Alright guys, welcome back to another episode of A Pinball Podcast. And in today's episode, we have a guest named Colin MacAlpine. So if you guys don't know who this is, Colin is the 14th ranked player in the world for pinball. He is also the 2017 champion of pinball. And he's also a multi-time state champion in the state of Texas. He knows his pinball. He's very fun to talk to, very engaging. And in this episode, we will talk about Mandalorian. We'll talk about tournaments. We'll talk about his epic game on Shadow. So don't miss this. You guys stick around. Have fun. Enjoy. Let's rock and roll. Colin, I'm going to start off with my bourbon. What are you drinking tonight, brother? I'm drinking a hazy Imperial IPA called Fear Movie Lions, which, you know, FML. Fear Movie Lions. Yeah, and I don't know why they use those words other than the first letters of each word is FML. so I think that's why. I can dig that. Is that local? No, that's from, oh, crud. I think it's Stone Brewery out in California. Oh, that's way out there. That's in another country, California. That's where Belcedo and D'Python Anghelo and all of them are at. But it's a nice, high-quality, good-tasting 9%, so cheers. Nice. Well, salute. I'm drinking a strong bourbon not going to lie that's strong you might have to carry this podcast before long Colin that's good you can bring down that bottle at Houston if there's anything left at that point well you know I don't know if I get stuck in my house any longer I might just drink the whole damn thing before then and I still owe you it was funny I was telling Colin this before you know we I like to mess with my guests and tell them I'm going to provide something for them for being on here. So that's why I was telling Ray and Tom the other day that I meant to send them bottles of whiskey for coming on. But they still don't believe me that it got lost in the mill. So, you know, they're going to be crying when they see that I'm actually bringing you bottles of whiskey when I see you down in Houston here in a couple of months. Yep. Well, they'll just have to cry from long distance. Well, Colin, obviously it's been a little bit crazy this past year without us playing any tournaments or anything like that. But luckily, pinball has still been going on with manufacturers still putting out pins. And obviously here just a couple of days ago, Mando was debuted. So what do you think about it? What are your general thoughts? I'm very excited about it. I'm very excited about the theme. I'm excited with how it looks. it's interesting because I'm really hopeful that as the pandemic is waning, that maybe this pinball machine can be a nice bookend to, you know, Mando being kind of on the front end of the pandemic in terms of, I don't remember exactly when the first season was streaming, but was that the beginning of 2019? Yeah, it was, I believe, November 2019. So it was fairly recent, fairly recent. So it was just in front of it. So maybe it's other stuff. But anyway, the you know, it's it's something where it's great to see Stern putting out another cornerstone title, you know, staying on schedule despite the you know, the they've had to Carl Weathers the storm in terms of business interruptions and shutdowns due to covid and having to do no staffing and then partial staffing. and they're just proving once again the manufacturing machine and juggernaut that they are in being able to provide yet another what looks to be a fantastic pinball machine for all of us pinheads. Yeah, and it's one of those things that I don't know about you, but I am a huge Star Wars fan. So whenever I see something Star Wars, it tends to get some type of emotional reaction out of me. But when you put Star Wars into something that I'm really into, like pinball, it's just like a rocket ship going off. I mean, it's hard to describe. And I don't know if there's too many other people that feel like that. I have to assume that there are a lot of people that feel that way. But, I mean, what's your fandom with Star Wars? I get the feeling you're a huge Mandalorian fan from our previous conversation. Yeah, I'm a big fan. Maybe not as big as you. I mean, I'll reenact like the Travis, you know, reaction video, you know, throwing up the hands. And, you know, I think I need to get a little, you know, get a teardrop going on here to really celebrate it the way you did. Oh, my gosh. I've gotten so much crap about that. And, like, that was my true reaction. I mean, Colin, he had to ride in a car with me. Or, you know, we spent a weekend together up in Wisconsin. So it's like pretty much what you see is what you get. But I just, I get excited about that stuff. And so even if it's just me here, like I just I don't know. It's just it's something about Star Wars. Like I'm the type of person I'll watch Star Wars by myself. Right. I'll just sit there in my theater, watch it by myself, and I'll still have a reaction to a scene that I know is coming. But I still just eat it up. I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just a huge Star Wars stan. I don't know. But, yeah, I've gotten plenty of shit about about that little tear that came down. But no more crying. I'm not going to cry over pinball anymore as long as I can help it. All right, no more tears. No more tears. I mean, well, come on. You won Pinberg. Did you not shed even one tear after all that? Not even one? I think later on. Yeah, not during the actual moment of it. It was more of a surprise and shock and elation to be able to pull that off. And, yeah, here's a little toast to Pinberg. We miss you. We miss you, Pinberg. For sure. We miss you, ISPA. But anyway, let's stay focused here. So you asked me about Mando. Yes. So if those of you who haven't already listened to it, you can go and click on the prior episode where Travis goes into great detail on what we've seen so far. And let's clarify once again. Travis, I know you do the same thing. that is so far, meaning that we've only seen a very, very tip of the iceberg in terms of Mandalorian pinball. And we've seen very, just a little trailer video. So no extensive gameplay video. We've seen at least enough to kind of get a feel for where the shots can go. And that's big to me. I am a big part of what brings enjoyment to me in pinball is the kinetic aspect of the ball going places and the ball going different places. And, I mean, I love that. I mean, I like – I kind of miss, actually, the Bally Williams days of trap doors and subways. That's – I just – I always liked that. Like the ball would disappear in one place in the play field and pop up somewhere else. We don't see that as much anymore today. Do you feel like we need that more today? Do you think that that's more important than just shots in general, like shots with flow? No, it's not more important, but I think it is important to have shots that go into different directions or different places, depending on the game state. Just for the sake of variety and for the sake of that, just the physical nature of pinball, that way it doesn't become quite so predictable. So, you know, that's the problem with video games. Video games, it's very predictable. And with pinball, it's not as predictable. So I really like, but the thing I like about Mandalorian, what I've seen so far is the, I really like how the left ramp looks because I like the big shots that, that, that flow smoothly, but go long distances and coming back to your flipper with whatever they're going to do. So, you know, there's lots of games out there that do that. And this one seems to do it pretty well. I used to always think well I'm not sure if I like cross play field return shots but then I decided I like those a lot similar to your impression of the pro I am worried about over time what the plastic is going to look like but I'm very pleased in how the pro has very little gameplay stripped out of it I think that I think that the Mando you know helmet area mini play field area is from a gameplay and game logic perspective is actually going to behave almost identical yep it's the same six targets or however many across in an arc there across his head that it's going to it's the same way to access it the only difference is the you know how you actually hit those targets and it won't have necessarily a a sometimes vertical sometimes horizontal part of it. And I was of the same impression that you had where I kind of wondered about the premium where it just, those flippers are really big and the gap between them is really small. So maybe they're going to do something like a family guy with a Stewie pinball, or maybe there'd be a timer or something of that sort. But I actually really like mini playfields right now. But there's a caveat for that. I really like mini playfields that work. if there's a mini play field that doesn't work, then I hate it. And so I really like mini playfields that do, that don't just have, you know, flippers set in like a normal position, whether I like ones with a single flipper or flippers that are offset. Like I think one of the best mini playfields of all time is Simpsons, Simpsons pinball party. Yes. And those two flippers are not like an Italian bottom, you know, right next to each other. They're offset. Or you have, you know, mini playfields with one flipper that work really well. So to me, for instance, like the ACDC mini play field, eh, it's okay in terms of how it's integrated after the later code revisions. But it's not, you know, great. Even despite, even if Munster's rules were a lot better, I'm just not a huge fan of like having a whole nother pinball machine in the mini play field. So also Game of Thrones premium, not a big fan, but I like what I see of this Mandalorian mini play field because I'm curious to see if it gives us some of that same feel that we get from Banzai Run. So Banzai Run, for those of you, I imagine all your listeners know, but if you don't know, Banzai Run has a huge play field, not a mini play field, in the backbox and is vertical. So you have the whole aspect of the gravity and all the, you know, not just a slope at six and a half degrees or seven degrees, but it's almost 90 degrees and it works really well it's really well designed it's uh it's really well thought out and it has a very different feel in terms of how the ball interacts with the flippers and that's a cool part about pinball is when you can incorporate something where it the ball interacts in a different way and so that mandalorian play field because i think in the pro it's actually vertically inclined the whole time. It doesn't move. So it already has... It looks like it is, pretty much. And what I'm curious of, what you mentioned earlier about possible coding with that, I'm curious, what do you think would be the perfect type of code in terms of that mini play field to make it worth your while to go up there? And how long do you think the ball should remain up there, judging with the size of the flippers? I wouldn't have it stay up there for long at all. I think it has to be really short and sweet. I was thinking no more than maybe three to five seconds tops. Or potentially penalize you if you hit the wrong target. That's a good one. So that way it's not just a flail fest. So you don't just go up there and, oh, flail away, blah, blah, blah. I just feel like I'm flailing like a newbie playing pinball. You know, make it so that there's maybe the first iteration of it, an encounter. I think they're called encounters. Yes. Make it so the first encounter, fine, flail away. Because you want the novice player to be able to experience it and not feel cheated. You know, it's like, hey, I got to do the cool thing. So let them do the cool thing and not feel. But there needs to be some, as you can see, there's different levels of it because it's got the one, two, three. So the second or the third level, maybe not just time, but have it such that, you know, if you hit the wrong target, maybe it knocks, maybe you lose a bunch of time on your timer. Or maybe you lose all your time and the flipper goes dead and you're done. See, that was another way. That's what I was thinking of with those targets right there. I would almost like it to where you're supposed to hit a specific type and a specific amount of target. and then the moment you do that, like say you miss it two or three times, then your flippers just die. Or maybe even, I wonder if they could code it in to where you actually lose access to one flipper. Or maybe so many shots you might lose one and then you still gotta use the other to make it a little bit different for the premium and the LE because obviously on the pro, it's still just one single flipper. But I gotta be honest with you, Colin, I actually like the pro mini play field better than the premium. I like the idea of just one flipper and having to strategically nudge off that. I don't know if it's a post or a rubber. I like the idea of that. I feel like there's actually a little bit more skill involved with that potentially, just looking at it, but obviously we won't know until we see it actually get flipped. Correct. No, I had the same impression. The only thing I could think of that was maybe slightly more appealing about the premium in LE was just the fact that it changes state. and so you'll have to learn how to play it differently depending upon what state it's in. So that could be cool as well. But bottom line, I'm really happy that Brian Eddy decided to do another pin with a mini play field that looks like it has some good potential to it and that doesn't overwhelm the play field, the main play field. Exactly. Thank you. I fully agree, a thousand percent, because it's one of those things where I know, obviously, like, take, for instance, Black Knight. That was recently released. Everybody seemed to, at least the vast majority of people, preferred the Pro over the LE and the Premium. And Black Knight, historically speaking, it was supposed to be an upper playfield type game. But I almost feel like now, this day and age, modern games, you've got to be careful with that type of stuff. And I think Game of Thrones might be about as large as you could possibly get now. But I do. I agree with you. I think Mandalorian has just the perfect fit. Now, I just I'm hoping that we are able to actually change the flippers ourselves, because me personally, I want to make the flippers smaller when I get a premium. I think I'm going to get a premium and then somehow I want to make them smaller just because I just feel like unless the coding is there, I feel like it might be one of those things where you just kind of get stuck up there all day, especially if you know what you're doing. Yeah. And I guess I have, I have faith in Dwight and whoever else is on his team in terms of, in terms of rules development, that they're going to not allow it to be just a, you know, complete exploit. I mean, I know that the Game of Thrones premium and Ellie, a friend of mine here in Austin, Brad, he put lightning flippers on his, and I think that was an improvement. It really it made it more challenging. Now, at least with that mini play field, you did have exit points next to the shots you're trying to hit. You know, similar to like, you know, World Poker Tour, where there's an exit point, you know, that drops down, you know, not just between the flippers. And there's nothing like, I mean, it's pretty obvious. There is none of that on Mando. The only place you're draining out is through between the flippers. And so it's also different than, say, J.J.P. Pirates, where you don't just have the flipper, you know, drain between the flippers, but you have the drain off of the right-hand side as that ship is rocking back and forth. So it's a little bit interesting that, you know, it has only that one spot to drain. And, yeah, on the premium LE, I mean, I look at that like, can you even, could you even physically fit the ball between the two flippers? yeah it looks like that yeah it looks the way it's designed that the ball is supposed to stay out there a long time but so let's circle back to what you were talking about with the left ramp because that's a shot that i feel like looks really good on it too and one of the things that i really liked about it was the fact that when the ball came all the way back around on the wire form across now the ramp part that's plastic on the pro i'm not a big fan of that but on the premium and Ellie, I think it looks fantastic. And just seeing the ball fly across there, to me, that could have some high-end potential to create some spectacular moments, especially if you can combo that left ramp into that helix ramp, which is that right ramp, or even the horseshoe ramp that they have. What's your general thoughts on that on possible combos in the game? Oh, yeah. I mean, essentially it provides the alternating crossover flippers of any left-right ramp combo. So, and with the premium LE, it has the additional benefit of being able to do it with one additional shot, albeit, you know, a 180, you know, U-turn, vertical U-turn shot, which I don't, I'm not a huge fan of those. I think they're okay, but it's the thing I've experienced with sometimes on some different physical copies of Jurassic Park that has two of those, that there's, in some of them, the ball struggles to make it up and to not always, you know, get hung up or whether it's making contact with the screws that are right on the ramp flamp entrance, you know, whatever the case may be. But the point is, it definitely has potential for left-right combos, and it's going to be different than a lot of other left-right ramp combos. And here's why. The left ramp is really long. the right ramp is really short in terms of its total travel path. And so it's going to have an interesting rhythm, if you will, if it's something we're going to try to go back and forth, left, right, left, right, that there's going to be one that comes back very quickly and one that takes a lot longer. Now, that's a very excellent point. And, you know, for the people listening at home, this is why you have a high caliber pinball player like Colin on here that can tell us this, because that is an astute observation. And that's something right there that I hope that a lot of people that do see this pin that are kind of, I mean, obviously there was a little bit of a letdown from some people, as there always is. But the way that I operate, and I'm sure it's the way you operate too, we see the shots more than anything else. Like we see shots, we see potential for fun combinations. And that's an excellent point right there that when you can change up rhythm like that, it adds a certain dimension to the game that other games might not have. It didn't seem like that we necessarily had that on Stranger Things, which was Brian Eddy's last pin that he had out. Everything seemed to be fairly symmetrical to where the timing was basically the same from both flippers. But that's an excellent point that it could add a definite nuance to the gameplay overall, especially if combos do play a big part in the game. And I'm hoping that they do. I'm not quite sure if they do just yet, but I would have to assume it's Brian Eddy. and it's a combo-heavy game, potentially, wouldn't you think that that would be coded in there somehow? Yeah, you would think so. The one thing, I don't know if you noticed, I need to pull up the actual pictures on my separate screen here I don recall if it has like the ubiquitous you know some form of an arrow insert in front of each of the ramps or each of the shots. I don't believe it does. I don't believe it does. Circular inserts with names on them, which is a little bit of kind of hearkening back. And that's why I think a lot of people have talked about how this looks more like a Williams machine than a Stern machine because stern machines for the past 10 years have had, you know, and for good reason, had inserts or the arrow inserts or triangle inserts or Star Trek insignia inserts in front of each major shot without any lettering in front of the shot, at least for one of the inserts. And part of that is just because it gives you more flexibility. You know, when you're dealing with a static printed insert, you know, suddenly you light up that insert with words on it and you don't want to confuse the player in lighting it up for something other than the word that's printed on it. That's a great point. So I don't know if it's going to be as combo heavy, at least in terms of what's obvious to the player. You could have combos taking place, and maybe they'll represent that on the LCD screen. Obviously, there's plenty of real estate on an LCD screen to represent that. But in terms of what's on the play field itself, you don't see those general lights that you could use for representing combos. Yeah, and even on this game, I forget how many RGBs are even on this game. I think it was either 13 or 18. It wasn't near as much as what they had on Led Zeppelin. and obviously it's not near as much as your counterparts with the Jersey Jack, but it seems like that this pen is very much reliant on both theme and what's under that glass, what the shots are. Now, in terms of the code, hopefully it comes out well. I'm sure we all have our fingers crossed because we all want to play a great pen, but what I'm curious of, now that you mention that, I'm wondering if Dwight might be able to code something in, similar to what he did with Ninja Turtles, to have a completely different mini rule set within the game. That's almost like its own separate game. You know what I mean? Besides the main one. That's something a little bit for somebody at home that's playing it. What are your thoughts on that? Well, that would be aligned with what Stern's been doing, you know, with recent, regardless of the rules designer for each game. And now we have kind of a, it's kind of a neat to see, you know, it's actually really fascinating to see the difference in just some of the nuance of rules between the rules designer also being the game designer in the case of Keith Owen, or the rules designer, the lead rules designer being really the software programmer. as we see in the case of Dwight or Tim Sexton or Lyman Sheets, you know, and Raymond Davidson obviously offering support more recently on some of those games as well. So we'll see what happens with that. But even regardless of which combination you pick, all the recent games, they've intentionally and I think very, very wisely put in a, you know, available at the start button mini game within the game that's effectively already, you know, it's really cool for them because it's already coded in there. They're taking a mini wizard mode and just, you know, front loading it so anybody can play it. But I also appreciate that in some of them, they were really, they've changed it slightly so that it plays a little bit differently than when the one you finally get to when you, you know, quote unquote, earn it. Yep. Yeah, and Battle Royale on Avengers, prime example of that. It's way different if you just play it. So I think that Dwight will probably do that again this time. He's done that on Turtles already. He didn't do that on Star Wars. Unfortunately, definitely didn't do that on Monsters. That was already pretty close to the start button to begin with. Yeah. Um, uh, you know, they, nobody had really thought of doing that yet back when he coded Game of Thrones. Uh, but I'm, but I'm really excited. I, you know, I've, as most people know who know me, I really, you know, get all excited and jazzed up about the, the game rules. And it's fun to find, you know, nuances and ways to, you know, maximize your, either your progress or your score by you know finding which combination or sequence of game roles get you there and the cool part about dwight is he's you know similar in terms of how he thinks about things and and designs them and then it's just a matter of you have to give him a little bit of time because you know when you come up with the complexity that he comes up with and it's similar also with other other game designers too this isn't just a loan to dwight but you know it takes some time because you come up with all these cool interaction factors and there's bound to be little bugs here and there as far as something not carrying correctly between variables and you know all that fun stuff but dwight has done a really good job in the past on you know most of his games we'll forget about you know monsters because that's a that was kind of a different you know they intentionally did something different that's not for me that's not i know for you but you know maybe it's for a lot of other people out there and that's fine whatever I think from what I've read and heard so far about either Dwight kind of alluding to things when he was getting interviewed by Teolis on Pinball Profile, in addition to what he's written on some of the articles that have been released thus far, that it sounds like this is going to be more in the vein of, not even more in the vein of Star Wars that he coded and did rules design. It's going to be more in the vein of Game of Thrones. Yep. I get that feeling, too, and it's actually giving me a lot more confidence as the days go by with what we're going to see. And, you know, you touch base on it, the different types of modes at the start button. I think potentially with Mando, we could see upwards of four because we have the normal or you could even say competition with the default. We have co-op, which they're bringing back. I'm not even sure exactly how that's going to work because I'm kind of curious because obviously turtles co-op worked because there's four turtles, but with Mandalorian, you're supposed to be Mando. I mean, is there going to be two Mandos? Is that how you think it's going to be? Or it's fine. I mean, I don't get too hung up on that. The other has to be aligned with the number of characters in the story. I mean, just like, I think, I think one of the, I think it was the first game that had co-op mode was TNA. Right. It's not like you have, you know, four different characters trying to go and, you know, you know, take down the nuclear reactors or whatever. It's just one character in the story, but you're all just working together. So to me, the benefit of doing co-op mode is not necessarily a complete and perfect alignment with storyboard and character. It's more of getting to go further in the game you normally would and being able to cheer on the people you're playing with, you know, and high five each other and all making progress together. as opposed to always competing and going, oh, okay, I made it further than you, or I got a better score than you. Yeah, definitely. So that would be... Oh, sorry about that. My dogs are barking. No, no, you're fine. I think my wife and kids just came home, so you might have to edit. No, no, you're fine. We just roll with it. We just roll with it. Okay, all right. So that gives us two of the modes. So obviously the third one's going to be, I think it's called Impossible Play. I keep wanting to call it that. I think it's called that. And it sounds like somehow you have to charge up your flippers or they'll die if you don't hit shots. I don't know if you're able to stay trapped up like that. That's why I'm kind of confused on that. Do you have any information on that? Have you read anything about that? No. Just from what I've read, it's the it sounds like you're not going to be able to hold up your flippers for very long. So it doesn't sound like no hold flippers, but it sounds like you're you're essentially going to be. So it might be something akin to what GNR does. And maybe it'll just be that you only have a limited amount of meter bar that you can hold your flippers up. That's fine to me. That's gimmicky to me. I'd say you're not going to be able to take your time on this game. Yeah, I mean, I like to. But that's just only in that little particular mode. Yeah, well, unless we're playing dollar games. I challenge you to that. Well, shoot, man. I mean, I've played dollar games just on seeing who could make the most secret skill shots in Iron Maiden. So, you know, you can make dollar games out of anything. So, no, I like having these different ways to play the game in a different mode. That's great. I think it's fun. Like, I really like, and I've only had a chance to play it a couple times, the Avengers Infinity Quest, the difficult or hard level soul gem. Oh, yeah. That is fun. I mean, I love that little nuance that you can choose to do that in the middle of your game. You can either choose to play it safe or if you go for a Hail Mary that you can just decide from there. I really love that nuance. That has to be, honestly, I'll probably sound like a fanboy right now. That's probably my favorite nuance in a rule set that I can think of off the top of my head. Just because by the time you get to that point with Soul Gem, that means that you're already making a lot of progress. And if you got to throw that Hail Mary right there, that means you're having like a Call in the Calpine shadow comeback type game at that point. So, I mean, I think that that has high end potential, you know, of some excellent moments in the future, especially from competition standpoint, seeing it on stream. Yeah, I think so. And I don't know, of course, the impossible play thing, I think it's a gimmick that you have to choose before you start your game. Right. But yeah, it's a good point on the Avengers Infinity Quest and how that's, I can't really think of a whole lot of other ones that you have to pick. You have to pick which version or which level of risk that you want to take and which level of reward you want to take before actually executing. Like most other risk reward decisions are aligned with, do I cash out now or do I press my luck? And with soul gem, it's not going hard level is not pressing your luck. It's not like middle way through the soul gem thing. Well, Hey, do you want to go another lap around of another lap around soul gem shots with however many flips you have left? It's, you got to choose upfront. And you know, it's, and it's, it penalizes you greatly in terms of your, your progress and some of your also scoring potential. If you opt for the hard mode and mess it up and miss out on your soul gem, that's devastating yeah yeah it definitely could be and that's i mean but it's even more hilarious though all in that they have that in there and then elwynn ended up putting in the carl difficulty that just cracked me up and if you guys don't know what we're talking about just look over on ie pinball you'll you'll see carl d'Python Anghelo playing avengers and just freaking tearing it up just yeah like crazy so all right so mando let's see trying to think of anything else There could be that we're missing on that. I think we've pretty much covered. Well, so the other thing I'm, you know, I don't know if you covered as much. I don't think I recall you talking about it, but I'm very interested to see what Dwight does with, in thematically integrating with the whole collection of, you know, your Beskar armor and, you know, trading that in. I think there's been some mention that it's going to be similar to, or a, you know, evolution of the gold collection and trading system of game of thrones. And I'm really hoping it's a lot more than that because quite honestly, the gold collection and trading system of game of thrones is, eh, it's okay. Yep. But it's not that great in my humble opinion. I like the fact that it's there. I like the fact that it's available and that's a cool thing for players to do, but it just, I never found myself really intentionally playing for that. Yeah. Is the Beskar armor, is that something that you can collect like pieces maybe for completing modes? It's kind of like getting a gem at the end of a gem quest on an infinity quest. Maybe that might be it. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm just going off of what very little I've had a chance to read. Because I feel like that would actually be a really good thing for this game that if obviously you get some type of reward for finishing a mode. Like I dig that in pinball machines that you get some type of something that helps you later in the game. So I like the idea of that. And maybe, you know, that feels like that, especially if you guys have watched The Mandalorian, it feels like that that is a natural progression to get different things. Because obviously at one point in the story, you have The Mandalorian finding Boba Fett's armor and collecting that. You have him getting different types of armor. You have him collecting guns. I mean, to me, that does lend potential towards just a different nuance with the gameplay that gives you a reason to complete the modes. I mean, that's the main thing. You need a reason to complete modes and not time things out. And that seems like the most natural progression for this type of theme for something like that to happen. Yeah. No, I think it's got great potential for it. Yeah. The only other thing, you know, as far as my – you've already addressed this on your other episodes. So I'm just going to mention that, yeah, I was, you know, in my dream of dreams of how this would play out in Mandalorian pinball. I definitely wanted Grogu interacting with the ball. But as I talked with other people about, you know, the humor side, because that's why I really think that a lot of modern pinball machines are lacking in humor. And Mandalorian, the primary humor of Mandalorian comes from Grogu. Yep. And, you know, like the scenes where Grogu is like caught eating things when he shouldn't be is hilarious. I love it. And it really adds that bit of levity and makes you laugh as opposed to just like, hey, this is a sci-fi drama, intense action, you know, epic quest type of thing. And then you have Grogu, you know, chomping down on the cherished eggs of whatever alien they were transporting. you know and so i was really hoping that they would have some way that grogu would like mischievously eat your pinballs yep but then somebody taught me like well then yeah but then you'd have to essentially have the whole mech like a groot and a rudy and that would really take away from the look of grogu so i'm like okay i agree yeah but then it's like okay i'm like well the obvious thing was like okay they're gonna put a magnet in front of grogu and have grogu fling balls around but the positioning of where that magnet is. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, I hope I'm, I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm proved wrong. And after we see it played in whatever people will go, Colin, how dare you leave the conclusions? You know, Brian, Eddie and Dwight knew exactly what they're doing. And they've tested this for months and whatever. So, and so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and look forward to playing it the first time. But I was really hoping that that, you know, that he was somehow going to be interacting with the ball more than just a magnet. And with that magnet, you know, I mean, it feels like, okay, it's just like what you do with Sparky and Well Walker. And, you know, they've done this before. And the good news is Stern's good at it. You know, Stern's good at, you know, in having that interaction with the ball with a magnet in front of a bash toy. Well, in this case, it's not a bash toy. It's just an amazing looking sculpt. The sculpt's phenomenal. But unfortunately, you don't get the feel of like, in my opinion, from watching just the very limited gameplay video you've seen of Grogu really, truly interacting with the ball. And man, I really wanted that. But I'm fine. I'm just happy there's new pinball coming out. So that's not a knock on Brian Eddy or Dwight or Stern or anything. It's more of just you. Everybody has these dreams and lofty expectations. And OK, whatever. We'll just enjoy it. Well, one of the funny parts about that. and I was thinking about that here just earlier today, the fact that in previous pinball machines, one of the knocks on the games that come out from Stern is that they don't have enough 3D molded sculpts in there. Like the Infinity Gauntlet got like crushed. Oh, yeah. Deadpool, when it came out, everybody was talking about just the 2D looking plastics or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, exactly. And now we get this to where it's legitimately like a life-size Grogu chilling in there. Oh, it's phenomenal. You know what I mean? It looks awesome. So I'm with you on it that I wish it would do something, and then at the other side I'm thinking, okay, well, at least it's there because I think I thought I read something that Brian Eddy had stated that he actually built the game around that. That was like the very first thing that he put in it. So I think it's – I'm kind of wondering. I'd like to be a fly on the wall at Stern seeing what he thinks about all of us saying we wish Grogu would do something different because I feel the same way. I feel the same way. Like, I feel like like right now I got this little guy here and he does the same thing that Grogu does in the pinball machine and he's just in a Funko box. So yeah, I wish it could, but you know, part of me wonders like maybe the action button might make that magnet do something. Probably doesn't. Maybe I'm just hopeful of that, but yeah, well there was an article. I don't know if you saw it earlier today and Stern shared it and it's pretty funny because in the article it actually mentions that Grogu moves. Yeah, I saw that. And I was kind of like, you know, the conspiracy theorist in me, you know, like Charlie Day or whatever, by the chalkboard or whatever, like pointing to everything and saying, yeah, this is probably what it is. I really want to believe that in the L.E. because they didn't show. I don't think they really showed the L.E. at all on video. Like, what if like let's just let's just say what if Rogu actually moves in the L.E. and they do something different? Like even just not even like grabbing the ball, just a little, you know. Just something. I would really like to see that. And to me, I'm kind of shocked that they didn't do something like that, because that seems like something from a mechanical engineering point of view should be fairly easy to do. Yeah. Well, if you look at the seam on Grogu's hand that's extended, it has the potential there that maybe that hand spins a little bit. And I think that would that would almost be, you know, enough for you to satisfy. I think a lot of people just in terms of like having that hand, cause that's, that's from a scene or multiple scenes. Yeah. Just have his eyes closed. That would be even better if his eyes would close. Yeah. If you could get like, you know, not too comical looking like Rudy eyelids, right. You know, on him that the eyes closed and the hand suddenly goes from this like upturns. Yeah. And that would be like a game changer in terms of interactivity, even though it's not even interacting with the ball. Yeah. Just because you now have a physical representation of a character and his physical, you know, mannerisms in the show, it would, yeah, it would really come off well. But we'll see. Well, hopefully everybody at Stern is listening to us. I know you guys are. So Colin and I are demanding a new Grogu that does that. Please, please. We will pay $15,000 for that. Or at least maybe Colin will, and I'll go to Austin and I'll play it. Yeah. All right. So you know moving ahead a little bit So obviously we still been playing a little bit of pinball here and there Mainly one giant event that just happened here just a couple of weeks ago over at District 82 in Wisconsin Now, you know, I'm sure everybody here that's listening is aware that there's a little bit of a pandemic happening across the world and IFPA has been shut down as a result. But, you know, I was so happy to get to play in a major tournament with not only the community of Wisconsin, but getting to play against world class players like yourself and Raymond and Luke and Elwin. And I mean, stuff like that. That's something that I've tremendously missed. And so the Great Lakes Pinball Open, what are your thoughts on that? You know, I know obviously on the streams you were very ecstatic with what you saw because, I mean, it is a sight to behold up there. Yeah, it was a fantastic weekend. I mean, just before getting into the details of the event, let's talk first about the venue. If you are within a reasonable travel distance and even flying distance. I mean, I flew up there from Austin, Texas. Travis, you flew up there from Oklahoma City. And obviously, we're in the middle of the country, so it's not that long of a flight. And, you know, I found a really good, you know, air ticket deal. And if somebody else, if you're within a reasonable air ticket deal or you can drive there, you should go there. If you're also ever been to or considering going to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, but you live in the Midwest or you live east and don't want to make as long of a trip, go to District 82. I mean, Eric Thorne, the dude, his maintenance of those pinball machines is ridiculous. It's fantastic. It's off the charts. It's just absolutely ridiculous. And he, the, the level of care and OCD that he puts into those things. And I found out, I was like, I told like, dude, like you're going to burn yourself out because he does most of all that himself. You know, he had some volunteers obviously come in and help him, I think in preparation for certain events and maybe, maybe here and there. but he I mean the the way that he has and he's I think even done some videos on this but the way that he's got things tweaked in terms of his the flippers like I did not find a flipper the entire weekend of all the machines that I played he's got over 100 pins there going all the way back down to like the you know two inch flipper luck boxes you know like palooka and whatever and all the flippers the most important aspect of any pinball machines is how you interact with the ball it's the flippers and he's got them all perfect yeah i mean his flippers are just there is not a single one and if there was if there's ever any issue where the coil died or though there's a rifling or shotgun or you know automatic rifle you know flip or whatever he just like shut it off, you know, slap a sticker on it, and then, like, by 9 o'clock the next day, he's got his pick. It's working. Yeah, it's amazing. I've never played a venue anywhere, and this includes any Stern Pro Circuit event in which the pins were there for Herb, and it has to be dialed in for a ton of play. I've never played on that many pins that are just totally dialed in that play exactly the way you expect them to play. I mean, that's the most shocking thing about it. I mean, it's It's almost so jarring when the ball does what you expect it to do, that consistently, it's jarring. Because most places, when you go on location, you're bound to have one or two games that do that, but then you're bound to have three or four games that don't do that. Correct. Yeah, across the board. It's a great location, and Colin's right. If you guys have a chance, actually, there is a tournament coming up in June. On June 18th and 19th, the Triple Flip opens, so three tournaments there that you guys could possibly play. and I think spots are nearly filled up. I think they're allowing 95 in total, and there's about 80 to 82 already signed up, I think, off the top of my head. So you're not going to be able to get up to that one, are you? You're not signed up yet? No, I'm not. Yeah, sadly, I'd like to because I'm missing out. We really don't have much in the way of leagues and tourneys going on here yet, again, in Austin. And part of that's because the location that I pretty much organized, all the events, the tournaments and leagues that I was organizing alongside of others like Dick Curtis were at Buffalo Billiards, which unfortunately, that property got sold to another owner, another investor who's turning into something completely different. So there are other locations here in Austin, but we just haven't had also a whole lot of, I don't know, people haven't been necessarily as willing to go out. I've been playing on location even throughout the summer, You know, even when, you know, we did well before we had vaccines, but I'm missing, just like you mentioned, I'm missing terribly the chance to just play with other people, you know, interact, socialize, you know, compete. that's what was so great about Great Lakes Pinball Open just like you said getting to play again for the first time getting to play with other you know with other world-class players getting to meet some of the local players there in that greater area of Wisconsin because there's a lot of people that drive from pretty far in Wisconsin to come play there and also some you know just like as you well know and anybody who the more you play the more you compete the better you get yep and they've got some local players there that are i mean tom grapp obviously he runs fox city pinball does the streaming he and then son neil as well are both great players and you know part of that's because they have that location and they have a league and they're they're they're constantly playing with each other and competing and getting better but you have other people that are getting introduced to the sport that are getting really good yeah i'd never heard of them before and I'm playing against them going, wow, these players are outstanding. Yeah. Well, I predict they have up there a future women's world champion with Cassidy. I believe her last name is Malinowski. I might be pronouncing it wrong. Yeah, Cassidy the assassin Malinowski. Oh my gosh. If you guys have no clue who we're talking about, I think she might be 14 now. So I'll go ahead just in case I'll just say she's 14, but this girl is legit. I mean, she doesn't just give you fits. She will beat you. She will already beat you. And it's like a, it's like a female version of Escher Lefkoff. And I like just seeing her right now, I fully expect her to be able to compete here just in a couple of years at a very high level at Stern pro circuit events. I mean, she is legit. I was blown away by her skill set overall, especially on older machines, on solid states. We're not talking just chopping up moderns. I mean, she's doing this on solid states. It's crazy. Yeah, I had a chance. I played one game with her on X's and O's that she won, and she beat both Raymond and me. And she knew all the rules. I spoke to her a little bit at the very tail end of the night on Saturday, her and her dad. and just, you know, she really likes to learn the rules and understands them. So she knew she had to rush up to that X's and O's to take her skill shot and know that it's time. So for anybody who doesn't know, if you ever play X's and O's, you're rushing up there when it's your turn to take that skill shot. But, yeah, but just even just that and flipper skills and just also I think, you know, that's what impresses me the most about these young kids and some of these kids who are not kids anymore, now they're 18 or whatever. So now they're, now they're adults, but just even when they were kids to have what it takes in between their ears, as far as not just knowledge, but just you have to have a certain mentality and focus and understanding of risk reward and patience. That's the thing I think you see. I mean, you have kids. I mean, a lot of, you see a lot of kids and adult too, you know we're not very patient and you you have to have a patience in pinball uh to know when you need to you know not just flip away and maybe you know slow things down a little bit so you can get better control improve your chances improve your odds make the next shot you want to make but yeah so the the players there was not just cassidy though there were other players as well not just from the local area there are people that drove in from milwaukee and uh madison and so i got a chance to meet a lot of new people. And that's, uh, that's perhaps one of the best parts. And that's what I kind of missed the most is just getting to, you know, hang out with the people that I know really well and getting a chance to meet new people and, you know, see how other people, you know, play certain machines. It was fun playing new machines. Like Eric's got, especially some of those older ones, I'd never played them before. Uh, so that was fun to do that. And I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm very confident that in the next sometime in the next cycle of IFPA World Championships, you know, there's going to be a World Championships held at District 82. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. There has to be, at the very least, a national championship. But, yeah, I feel you on that. A world championship for sure. So, obviously, you did pretty well at Classics when we were up there. No, I didn't. Classics? Okay, you tried very hard. I'll tell the Pinburgh World Champion. He tried. I was trying to be nice. What I was going to segue into is you had an all-time banger of a match at the target match play. Now, we could talk about the rest of the tournament, but I'm telling you guys, and this was caught on stream. This is legitimately just what was hilarious when you, me, and Ray were driving up from Chicago. We were talking about Johannes' game on Dracula on the way up there and what that meant and just the pressure situation of that. and we were kind of talking about, well, we'll never see anything like that again in that situation. And that's probably true. That was such a unique situation with it being, I think it was like Game 9, the finals, the World Championship. I mean, you cannot write a storybook on that. But I will say the Shadow comeback was probably the craziest comeback outside of that that I've ever seen in my life. I mean, tell us about that a little bit for those that haven't seen it yet. Well, so essentially, Keith Elwin was being usual Keith Elwin, where he was essentially just taking a smorgasbord of shadow, point scoring, and play. He was doing it all. So he was doing a little bit of vengeance. He played his multi-balls. He was throwing in modes, too. So he had found that mode shot, was dialed in on that. I think he played three or four con multi-balls. It was pretty absurd. And his loops, I think he had his loop scoring up to maybe close to 60 million per upper loop. It was pretty ridiculous. And so he drained his ball three, you know, finally. And, you know, I don't think there was some initial thoughts of like, sometimes in Keith's body language when he sometimes you feel like he gave up on the ball. But there's other times where essentially he gives up on a ball because he knows it's gone. Because he's Keith Elwin and he can read the ball that well from how good he is and how long he's been playing pinball. And so that arc that was where his ball was going to drain, I think it's also because he had some pretty big bonus built up because he'd been playing modes. And so, yeah, he walked away from ball three as player three with two billion points. And two billion points is, yeah, that's a lot on Shadow. Yeah. And everybody else had like, you know, I think in the, you know, hundreds of hundred million range, maybe not quite 200. I stepped up to my ball three, and I'd done a little bit of work on balls one and two, but not that level. So I think I stepped up with maybe $200 million, facing down $2 billion. But what I'd done is I'd noticed from a video on demand that Tom Graff had posted from Fox Cities Pinball showing a prior match of Shadow. And I'd noticed that instead of doing the upper loop, Jason Wardrick and some other players were just riding ramps, you know, via vengeance. Right. And doing super vengeance. And I'd never really thought of that as a valid strategy on shadow because it was always, okay, hey, get near multiball, play main multiball or con multiball. And also, obviously, do the upper loop and, you know, score that way if you can find that timing. And so that's why I usually like to play, I'll usually play Shadow that way. But in this case, I knew, and I didn't even know until afterwards why it worked so well. But now I do. And so in PAPA settings, they turn down the timer on Vengeance to the minimum setting, which requires you to nearly hit those four ramp shots with perfection. By ramp shots in Vengeance, essentially there's a left and a right ramp, but it also has those FERBA diverters at the top of each ramp. that you control with auxiliary buttons. And so you have to hit not each ramp once of the two ramps, but you have to hit each ramp twice. And you have to hit it with the diverter in the correct position to qualify it and then essentially rinse repeat. You do the same thing again, and then you get vengeance. And if you hit in the combo, you get super vengeance or 100 million points for that fourth ramp shot, along with other various sundry background points. And the benefit that I found to this particular shadow, So even with Keith as well, usually if you did the loop strategy, which means you hit the left orbit and then you go for the upper mini loop with your upper flipper, you would usually maybe get maximum two. You'd get one, but it came back around really fast. And it was also super early on that flipper, just the way that the angle maybe that flipper was set at and the strength on it or how far the coil stop was on it. But for whatever reason, you could not get a lot of mini loops in one orbit shot. Plus, every time you miss an upper flipper shot, as anybody knows, you're left to right. You are out of control and shadow outlanes are awful. Absolutely. And this one is a little more forgiving because the tilt was much looser than most shadows. But still, so the point was that based on all that, I'm thinking, okay, I'm just going to go ramps. And so that's what I started out with. But the thing about when you go with ramps is that you don't really build value as opposed to the mini loop. If you do the upper loop, that builds value and holds it for your whole game. With the ramp strategy and vengeance, it's like every vengeance and super vengeance, it's pretty much the same 50 million or 100 million for that four shot. You do build some value of like five to seven to nine for each of the ramp shots. And that does add up, but it's not as overwhelming as the mini loop, you know, build. But the thing about the ramp strategy is that it gives you a safe return to the flipper. So if you can find the timing for comboing those ramps and you're, you know, you know how to work the auxiliary buttons to change your, your Ferber diverters, you're completely a hundred percent safe. and what I did is I found that rhythm on ball three and I think I did three laps of super vengeance without missing. Yes, it was insane. For those that, Colin is understating this. He basically just chewed this pin up and it was amazing to watch from the side because it honestly, you were so precise with your shots, Colin, that it honestly looked like you had a magnet at the top of each ramp. because nothing rattled. It was perfect and just came right back to the flippers, just flowed. And, you know, I think seeing that, you've changed probably the entire meta to Shadow from here on out. I got a feeling everybody's probably going to do just this because, of course, we all want to think that we're all sharpshooters, you know, and we'll never miss or anything like that. But you proved what happens when you don't miss good things happen in the game. Yeah, I mean, we were just talking about Brian Eddy earlier, And that's, I think shadow, it used to be an underrated pin. I think over the past, you know, five, eight years or whatever, people really understand, you know, how fun shadow is as a pin. And also, you know, in competition as well, it works in both settings. But yeah, that particular, and the way you can make it so that strategy doesn't dominate is by, you know, reducing the timer. So I think Eric had it set for default, which is like a 20 second timer. and by the way the timer resets every time you complete a vengeance so every time you complete all four you go back to having the full 20 seconds or whatever it is of time to shoot another four ramps and this particular shadow the other reason why it was fairly effective was it had super bands on it as opposed to a lot of other shadows i've played where it has natural red rubber and so So I could have sworn, but I'm not sure as well, that I think the coil stops allowed for a little bit higher of a throw on the flipper. So it allowed for a little bit easier to try to get control and trap if you needed to. But if you're going vengeance, you're not trapping. But you do need to trap if you get out of control to try to get back into control. And you could do this on this shadow more so than some other shadows I've played. So that also helped. and for those wondering the big difference with super bands it makes it to where your live catches you can pretty much be on point with your live catches that ball is going to stick for the most point whereas like colin was saying if the red rubber is on there you're pretty much at the mercy with your timing you have to be very precise to control it at that point so okay so you're basically ramping out at this point and you're not missing and i'm ramping out that's awesome I'm like, I'll tell you what that was. I'd never, you know, first off, I'd never really tried that strategy before on Shadow. I'd played Vengeance and I knew about what it does and things like that. And you just quite honestly, in terms of that, you know, there's lots of games with left right ramp alternating combos. And I don't think I've ever been in that. I mean, because you can do that in Scared Stiff. I mean, Medieval Madness, there's lots of left right, you know, combos you can do. and I don't even know if I've ever hit, like, I think I literally hit a dozen of those in a row without missing. Yeah. And I don't think I've ever done that before. Just being with alternate. I can do that with like looping a shot. Sure. Like center ramp of Led Zeppelin. Oh yeah, sure. Do, you know, do a couple dozen of those, but the alternating adds that degree of difficulty because that, like we were talking about earlier, the distance and the time it takes to get back to the flipper changes between each of the flippers and each of the ramps. So yeah, I was nailing it and I knew I was, I was like, okay, I'm definitely hitting a lot of shots. And the thing I didn't realize, I learned something new about shadow playing this game. I thought that shadow bonus really the only time you're ever going to get big bonus if you play modes, cause you can get like, you know, Hey, you play a mode well and finish it. You can get like 40, 50 million, 70 million sometimes for a mode. Yep. And that's not, doesn't ever get multiplied by the bonus. But I thought that's the only reason why you would, you know, make sure don't tilt out on shadow bonus. Well, apparently you get big bonus in a lot of multipliers when you do the vengeance strat. And so I drained out with I think I looked at the scoreboard I knew I needed to get billion I looked at the scoreboard and saw I was only about 1 something And you know I been working hard at it obviously And I felt like I was in the flow. And, you know, I just missed like a super vengeance shot. So that would have been another $100 million. And, you know, just keep the flow going. So I was like, ah, well, I missed it. You know, no big deal. It's not like Johannes where he loses to Daniele. And then he takes second instead of first. and not world champion versus world champion, but it's still just disappointing. And then the booth was not that far. It was only like a couple feet away, and Raymond's sitting at that with Tom Graff. And suddenly Raymond is looking at the bonus. I've kind of turned away from it. He's like, oh, you got it. And sure enough, I had over $300 million in bonus just from shooting ramps and changing my lanes at the bottom to get bonus X every time I spelled con. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was funny because I was standing there because I was done with my game. And I was standing there and watching this all happen from the side. And I remember distinctly when you drained, you were walking over towards me. And you could tell, like, you had that sense of relief, like, okay, well, that's done. Because that's an intense moment. But you could also tell, well, crap, I didn't quite get there. But then it was just like a 180 as soon as you heard the roar. And then you realized that you had crossed over. I mean, that was an amazing moment. And that right there just, I mean, for me, that's what I love about pinball. I love seeing those moments to where people have success, especially when my friends are having success. I mean, to me, that's awesome. And that's the one number one thing that I've missed more than anything, just simply competing with friends and getting to have that type of camaraderie and being able to see things like that that we can't necessarily see by just sitting here on our own. little home arcades and just play by herself. So yeah, that was definitely excellent. If you guys haven't seen this yet, there is video of this. I will put it down in the description down below. So as soon as you guys are done with this podcast, go watch that. You will be mind just blown when you see that. So we'll kind of segue a little bit with that. What do you like? What is your feelings about tournaments coming back? Because obviously you and I, we've had a lot of conversations about this, you know, and I'll be straight up with everybody. I am very pro. Let's get back to doing tournaments because everything else here in the country is opening up. A lot of states are already fully open. I know just tonight before this podcast, I took my girls to dance class. My boys have jujitsu full contact. I mean, it's everything is going except for being able to stand in front of a pinball machine with other people and it officially be sanctioned. So, you know, what are your thoughts on that a little bit about what you would like to see in terms of tournaments coming back here sooner rather than later? Or, you know, what do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely a sooner rather than later. In fact, you know, not just even sooner, but even, you know, should have been and could have been for a long time now. Yeah. And I think the, you know, District 82 is a great example. You've had Eric running events there, you know, since May of 2020. and in that case you know he's you know done taken great lengths gone to great lengths as far as you know masking and distancing in terms of not having you know a foursome playing a game next to another one so that way you have you can incorporate some more distancing and whatever and to me that is even now going into the rearview mirror because you know now you know the if if you have all the people that are getting vaccinated and even if not everybody's vaccinated because there's some people that are going to choose not to. I am. I know you are. And that's the choice that we've made. And I'm very comfortable with my choice, and I'm very happy with my choice. I mean, the data that the CDC has on their website shows that the vaccine is 99.99% effective of preventing you from getting COVID of any severity. and it's one in a million if you've vaccinated about actually having a case that causes death and to me that's that's the type of numbers that we should be you know trumpeting from the mountaintop for everybody so we can get back to normal but even without that I think people could still go out and play with their masks on I've been playing with my mask on since you know roughly springtime or May, whenever Cidercade open here in Austin, I've been going there and diligently wearing my mask every time I play there. And I, you know, wash my hands before I start playing. And I use some hand sanitizer sometimes, you know, when I'm going between games. And when I get done, I go wash my hands when I'm done. And, you know, I didn't catch COVID before, you know, I got vaccinated. I was, I was fine. And so I'm definitely the mindset that we need to get back to playing competitive pinball. The good news is you can play competitive pinball without having the IFPA sanction it. So go and reconnect, please reconnect with your local league, local tournaments, whatever, you know, groups you have, whether it's on Facebook or, you know, if you have, you know, Slack channels or just email groups or what have you to go back and get out there and continue playing if you're comfortable with it. And I highly recommend for people to consider dipping their toe in and, you know, getting comfortable with it again. Now, as far as ISPA sanctioning, so the process for that that has been described from the ISPA is they're using the input from each of the individual state representatives. So if you, along with your other player base in your local area, are all feeling comfortable and your local regulations allow you to play, which I think is pretty much everywhere now, there was a time period where there were still a lot of areas in the country where certain states or cities would not allow, you know, groups more than whatever, you know, very little groups of five or whatever to get together and congregate. But those are being eased now. So, and given the efficacy of the vaccine and the different herd immunity that we have and the different immunity we have, especially of those people that needed it most, elderly and people who had underlying conditions, tell your state rep, you know, email them or message them or whatever and say, hey, I'd really like for you, ask them, is our state a yes or no in terms of the IFPA vote? And by the way, even if your state is yes, that doesn't mean that we're suddenly all going to be sanctioned again because IFPA is international. So it's not just the US, but you can only control and provide input for your state. So I highly encourage anybody listening to this, if you want IFPA to re-sanction events again and you think that it's you know available for people and you know people are going out because that's what happened right now people are going on playing they are going out and having tournaments they are going out and having leagues well even uh stern pinball they've started doing the stern launch parties or they're about to start they've contacted the stern army people even with the mandalorian they had the webinar for the stern army people so that is starting to fire back up You can see it. That spark has happened. Correct. It's just it's time to see it come to full fruition at this point. Yeah. So that's what I'd recommend is contact your state rep or if you don't know who you find out who they are, contact them and say, hey, I would I would like to lend my voice to, you know, saying a strong consider changing the answer to yes, at least for your state as appropriate. it. And, you know, for those of you, you know, on the fence about getting a vaccine, you know, I realized, hey, everybody has to make that. It's a personal choice. But based on the data I'm seeing, it's just ridiculously effective. So go get it. It's one of those things that's funny because my wife, she had to work some of the COVID stuff and some of the quarantines early on out in California back in March of last year. And, you know, it's one of those things that she works different natural disasters. And you and I have talked about this, that she's even been pulled off her COVID teams. So they've actually downsized our own government for different locations. And the vaccine distribution has started to downsize itself a little bit. So, I mean, it's all out there at this point. I think that the people that wanted to do to get vaccinated, they've been able to. And I mean, facing facts, I would have to think the vast majority of people that are involved in pinball are probably pro-vaccine. So I have to assume that a lot of people are pretty much covered overall. And I just hope to see that even the places that are out there that aren't sanctioned yet or that aren't saying yes yet, that they are at least considering it and that they're at least starting to get out there and play tournaments, even if they're not a yes yet. They're at least getting out there and they're seeing, hey, there is an end to this. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. And you can still see your friends. You still can get out and socialize. You can get back to some sort of normalcy because, to me, that's what pinball is about for all of us. More than anything else, it's about the people. It's about getting to hang out. It's about getting to share those moments together because we're not – even though you and I are talking here in a computer, it's so much better when we're in person. We're getting to hang out and getting to talk pinball. And that's I feel like that's something that even myself before all this, I didn't appreciate that enough when I was getting it because it's just that was the normal thing. And now you realize that it could be taken away at any time. So now it's like, you know, I fully appreciate it. I'm ready to get out there in District 82 that that wet my whistle enough. And now I'm ready for everything else. I mean, what we got Chicago Expo coming up pretty soon. I think Freeplay Florida. And I believe you guys have something brewing down in Texas also, correct? Yeah, the Houston Pinball Arcade and the Pinball Expo in Houston, Texas. I apologize. I should have pulled that up so I could get the date right as far as the exact date it's going to happen. That's in November. I have the date for you, as a matter of fact. I'm prepared. I say that, and I think it's the third weekend. It's either the second or the third weekend. It's either going to be the 12th through the 14th or the 19th. I think it's the second weekend. It's the week before free play. So I'm pretty sure it's the 12th or the 11th through the 14th. Okay. I've already got my hotel reserved, so I'm already golden there. But, yeah, I'm excited to get back to that. Just one last thing before we talk about the upcoming events. The more important thing about going out and playing pinball again, please, please, please get out there and support your locations. Yep. If you have a location there that actually survived this, they need your patronage. They need your coin drop. They need your purchases of food or beverage or whatever else or membership if they charge a monthly membership or whatever. Go out and support your locations. They're so important to our community. So please go out there and play. If you're vaccinated, you should go out there. And quite honestly, I'd rather be out there even without a mask on at this point, based on the numbers and the science that I'm seeing. But the bottom line is get out there. I don't care so much about the IFPA sanctioning as I do care about pinball locations. Yep. Hear, hear. That's definitely well said. And, I mean, you guys are hearing it from Colin himself. I mean, this is not somebody to take their opinion lightly. this is a, he's a big deal in the pinball community for sure. So definitely, I mean, I fully agree on that. So, but yeah, Houston Expo. So yes, come to that. That's going to be a great show. It's a, it's definitely, if you haven't been there before, it is a, you know, it airs on the side of being a very social party show. Yes. So I'm, I'm really happy that, you know, with the way that the, the pandemic is waning and the, and COVID is waning with all the, you know, the, the vaccinations and everything, because when we get to that point in November, you know, hopefully we'll be at a point where we're not even having to deal with masks unless somebody's like, actually like, you know, feeling under the Carl Weathers or whatever, or just don't show up at all if you're under the Carl Weathers, for that matter. But the, you know, the point is that that is a fun show. I know you've been to it before. I've been to it like three or four times now. And I know that Phil Grimaldi is planning on organizing, you know, tournaments, you know, for the Space City Pinball Open is what it's been, is what it's transitioned into now. So they'll be hosting that. I know that Elizabeth Dronay and Rally is there going to be organizing a women's tournament for that as well. so yeah if you're if you're within you know don't mind yes hey spring for the the airfare whatever houston's a they got two major airports there so you can fly in there for pretty cheap and uh and come join that uh that that show it should be a nice it's very different from chicago expo it is not a industry type of show it is more of a party fun show yes yeah it's it's very much uh it feels like it's midnight at six o'clock in the evening type of vibe that's what it feels like down there i mean i loved it down there you know the only thing i didn't love down there was that an earth shaker game calling i did not like it i don't drop an f-bomb often but i will for that game that game drives me nuts oh my gosh so for those that don't know what i'm referring to This is like an inside joke. So Colin, basically, he just kills me every time we play pretty much, except for maybe once out of every 20 times. I'll get lucky because he'll show pity on me, and he'll be like, okay, I'll let you have one. But he was our bus driver. I say last year. This is 2019. And he decides to go System 11 on me, and I am like freaking Ray Charles on a System 11. I mean, I cannot play it. I don't know what it is. I don't know but you figured it out obviously I mean you put up what like 40 billion I think on the whole one at least it felt like you played forever on that game but as long as there's no earth shaker there I will be there can you promise me there's no earth shaker this year I can't because that's Phil's call you'll have to talk to Phil you can bribe him with a bottle of that Woodford or whatever Phil I will bring you like a case of this if that's not in there. See, now it won't be at Houston, and it'll be at TPF in 2022. I know it. I know it. So speaking of which, we are hopeful, obviously, that TPF will come back. You do play a big part of that with the TPF Wizards Tournament. What can you tell us about that? Because I know there's some people out there that still are wondering, is their, I guess, their tournament vouchers or whatever you want to call it, their entry or their spot, is it still secure if they had it back in 2020, is it still secure for 2022? It is. For those people that chose to let their... So what we did is we refunded all the tournament entry fees. So those were all refunded. And what we did is to help support the event, we asked... They asked everybody if they would let their money roll, they would then have that transferred to the next... We thought it was going to be next year. But then now it turns out to the next time we're going to hold it, which now is going to be 2022. And so what we did for the tournament players, like, Hey, we will, you will hold your spot in the tournament. If you let your show entry fee roll and let that remain with the, with the events. So that way that they could remain, you know, that they could remain solvent and whatever, and not have to deal with the, you know, some pretty severe actions. And thankfully almost all tournament players chose to go that route. so there's actually i think maybe less than five spots if any that uh will be open for that now of course there we're going to be i'm going to be reaching out to all that you know all those players and you know reconfirming hey are you still want that spot you know if they have no plans of attending then you know then those hopefully those tell me hey no i don't want that because we're going to expect them, they're going to have to pay again the tournament fee because we refunded that. So if they're choosing not to enter the tournament again, then they'll lose that spot. And then we'll have to open up, we'll be doing a reopening of the wait list. So that's something that usually we, you know, in the past couple of years, we do that around the October timeframe. So stay tuned to, you know, follow Texas Pinball Festival on Facebook, other social media. go to their website, and then we'll keep people posted that way. I usually also post about it over on Tilt Forums. I know that Ed Van Der Veen posts about it on Pinside. So, you know, the various different mechanisms out there to stay tuned, but we'll make sure that that gets publicized as far as when there will be a sign-up for what effectively will be the wait list to get into the Wizards tournament. The Classics tournament will be a complete reopening again. So the Classics event is actually also limited, but it has a bigger cap on the number of players. I think what we have is like a 240-player cap on the Classics. And so it's also a limited-entry tournament. But, yeah, I'm very excited for that. I mean, it's a long ways off now, but it'll be here before we know it, March of 2022. So, yeah, if you haven't already thought about that, I mean, go to Texas pinball festival just for the show. And even if you can't play in the wizards tournament, because all these people have already committed to the tournament back in 2019, and they're going to get to keep their 2020 rather, and they're going to keep their spot for 2022. You can still sign up for the classics tournament. And that's a great time. You can, there will still be a sign up. I believe, although I don't, I need to confirm that with the, with Elizabeth, as far as the, the Texas throwdown for the, the women's tournament there and just even just go to the show because the Texas pinball festival is one of the best, if not the best show in the country. I mean, pinball certainly is kind of as the original status and obviously proximity to the manufacturer. There's still a lot of, you know, industry show aspects to that, but, but TPF has really risen up to, equal that and in some ways exceed it. It's a fantastic show. Go mark that on your calendar. Reserve those vacation days now so that way you can attend TPF in 2022. Outside of something really, really crazy or weird happening, it's going to happen. Excellent. Well, I'm sure that's music to everybody's ears because that show has been sorely missed over the past couple of years. But I'm excited. Just even hearing about that in May, just hearing that there's shows coming up, especially TPF, I'm ready. I'm ready. We got to get it here. And just like we talked about earlier in this podcast, get out, support your location, get out, play some pinball, get out, call people, talk to people, talk to your state rep. Let's get things going again. It's time. Colin, I appreciate you talking to me, brother. I had a good one. And we're going to do this again sometime. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's fun to sit and talk, whether it's like this or whether it's for two hours after finishing up at midnight sitting around Tom Graff's kitchen table. Yep, definitely. And we'll have to do that again sometime. Sounds good. All right. Take care, Colin. Thanks, Travis.