you're going to collect weapons anyways. I mean, if you see it and you're under control, I would say definitely get a weapon just because the mech suit could be so overpowering. I mean, even your most basic casual mech suits, you should be able to put up 60 to 80 million points. And in a tournament setting, that's putting on some pressure right there. And that's just the most basic mech suit you could have. Because I think mech suit is what, a four ball, multiball? And the ball save is actually really long. Yeah. Cool. Do you think that's it? Do you think that's how you win big? That's how you beat Travis? I think that's the most basic strategy I do. I mean, there's all kinds of different ones because you've got three different modes, battle modes that you could do. Most people don't take Mystique starting out, although I will say if you have double damage and you have a boom, I believe you can complete that in four shots anyways. Yeah. And we talked about this before, Joel. I forget the exact sequence because it's been a while. I think it's if you get on your left flipper, you could go spinner, live catch, backhand the left ramp, and hit your boom, and that spots your katana shot. And then I think you can hit the center spinner again. Spinner again, and you're pretty – yeah. I think that's the sequence. At least when I play, it's like, well, if I got Wolverine ready, then might as well go Mystique because she's super easy to hit. and then it's one of those like, well, if I'm one shot away from Little Deadpool, I go Juggernaut because I like having that multiball. If I don't have anything teamed up, I just go Sabretooth. But that's, I don't know, that's the way I look at it. But it's a great game. They've really found an entertaining game for, you know, there isn't some crazy mech in the game that draws people in, but it's just a fun shooter. It's got great code for all different levels. I don't know, I'm a fan, I'm a big fan of Deadpool for sure it's an excellent game, for sure and that's pretty much what I would say is that you have those different tactics that you could do, is just find a mode that you feel comfortable with, and if you're comfortable with that mode, always go with that mode right out of the gate, because you're just trying to put points on the board for sure I think that's it, you guys good with that? we're good I feel great, I think we should go for two more hours Well, here, let's do our outro. So good. So good. All right. Well, we always say the best for last. We know that. This was something we couldn't, I mean, when Travis and I recorded last week, every bit of it felt odd, but obviously you can't, I mean, couldn't do this. I mean, what the heck? So here we go. It's everybody's favorite segment. Here comes Tom Talks. So good. All right. I have no prompt. Travis, you got anything to let Tom just do his thing? All right. Tom Graff. Yes. Earlier you were talking about Godzilla. and you brought up the magna grab messing up or the magnet getting overheated, correct? Correct. All right. Can you please explain to Keith Elwin how he can fix that? Oh, shoot. I think I have a phone call. I got to go. All right. So, Keith, take that and go ahead and fix your game. Thanks. Time, time. You ain't nothing to say. Time, time. You ain't nothing to say. Time, time. Time, time. I guess not. Best segment in pinball. It is. It's the Keith Ellman of pinball segments, right? That's why everybody turns this podcast off. That's why they never even hear the rest of this. But, no, we've had – this was a good episode. Definitely. I love it. I love we always throw out of time, and then we always blow by that time. So, yeah, we're pushing two hours again, but that's fine. We said an hour and 15 minutes. An hour and 15 minutes. Top. Yep. But, no, it's been good. Sorry I talk so much, guys. God, if you could just – you've got a lot of good points, Tom. If you could just make it a little more concise. That's all I can ask. I'm proud of Tom tonight. Tom talked a lot. He did. Tom was on point today. He had some good points. Thank you. Talked some Deadpool. Talked some Godzilla. Talked some Insider Connected. We talked about going to the bathroom together at Cleopin. That was exciting. Yeah. He thought he was right at one point and then realized he was wrong and apologized to you. It takes a big man to apologize to Travis. Yeah, that's really cool. He's a dentist. They don't need to know math. It's fine. I'm normally wrong. Wow. Well, well, well. All right. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap her up. Plugs. Yeah. Travis, you want to go ahead? Yes, you can find me at Triple Drain Podcast. We come on TPN every now and again, usually on a Wednesday. Right, Joel, I think? Yeah. Okay, yeah. And then you can also find me over at YouTube at Marv Loco. And I put videos up every now and again, although I've been kind of lazy the past couple of weeks. But we'll fix that after I win my six tournaments, the Super Series. At least five. Well, that's true because I might miss the sixth one. So, yes, five. Thank you, Joel. You can give one to Tom. That's fine. Yeah. That's fair. All right, Tom, plug away, man. I am Fox Cities Pinball. You can find me on Twitch and YouTube. I do a lot of tournament streaming at District 82 Pinball. Hopefully my Godzilla LE will be here in the next few weeks. I'll be streaming that. and probably plan something with maybe Don't Panic Flip. So do a little head-to-head battle one of these days. Nice. Yeah, very cool. And, yeah, I'm Joel Engelberth. I do Just Another Pinball podcast. I also do Just Another Pinball stream. I normally stream every Wednesday night, 10 to midnight, Eastern Standard Time. Been doing some unique stuff the last few weeks because my basement is kind of in disarray. We're doing drywall right now. But I've been just doing some really interesting just kind of chatting streams and having other pinball people on, and we've just been talking over news, kind of like a visual podcast. It's been a lot of fun. So feel free. All of those, by the way, there is a YouTube channel, The Pinball Network. If you find that, all of those have actually been put on that. So feel free to subscribe to that. We also have a YouTube. We haven't done anything with it yet, but if you want to just subscribe to something else, Triple Drain. There is a YouTube channel. Feel free to subscribe to that as well. And yeah, I've also streamed for Flip N Out Pinball every other Thursday. And we did a kind of a stream podcast on that recently as well. So bye bye bye, Zach Minney, Nicole Minney. They'll treat you right. Yeah. Last thing I would say, we enjoy doing this podcast. We have a lot of fun. But the reality is it's just three guys talking and we throw it out there and we have no idea. So feedback, any feedback at all, positive or negative, feel free to email us at TripleDrain. It's just TripleDrain, right, at gmail.com? Yes, just TripleDrain. Yeah, TripleDrain at gmail.com. Any feedback at all? I would say there's some amazing content creators in, not saying we are, but there's amazing content creators in pinball, and the reality is we throw it out there, and unless you email somebody or send them a Facebook message or say whatever, we have no idea if you're enjoying it. So, you know, next time you see it, let them know. Joel, our numbers say everybody's enjoying Triple Drain. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, so we do our best to read forums and stuff, and, you know, we've read criticism, positive and negative, on forums that we're trying to learn from and improve. But, yeah, that's all I can say is if there are people out there that are doing stuff you like, let them know, and that's really exciting. It's always good getting that type of feedback. So, yeah, well, that's all I've got, guys. You two have a great four days of pinball tournament coming up. We didn't mention Insider Connected. You guys can follow me at Marv Loco, and I will be your buddy. I want to see your scores. I will stalk you via Insider Connected. See, that's my only issue right now is it doesn't let you know when somebody follows you, so I can't, like, follow you back. I'm not notified of that. How do I know if somebody friend requested me? That's the thing. You just follow them. Yeah. What? I don't. What? This is like. Either that or not a single person's followed me and I've yet to get a notification. What's that app? It's called stalking. Oh, yeah. Isn't there like a dating app that's like that? What's that called? Tinder. Yeah, this is like pinball Tinder. So I got to like your profile and then you got to like mine and know we got a match? No, it's just public data. It's just public. Mine, my insider connected name is Joel Bob. J-O-E-L-B-O-B, all one word, Joel Bob. We're not even friends on here, Joel. Oh, and we do have a Facebook. But we know each other, Travis. I thought we were friends then. Joel Bob? Oh, yeah, there's Joel Bob. We do have Facebook and Instagram. Maybe we can post our stuff on there. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I forgot about that, too. Gosh, we are horrible at this podcast. Oh, we're just all over the social media. Oh, we have merch, too. Silver Ball Swag. Feel free to check that out. Much better. Somebody in what? Idaho? Iowa? Somebody bought a shirt. Iowa. Whoever that was, congrats to you. So thank you. Thank you for that. Go Hawkeyes. There we go. All right. What was it? Oh, yeah. Here we go. Here's our sign off that we talked about last time. Next time you triple drain, make sure you leave a credit on the machine for the next person. And David Dennis is the worst. Yeah. Why do you even say his name? By far. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Tom. You're responsible for saying bye. Goodbye, everybody. Perfect. Thank you.