So round three matchups. We're down to our 16 finalists. So there are only four games per region, two matchups per region. So in the Williams region, the number one seed Earthshaker is going to go up against the number three seed Taxi. And the number seven seed High Speed will go against the number five seed Pinbot. Then in the Gottlieb region, the number one seed Haunted House will go against the number 14 seed Genesis. And the number two seed Black Hole will go against the number four seed TX Sector. In the Bally region, the number one seed Elvira and the Party Monsters will be against the number three seed Fathom. And the number two seed Centaur will go against the number four seed Eight Ball Deluxe. And finally, in the other region, the number one seed Sea Witch will go against the number six seed Nine Ball. and the number two seed Stargazer will go against the number 13 seed Robocop. And as noted earlier, other than Robocop, which is the Data East game, those are all sterns. So that's it. We will have the link to round three in the show notes and on the main page, and we'll put it out on the social media. And we encourage you to go and cast your vote. And when we do the next podcast, we will go over those results and get ready for the final regional breakouts in round four. and then we'll be actually moving forward to region versus region play. I'm not expecting any real upsets in here other than, no, I don't really expect any upsets here. Well, maybe Penbot. I think Penbot might pull out ahead. Or I'm sorry, I read that backwards. Penbot is the higher seed. Never mind, I'm not expecting any upsets. Yes, I think you're right that there's not very much likelihood, at least, to see any upsets here in round three. I could envision two. I wouldn't be surprised with the popularity of the table from Pinball Arcade in particular, that Taxi might overtake Earthshaker, because I know a lot of people have been exposed to Taxi. And then I could also envision an upset in the Bally region. Fathom. There's a lot of love for Fathom amongst players and collectors. So I could actually see Fathom taking out Elvira and the Party Monsters. I don't know if it will. I haven't decided how I'm going to vote on that one yet, because Fathom, I think, is a frustrating game that Elvira and the Party Monsters has some unbalanced scoring. Yeah, but it's still a super popular game, but all the Elvira games are really just hyper popular. Right, right. And again, it comes down to who's doing the voting. So, yeah, a lot of people who are collectors of pinball remember Elvira. I barely remember Elvira from when I was a kid and my mom and dad would let me stay up with them and watch the horror specials. So I got to see her when she was actually working. To today's generation, though, you know, if we have any teens who are listening and want to vote or even people in their 20s, they might not really have much of a clue of who she is. So and I don't know how much of I mean, scared stiff is a it's a good table in a lot of ways. It's not just that Elvira's on it, but Elvira and the Party Monsters. I think a lot of people would argue that it's not, it maybe isn't as good as a lot of other games and that it just sort of rides on her coattails. But I don't know. We're going to see how it turns out. So with that said, let's go ahead and transition into the first of our two pinball interviews. I sat down and had a discussion with Project Pinball Charity. And for those that aren't familiar, Project Pinball is a charity that puts pinball machines into children's hospitals. So I got to speak with Daniel Spoilar and Amber Streif with the charity. So let's go ahead and run that tape, and then we'll talk about it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Amber Streif, executive assistant, and Daniel Spoiler, senior director and founder of the Project Pinball Charity. Amber and Daniel, thank you so much for joining the Eclectic Gamers podcast. Well, thank you so much for having us on. We really appreciate the opportunity to say things about our charity. Well, I've been aware of Project Pinball for a while, but a lot of our listeners, because as our podcast name would suggest, they're not just pinball players. We also appeal to tabletop and video gamers who aren't so much into pinball. So if you could both go into exactly what Project Pinball does as a charitable entity, I think it'll help lay some groundwork. Well, what we found out back in 2011 that projects, well, the pinball machine could serve to be a therapeutic device in the right setting. So what we did was we found a pinball machine that was broken down. We renovated this thing kind of back into service to serve that hospital. and we started getting all these great stories of how one machine could be so dynamic in that setting for the patients, for the siblings, for the parents, for, you know, just grown-ups in general, doctors, nurses, what have you. So we really took a hard look at, you know, what we could do for our surrounding communities here in Florida. But we started talking to other people out in the pinball communities and other communities out there, and they showed interest as well. So what we did was we came up with a charity that caters to putting pinball machines in family rooms in the children's hospitals across the United States. So our goal is to pretty much help the child life specialists and the doctors to help treat these small patients there by giving them a great release. instead of them being trapped in hospitals being patients, they can, you know, walk up to a pinball machine and just have fun as kids because that setting could be quite grueling on, you know, not only the patients but the parents as well. So that is our main goal to provide pinball machines for these children's hospitals across our great nation. And in terms of number of hospitals you helped in terms of acquiring pinball machines and placing pinball machines Do you have any numbers you could share with us Well right now we actually placed in 18 different hospitals and we're going to be talking soon about a July campaign that we're doing that we're going to be placing up to eight more. So hopefully by the end of the year we'll be in about 25 different hospitals. Wow, that's quite a bit of expansion. And so speaking of that, let's go ahead and transition on over to that. What ongoing activities is Project Pinball Charity engaged with? And I guess let's hear more also about this upcoming campaign that's ambitiously expanding quite a few more hospitals to that roster you've already outlined. Well, last year it started with our July campaign, which we affectionately call Love Across America, because that's exactly what we do. We travel out of our state of Florida, and we head up the east coast to Boston. and then we head from Boston all the way over to the West Coast, arriving in San Francisco. Then we head right back across the United States, and we end up in Pittsburgh for a show there, Replay FX, and then we tend to journey back home. This all takes us through 26 different states, over 10,000 miles in a course of five weeks. We hit three major shows. We do meet and greets along the way, but more importantly, we do dedications as well. This campaign allows us to, you know, raise awareness in these different communities across the United States while giving back by, you know, providing hospital dedications. We did five machines last year, and our goal was to do a second annual tour that's going to kick off July 1st this year. and we're working. Our goal was five, but we're actually shooting for eight. So it's a lot of moving parts, but we're hopeful. So the campaign is quite interesting because there's a lot of people that share in it. They look forward to us arriving in their home state or even their town or city, wherever they are, and they come out to meet us with these meet and greets or these small fundraisers. And, you know, they make it their own. So we try to share it everywhere that we can, bring awareness to what we're doing, because it's a great endeavor. It really helps out with what we do. Could you walk through an example of, like, what a typical meet and greet style would be able to be like? It does sound like these are all pretty unique, so each location probably varies to some degree in terms of what they do for a fundraiser or whatnot. But in case anyone's been thinking about or sees on the campaign chart that you're going to be in one of their areas, they might be kind of curious in terms of how they can actually engage in that sort of process to be a part of this campaign. Yeah, definitely. You know, like you said, it's very dynamic based on the area that we're in and based on the other events that are going on as well. You know, when we visit Pittsburgh, for example, there's a big expo that's going on. So usually what we'll do is we'll go out to dinner with some people who would be interested, you know, and just hang out and really have a good time. And then, you know, when we would go to different cities like Omaha, there would be people there who have in the past helped us raise money for the children's hospitals. And they would hold a fundraiser or, you know, just kind of like a dinner or a little pinball tournament, just something something light and relaxing that people can just have a good time and really be a part of the charity. and know what it's like to kind of give back. You know, even if they can't be there at the dedications, they can be there to support. Let me add also in the different communities, I'm not going to say the pinball community because the arcade community has helped us in the past as well. But they could organize tournaments and everything like that, you know, because there's tournaments across the United States that you hold for fun or, you know, like competition, what have you. What they do is they approach us and say, hey, we would like to give back to you guys or do something for our community. So they might hold a, let's call it a pinball tournament in this case, where they just have people come over and they compete. And any kind of proceeds go to help the charity do what we do. And, you know, it always helps spreads awareness. So, you know, it's always a win-win to talk about the charity because there's a lot of people out there that align themselves with our goals, and they make it a common goal. They make it their goal. All right. Well, in terms of participation and outside of these localized events relating to the July campaign, what other ways can people participate or contribute to Project Pinball? We have a huge list of ideas that people can bring to us. We love our volunteers. They really help bring the charity all across the nation. You know, we're based in Florida, so our pinball machines that are out in California and Omaha, they still need to be maintained. So we have a lot of people who volunteer to maintain the machines. They go out, you know, every other month and clean it up, change the rubbers out, make sure that it's tip-top shape for the, you know, the children's hospitals. We also look for volunteers to kind of bridge those connections with the children's hospitals. It's always a lot easier if we have somebody as kind of the middleman who can introduce us to the children's hospital, who believes in what we're doing, to make the connection easier so we can bring the pinball machines to the children's hospitals. And plus, they could always reach out and contact us for any ideas that they think that could help us. I mean, there's a lot of ways to hold fundraisers and everything like that and to volunteer. We make it really easy for people to contact us. They could contact us through email. Project Pinball Charity at gmail.com is the main one. And, you know, we have a lot of people just reaching out to us. Like Amber was saying, we have people in, you know, different cities across the United States that said, hey, I could do this to help you guys. So, you know, we put everybody in a database. That way when the need arises maybe for that community, we have plenty of names that we can pull from and we can contact them when we're ready on this end. So it all works out pretty good. Excellent, excellent. And we'll include a link in our show notes for people that want to find out more information to your website, which I have as projectpinball.org. Are there any other, like, presence on social media that you use to communicate with people outside of the database system that you maintain? We're very prevalent on Facebook right now. Really, if you message us on there, we can get in touch. We're also on FinSide. We have a really active thread on there. And we created a GoFundMe account specifically for the July campaign to give back to our donors and our volunteers. On there, there's a bunch of different options that you can donate, and you get prizes for the different amounts that you donate. because we really wanted to make people feel like they were a part of the July campaign. You know, if you can't come out, if you can't, you know, if we're not going to your city, it would be awesome for you to still feel included and feel like you're part of the Project Pinball team. Well, I want to include a great story with that. Last year I was on the road and we were doing a social media campaign through Instagram and Facebook, Twitter, all of that. And people were actually following what we were doing every single day. They would, you know, respond in kind and, you know, just show words of support. People were taking photographs of our vehicle as it traveled across the United States. And it was probably about three weeks in. And I took two days off. And what I did was it was sort of like a, you know, I came from California extreme and then I took a day off. And it was coming out of a social media blitz, and all of a sudden there was silence. I had people reaching out to me by email and, you know, Facebook saying, are you okay? They were actually concerned because they were so in tuned in our daily mission that all of a sudden I didn't really, you know, consider it. But I just fell off the face of the planet. And they were really concerned for my well-being. and it really opened my eyes up to how, you know, in tuned the community can be. You know, they really showed concern, and they were following pretty much what we were doing across the United States while we were doing good things. And like I said, people choose different ways to, you know, plug themselves in, and I think that's fantastic. We always need that for the charity. It shows support, and we just love that. Wow, that really, I think, shows quite a success that you've had with social outreach to be able to see that much impact when you just go silent for a short period of time. Amazing, really, to me. I actually heard about Project Pinball a few years ago when I was – I didn't really get into pinball until 2012. And one of the things that I did, I think, in 2014 is I added Project Pinball as my charity at Amazon. So for those that aren't familiar, you can do Amazon Smile. They give eligible purchases, which are most of the prime purchases, to a charity of your choosing. I had done the – no offense to the American Cancer Society, but I'd done the American Cancer Society for a long time. And then I went ahead and I transitioned over to you guys. So that is an option for people, incidentally. They're big Amazon shoppers, which I am, to participate. I know you can take direct donations on your website. One of the things I wanted to ask about is pinball machines, though. If people had old pinball machines, do you guys do anything with those? Or I imagine you want newer units in at the hospitals. Well, we do take donations of pinball machines all the time. It's amazing how people find us. And even in different states, we, you know, pick them up, what have you. We have connections across the United States. And if it's in a different state, usually that's not a problem. So we're taking pretty much any pinball machine out there because, you know, we had a donation of a Mexico, which I believe was a flipperless bingo or early flipper game back in the 50s. And we weren't sure, you know, what the value was. I talked to Tim Arnold at the Pinball Hall of Fame to kind of, you know, see what the worth was. And so what we did was we decided that there was someone that was close, willing to pick it up, and we just offered it back to the pinball community. Even though we couldn't put a machine like that in a hospital setting, we were able to save that machine from a junk pile or, you know, being torn apart as trash and put it back into the pinball community. And the person that received the machine actually wrote a check for, you know, whatever he thought the machine was worth. So, you know, it was a win-win for us. We didn't have that money that he donated before that person that offered that machine in that case. You know, that money did not exist. We received some newer machines, brand-new machines that we're using in Children's Hospital where they just contacted us and say, we just had a gentleman offer us a Ghostbusters. He wants to buy it. He wanted to see if we would be able to do our magic in his area. So we're actively, you know, looking to, you know, see how we could do this smoothly.