Welcome to the Spinners Lit Pinball Podcast, Episode 78, The Home Game. I'm Spencer, your host, and with me tonight are my co-hosts, Dan. Hey, what's going on, folks? And Mark. Hey, everyone. How's everybody been? Good. Good. I started school, and now I'm back in the school teaching fourth grade. I have 25 students, and so far the year is starting great. Compared to last year, I had 37 students, and that was quite a challenge to be able to take that. At least at the beginning of the year, it was 26, and then it grew to 37 when we lost a teacher. But this year, we got five fourth-grade teachers, and things are going smoothly so far. So, yeah, and playing a lot of tournaments, and looking forward to coming out to Sacramento to play at Shannon's pin golf tournament. Back to life. Back to reality. Uh-huh. Yep. It's like, oh, shoot, after this podcast, I got to write lesson plans for this week. One of these days, it's not going to be that case. I'm going to be like, oh, I don't have to do anything for Monday. Yay. Not quite there yet. When that day comes, what are you going to do, Mark? Oh, I know. Go play pinball. Exactly. I always say, what do you do when you retire? Yeah, I don't know what we're going to do. The possibilities are endless. I might take up pickleball. I might play golf. I'm definitely going to play pinball still. I might have more machines. I don't know. We'll see what happens. Mark's going to start restoring beaters. I'll be starting to learn how to actually work on a pinball machine instead of always watching people work on a pinball machine. So, yeah, that's what I'm doing. Not much new for me. I'm just playing in league fairly badly. And the other night at league, I tied with Alex, which sounds like an amazing achievement until I reveal that we both finished second to last. That's still an amazing achievement. And we were both in like the same group. So it was just like we kind of mutually drowned each other, I think. But no, I'm, yeah, just, you know, playing and no new games, nothing exciting to report on the pinball acquisitions front. So same old, same old for me this month. So, Dan, I have a question for you. Do you have any advice where you just kick ass when you play in a tournament and you get number one spot in the qualifying and then you tank it in the finals? That's what's happened to me two times in a row now just this weekend. I played in a tournament on Saturday and I was just one below Andre Massinkoff, who happened to play in our tournament on Saturday. and I ended up seventh finishing the tournament. I don't understand what's happening. I guess it's getting in my head or whatever, but do you have any advice? No, I'm the exact wrong guy to ask. Because when it comes to league, like I'm really good at like showing up every week, playing real consistent, finishing top three, top four, getting my buys, and then getting to playoff day and then just tanking. Yeah, I do the same thing. it is good yeah right exactly i almost do better i think when like maybe i miss a week or or maybe like my qualifying like i don't finish so high in qualifying i start to get into my own head but i finish a little bit lower and i and i come to the realization that i'm gonna have to fight my way out and i think that i have my best performances then i've taken i've taken i don't know if I won from the bottom, but I know that I've taken second and, you know, I've, I've fought the good fight because I don't know, it just kind of gets me into a mode where like your back's against the wall and you're playing for survival rather than, oh, I'm top qualifier. I should win this. And then you just get, you know, beat down. You know what? That's a good answer. That's exactly what happens to me. It's an honest answer. I mean, I don't know if it's a good answer, but it's an honest answer. No, it's an, it totally fits with me too. It's like, I'm totally relaxed when I'm in qualifying and then it gets in my head. And then before you know it, I choke. Uh, and it was funny. And here's the thing that frustrates me is every time we play in a tournament, Jeffrey Newman always sneaks in at that eighth spot, which is like the last spot on the, on the list before it drops with the cutoff and he gets in. And when we play amazing race, he sets all the scores. So what's the first game he plays on? Butterfly, which, of course, is an EM. And he wails and puts a huge score. And then it's really hard to beat that score unless, of course, you get less. And then somebody doesn't beat your score. You're safe. But it's like he kept going down the line setting the scores. And it's like, oh, my gosh. And Jeffrey is so good. He is great. He's a great player. He's so aware of what he's doing and what the rules are that you know that he can be going like, okay, I need to finish eighth. Yeah. And I'm not trying to say that that's what he's doing. I'm not going to presume that I know Jeffrey's strategy. But all I'm saying is if that's a good strategy, you can bet your butt that he's doing it intentionally. Yeah. You know, now I don't know, he might listen to this, which would be funny and be like, oh, dude, no, just that's where I finished. And, you know, I just played my way out of it. But, you know, it just seems like it's always the case. Like he he gets he gets very fortunate that he wins that last game, that it means means all everything to get, you know, in that top eight, which is what Jim cuts it off to because we had 16 players on Saturday. And he just squeaks in and then he's the first person to set the score in Amazing Race. and it's just pretty ironic that it's happened several times. And he is a great player. Don't get me wrong. He is a great, outstanding player. And that's what he wants you to think, though. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. You know, he just lucked in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're dead. Yep. Yep. And it's really funny. Just real quick about the tournament. When Andre played, he played his A game. I mean, he was blowing up every game. And then the last game he played was against Dan Armstrong on Superman. And I was texting my wife saying, well, just to let you know, Andre came into town and he took it before I didn't know what the results were. And all of a sudden I look, and sure enough, Dan Armstrong actually pulled it off. And Andre had some unfortunate drains. And he won the tournament. Dan Armstrong won the tournament against Andre in the final game. And I changed my text. I'm like, well, wait, let me change that. Actually, Dan won. Never mind. You know what I love about Dan? Yeah. He uses the same high score initials that I do. Yep. Yep. He does. So I can come into town and be like, look at this. I'm a badass. Yeah. So kudos to Dan, man. I really love going back from Dan Armstrong, who is the true badass Dan of Reno. So great job, Dan. You're the man. He's a good player. Yeah, you are the man, Dan. So good job. I played pinball with Andre, not competitively. One time we were at the museum in Alameda, and he was there. ACDC was the newest game. That's how long ago it was. And I think it was like maybe a year or two after he had won Papa. And he was just there. And I say, hey, you know, are we playing? He said, yeah, come on, play in. We played. We had a good time. We talked. And I've seen him at tournaments. He's an intense dude. He was relaxed. He was having fun. Yeah. He's cool. When he's, yeah, when he's not, when it's just, I'm just playing for fun, he's really easy to be around. You know, but when he's in, like, when he's in a hardcore tournament, like, I'm in it to win it, boys, so give me some room. And I understand that. I understand that mindset. Well, what you're talking about was like, okay, he's geared up, so he doesn't get that, you know, where you get up to the finals and then choke because you panic or you just have a moment of doubt or whatever you want to call it. Right. And he gets in that warrior mindset like, I'm in this to kill somebody. Yeah, he does. And one thing he did say, he said he was really impressed with Press Start, how great the machines played. Nice. He was like, this is pretty awesome. You got a really good place here. That's a great compliment. It was really neat to have him there. I mean, it was an honor to have him come and travel to Reno to play in a little tournament. But it was cool to see him. You guys are really building a name and a reputation. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. The whole Reno scene. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So, yeah, thanks, Andre, if you're listening. Thanks for coming down to Reno and playing. It was fun, and it goes to show you there's some pretty damn good players here in Reno, I have to say, you know, compared to what he was. I mean, he's definitely A-League. There's no doubt about it. Oh, man, I got to say, I hope Andre doesn't listen, because I think I've talked a lot of smack about Andre. Especially when I'm, like, doing the commentary on the streams. especially my favorite maneuver which is Andre the flippers where you just go up and you flip like 200 times before you start playing yup he's checking every single yeah that's true but for real Andre is a great dude and it's always wonderful to have him come and play in any competitions that we're involved in and yeah he does a lot of cool stuff for pinball and you know kind of going back to what you said Spencer is like the good players go where the good pinball is so if your competition sucks you know guys like andre guys like jack they're not going to show up so the truth is like yeah it speaks a lot to what you guys have achieved in building that competitive scene in reno and what all of your operators have done and all of your players have done and you know no small part of that is is Jim's work because Jim's probably put more hours into making Reno a competitive pinball scene than anybody. So, yeah, you know, you guys have done amazing work. And it's always, I love, you know, I miss my work trips to Reno because I love timing them so that I could get off work, Antonio Cruz over to press start early enough to get in your guys' competitions and have a night of pinball against, you know, the best that Reno has to offer. And, you know, sometimes I do okay and usually I'd bomb out. But it was always it was always good time. So if you are a pinball player who happens to be listening to this and you don't already play in Reno, like, man, you got to get to Reno and check out their scene. Yeah. What about you, Spencer? How's life? Life's a roller coaster. You know, it's good. And I can't complain. Literally the day after we recorded the last episode, I finally got that call. My mom passed. so I've lost both my parents within like literally seven months to the day so I was dealing with that um she'd been really sick for a real long time so I knew this was coming I just didn't know when so I was dealing with that um other than that man we're doing good you know the family is is happy and healthy and doing good and uh you know we're getting geared up in fact I went out with Seth today and Mickey, you know, back to school stuff, you know, picking up last minute stuff. So we're doing that and got an update on Dungeons and Dragons. We've been playing that. Mickey was screaming something. I was upstairs. I played a couple of games with him this morning after breakfast. And then I come around downstairs like, wow, what's wrong? He goes, I got a trinket because they got a new thing called trinkets. so you can go to the shop and pay a lot of money and buy these trinkets, which give you extra, like, strength or dexterity or stamina. And then if you get more than one of the same category, you can link them together. So there's new stuff going on. It's pretty cool. Put some new springs in the drop targets and flash Gordon. You know, just doing a little bit of maintenance, having fun, had some friends over we haven't seen for a while, and they got to play Dungeons & Dragons. I've never seen it before, so that was pretty cool. And that's about it, man. So we're here to talk about pinball as usual, and tonight's episode, of course, is the home game. And so the new Star Wars home pin is at Costco, and I'm sure by now you've all heard about it. I've heard about it, but I haven't gone and played it yet. Hopefully it's still there. A lot of times I go and hear about it and then I go and they go, oh, sorry, we're all sold out. They're gone. I'm like, what? I want to play them. So I haven't gone there yet. But, yeah, I've heard. I don't think every location gets them. You don't think so? I mean, I, you know, I don't know. I haven't gone to Costco. I don't even have a Costco membership. So for me, it's like I've never gone to Costco and played a pinball machine. But I did get a text message from my boss. and you know if there's one thing that my the people at my company knows is that i'm i'm the pinball guy so anytime you know a co-worker who's got my number sees a pinball machine they text me a picture which is super nice of them and so yeah i got a picture of star wars home and i'm like hey did you buy it and i didn't get an answer from him because you never quite know with my boss he's uh he's he's he's a little bit on the crazy side he's asking me about hey can you know can can we find my wife a cocktail arcade machine and I'm like we can definitely find your wife a cocktail arcade machine just how much do you want to spend yeah exactly and but no I mean I've been hearing a lot of folks talk about the Star Wars home edition you know and before that there was a Jurassic home edition was it last Christmas last holiday season there was a Jurassic home edition there was yep I played that one yeah and they're loading those things up they have insider connected So they're really close to real arcade machines. And, you know, Spencer and I were talking about this. I've always had a weird fascination with home edition pinball machines going back to like the early 80s. Okay. And I thought it would be interesting, you know, that we can kind of take a look. And, you know, I don't know if you guys, well, I do know Spencer has. Mark might be the wild card here, but I don't know how much experience that you guys have with home games. But like, I was just kind of curious about, you know, what you guys think of the concept of home edition pinball, not necessarily looking through the eyes of of competition pinball players or pinball collectors. But going back to when you were a kid and there was a possibility that, you know, maybe this is how you could have pinball at home. It's interesting, right? Because as people who own arcade pinball machines, there's a certain brand of crazy that comes with that, I think. I don't know if you guys agree with me or disagree, but I think I've shared this before. If you like pinball, you play a pinball machine when you see it. Oh, that's so true. Right. If you really like pinball, you go to a place where, you know, there's pinball so that you can play pinball. Maybe you maybe you get into a competition at the level where you're pinball obsessed enough to buy a pinball machine and put it in your house. Let alone two or three or five or 10 pinball machines. you're a little crazy right like that's all there is to it like you are crazy about pinball you love pinball not saying it's a bad thing you know I own a pile of pinball machines Spencer's you know had good size collection Mark's always got a couple kicking around we know that probably most of the people who listen to us you know they either own pinball machines or they make regular pilgrimages to places where They can play pinball for the express reason of playing pinball. So I'm not trying to cap on anybody, but go back in time to when maybe you were a kid or maybe when owning a pinball machine wasn't even a possibility, and you're looking at like the Sears wishbook. And the one I remember super vividly always seeing in like the Sears wishbook or maybe I'm just kind of flashing back and I'm just kind of remembering it, was like Evel Knievel. Okay. Right. Yep. You know what I'm saying, Spencer, that Evel Knievel home game? Yeah, I've got some stats on that when you're ready. Okay. And Bally did, like, what, four different styles of their home game? They did Evel Knievel. They did Fireball. Yeah. They did Elton John, Captain Fantastic, and I don't know what the fourth one was. It was an unlicensed original theme called Galaxy Ranger. Galaxy Ranger. It's really kind of cool artwork. I kind of looked at it close last night doing my show notes. Yeah, they looked legit, right? Like those things looked like the real thing. And, you know, I don't know. You know how much they cost. How much did they cost when they were new? Okay, 1978. The best data I have is from an actual receipt that one came in on trade at TNT Amusement, Todd Tucky, shout out to him, was a Fireball Home Edition, which they did four runs of that particular one. It sold better than any of the others. January 1978, sold in Pennsylvania, brand new in the box for $629 plus tax. Okay, so what's 1978 $600 in today's dollars? Around $2,400 roughly. Okay. that feels like a crazy good price for something that was yeah i mean probably pretty close i mean you know not quite as as feature-packed as a real pinball machine in those days but like it's you know from the videos and stuff it's it's it's solid state it's not em right it's solid state you know it's got sound it's got you know it's got you know real flippers it's got real bumpers It's got targets. It's got lights. It's got digital scoring, which at the time was kind of state of the art. Yeah, spinners, sound effects. It's got two spinners on it. Yeah, two spinners, yeah. But no drop targets, though. No drop targets, no. So there was actually – Them drops were a little too expensive. Too expensive, yeah. I thought – I always thought that all four games had the exact same play field layout. No. There was two layouts. The Fireball and the Captain Fantastic had the same layout. two flippers the evil kenevil and the galaxy ranger were just slightly different with three flippers so they had it it's got the two on one side right on one side and only and only a left slingshot the right's like a passive bumper oh yeah yeah i'm seeing that right now yeah you see that now i i never noticed that before i always just assumed but so um all of them you know the Evel Knievel sold pretty well. Captain Fantastic sold decently well because, you know, bumping off of just a couple years before with the Bally EM Captain Fantastic pinball machine. And then Galaxy Ranger had, I mean, it sold some. But the Fireball Home Edition, they had four runs of that between 78 and 79 because that's such an iconic. You look at the back glass and the art on those. and the later runs had a different size, like they had a different power supply. So I guess they upgraded because they realized, oh, let's upgrade this so it's working better like companies still do today. But yeah, man, for the time, for 1978, you can get like an Evel Knievel out of the Sears catalog for around 600 bucks and change. Yeah, I'm looking at a flyer right here and they got kids surrounded with Evel Knievel in the back. And Evel Knievel was still huge then. It was cool. Oh, he was huge in the 70s. In fact, they're doing a 50th anniversary of the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle toy right now. Wow. Because that first came out like 75. I totally had that. I love that toy. There's a really popular video series online of people setting up big elaborate stunts with Evel Knievel Stunt Cycles. Yep. Yeah. Yep. And those things get millions of views. But yeah, when I was a kid, obviously Evel Knievel was the one I wanted. Looking back, it's like Evel Knievel would be cool. I don't know, Captain Fantastic seems a little more timeless. I think as a pinball guy, I might gravitate towards Fireball. You know, I'm a half owner of a Fireball 2. So it's like part of me is sort of like, oh, Fireball would be really neat. But I just, every time I see one of those things come up for sale, and, you know, they always want around 500 bucks for it, and the operation is always a little bit, like, unknown. And I'm always super tempted to like go out and pick one of these things up, even though I have just tons of real arcade machines. Because I've always thought that the concept of home pinball is a home specific pinball is really neat. Like I kind of think that a little bit of it goes back to like in video games you know the concept of arcade ports right so when a video game comes out to the arcade obviously the arcade version was always superior Then they'd want to bring it home to, like, your Atari or your Nintendo. And, you know, it would always, you know, it was always not as good as the arcade, but it was really cool to see how much of the arcade action that they were going to pack in there. Yeah, yeah. Like ColecoVision is a perfect example. Like it was so close to the actual thing, right? So close. But still, you're like, oh, it's still not Donkey Kong like in the arcade. Yeah. And Donkey Kong is a great example, right? Because ColecoVision sold on the strength of that Donkey Kong port versus what you could get on Atari, which was also by Coleco. Right. And Coleco had a home pit, right? They had the Fonz. They did have the Fonz home pin. They did. That was more of a – it was – I mean, it was more of a toy because it's – like it had like really bad analog scoring. It was just like a score reel, like a single score reel. Was this the one like you wind up? There was one where it was – No, this was – It wasn't wind up. No? Okay. Yeah, this was more legit than that. Like, I mean, to me, it's like I think – did you ever have like a toy pinball machine? Yeah. Like the one that my friend did, but I did not have one. Yeah. You'd push on the buttons and pushing on the buttons. They were like lever action. So they caused those big plastic flippers to flip and you'd knock the ball around. And some of them had, you know, animations and some of them were just like super, super passive. I never actually had one. I had like one of the little handheld ones that was like super little and the ball was like tiny. It was like a Martin, like even smaller than a marble, like a bag of tell kind of thing. Yeah, but I always wanted like a real honest and to God tabletop pinball machine. And so like, yeah, if you'd like laid the Fonz on me when I was a kid, I probably would have thought that thing was the bee's knees. Yeah. So, I mean, it's still mechanical. It still has scoring. It still had sound effects. It didn't have voice, did it? I know the voice is a big part of the commercial, but it was just part of the commercial. There's no voice. Okay. Well, yeah, that thing looked like super heavy duty, you know, and there were other brands, right? Brunswick had a couple models. They had the legendary Alive. Yeah. Which was the one that looked like it was like Tom Jones and Elvis had like a flipper baby. It's so funny you mention that because if you showed that picture of the back glass to like 500 people, It would be almost perfect down the middle that would say half would say Elvis and half would say Tom Jones. Yeah, and it was just ambiguous enough to where they didn't get sued for copyright infringement. Right. You know, their art department was pretty astute on that one. So, yeah, man. Well, I had one of the little tabletop ones like where it's like really small and it uses like a marble-sized metal ball. But the flippers worked and it had pop bumpers and rollovers. And we had fun with it. It was battery operated. And you'd smoke the batteries out in about an hour and 10 minutes. Yep. Two big fat D cells. Oh, yeah. Yep. Two fat D cells. Yep. And look at the advantage. Those things would hold it down. Yes. Yes. And, yeah, like you said, the flippers weren't electronic or anything. They didn't have, you know, like coils or anything. They were just mechanical. You push the button and it would push an arm that would raise the flipper up. But we still had a blast playing that. You know, I'll sidestep because Zizzle I have on here. They did, too, the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Marvel superheroes. And it was a smaller ball. Our good friend of the show, Adam Pressler, he had a Zizzle Pirates at his house for a short time. Oh, wow. And it was just like one day I'm waiting to play a game. I'm like, hey, Adam, play me a game of this. So we had a great time because they had RAM. You had, I think, a RAM, maybe two. You know, and we had a blast playing that. But I'm going to jump backwards to like the Valley Home Editions. They had the Valley name. They had that. They had that pedigree. Oh, that's a Valley because you see them at the Pizza Place or the Bowling Alley. And like Dan said, you know, the pop bumpers, the spinners, the flippers were all actual commercial grade mechs. Had no coin door. You know. It wasn't as deep of a cabinet. It was a little more. Yeah. Yeah, and the Playful was maybe just a tiny bit smaller than a commercial grade, but not a lot. And it had the cool artwork. So you got all the goodies. It was a single digital display, but you could play up to four players with that digital display. That's pretty cool. You know, and yeah, I mean, man, gosh, can you imagine having one of those, you know, as a kid in 1978? Dude, I would have done my homework every day, you know. I kind of want one now, like I was saying. So Zizzle, you got a little ahead of me, a little back behind. Okay. Zizzle is the first home arcade machine that I have personal experience with. Okay. Because we got a Zizzle from our friend Todd. He had one, and I was getting set to buy one off of Craigslist for Brian's kids. And Todd's like, well, I can just give you guys one. And we're like, oh, that'd be great. And so, you know, we got this Zizzle from Todd, brand new, Pirates of the Caribbean. and we took it home and we set it up. And, I mean, yeah, clearly Zizzle is not built from real arcade parts. No. And it's closer in a way to, like, those tabletop arcade or pinball toys than, like, a real arcade machine. But I'll tell you what, it wasn't that bad. Like, they could have done a couple things that would have given those things a little bit more legitimacy. but you could actually if you obeyed the laws of like how you should play it you could play a pretty good game of pinball on it it had ramps it had targets you could hit it had sound effects the problem with it was it had no tilt mechanism okay and it was light you could slide that thing three four down you could lift it off the ground it was nothing right It's like it weighs less than a gallon of milk. So, yeah, you could just throw that thing all over the place and keep them all alive. But, you know, his kids love the heck out of it. And I played it quite a few times. And I I don't know if it still works. It's been a long time, but, you know, it was it was reasonably robust. And we actually brought it over like one of the first times that I did league over at my house. I brought it over here and I told everybody you guys could play my new Pirates of the Caribbean. and I actually put it in my lineup. That's awesome. So that people could just be like, oh, what a schmuck. Was that before you got an actual Pirates of the Caribbean game? Yeah, it was way before I had my JJ Pirates. Probably before Jeff even had it. And they did that. They did Marvel. And they did a couple versions of each. I think they did a later revision of them that was a little bit more buffed up. It had like more more details like it looked like it had plastics rather than just clear covers for the slings and whatnot. And they were like, what, 500 bucks. Yeah. Did they use a regular steel ball or was it a smaller ball? It was everything was smaller. OK. Right. Like it was actually I'm trying to think probably like the little mini ball that they use in like probably even smaller than a little mini ball that they use in the lower play field on like Avatar these days. OK. Maybe a little bit bigger than the one they use in like Stewie Pinball or Grandpa's Dungeon. So it was, yeah, maybe, I don't know, half scale, third scale. I mean, a third feels way too small. I had one in my science kit, and I think it's that same size. It's kind of like a half of a regular size ball. Yeah, it stood on legs. It had a little backbox. It had a little scoreboard and digital displays and a lot, quite a bit of digital sound, although it didn't have music. and how was the reliability did it last pretty long or like i was saying i think that i think that brian's i think it worked for a long time maybe the power adapter finally broke i need to ask him about it but i know that his boys played played the tar out of it um you know and they're none too gentle like they play they play real pinball you know basically like men now so i'm expecting to see him start doing slide saves and bang backs any day oh yeah so the ball size is three quarters of an inch on the Zizzle. Yeah, three quarters of an inch. Yep. Okay. So it was their starter game. Right? And they learned pinball basics from it. You know, maybe good habits and maybe bad habits. But I always really thought that the Zizzle idea was super cool. Again, by the time Zizzle came along, I owned a pinball. Like I had bought a pinball machine or two by then. So I didn't feel the need to own it. But I always had that attitude that it's just like, yeah, this might be a really cool toy for someone who, you know, likes pinball but doesn't want to, you know, spend at the time like $1,000 on a used pinball machine. Boy, that sounds quaint. That's a lot. Or doesn't want to get like an old EM for half the price and fix it up. Yeah. Because you could get a real pinball machine back in like, what was it, 2005, 2006 for, you know, 400, 500 bucks if you're willing to do a little work. so I always thought that that was a really cool thing, but I don't think that home pinball really grew up until Stern got into it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the Valley was a really great, and I've only played the fireball. I went to a collector's house one time up near the bowling alley that you and I went to in Pollock Pines, Dan, because I was a friend. I was actually helped by my boss by Terminator 2 from a guy up there, And he had one. He goes, have you ever seen one of these? He got it playing good, and I had a good time. And then a couple years later, somebody brought one to the show, and I played a couple games on it. So that's my only experience with any of the ballads. But anyway, so on to the Stern. Yes. Lots have come out from Stern. So, yeah, Stern started off with – so I think you corrected me on this a little bit. They started off with Batman. Yes, The Dark Knight. And they did 50 of them? 48 produced, and they called it the Standard Mode. Because remember, this was before they were really doing LE. Standard Mode, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Standard Mode. I think they did, like, The Lord of the Rings LE. Maybe it was before they did that. But they called it the Standard Mode. And then we're – Lord of the Rings LE would be way before that, right? Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I'm a little iffy on the timeline. It was, what, 2010? and it was basically a Batman Dark Knight arcade machine, but no coin play, and most of the fancy mechanical features were removed. Yeah, Crane Mac was definitely removed. And it's funny you say that. You said 43 were made? 48. That's crazy because I saw one at Costco. I saw one at Costco when I was there. Dan, didn't you see one at Costco? no i the one of those that i've seen is the next one which was the iron man iron man oh iron man the classic and i know they removed the magnet i'm they removed the whiplash magnet i don't know they have they have the monger toy in that one but uh i'm trying to find the or just yeah yeah no it raised out of the playfield i believe really i'm pretty sure yeah Wow. They kind of went a little higher. And I think they might have... It still has the crane. It still has the crane, but they took the... So they removed the Joker, the Joker reveal, and they removed the Batmobile race, and they removed the upper mini playfield bagatelle thing. Yes, okay. But like, if you look at this thing, and you really didn't know about it, like, I don't think that anybody who really knew about arcade machines would be confused and be like, oh, this is an arcade game. But I mean, if you just look at a picture of this in passing, like it, it looks like the real thing. And I'm sure with all the mechanisms and whatnot, it probably felt a lot like the real thing. It had a full size DMD. I'm sure it had probably, you know, very similar game rules. It had a blank coin door. So there were no coin slots. But like, to me, like I would look at that and it wasn't that much less than a pro. unfortunately i think it was maybe a thousand bucks less than a pro at the time but like you look at that and you go like oh this is like legit you know going back to the valley days much better than zizzle much better than the brunswick ones this is going back to like this thing is really close to being a real authentic arcade machine yeah it looks good i'm looking at a picture right now and it you could if you didn't weren't aware of what the differences were you'd be like oh, wow, this is a full-fledged pinball machine here. Yeah, I think there were like 1,000 less, like Dan was saying. If I recall correctly, there were maybe 1,000 less than what a Stern Pro was running at the time. Okay. Yeah, and I mean, to me, again, fascinating thing, right? Like how much of the real arcade can they get in for a home price? But at that point, I think that was like $3,300 or $3,500. Was that a realistic home price? Because we went from the Cadillac of the home machines, which was the Bally, being the equivalent of $2,500 in today's money, was it $600? Yeah. To being $3,500, which I'm sure is probably more like $5,000, $6,000 in today's money. Very close to a home or very close to a real arcade, a pro machine. Mm-hmm. And then I never got to check that out, unfortunately. Did anyone ever get there? Did you get to play it when it was at Costco, Mark? I don't think it was plugged in, if I can remember. Boy, it was a while back, because it was, what, 2010, right, when it came out? Yeah. Yeah, I might have played it a little bit, but I thought it was pretty cool to see a pinball machine at Costco. And at that time, I don't think I was that crazy about pinball in 2010. Maybe I was. I don't know. But it was cool to see that. It was like, whoa, this looks like it. And then I did realize that, oh, it is a little different than what I saw. There was one over at one of the pizza joints here in Reno. And I was like, oh, there is a little different here, but not much. But I did not get to play it to see how it shot. I don't think I remember that. I think I just saw it and looked at it and I was like, I wanted to play it, but I think it wasn't plugged in. So I'm trying to find I'm trying to find like pictures, like a really good picture of just like how much different it was. But it looks really like it looks really close. I mean, really close to the real thing. And then they did Iron Man. Right. They did the Iron Man classic, which I think was the following year. And there was actually an Iron Man classic that one of our league members, I think it was David. David R actually owned and was trying to sell forever. I don't know how much he ended up getting for it, like $2,500, $3,000 or something. And again, I was like, oh my gosh, man, like that thing feels like it's totally worth it because it loses the magnets. It loses the whiplash magnet. It loses the warm machine kickback, but it kept the ironmonger like it looked, you know, really close to the real thing. Yeah. I got a price point for that when new. Okay. You ready? It was $45.99 from Costco, new in the box. Wow. Okay. So at that time, so a Stern Pro was what, $55, $52, something like that? Mm-hmm. It was cheaper than a Stern Pro, but not by much. I wonder if it was just as brutal. as the regular one. This is according to Internet Pinball Database, where I got that information. Okay. I'm looking at a picture of it, and it looks so similar. I mean, unless this picture is of the actual the other version, but... It looks just like the real thing. Yeah, so there's no magnet on that part where the whiplash is? It's just like a target or something? I think it's a stand-up target. Yeah, I think it's missing whiplash. it's missing the War Machine kicker and it's missing I think that was about it. I think, of course, no coin door. There's like a captive ball, it looks like, at War Machine. Yeah, and that seemed like I don't know how many of those they did, but again, it seemed like a great idea, but they couldn't bring the price down enough to intrigue somebody who was going to be crazy enough to actually buy something like that. Like at the point that you're going to spend $5,000 on the home edition, why wouldn't you spend $6,000 and buy the real machine, right? Because I think you could still get a real Iron Man at that time, you know, and then the class are, well, I think it was like 65. I know that the, not the classic, but the vault came out not too far later because Iron Mans were pretty hard to get. But I've always been intrigued because I'm wondering like, man, how many of these Iron Man classics are really out there? Like what a weird, what a weird, cool pinball thing to own. Yeah, no kidding. And to have that mech with the mech coming out of the play field, that is cool. That's pretty cool. The Monger is included in that. Yeah, same graphics, same sounds, full size, full size display. Yeah, everything. And then a couple years later, I mean, it might have been more than a couple years later, I think Stern took a bit of a break. and then they came back with, and I'm interested what you know about these, Spencer. They came back with a radically different concept, which was the pin. And the pins were dedicated home machines. Like they didn't have a DMD. They didn't start with the arcade play field. They had a unique layout. They had a unique cabinet. They looked a little bit weird. and they did two of those. They did Transformers and they did Avengers. Transformers and Avengers. Okay. I haven't seen those out in the wild at all, ever. Yeah. No, I've never seen it. They were a little bit smaller. They were a single-mind alphanumeric display, so no DMD or anything like that. I think there was a single speaker right in the middle of the bat. And they were smaller, lighter weight, obviously. They were running the original Spike system. Not much else out there. I don't know anybody who's ever played one. So it's 2012. It was down to $3,500. It had two players, two flippers, two ramps, three balls. and apparently the current median selling price on them is $1,075. Oh, this is interesting. They were the very first Stern games to use the Spike system. Yeah, they were Spike 1. Yeah, yeah. So I guess it is, well, we'll test some stuff out and see where we go. They had the cube, I know, on the Avengers. Oh, no, the Transformers did too because it was the AllSpark cube. They both had cube MacGuffins. There we go, yeah. Yeah. The Chessarack slash Cosmic Cube in Avengers, and you had the AllSpark, whatever the heck they wanted to call it, in Transformers. Yeah. Just reuse the cube. Yeah. That's funny. So, like, I'm a big Transformers fan, so I always really super wanted one of these. I did eventually get myself a real Transformers arcade machine. but yeah it was same sort of thing where it's all like ah thirty five hundred dollars for something that in this case didn't even have the air of being a real pinball machine right like you know it looks it looks like a toy it's very colorful it has art where the coin door should be it doesn't even have like the faux coin door i think you can't pull the glass off of it like without like taking the machine apart i think all the servicing needs to be done from underneath yeah you can't lift the glass but it's like that idea they had over at uh deep root where it's like like or uh what's the other guys uh the way it lifts up you know where the the frame and everything and the glass is on that it lifts up like in one oh you're talking about turner turner like turner pinball yeah that's they didn't invent that so actually valley did that in the early 70s Right. Well, who else did that? I think Highway did that, too. Yeah. Highway did, too. Yeah. You could just pop the hood. Yeah. Kind of like that. Yeah. Which seems like a great idea until you want to go full upright on your play field. But, yeah, I was watching that video you told me you hit me to with TNT last night, Dan. And, yeah, so if you want to work on the pin, you just tilt the thing back on its butt like you'd be soldiering. it and you can go in from underneath and work on everything And I just like oh man Interesting You can tell that they had this image in their head of like we want to make this thing completely Oh, I couldn't get to my button in time. Sorry, Mark. You can edit that one out. That's all right. No worries. Bless you, sir. But you can tell they had this image in their head that they were going to make a machine that you wouldn't need to service, which does not exist. Right. And every one of these that I've ever seen or heard about has been broken. And apparently replacement parts just don't exist. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Interesting. So, you know, what a disaster I think that that would have been. And I don't know if they sold a lot, but. They sold three. No, I don't know. Yeah, they sold three. All three of them are dead, right? They didn't sell a lot. So quick question So the Transformers and Avengers Were they the same Playfield layout And just changed the toys All they did was just change the art and the toys A little bit and maybe even kept the toy Just changed the art I'm looking at the Avengers right now At the very very back center of the playfield They have like a toy action figure Hulk That's just like you know Glued or stapled down You know But you know It had two ramps and it had a multiball and, you know, I mean, it's cool looking. And was it an original layout or was it based off of the Transformers layout? It was the same layout as the Transformers home pin. Okay, but the Transformers home pin was the original layout. They're both unique. Yeah, they weren't related to the arcade versions in any form or fashion. Okay. Well, that's cool. So, yes, I mean, yeah, that was the beginning of Stern's foray into modern home pinball. Yeah. And then they and then they upped their game and came back much stronger. Hmm. OK. So the next was Spider-Man. Yep. Which we both played. So, you know, Mike Hozier of the CCPL, he had one of these for a while when I joined league. It was at his house. So I did actually get to put quite a few games on on this machine. And and the Spider-Man Home Edition play field still exists like they've used it on a lot of the other Home Edition and private label edition pinball machines. So I think they've used that basic same play field with some modifications and Jurassic in Star Wars Home in Supreme in heavy metal. Like, OK, they just keep reusing that. And that's a really fun game. It's a Gomez design. It's got a neat little passive ball lock that, you know, you hit it and the ball kind of rests in it where you can then hit it like a captive ball and knock it out. to start your multiball. There's no other way. Yeah, it can't just knock the ball out itself. It's just a switch telling it that the ball's there. It also was the first machine, the first Stern machine with a color display. Okay. And it was like a really chunky color DMD. It wasn't a standard size DMD. It was, I think it was a little taller, kind of more of like a three by four layout. And it was monochrome, of course. This was not multicolor. This is like a... That was multicolor. It was multicolor. Yeah. Full color display, spike system, you know, great sound. I think it shared a lot of its sound effects with the Vault Edition, which they did pretty close to the same time. And I think it had a really, really similar heart. But, like, again, awesome game. Like, on its own merits, it was really, really cool. What was that one going for? I'm trying to find that now so I'm willing to bet you it was probably a little bit more expensive than it could have been for people to want to buy it hmm yeah I'm thinking of somewhere in the low fours but because I would say 4500 is my guess but yeah because I have the Star Wars pin 2016 It was $6,500. Oh, wow. MSRP goes for about $2,300 to $2,600 now. Holy crap. Four players, two flippers, two ramps, four balls. But, like, it's a legit pinball machine. Like, if you threw a coin door on this, like, it might feel like a little bit of a lame pinball machine by some of the standards of what you would expect now. But like it felt legit. Like I never played that game and thought, oh, this thing feels cheap or terrible. Like it like it was substantial. You did have to kind of have this assemble it to get the glass out. You know, it required tools, which is lame. But it it was legit. Like you could tell that Stern had learned from the pin that it was too different, a little too toyetic. But with that increase in quality came an increase in price. and did it have separate pop bumpers uh from the solenoid or was it just one that acted all on them or were there any pop bumpers and i can't remember for the spider man bumpers okay but they went on it works the same way that the modern ones work where they run on individual solenoids but they're all driven by the same board so when you hit a pop bumper all the pop bumpers will pop once okay okay i gotta say that the the trans light on that home spider-man pin because it's been a while since i saw it so i'm looking at the artwork right now and it's because it's like the comic artwork spider-man's fight fighting uh um doc ock on the trans light it's really cool looking hmm no that's a great looking game the the apron on that game i I always thought was really, really cool because it had like a full art apron way before Stern was doing full art aprons on anybody else's game. Like I said, you look at this game and other than the missing coin door, which, you know, again, it's got art there to make it look a little bit more toyetic. If you didn't know the difference, you know, you might think, Oh, this is a legit arcade pinball machine. Mm hmm. Yeah, and it's interesting. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, Spence. Oh, no, I was just looking at the apron art. Dan was right. It's really well done. Yeah. That's a great art package. Yeah. And it's interesting you say that. So it had a color DMD is what you're saying? Yeah. It didn't have a DMD like you're thinking of a DMD, but it had a dot matrix display, different aspect ratio than like what you think of as a DMD. That was, yeah, all unique color dots. Wow. Okay. Very interesting. Yeah. And that was the first one of those home additions that I got to spend any time on. And I walked away thinking this is something that like I would legit own, not just because of a fascination with like 70s home, you know, version pinball machines being cheap. Like, you know, I could pick this up for 500 bucks and have some pinball fun with it. But like, yeah, it was like a really cool machine. You know, it had legit ramps. It had great art. It had, you know, unique, like, how can we get the most out of this for the least money features? But like, they were fun. It was simple, but it was, but it was really, really cool. But yeah, they came in a little bit high on the price. Yeah. You know, a few years later, it also had two, three and four ball, multiball, custom speech. And yet to answer your question, both slingshots and the top two pop bumpers operate simultaneously. OK, that's what I thought. OK. Yeah. Which makes a different kind of play in a way. um but yeah i i remember um seeing that like you said that layout has been used over and over again on different designs and different uh intellectual property uh you know licensing and stuff like that but um i i the only thing that would just deter me away from it uh as a actual you know pinball connoisseur, pinball player is just the depth of the rules are not as deep as I want for paying that amount of money, but for a casual person who doesn't care about in-depth rules, it's a solid game. Yeah. Yeah. So then you got Star Wars. Star Wars is a modified version of basically the same layout. I think it's the same Gomez idea, but they have wire forms. They have a Death Star toy. They have a TIE fighter. It has a LCD, a really itty-bitty LCD. The cabinet is not an arcade cabinet, but it looks very arcadey. It's got a blank coin door, but it's got a full-size blank coin door. So if you really wanted coin slots, I'm sure you could line that up somehow. you know and i've gotten to check this out at pentagogo and it's got drop targets and all sorts of good stuff like it's super fun i think some people might even argue that it's more fun than the real Steve Ritchie star wars this is the old star wars we're talking about right you're talking about the one i mean obviously this is the first release so this new release It's a re-release, like an enhanced re-release of this initial one. I don't know if there's a lot of differences besides that's got Insider now. Right. And it also has an LCD screen. Or the other one did not. No, it had an LCD screen. Yeah, the original had an LCD screen as well as the comic book card edition. So everything from here on is LCD. No more dot matrices. No more alphanumeric. It's all LCD. Yeah. And then they did Jurassic and Jurassic again was was a heavy reworking of this same layout. And it was done by Jack Danger. OK, so Jack Danger working on the initial Gomez design. But he had a jump ramp that made it a little more unique, right? No, it's awesome. Yeah, it's definitely got some some new stuff in it. It's got Jurassic Park theme and Jurassic Park toys. It's got the LCD. I think it might have used a little larger LCD. Sold for about the same money. Had Insider, which was interesting. That's right. It did have Insider. Yeah. And having that, you know, you can get all the badges and cool stuff like that. So for somebody who's got a home game and they're connected and they can hopefully all have leaderboards and play remotely with other people and have like online tournaments and such. and then say if they push that that can be a really good selling point and help with the longevity of people enjoying that game you know even with a uh a more simplistic rule set yeah it is fun to shoot i i definitely had a chance to play a star wars the first version i now i want to play the one at costco i gotta get over there before it's gone but um i had really fun playing it at pentagogo too they had it on display i remember uh probably the same when you played dan And I kept going back to that. It was fun to try to shoot that little mini ramp on the left side and trying to lock the ball and then hit it out by starting multiball. It was actually pretty fun to shoot, and the rules were simple. It was kind of like medieval madness where you had to shoot the ramp three times, you had to shoot the orbit three times, kind of like that. But definitely not a boring game to play, that's for sure. yeah then jurassic jurassic is good now we're back around to star wars okay and you know they've they've enhanced it it's got insider it's it's you know it sells basically for the same price as a skirm pro uh well it's a little less right you know they're they're showing up there in the five thousands uh looks like someone sent me an ad today where one was selling for 47.99 okay so it's definitely a chance to get you know full-size pinball thrills for you know used used stern pro bucks yeah but like you being a pinball collector being a pinball enthusiast would you spend the money on a home edition and i think you answered this already you kind of jumped the gun and answered it early Yeah. Well, OK, so if you're asking me, honestly speaking, if the rules were more in depth, then, yes, I probably would get one of those. But but with it, if would you buy one as they stand today? Because, no, you're killing me with you're killing me with pre answering my questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. No, yeah, I I wouldn't. Yeah, I, you know, there's a few things that would absolutely sell me a home edition, right? What about you, Spencer? Before I answer that question, like, would you buy a home edition pinball? Not brand new for the price point because I could get a good used Stern Pro for the same price, you know. There you go. I think they're fun. I think they have their place, you know. They're great. If you had either a unique theme, like there's no Stern Pro Premium LE version of it, but like a unique theme with solid enough gameplay. Or if they managed to make the value proposition like so good for the gameplay that you get. Like I would think about it, but I think that the one thing that will always keep me from buying a home edition. is that in a world of limited funds and limited space, it's not the real thing. It's not an arcade machine. It is not commercial equipment. Right. And this might be kind of like a snooty, like elitist, like kind of answer. I own arcade one-ups. Like, let me put this into perspective. Like, I own miniature arcade games. you know I own real coin up arcade games I've built main machines I don't have anything against like home editions of stuff but if I'm spending commercial equipment money I want commercial grade equipment even if I'm not going to use it right even if I'm never going to slide a quarter to that thing or if by the time I've got it it's seen it's last quarter I want the capability and I don't know why. Again, maybe it's the craziness that gets me to buy and dedicate big chunks of my home to home pinball machines. But, yeah, I think that it's not the real thing. It's close. It's real close. It's really close. It's getting better, but, yeah, it's not. I mean, that's why we do what we do because we're broken. so we're not right in the head does the home edition have a coin door on it the new Star Wars or no they have a coin they have a faux coin door a faux coin door I think that might be one of the differences too is it has a faux coin door and I think the number one selling point Spencer was telling me about this last night apparently the box that it comes in looks like a 1970 style Star Wars toy box like from Kenner yeah okay that's pretty cool yeah that's amazing right that's pretty cool yeah like if i had five thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket i might have to buy one just just for the box just for the box just for the box oh it does look cool i'm looking at it right now sell me on a home game right like if you come out with the way that it's unique from the arcade game or you come out with like, you know, an unstoppable theme that maybe you don't think it would sell to the arcade people, but maybe it would sell to a home audience. And I know that when it comes to themes like the home audience, you've got to have like that triple A theme. But I mean, if they made Harry Potter into a home edition only game, they probably still would sell five thousand of them. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Or Beavis and Butthead or something like that. Ren and Stimpy or – you know. I have to say something. The box is really cool. I'm looking at the video that you sent me. And it looks exactly like when you buy an action figure. Or like an old X-Wing or TIE Fighter from 1978. Yeah, it totally looked like Kenner. From 79. I mean you can tell because it has that line, like the square or the rectangle going around it. It like goes into the logo. Oh, yeah. It goes right in the logo. It totally looks like it. That's cool. The level of attention to detail to the late 1970s, very early 1980s. Yeah, that's cool. The Star Wars Kenner toy line from 78 to like 83 when Return of the Jedi came out. And they just like, that just punches you in the nostalgia nut so hard. So, yeah. See if you can get with me on this, right? So, like, here's an audience that they might sell those coin, those coin games, those home games, too, but maybe not, you know, feel like they have the interest to get that full arcade game, you know, audience. Like, what about like G.I. Joe? Perfect. Or He-Man. Yeah. Or Generation One Transformers toy line. Like, to me, collectors for those things are crazier than you realize. and I swear, man, I know a guy in our group that if you did a home edition GI Joe pinball machine right now for $5,000 and included an action figure with it and put that on the front of the box, he would buy it. He would 100% buy it. He'd buy two of them. Yeah. One to play with and one to put away. I don't know if he's that crazy, but I mean, if he listens to the show, the guy who I'm talking about knows who I'm talking about. Like he loves GI Joe. Like I love transformers. If you did like, you know, I had to get a transformers pinball machine. Eventually I did get a pro. I love it. If they were to come around and say, Hey, we're going to do G1 transformers and we're doing it in the current home machine format. I wouldn't be able to say no. Yeah. And we're going to sell it at Costco. Like I'd go get a Costco membership to buy it. You don't have a Costco. There are no Costcos in Wyoming. So I have to drive over to Denver to go to a Costco. So, you know. I want to go over to this and play it now. I'm looking at it and I'm like, looks pretty cool. And I've played it before, but, you know, it's just neat to see it again. And of course they have a lot of the other ones too from that design, right? Supreme. I did get to play a Supreme, by the way. Supreme's not a home game, though. Supreme is a coin play game. It is a coin play game. You're right. So don't get confused. We were talking about this earlier. Even though it uses the home style layout, it is a full on, full DMD coin play game. Same with Heavy Metal. Oh, Heavy Metal is also. Okay. Okay. So it uses the same layout, but it's not considered a home game. That's good to know. But you can plug coins into it. So real quick on Supreme, on Supreme they only made 100 units because the whole thing is Supreme no matter what they make. If it's a brick or a paperweight or a pair of jeans or a hoodie or a pinball machine or a skateboard deck, limited. It was always limited quality. So you always wanted to be the special kid and be able to get in. So they made 100 of those units. Most expensive at the time. Yeah, it still is. I still, Svetch is a pretty penny because it's a special collector thing well outside of our community. I played it in Vegas. That's where I played it. Yeah, they had it at that shoe shop. At the shoe shop. Yep, you're right. It was in the Caesars. Those are the kind of guys that it's going to be like, it's going to be a flex, right? You know, they're going to have the most expensive pinball machine out there, and they're going to put it out there so that, you know, you can play it. It worked because I looked on Pinball Map and said, oh, there's a Supreme in the forum shops at Caesars. Yeah, I'm going. Cool. I want to check it out. Because that's a rare one. There's only 100 of them. You're like, hey, I got to play it. So cool. And I played it a lot. It was fun to shoot. Did they even make 100 heavy metals? I don't know about the numbers, but on heavy metal, thank you for asking, Dan, the slings and the pop bumpers fire simultaneously. Yeah, because they use a limited amount of node boards. Exactly. same with the home pin on star wars okay yeah and that's just about because of the fact that the idea with how the private labels and the home games work is you're not using a full arcade machine budget because you know in the theory is you're selling them for less now once supreme buys them from stern for whatever they pay they can sell them for however much they want but supreme basically went to stern and said hey make us a hundred of these stern didn't go out there and say, hey, can we sell 100 Supremes, right? So Heavy Metal was never going to make Supreme unless Supreme came to them and said, we're going to pay you so much to make us machines, and then Supreme sold them. Right. Yeah. Heavy Metal was all for the contract. Heavy Metal was bought by that Primus which uses the Wonelli layout And what was the other one that uses Wonelli Paps Cancrusher Paps Cancrusher Paps Cancrusher. So those are all private label. Coin games, full arcade capability. They were just built, you know, to that specification because that was their intended use. And my understanding with the home games is Stern will do whatever you want, just you got to pay for it. You got to buy for it. You've got to buy X amount. So, okay, let me correct myself because I'm reading my notes, and I ran my notes. So heavy metal, slings and pop bumpers, sorry, and fantasy. Underneath, layout, same as Star Wars home pin. So I don't know if the Star Wars home pin, if the slings and pops fire simultaneously, but it's the same layout. Yeah, they do. Okay, so it's the same layout. Again, that's the whole kind of compromise. Now, the slings, it's not like the pops fire with the pops and the slings fire with the slings. It's just left and right go at once. Exactly. And again, the reason they do that is because they only have so many solenoid drivers available to them because they're only using so many node. And that's how they shave costs down. Okay. I don't think that we mentioned it, but there was an earlier, like a 70s home game that, like, it would be the crappiest home game because whether you press the left or the right flipper button, both the flippers went at once. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember what this one was called. Was it by Tomy? No, it was like more legit. It was by some weird, you know, like a Brunswick, but it wasn't Brunswick. Or like Mattel. Mattel had Las Vegas. Did that do that or no? I don't know. I have no idea. I'm not as well. You did a little bit more homework on the actual going back to the 70s. I just was like, I'll tell you that I really wanted an Evel Knievel and that fireball looks cool. Can you believe it? I did my homework. But, yeah, I just, you know, kind of to bring it to a close, unless you guys have anything else to say on them. I think home edition pinball machines are cool. I think that there is an audience out there for them, but I think Stern, because they want to get the most out of that license, they want to get the most out of Star Wars, they want to get the most out of Jurassic Park, I think they always end up stepping on their own feet. I think that the key is find a license just for a home edition pinball machine and bring it to the masses and see what it'll do. because I do think that, you know, if you look at that box for Star Wars, that almost sells you the game, right? The box is incredible. As soon as I showed Dan that picture, it's like I'm buying one. I know, right? I said, oh, shit, I got to have that. Me too. Like, I'm not even kidding. That was a quote. I was like, all of a sudden, things are so much different. And I look back, and you know why it doesn't make the kill on me, but it comes real close, is because I didn't have Star Wars toys as a kid. Okay. Like it was a little bit like it came out, but when it came to getting three and three quarter action figures, I got into G.I. Joe. Probably because that's what my parents would buy me. And I had a really good collection of G.I. Joe's for a couple of years. And then 1984 Transformers came along and just blew that out of the way. And by 1987, it was Nintendo. So here's the deal. make a home edition nintendo themed pinball machine put in a box that looks like a classic nintendo box and i will give you five thousand dollars absolutely i will rush i will rush down there with my visa and i will buy it because i'm that stupid you know make it look like sega i'll buy two of them you know if i meet somebody just you know a casual conversation we're talking about pinball and they're like oh yeah i've got the home star wars i'm like dude that game shoots great It's a lot of fun or the Jurassic Park or, you know, my uncle had the Evel Knievel home game when I was a kid. I'm like, dude, those are awesome. And you could be a kid and have access to one of those in the late 70s. You know, you were you were king of the hill, man. You know, the late 70s, your parents weren't spending no six hundred dollars on you. No. Yeah. Unless you were a really good kid, which I wasn't. Yeah. Right. Like how much was your bicycle? Maybe a hundred bucks. Yeah, maybe. And that was like a kid version of a car. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that's, and you know, I don't want to side note because we have mutual friends who are big into the retro or classic like BMX bikes and stuff. And a lot of that stuff's coming back around now. And I just saw Mongoose is re-releasing their old rims that were like the tough wheels, but they're metal. And they have like the spider web kind of work. Oh, I totally remember Mongoose. Yeah, so they're re-releasing those. They're doing a version three of those. Oh, wow. Yeah, I just saw something about that. So that kind of stuff, man. It hits, like I said, that Star Wars box. As soon as I saw the box, I said, Dan, have you seen the box to the new Star Wars home, Ben? He's like, no. Hold on. He showed me that picture, and my response was the same as yours. I was like, oh, my God. I want one of those. because i said the same thing was like being a big kid and like oh i got a toy that's star wars and brings back your childhood totally the culture will make the kill yeah like it really will and it sounds so terrible to put it out there like that but it's like i won't buy jurassic park home game when i could have jurassic park commercial edition i just won't i just won't Unless the price difference was like humongous, like if they were just arcade one up cheap. And, you know, the funny thing is real quick before we wrap up on on home edition pinball machines. There's a lot of fake home edition pinball machines, right? There's a lot of companies that are doing virtual pins, you know, digital pins that, you know, are at home. We're kind of talking more about like the real physical, you know, like it's a real pinball machine in a smaller or a home style. Not a video. Yeah, like not a video pin. because I don't have any problem with arcade one up. I don't have any problem with people who like arcade one up. I don't have any problem with people who like home edition pinball machines. If someone's out there collecting them, I will say that like it is a gateway drug. You see a lot of these people who either they've already fizzled out on arcade one up or they've moved on and now they're buying full size real arcade machines. And, you know, I kind of love that. Yeah. I think that it serves a master. And that's why I think if Stern would bring something to the home market that you couldn't already get the full strength of, they might entice people. I know people are interested. I've read posts. I've had people who, again, they've sent me pictures. People see this and they go like, oh, this is cool. They do. They do. You're right. Even my teachers that I work with sent me a picture and said, hey, look at what we saw at Costco, a Star Wars pinball machine. It definitely exposes people to pinball machines that never even knew they were out in arcades. And it's really interesting to see the interest in it. And I guess that's a way of George doing it, putting it in a Costco. It's a great way to advertise CERN. Yeah. I mean, it gets your brand out there. And if you do it, again, I think that this $5,000 price point, it's high, but it's pretty reasonable for the level of quality that you get. You just have to not give somebody like an automatic out to all. I'll just buy a used Pro, right? I can buy a used Star Wars Pro for $5,000 probably all day long, you know. And that's, you know, not to say that most people looking at a home edition pinball machine are going to want to delve into the used pinball machine market. But if you're smart, you know what you can get. They're trying to get people at Costco to do something a little crazy. Right. And, you know, and that's so true. Like when things are more accessible, people will be more inclined to buy them instead of, you know, having to go through Stern or go through a distributor. And you're like, oh, I can buy it at the store. I can see it over at Costco or, you know, other locations. It's like, wow, I can just buy it here and just make a payment plan. And boom, I have my own machine in my room. So can't do payment plan on Costco. But, yeah. Well, yeah, but you can put it on your MasterCard. Sure. You know where you can't finance a game? This is probably a dangerous thing to put out in the world. Probably. R.C. Willey. You don't have those in Wyoming. Thank God, because I'd be really – I'd be like, honey, we can live off top problems for eight months. Well, you can if you put on an R.C. Willey credit card. Then you can. No, I'm saying R.C. Willey will finance pinball machines. They have in-store financing. Yep. I have like a $10,000 RC Willie credit line. Yeah, there you go. We bought our furniture and my big TV through them. Yep. I should just go out and do something stupid right now. I know. Just put it in the Star Wars box you sold. Put it in that home Star Wars box and boom, you made the kill. That'll have like $7,000 in Star Wars toys. No, man, I'm telling you though, if they did Transformers, like they would get me so easy. Or if they actually made a Transformers commercial edition, you'd go nuts if it was G1, right? Well, I have a Transformers commercial edition, but they need to do, yeah, the Generation 1. G1. Transformers. Everybody says, every Transformers fan says the same thing, G1. Do a G1. Tell you, man, I think that that Transformers Pro, you can get those things for like $4,000. I think that is one of the best bang-for-your-buck pinball machines. I agree. I think it. It's a Gomez, so it shoots like a dream. It's got a really fun toy with the Optimus Prime Bash toy. It's a Megatron trough that holds like five balls. Yeah. In fact, the removal of the toys from the LE actually kind of makes the game better. You slap a couple, you know, $20 Transformers action figures from back in the day in it and kind of fill up some of the empty space. You probably wouldn't even know the difference. I'm not saying I did that, but I totally did that. One of them fell off when I took it to Golden State. I found it in the back of the cabinet. Oh, wow. I think I just taped it down. I don't think I even like – I did like a Henry install. I don't think I even bothered to use a zip tie. Henry's home mods are better than mine. I'm excited to see what they do with the home pins in the future because Star Wars is still hot. But in Jurassic Park, what will they do next? Will they do Guardians of the Galaxy? Will they do Dungeons and Dragons? or Godzilla, or you know what, and how will that look, and how will that play? And then again, with the Insider Connected, especially for younger people who are more in tune with that thing, I'm not digging it. I'm really loving the Insider Connected feature, and I dig sharing that with the casual people who, you know, like Dan talks about, it's like if they see a pinball machine at a pizza place or a bar, they'll play it, and they enjoy pinball, but they're not really they're not they're not us okay they're not broken toys but that's that's what i'm saying the difference is right it's like again a casual will play a game a casual who likes pinball will play a game if they see it you know a real casual they're just going to be like oh harry potter like i gotta see what this is like yeah but like you know i'm talking about your levels of pinball fandom because you know you have like these levels and again to us owning a machine doesn't feel crazy because we podcast about it on the internet and everyone who we hang out with, you know, probably owns a pinball machine or two. I mean, maybe they don't, uh, or they go out of their way to go to a place that plays pinball, at least within the sphere of pinball. Like I'm sure we all know people who don't collect pinball, but for me, a lot of my social life these days, like is based around people who, who play pinball and travel to pinball and talk about pinball and love pinball um and the friends who i have that don't do pinball like they're generally nerdy enough that like they get it they'll go to an arcade and look for arcade games and yeah maybe they're not pinball but they're video gamers that's just because i'm a dork i have two arcade one-ups so i did not pay retail works on so um yeah so but i but i have two so So, you know, I was thinking, because I was talking to the boys, because we've got the Atari system that's got Warlords. I said, yeah, man, I'd love to find a four-player cocktail. So I'm looking for one. Like, I know it's like hen's teeth, but Dan's got me excited about finding a cocktail Warlords. Yeah, I would, at this point, if I could find the tabletop, I guess that a guy in our group has one, and Brian's kids played it and really liked it. Like, I'm kind of at the point where if I ever found, like, a Warlords cocktail machine or even the Arcade 1-Up Warlords tabletop, like, I would probably do something stupid. Did Arcade 1-Up do one? Yeah, it's like a pub table. Oh, okay. So it's taller and it's round. Okay. But it's got four dial controllers. How much is that? I'm buying one. It plays a pretty good game of Warlords. I'm buying one. I don't think that they've made it for several years, so you're probably looking at somewhere between $600 and $1,000. But, you know, you might scroll Craigslist and find someone just get it out of my house for $100. Yeah. It does feel like, you know, although this is kind of off the subject, arcade one-up collecting is like pinball collecting, but it's smaller, right? Yeah. Like, you know, people spend less money, but they bitch just as loud. and the market's kind of at the point where they've imploded and now there's other players who might get into it and save them. But yeah, Arcade 1-Up is a fascinating, fascinating thing. And you're getting to the point where I think the Arcade 1-Up boom kind of came and kind of busted and kind of ended. So a lot of folks have moved on. So sometimes, you know, you'll go out there and you'll see those things cheap or even, you know, people will just be like, okay, I just picked up an arcade one up out of like a trash pile. And you're just like, oh, wow, that's pretty cool. Does it work? And, you know, if you're looking for, you know, arcade style cheap thrills, I mean, they do the trick, you know. Some of them, you know, the Star Wars and the Tron one that they did, some of those are really cool. They have custom controllers. You know, they've made driving games and shooting games. But, you know, at the end of the day, to people who own real arcade machines, they're just not real. yeah like if you can play star wars though for five hundred dollars in arcade one up versus five thousand dollars and the experience is 90 the same it's pretty hard to be like well you know i'm gonna buy this five thousand dollar arcade machine unless you're hardcore and you're just like i just gotta have the real thing i hate to say it but fuck i'm too hardcore I'm like, yeah, the home edition is pretty good, but it's not quite the same. And it doesn't come in a box telling me I'm getting a free Han Solo. I'm getting a free Boba Fett if I send in five proofs of purchase. Yep. Oh, man. I think we've covered everything. We covered all our bases. I mean, enough. To the listener, you know our email. If you don't, it's thespinnerislit at gmail.com. if you know of another home game we didn't talk about give us an email we'll talk about it on the next episode I would be super interested if you want to post on the Facebook or drop us a message to hear people's opinions on this I think this is going to be an episode that everyone's just like oh you guys suck like I can't believe you guys talked about home games for an hour I don't think so it's actually an hour and a half an hour and 24 minutes something different we had an intro yeah we had an intro So do we want to do shout-outs and thank-yous now? I'm good. Let's go. All right. Dan, start us. You know what? I want to throw a shout-out. Thank you, of course, to you guys as usual. I want to throw a shout-out to the whole CCPL family. Thanks for playing pinball with me every week. I want to throw a shout-out to our good friend Adam Pressler. Hopefully everything goes real well for you. And, yeah, I'm good. Mark. My shout-out is to Jim Martin for always holding these tournaments every month and every Tuesday night. He's always having things with variety. He's starting a pin golf tournament that's going to be coming up in a couple of weeks. We're really excited about that. He did a little test tournament just last weekend, and it was really fun. So I love how he changes things up. He always keeps those games running really great. Of course, to you guys and also my family and everybody else and just really just enjoying life so far. Right on, man. All right. A shout out to my mom, who is now with my dad, who gave me life and also played pinball with me as a kid and as an adult. So thanks, mom. and to you guys, man, who every month we find a way to get together in between movies. And next week, you guys are both at Weird Al. A week ago Thursday, me and the boys were at Weird Al. I'm not going to say a word other than, you know, damn, you're going to have a good time. And the opening act was jaw-droppingly, surprisingly really great. Oh, it's Puddles, right? Puddles, Pity Party. Oh, yeah. He's awesome. I've watched some of his. City Party is freaking great. Yeah. We're all three of us here for the listener, diehard, hardcore Weird Al fans. We go way back. I go all the way back to Dr. Domeno. Dr. Domeno listening on the radio. I listened to every song, and I was like, oh, come on. I want to hear one from Weird Al. Yeah, before Weird Al even got signed. So definitely this tour is worth seeing. I bought the poster, so I'm going to hang out. It's in a frame. I just got to hang it up in the game room. The tour poster, because they do each one individually for the city you're in. So that's pretty cool. So you guys, I won't say anything else. I know you guys are going to have a real good time. So, Dan, you're going, yours is Saturday, mine's Sunday. It has to be that, right? Yeah. What's the difference in the posters? It'll tell you the city and the date. So, like, mine says Casper, Wyoming with the date we saw them. Okay, so it doesn't have, like, any unique art or anything? I don't know. I was almost like, Mark, buy me a state line poster. I was going to say, I almost bought extras for you guys because they're only $20. And they're on a really nice six-car stop. I'll leave you with this story, and then we'll kick out. So I'm singing along when he's doing the medley, and he's doing Ricky. And I'm singing along with every word. And a lady in the seat in front of me turns around, and she goes, you know every word. She fist bumped me. So the rest of the night she's screaming and she goes – and she keeps going, I hope they do White and Nerdy. I said, no, no, they're going to do White and Nerdy. I know because I go online and check what the set list is for this show. I know they're going to do White and Nerdy. Because I am White and Nerdy. Because I am that White and Nerdy. So she went completely ballistic in a good way, cool nuts, when they did White and Nerdy. So I'll leave you guys with that. So to all the wonderful people who listen to us and to all the pinball, even non-pinball people who support what we do, thank you guys so much. Again, thespinnerslit at gmail.com. Check us out on our Facebook page. Guys, you got anything else before we take it out? Nope. Play pinball. Feeling good. Play pinball. Keep America strong. I go out walking After midnight Out in the moonlight Just like we used to do I'm always walking After midnight Searching for you I walk for miles Along the highway Well that's just my way Of saying I love you I'm always walking After midnight Searching for you I stop to see a weeping willow Crying on his pillow Maybe he's crying for me And as the skies tend to me Night winds whisper to me I'm lonesome as I can be I go out walking After midnight Out in the starlight Just hoping you may be somewhere Walking after midnight Searching for me I stopped to see a weeping willow Riding on his pillow Maybe he's crying for me And as the skies turned gloomy Night winds whisper to me I'm lonesome as I can be I go out walking After midnight Out in the starlight Just hoping you may be somewhere Walking after midnight Searching for me you