Hey, get out of the way! Beavis! Why aren't you in class? You stay the hell out of this, McFicker! I'm sick of you always telling me what to do! What? But I'm the principal! I'm supposed to tell you what to do! Yeah, you need to stop blaming others for your, um, for your denials, and, um, you're supposed to decide what you'd be or something. McDicker. Sputtles. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Hill Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Howell, and you're with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Brr. Brr. You're in pain. Yeah, I'm in pain and it's cold. And it's cold. Aren't you at your house? I am at my house. It got to 47 degrees this week. Wow. Yeah, not good. It's cold in Rochester. This is episode 174. Shit. How are we doing with this? 174. That's a lot of episodes. That's a lot of episodes. But we are not alone this week. We have a guest. It's not Zach. It's not Zach. We always say that, and it's Zach. Sorry, Zach. We have an actual guest. We have an actual guest. This is John Moore from Easy Pinball. We talked about his product once, and we got him on because I actually assembled my product finally. It is the Stern, the guy who's doing the old cabinets for Stern electronic pinball machines. Hey, John. Hey, how are you guys tonight? All righty. So, John, I'm going to ask the most basic question we ever have on this podcast. How did you get into pinball? Well, the first pinball machine I bought was in 1977, and I bought it with my paper route money. I was seven years old at the time, and it was a Midway Raceway. I still have it, too. Oh, wow. How many people can say that they still have their machine 40-some years later? I had mine for 25, I guess. That was about it, and I sold it off. Yep. And in the early 90s when everybody was dumping all the solid state ballets and sterns and stuff like that, I kind of fell in love with the old ballet titles and set out to acquire one of each of them. And believe it or not, this is one of the early 6800 processor, the 77 to 85 version ballets. And on January 1st, 2018, I completed my collection. I have one of each of them. Holy for holies. Yeah. It's a big garage. It takes a lot of room. That's a lot of dedication. And there's some good games in there, and there's some bad games in there. Man, you have some really good ones, and some of them that have great artwork and not so good playing. Yes. One that comes to mind? Silver Bowl Mania. Absolutely. Yeah. So how many games have you owned? Oh, gosh. Over the years, it's got to be well north of 300. Nice. That's what we like to hear. Wow, Bruce. He's got you on that one, I think. Well, yeah, we're about 300. I'm at 300 almost right now, too. Damn. Yeah, I know. That's scary. I don't have 300 currently. No, no. Just a little over 100 currently. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. I have about 25 right now currently. And, Ron, what do you have? 38? 30-something. Yeah, 30-something. So, John, during COVID, you posted on Pinside that you were building CERN electronics cabinets. Now, first, why CERN cabinets? Well, the CERN cabinets, the reason I chose them is kind of a self-serving reason and another reason is that you saw a lot of these reproduction parts were starting to come on the market here in early, you know, 18, 19, COVID, that kind of thing. And so Stargazer, Quicksilver, Sea Witch. And then you started to see on some of the sites that people were scratch building them. And I thought, you know, if you're going to have a brand new play field, back glass plastics, you can put in new displays, new electronics, get a new harness. Gosh, you should probably have a new cabinet to put that in. So I felt that that was kind of an unserved part of the market, and I wanted to give that a try. And for a self-serving reason, I and three other friends were building scratch built Quicksilvers anyway, so it kind of made sense to do it that way. And I got two of your cabinets, and they were the knock-down versions. Correct, correct. Part of the process with the Easy Pinball design is to take the original cabinet and have it look identical to the classic stern on the outside, but to minimize the parts count and use modern joinery, modern CNC machining techniques to down the parts count and then also to make it flat packable. so that you can take and put that all on a shipping pallet and ship it pretty much anywhere in the United States. Now, shipping costs have gone up a little bit, down a little bit, but it's certainly much cheaper than trying to sell to a ship in an assembled cabin. It was. It was pretty reasonable for me, and I have luckily a wood paint clear coat guy in my repertoire of things, which is his name is Vance. He finished assembling them a couple weeks ago, And I got them, and they look awesome. So very nice detail. He had, I think, maybe like one or two questions for you on a couple things. He said the quality was excellent, which I agree it was totally excellent. And the wood is heavy-duty, not crap wood, nice solid. Yeah, I use 13-ply imported plywood from Finland. And this is the same multi-ply plywood that you would see, like, on a John Greatwich play field. It's much, much higher density of plies per given density or thickness than you would see in the plywood that you buy at Home Depot or anything like that. Yeah, it's really impressive. And I got them. Now I just have to order the stencils. They're in my basement right now. And then we're going to set up a paint booth in, I think we're talking April in my house. We're going to set up a paint booth, and we're going to spray them right in my garage for the stencils for both, and then we'll be able to show the pictures. But I will be posting pictures from my cabinets from Vance building them on our Slamtail Podcast Facebook page so everyone can see what I have, even though you see my dirty garage also. But you'll see how nice they actually are and how impressive they are. And I've showed a couple of friends who own a lot of sterns, and they went, ooh, very cool. how do I get this? So that's why I said, let's get him on so he can tell the story behind the cabinets and everything else about it. And just, you know, you can get a general feel that it's not like, I don't want people to think like it's a scam or anything. It's not. I got these cabinets. We were, we talked for a while and then COVID came up and we were trying to do some stuff. And I was behind a month or two and then I contacted him and I was like, I'm ready. Sent you my money. I sent the check. Two weeks later, he sent me a tracking number. And a week later, I had them in my possession. And then a week later, they went to Vance. So what games did you get them for? I got mine for, well, Dragon Fist, and I got mine for the Shirt Silver, which is my Quicksilver, but it was, I actually got, John doesn't even know this, my Quicksilver is going to re-import from Australia. And it was painted silver, but green. And the nice thing about the Easy Pinball design is that it is generic for all of the solid-state sterns. So you can look at our website, easypinball.com, and see how the design works. But basically, if you have a chime game like Memory Lane or you have an early sound game like Meteor or something later, this cabinet will hold and accommodate all the different styles of sound boards, all the different speaker arrangements. I tried very desperately to make sure that it fits every single narrow-body sterns. Mm-hmm. Now you brought up a good point that I wanted to bring up to you, and you don't get asked this. Is there a possibility of a wide body eventually? Absolutely. In fact, one of the things that I'm going to be at Pinnagogo later this week, also at Pinball Expo at the end of October, one of the things I'm very interested to find from folks is what cabinet can I reproduce for them next. And if the majority of folks want to have a Flight 2000 cabinet or a widebody or a Classic Ballet, Classic Williams, Classic, you know, whatever it is, or a widebody, there's nothing here that we can't reproduce. It's all done precision CNC machinery, and it's all just programming of the CNC to do that. Nice. I definitely could use one for my Cheetah. No problem. Oh, it's terrible. Oh, it's boobard. So, Dragon Fist, are you going to try any kind of custom stencil with that? Nope. It's just going to stay stern? It's going to stay stern. It's going to be blue and white. It's going to stay stern. You know why? I like original. Know that. I'm the one that still uses incandescent bulbs. Yeah, he likes originals. That's why he has a new cabinet. So here's a good opportunity to put some actual artwork on the thing. No, because I have a new cabinet because the old cabinet is falling apart like yours was. Yeah, what do you mean was? It still is. I had to glue the bottom back in, and the pedestal is missing the whole front of it. So you can see all the wires going through. Yeah. In great condition. But, yeah, so I just wanted to get you on for that part, and plus actually introduce yourself. Now, you have 100 pins. What's your favorite, and what's your worst in your collection? So it's game you like, game you hate? Oh, well, that's not, well, usually that's not one you own, though. But in this case, he owns so many games, this is going to be difficult. It will be. Oh, gosh. You're putting me on the spot. I would have to say probably my favorite game of all time. It seemed to have followed me around as I moved from the Midwest to California was my Centaur. I really have a soft spot for Centaur. I like 8-Ball Deluxe. I really find that to be a great game. As far as my least favorite game from the Valley Run, gosh, I – Supersonic is the first one that comes to mind for me, but I'm sure that there's a lot of opinions on that. No, it's just a one-shot wonder. It's a one-flipper game. It's a one-flipper game. And it's an anti-Steve Ritchie. It's like left flipper only. Yes. Right. Oh, trust me. You're talking to two Bally Cern. You know, we're old solid staters, so we definitely, you know. We're old solid staters. We're just old. We're just old. Okay. But definitely. So you're going to be at, you said, Pinnagogo. which is coming up this week. We'll be probably putting this out probably Wednesday or Thursday, as Ron normally does. So you'll be there. And then you'll have cabinets there to look at and show? Yes, I'll have an assembled machine at Pinagogo, or an assembled cabinet, I should say, and then also some flat packs available for customers, along with a couple of the Quicksilver and Stargazer insert panels. One of the things I want to also kind of talk to people about is how easy this goes together, which is hence why I came up with the name Easy Pinball. The modern joinery puts everything together in perfect 90-degree corners. It has alignment pins, so you don't have to worry about one being up higher than the other. You can assemble this cabinet with a couple of hand tools, a tension strap, you know, an old pinball strap that you hold it in your truck with, and some glue. That's really what it goes together with, and we use Titebond No. 2, which any of you that are into cabinetry, it's available at every single big box hardware store. It's available everywhere. The thing goes together super easy. You can build the thing in your basement, in the floor of your garage in probably two or three hours, and really minimal tools, minimal expertise needed in woodworking. And how did your Quicksilver come out? I did Stargazer. Oh, Stargazer. Yeah, we are still in the process of building up the play field. So the cabinets are ready to go, but we're still putting together the play field. And then also you'll know what a Bally aficionado I am. I'm going to probably really irritate the diehard Stern collectors, but I'm building my Stargazer all with Bally mechanicals. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. All right, interview over. Yeah. No plastic pop bumpers? You can use the ones from 8-Ball Deluxe and the later ones. They fit right in. The whole thing about the Stearns is all the mechs are cheap, so they're great. That's why they're so good, because they're cheap. And fast. Right. And the cabinets have held up so well in the last 40 years. No, I agree with that. No, I agree with that. But, you know, I like the feel of the plastic pop-up rings. I really do. I think Bally is like the well-built economy car. The stern is like the sports car made of plastic that will explode if it hits anything. It's a kick car. Right? It's truly like a kick car, you know, to got. I think that's the best analogy I ever came up with for that. It's so true. So we got them on Game We Like, Game We Hate, and you're going to be at Expo, and you're going to be bringing out stuff for Expo, and Expo is a great show. I've sold there many, many years. So if you are going to Expo or Pinnagogo, go, this is your chance to get your cabinets made. Yep, and then I'll also have a supply of cabinets available to buy at both shows. So, yeah, like I say, you can also email me. It's easypinball at gmail.com. Like I say, everything I got for Easy Pinball, whether it be Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or YouTube, all of that, nobody had taken Easy Pinball, so I knew that was the right name for the company. Yes, it was. It was easy. Now I just need to get it all together. That's my motivation now. I'm so looking forward to seeing that first easy pinball cabinet come together and actually up and playable, whether you get it done first or I get it done first. I'm very excited to see what happens. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's a race. The race to the end. Please do Quicksilver just so the art looks a little better than just saying Stern on the side. That is definitely the first one because that Quicksilver cabinet I got from Australia. Love you, Ryan. sucks. Did a kangaroo, like, take a dump on it or something? Well, the color, you know, is just terrible on it. And just, it was pretty rickety. All the basics are there. That's the good thing about that game. But just, like, they put Gottlieb head brackets from the backside. Gottlieb, the two rails. Oh, yeah, across the back, yeah. Yeah, on his cabinet, like a Gottlieb. But it's really a stern. Why the hell did they do that? But, yeah, it's just an abused, poor cabinet. Like somebody painted the rails and the lockdown bar black. And the coin door, black. Why? But, again, John will be at Pinnagogo and Expo. Beat Ron, maybe. Ron's going to be going out there. Yeah, I'll be going. Talk to John and let him know what kind of cabinets you want to see in the future. You want to see stern wide-body cabinets. Let him know that. Just let him know what you want to see in the future. I just need to have enough people come together so it pencils out, and I'm happy to supply whatever that is. I've even been approached to do a wacky Konami video game cabinet, and I said, hey, I'll make any cabinet as long as it's something that, you know, pencils out. So you're going to hang out with us, John, and we're going to talk about topics of the week. Actually, three. We haven't been on in three weeks, Ron. Something like that, yeah. Yeah, a lot of things have gone on. So I'm going to start with something that John could have very well bought something from this auction if he was not that far away from it. He's not. The Museum of Pinball in Banning. They finished the second part of their auction, the second weekend. Yeah. And I have to ask you, John, did you buy anything from them? I did not. It was so priced out of my range, I was not able to land anything. But you were looking. You were like, hey, this might be a good chance. I'm close by. Yeah, what would you have bid on if the prices weren't so insane? I would have bought or bought. I would have been interested in the EM Evel Knievel, the EM Mata Hari. Also the Mata Hari with the plastic play field. Oh, yes. I have a soft spot in my collection for plastic play field games. I've got a few of them. So I always like to add another one if I could. But, alas, that was not to be. What would you have bid on, Bruce? if it wasn't absolutely insane. Split second, maybe a free fall. I definitely would have been interested in the 8-ball deluxe with the Alton America. That's the one I would have been interested in. Yeah, but oh, my God. Crack money still, not just little. I know somebody else with one of those. Oh, really? So we know where 2 and E10 are. There was more than 10 made, actually. Really? Okay, because we heard 10. There's probably, well, if you want to get into the nitty gritties of it, I actually own one, and I've done some research on it. By a serial number split that I can kind of establish, they made probably somewhere between 40 and 50 of them. And they were actually sent all to Aladdin's Castle, the ballet-owned and operated arcade chain back in the 80s, with the request that they went back to the factory. and I had a connection that worked for Bally at the time and you're probably right, probably 10 survived because he said that he saw almost all of them go in the dumpster. Oh, that hurts. That hurts. Thanks, Bally. Yeah, it was just like the blue display kiss. They made 13 of them and it's absolute known that they gave them away as Christmas presents at the holiday party at Bally and only three of them were claimed and the other ten went in the dumpster. No, I don't want that. Nope, nope, sorry. It doesn't fit my profile in my house. Sorry. How did they know? Forty years later, they could have sold them for $10,000. Little did they know. Well, you want to hear what the final total was? Oh, God. What, $5 million? Ready? So John Weeks' collection was worth $5,434,400. Yeesh. Wow. 18% of that is $978,192. So that would be for Captain's Auctions. Oh, God almighty. Oh, jeez. The hardest part is going to be getting those games all out of there through shippers. That is going to be the logistics nightmare from hell. Think about it. You know, you got maybe 200 to 300 or maybe 500 people going, hey, I'd like to pick up my game. Hey, I'm going to schedule a shipper. and then you've got to track it and make sure the right game goes to the right person. Ugh, scary. They've got to get them out of there and get ready for the pot factory. Yes. Right? Well, and I wanted to bring one little thing up because I mentioned this the last episode. We said how Replay FX must have been, the Replay Foundation must have been kicking themselves. They could have just auctioned all their stuff off and made way more money. Well, they actually couldn't do that. Yes, they couldn't. Got a little more info on that because that would have went against their, what is it called, mission statement. Yes. To just try to maximize profits, basically, in selling all that. Because their games were actually owned by the Replay Foundation. The Museum of Pinball games were not, like we've said in the past, the Museum of Pinball had almost no actual assets. The building and all the games are owned by John Weeks. So that's why he was able to sell them in this fashion. Now, I have a question for you, John. Did you know? Yes. Okay. Okay. And did you volunteer time there and your help? I did not. I did a little bit of – I did – John did buy a couple of machines from me over the years. Okay. And, you know, I did know John. We hung out in the same – back when the Orange County Pinball League was in effect and the like, I certainly have known him for a number of years. But the last four or five years or so when the Museum of Pinball has been open, I really hadn't had much involvement with that. Part of it was personally just because I had started a family and just wasn't able to have that kind of free time to be able to do that anymore. Gotcha. I was just wondering, you know. And he's going to be at Expo. Do you think he's going to drive up like in a new Porsche? Big limo. Or the Homer. Remember the Homer? Yeah, the Homer, yeah. He's going to jump out. I get no respect at all. Come on, what the hell? Okay, so we're doing Paddy Shack, yeah. Yes, we are. I would be interested. It would be nice to ask him in the seminar, what was the original plan? Say you were able to get that other building. Were you actually going to have that thing open all the time? Like, where were you going to get all the techs from? Yeah. Because it worked full time in that place. That was interesting. That was a lot of folks that donated a lot of time and a lot of effort to getting that stuff up and running. They did. I was called into action one of the times I was there. It's like, oh, can you help me with this? And then we both worked on a game with somebody there. I don't know who it was. Yeah, I got pulled in one time with an older Bally, and we were working on it. And then you came over for three minutes, Ron, just to peek in and be like, oh, okay. Have fun with that. Yeah, I'm not here to fix games, damn it. Yeah, I know. So, yeah, so that's another lost. Yep, another lost location. Yeah. So next I have Godzilla. Godzilla from Stern Pinball. Stern Pinball. We got to see gameplay. Pro and premium. Oh, yeah, premium and pro, since it's taken so long to do this episode. We've got to see both. Yes. What do you think? Impressions? Oh, quite. John, did you look at it and see both? I have not seen it yet, so I'm unfortunately not much help to you. Fail. Fail. You need to get on YouTube right now and watch the six. Well, you first, Bruce. You like it. I like it. I think the pro is a little too strict for my tastes. Okay. I do like the raising of the building. You like the Doctor Who building? I like the Doctor Who building. I like the Papa, you know, throwback from it also with the carpet. Yeah, the carpeting. I don't know if you've seen this, John, but they have a building in Godzilla that goes up and down. And in the building there's carpeting, and it's a copy of the carpeting that was at the Papa facility in Pittsburgh. That's so cheap. So I thought that was pretty cool. And the building where the balls come from is the building that was across the street. Oh, is it the warehouse? Yes. That stupid dilapidated warehouse they couldn't tear down? Yeah, they couldn't get it down. Yeah. Cool. Took up like 100 party spaces alone, so yes. I like it. I love the multiball with the music from Blue Oyster Cult. Oh, you mean the one I said that they should put in the game? Yes. You're welcome, Stern. I think the gameplay is really good. I like the magnet for the side. I like the toys. I think it's going to be another home run for Stern. I just wish they would get rid of their back orders. Yeah, they keep coming out with the new games and they're still behind with games A lot I think some people are getting a little cranky about this Do you think people maybe cancel Mandalorian orders once they saw Godzilla and said, eh, we'll get this I would Well, we know you love Mandalorian Oh, I love it Honestly, the best designer right now at Stern is definitely Keith He's just knocking it out of the park The only thing that's going to hurt this game, as I said, is the title, Godzilla. Because, you know, if you walk up to a key scheme, Iron Maiden, great game. Most people that walk into an arcade or to a pinball hall are going to look and say, ooh, there's a Monopoly. Ooh, there's, you know, even Stargate. People will probably flock more to a godly Stargate than to Iron Maiden. But the problem is, Iron Maiden's a super awesome game. that's a problem? Well, it is a problem, because for a theme, for an operator trying to make his money back on the game... Godzilla is not as big a theme as, say, Mandalorian is. Because Mandalorian is basically Star Wars, so... Exactly. So, if you were an operator, you'd keep your Mandalorian, or if you're a collector, you might have dumped your Mandalorian and tried to get on. And another thing I was really surprised about is 1,000 LEs, and they sold out like that. Yes, they did, at an increased price, which will be our next topic. But, yes. Yeah. What did you think? Ah, okay. Uh-oh. Now, this is the Godzilla guy who's been begging for this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I might as well. The artwork is interesting. Yeah, it wasn't happening. When I first saw the artwork, I thought Avengers. That's weird. It's like in that style, which I didn't really see that being the style for Godzilla. and he's green. Yeah. I think they used some of the promotional material from the day and he was green in that and that's what they went with. I've never seen Godzilla as being green. But other than that, I mean, everything that should be in the artwork is in there, all the monsters. As far as the rest of it, it's like if I was in the meeting where they were coming up with all the stuff for the game and they just took all my ideas. Like what I've been saying, I have Blue Oyster Cult in it. And I think, well, when would you use that? Well, I would think maybe the start of whatever the main multiball is goes off. Boom, there it is. I said it has to have all the other monsters. Well, it needs to be the right Godzilla. It needs to be the one that everybody remembers, the old Godzilla, and that's what it is. Then it needs to have all the other monsters in it. Yes, it does. And it needs to have monster battles. Boom, it's all in there. I mean, I know I usually say I have to play it first. I do have to play it first. but unless this thing plays like complete ass, like completely different than it did in every stream I've seen of it, I will be getting a Godzilla. I'll just say it right now. And it will be a premium, I guarantee. Oh, 100% it will be a premium. Yeah, so were you not impressed with the Pro like I was? The Pro, the magnet looked like it was used way more on the Pro. Yes, I agree with that. Because in the Pro, in the premium when you hit the building, when the lock is lit, it actually goes in and a buck throws it into the top of the building. So it's a physical ball lock. On the Pro, since the building doesn't move, you hit it into the building, and it just, like, goes around the left side and comes out, and the magnet just grabs it and then just swings it, and that's your lock. So the magnet's used a lot more. It's pretty cool. I really like that. I did. That's a new thing, that type of magnet. And I love the way it has the one, what's it, destruction jackpot where the magnet holds it, and it builds up the music, and then it releases it right in front of your flipper. But it's not like a super easy shot, but it is makeable. It has a repeatable loop shot. Boom, you got me right there. I was in league today. I played Iron Maiden and just started looping over and over just because I like to, even though it's not really giving me a lot of points. It looks absolutely awesome. And you're going to get the Insider Connected or whatever it's called? The Insider Connected thing that I will never activate. Wow. I can tell you, I watch the stream, and every time you've got, what do you call it, an award? That's not what they're calling them. What are they calling them? Like when you complete, like, you know, you start this, and you get this award or goal, whatever. There's another name they use for it. But it makes this sound every time you do it, which kind of goes over the top of the regular game sounds, and that's just, nope, that doesn't work for me. I'm that anal. That would bother me. because the sounds on this game, you know, I know I've gotten on Jurassic Park for the call-outs and stuff in that game. This is the opposite. The guy that was in the trailer, at first I really wasn't into that, and then when I actually saw it and heard it in the game, it's perfect. It's perfect. The music, it has the original theme music in there from Godzilla. It has the Blue Oyster Cult song, but it also has a lot of up-tempo rock numbers in there. It is awesome. It does have the guy, it has the one guy from Jurassic Park. We've lost another truck. We only have one truck left, that guy. He's in the game. Now, I have the biggest question for you of all. Yes, yes, sir. Are you going to have your game in Japanese or in English? Well, you could pick either. I would do English just because the Japanese, when they picked it, there was no subtitles. That's my fault. Yeah, they need to have subtitles if they want it. Yeah, they want to go all out. they need subtitles to really give it that authentic feel. That would be the icing on the cake. Yeah, maybe a future update. Who knows? Yes. You would think that wouldn't be too hard. No, no, no. I don't think so. Or maybe it is because they've got to figure out a place on the screen for the subtitles. So maybe it would be a pain. It would be a little bit nice underneath. Like it wouldn't be like a regular TV. So if you wanted to buy one of these new Godzillas, you're going to pay more. But why? Which goes into our next topic. John are you familiar with the Stern price increase I heard of it but I don know exactly what it was in terms of how much I tell you Yeah hold on dear I tell you So starting with Godzilla prices have gone up for pros And all pros will go up after the first of the year to that $700. Yeah, all other pros will go up $300 now, and then the remaining $400 at the first of the year. Yes. Wow. Yeah, so unless you're going to say part of that is the Insider Connected, but only a small part of that. I can tell you firsthand, the price of the supplies is going up. It's tough. Oh, yeah. What, 10%? Well, now your premium. I know, even worse. Your premium is now $1,200 higher. Your LE is $1,300 higher. now Ron this goes now let's say if you didn't own Deadpool and there's a run coming up this is where I see the problem with having this humongous backorder because lately Stern had been pushing off their original orders to later in the year or maybe even next year but wait a sec I ordered my game maybe two months ago or three months ago maybe a Deadpool or maybe you ordered an Elvira which already went up and you had to cancel and reorder. Is that going to go up again? Is that going to go up again? And then what if they push it back until January? I get nicked again for something else? That kind of thing. It's not my fault that there's a supply and demand issue. If I ordered it beforehand, should I get hit after the January 1st hit? That's what I'm kind of talking about. Why should I if I ordered it say now? And they said, oh yeah, you'll have it by December 15th. And then, like, December 1st, they go, oh, there's a delay with parts. It's not hanging out until January 10th. And, oh, by the way, you owe us $400 more because it goes now with the edict of if after January 1st. That would suck, too. Yeah, it does. It sucks. But, I mean, prices are going up across the board, all over on everything. Inflation is key. Oh, it's free money. All this money floating around. They're spending it all over the place at auctions. Oh, God. Oh, God. Like I said, I picture some oil tycoon like in Saudi Arabia was getting all those games for his palace or something. I want that Rocky that's painted white for some reason that has no sidearm. Now, is this going to stop you from buying a game, the increase, Ron? In the case of Godzilla, no. But I can see it more towards the operator. It's going to hurt the operator. $700 in the operator, yes. It's a big hit. That's a lot of quarters. 700 games. Let's say it that way. It's $700. And aren't they the cheapest anymore? That was always the thing. Like, they still had the cheapest. Like, how about if you wanted Hot Wheels? No, that's the cheapest. Even with their little increase. Their surcharge thing, yeah. Yeah. That's right. David Fick, the American dream of American pinball. We now have the most affordable machine. Yes. You know, and it's built, it's really well built. It had really no issues with hot wheels. Poor John is there like, why did I just hear Dusty Rhodes? Why did I have to do anything with pinball? What the fuck did that all come out, you know? See, David Fick's of American pinball. We create, everyone has to be a wrestler. So he's Dusty Rhodes because he's the American dream of American pinball. It just makes sense. Robert Mueller was Hulk Hogan, but, you know. Now he's Hollywood Hogan. Now he's Hollywood Hogan because he went full heel and took everyone's money, and now he's joined the NWO and stuff. Yes. But, yeah. So for the operator, I think it's going to hurt. $700 is nothing to sneeze at. No. Because you're splitting it. So it's got to be at least 1,400 games if you're selling it a dollar apiece because some operators do 50-50 splits. So it takes you 1,400 more games just to make that up. Is connected insider going to make that much more money for you? No, not really. Yeah, you mean insider connected? You're going to say it wrong every time, and it's going to be great. Every time now, just to piss people off, yes. But, yeah, insider connected. It's not going to make that much money for you. And my question about Insider Connected is, is it going to cost anything? Are you going to hit up operators again with more money to use this when you're already charging them more for the game, which is supposedly not just the increased cost of materials, but it's supposed to pay for this new thing? Yeah. I hope they don't make them pay anything else. I think they're going to. You really think they're going to hit operators to have this on? Well, not operators. They're going to include it in every game. So this is a $300 increase. But I think it's going to be on the app side that they're going to increase it. They're going to make the app eventually $1.99 a month. Or if you get a lifetime subscription, maybe it's $29.99. And then maybe if you scroll in and you scan your thing, maybe you could get an extra mode in the game. That's where I see this coming to. Yeah, DLC. Yes. Oh, it definitely will be DLC eventually. There will definitely be stuff that you have to be a member to see. Yes. There's no way that doesn't happen. Yeah, and I just don't know if it's the right way. See, I'm more open-minded. I don't do any of that stuff because I'm old and I don't play new games. But I watch a ton of Twitch. I watch a ton of modern gaming, and that's a big deal. Oh, it is. Achievements, unlocking things. It's a big deal, and it's about time they did that in pinball. So, actually, I like the direction, but for me personally, I would never use it. Like, for the games in my house, I don't really care. Yeah. And that's another thing, you know, you get these achievements. You know, I know that they're going to know some of them are on location, but some are not going to be. What makes it so, like, wait a second, I'm the repair guy at my location. I have it inside connected, and I go through all my things, and I, hey, look, I can get all the things right like this, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and just pull the glass off and play. You're talking about the extra check mark if it's a game on location that's verified. Yep. Yes, people at a location could still cheat, yes. Exactly. So what's the difference? There's not a 100% way you can't cheat. It's not 100%, but it's way easier to cheat if you're home. Of course. I mean, we know John takes the glass off his centaur all the time and starts multiball over and over and over. He just hits those four OR buttons, O-R-B, bang, there comes a ball popping out. Destroy centaur. That's one of my earliest X-Bowl memories. I think it was Vince, the corn. He brought in a centaur with, like, an obscenely overpowered sound system, and my God, you could hear the thing in the, you could hear it two rooms over. Oh, was it? Like in the late 90s? Early 2000s. Early 2000s. Yeah. And I was like, I need this game. Just hearing it like this is the most incredible sounding game ever. Destroy Centaur. All right. So that's the current price increase. And we're not happy about that. But we understand that some things have gone up in value. We understand here at Slant Hill Podcast because that's what we're all about is understanding. But, like, hey, you know, if I want that next game, what do I get? Do I get my Godzilla? Or do I go to an old game that's coming back out? Like, oh, Willy Wonka. Yes, Willy Wonka. They're going to make more Willy Wonkas, more LEs. So if you've been waiting for your Guns N' Roses for almost a year. If you've been waiting for your Willy Wonka that was originally $9,500, the LE, I believe, you can now get a new batch of them for only $11,000. Jesus fucking Christ. Wow. Yeah. $500 more than Guns N' Roses. Yes. And the funny thing is, if you've been waiting for your Guns N' Roses, why didn't they put the time into the second line to get all those back orders out of the Guns N' Roses? They're having the same problems as everyone else. They can't get workers, man. Oh, bullshit. But they can – wait a sec. They have guaranteed the Willy Wonkers are going to be gone and made by the end of December. So guess what? I guess Cousin Rose is just going to be delayed further, huh? Yeah, exactly. So you just pissed off more people holding their money longer for no reason. I do like Willy Wonka, though. I know I'm in a minority, but – There's definitely a minority. I love the way that thing shoots. Oh, it shoots great. Just they needed more animation in the back and everything like that. It's just – assets, huh? Yeah. But now you have extra goals now in this now, too, with Willy Wonka. Because they couldn't be one-upped. They now have their own goals. Yeah, well, they have score a bit. Yes, they do. So they're going to have quests just like PinQuest did. Poor PinQuest. They were doing this first, and now everyone else is going to be doing it, like for the other manufacturers. They're going to be doing the quests, because Stern is going to be doing the quest, so they had to add it. So they're going to be doing the same stuff. It's weird that they're doing it with Wonka first. You would think, like, Guns N' Roses would be the one they would do it with first. Well, I think Willy Wonka was planned to get the second line running, so I think that was their big, hey, we need to get this done, maybe boost fails. They score-bitted all the games except the worst game of all. Pirates and the best game dialed in, yes. No, no, it's not. What do you think of Dialed In, John? It's quite the game. I tell you, I've had the opportunity to play it a couple of times, and it's that. You're like classic Lawler. I can't wait to own one of these. Dead silence. Okay. I love it. All right. I think he disconnected. That's got to be the reason. Yeah, I think they, for a score of it, I think they just went by how many they sold. Yeah. Like, the least amount that they sold were the ones they did. Like, the two least ever they ever did was Pirates and Dialed In, so they're going to be last. I guarantee you Dialed In will be the last one they do. And now, does this bring up another thing where they could run another game after this? Like, Pirates people are bringing up, hey, we need Pirates back, you know? They should for what it's sold for at the auction. I know, but it's just, you know, I don't see one person from J.J. Jackson said, well, one step at a time, let's get these out first. But I don't see that coming. What about Toy Story? Who knows? It's been over a year. I heard the same rumor in a couple places that one of the delays with Toy Story is when they got the rights, it was similar to Pirates in that they got next to nothing, and they didn't want to repeat that, so they were trying to get more stuff for it. I don't know if that's true. I hope not, because that would be a shit show happening. What, them getting more stuff for it? No, getting less, keeping less, and still making a game. That would really suck for all these people who have been jonesing for it. Well, Wonka ain't the only new game coming out. Well, it's not a new game, but more copies of an older game. We have some more new games. Yay. You sound really excited, Bruce. Come on. Just pretend you're excited. I can't. You can't? You can't get excited over Queen? No, because it's not going to be for at least another year. Okay. But are you happy at least that there is going to be a Queen? Yes. I love the band. I just don't trust Pinball Brothers' quality. Yes, Pinball Brothers. Hey, what the door is? It's funny. We're not Italian. Okay. Okay, so the story on this one is this was going to be, Queen was going to be the game after Alien. They got the rights for it. As we found out, the rights they got for it were for live versions only. Which is fine. Which is fine. In this case. Normally, I would say that's not fine, but with Queen, that's fine. So when it was bought out by Pinball Brothers, went to them, And I know at some point Deep Root actually tried to buy the license off of Pinball Brothers, and they declined. So what happened is this past week at some, what is it, Queen store? Pop-Up Queen store. A Pop-Up Queen store is going to be there to the end of this year. It's like all Queen stuff. And in there, they have a non-working, non-playable Queen prototype. With the flyer on top. You grab a flyer. And Pinball Brothers says, yes, it will be coming out next year. And you can see the play field. It was, I guess, Dave Sanders and Barry Ousler and maybe others designed this. It was originally designed as a wide body, and it has been shrunk to a narrow body now. It has an upper play field with Brian May's guitar. And a lock area in the back also. It has drop targets blocking various shots. You hit the target down and then go through the shot. I do. Yeah. The artwork has been quite polarizing. Yeah. The back glass is hideous. Well, it's hand-drawn. It is hand-drawn. It's not Photoshopped. Have you seen any of the Queen pinball, John? I'm looking at Pinball Brothers' website, and I cannot even find it on the website. Go to pinballnews.com. Yes. they have a lot of screen shots, a lot of play field shots. Because Martin, he lives in Robert Englunds. I think he went there himself and took all these pictures. High-quality pictures of this thing, especially that you can get a nice high-res picture of the play field. I like the machine. It looks like the shots and everything. I like the kick-up through the ramp. It's almost like a scared stiff kick-up through the ramp. Yeah, I don't know what they did with John Deacon's hair. Oh, my God. I mean, the other ones, they look like themselves except poor John. He's got this poofy hair. He looks like Bob Ross. I'm pulling it up. You're absolutely right. He looks like Bob Ross. The interesting thing is, you can tell this is made in Europe. You know how? They don't care about certain things that would never fly here. If you look in the one spinner lane, they got a fat bottom girl there on a bike. Completely naked. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. And that's from a promo picture. These are all just hand-drawn copies of various artwork or pictures, photographs. And, yeah, that was the one that was in the, I think that was Fat Bottom Girls bicycle race. There was a video of a bicycle race, and they had all these basically nude women on bicycles, and they shoot them from behind. Yes. And I'm looking at that. That caught my eye. It's just like, whoa. Okay, you can tell this was made in Europe. Were you excited about it? I would have rather seen Stern do it. I mean, I knew Pinball Brothers had the license. Yeah. So I wasn't surprised to see it. Like when I first saw the post on it, I looked at it, and the first thing I looked for was the speaker panel to see if I could see where it said Pinball Brothers on it, and I saw it. Like, yep, okay. That's it. And then they've seen the crappy holes through the back glass. Yes, in there. The lock. The lock that's actually in the Translight. Don't you love that? I know. Stupid. It's as shitty as it looks. Trust me. I've seen it in person. Hey, what you talking about? We make a lock. We cut the hole and we put the lock in and we're good. Don't put it in the cabinet where it's been for decades. We're going to put it right in the glass. Yeah. Their facilities are in Italy, hence Bruce's very offensive Italian. I'm good at that. Yeah. And also the two-slot coin door. It says 25 cents on it, so you know this thing is a total mock-up. And I'm looking, you know, it looks like Brian May. It looks like Roger Taylor. It looks like Freddie Mercury. And then, like, John Deacon, what the hell happened to your hair? He looks like Yahoo Serious. He looks like he put his finger in an electric socket. Electric socket. Thank you. I said the same thing. And I've never seen him smile like that either. He usually was blank-faced. That was his whole gimmick. He was your prototype, like, in-the-background bass player. Stone. Very stone-faced. I'm going to do my thing. Yet he wrote, you're my best friend, another one bites the dust, a kind of magic, I want to break free. So when he did write songs, they were pretty damn good. Yes, they were. But I think it looks pretty good. I'd be interested if they get their quality better, which I'm going to find out how good their quality has gotten since Zach's gotten his aliens, since another one of our friends is getting his alien. It's another batch. Another batch. so that we'll get to see the improved quality. Hopefully. Because the first two, I know who won them. Well, I'm excited. I mean, it is... It is a new bit of a pinball machine. Yeah. It looks good. It's an upper play field in it. The upper play field, the flipper bat up there looks like a Williams flipper bat. Like, it literally has the Williams logo on there. So they might want to, you know, kind of get their own flipper bats going there. Or blank. I like the guitar shape, though. That's kind of a cool idea. It is a cool idea. I actually liked it. Yep, and that's the iconic Brian May red guitar, Big Red. Yep, Big Red. If their quality gets better, hey, you never know. I might be interested. Right now? No. But that's not the only Pinball Brothers news. Oh, yes. Pinball Brothers also announced, and we knew this was coming because this was announced when Alien came out, that eventually there was going to be an LE version of Alien. No, no, no, no, no. Excuse me. Repraise. Well, no, no. Originally it was going to be LE. But now that it's out, of course, they couldn't call it LE because they needed to create another term. It's the LV, Limited Version, because we can't call it LE. You know, I know we bust on these companies for each using their own terminology, but that's nothing new. How many different names for pop-upers are there? You had Thumper Bumpers, Pop Bumpers. If you were Williams, they were Jet Bumpers. Jet Bumpers. Yeah. You can't agree on one topic or one name. So, I mean, you got JJP, it's the collector's edition. Stern, it's the limited edition. What is it at Spooky? What is it called? It's not the bloodsucker's edition anymore. Cash! Cash Grab edition? Okay. And at Pinball Brothers, it's the LV edition. Yeah. It just burns my ears. like melting my brain. And what comes with the LV version? Let me do a marketing voice. To a long-awaited limited version of Alien, take the plunge into the alien world, an experience now enhanced by limited artwork, custom-cut Xenohead side armor, and lit inner side blades and backboard. Fight through the legendary movie scenes with rotating interactive beacons adding to the experience. Okay. How much more? I don't know. How much is it? I don't know. I think somebody was saying. It was like 8,000 something. I think it was. Wait a minute. Fight through the legendary movies scenes. Yeah, I know. The English is, it's movies scenes. I would think it would be apostrophe S. Hey, you don't worry about all my English. Okay, someone will correct me that it's not apostrophe S there, but it doesn't look right. Okay. Website says $85.95 for the standard version, SV, and $10,695 for the limited version, LV. $2,000. The beacons are very small. Yes, they are. They're very itty-bitty. The artwork's much better in the head. Yes, I agree. The artwork is much better. That is much better. Yes. But other than that, no, no, no, no. Actually, have you ever played Alien, John? I have not had the chance to. No, I have not. You have not had the chance to watch the xenomorph head fail 85% of the time? I am so sorry. I have not watched it fail. That's the sound it makes, but only when you turn the game on. It makes a horrific grinding noise when it comes out and tests, but during the game it doesn't make that noise. It's nice and quiet. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. Oh, man. But, again, I like Alien. It's one of those. I play the game, and it's like, damn, I wish this was made by someone else or constructed better. It's just, eh. Yeah. Strikeout. Well, it won't be. I think they'll sell. Just to say what they're limited to. 1,000 units. I don't think they're going to sell 1,000 units. I think they're in a fantasy world there. I think I'll take that one zero away from the backside, and you're good to go. Oh, you think it's 100 units? That's it? Yeah. Okay. $2,000 for that added stuff? No way. Okay. No effing way. Okay. If you do, you're stupid. Congratulations. Wow. Okay. All right. But that's not the only game. We got more. We got more? What do we got, Bruce? What did Chicago Gaming announce this week? Oh, okay. Well, it's not really new. We all knew it was coming out because they already announced it. Yeah, well, we haven't seen any information except for something new this week. Do you like Cactus Canyon, John? Yeah. Would you like to play a new version of it? Sure. What the heck? So you're going to get a chance. I don't know when, because the press release was somewhat confusing, which I will go into. But there was a press release that came out from the Chicago Gaming Company, CGC, announcing that Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharpe have been contracted to develop new and enhanced software for Cactus Canyon Remake. And then $1 from the sale will go to the IPA. The IPA. Oh, God. Well, there's a few things that I'm confused. Maybe they'll have a decent match sequence. Oh, yeah, because it doesn't have, like, no music or anything. It's just like, yeah. Well, here's a few issues. I'm really into timelines and stuff. When things don't make sense, I kind of get confused. What is it, a month ago at some pinball show, they announced this was the upcoming game. Six weeks ago from this weekend, yes. Which surprised absolutely no one because everyone knew it was the next game anyway. Now, there they said it was going to have new software, software by Joe Shover, who also works for American Pinball. So it's just like, okay, there's your new software. Then this comes out. Does that mean this is in addition to stuff Joe Shover did, or are they just shit canning everything he did? Is it already done? And when I say that, because the first sentence makes it sound like this is what it says. Chicago Gaming Company is pleased to announce that Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharpe have been contracted to develop new and enhanced software for Texas Canyon Remake. The way that's worded, how would you take that? Like, they're already done with it? They're working on it? Or they've literally just been hired to do it? How would you take that statement? I take it two ways. I think they are. Well, what I have, the biggest question is, is it going to be the original code and then you can switch it to the enhanced code? That wasn't my question. That wasn't my question. From that statement, what do you think? I think they are making an enhance code. That wasn't my question. I'll try, John. How would you take that paragraph? Did they just hire them to do this? Have they been working on it already? How is that worded to you? From my take on it, they're working on it already, or it's already done. Really? Even the way it says have been contracted. Well, have been means it's passed. Yeah, they have been going back, which assumes that they've been working on it. It's not like we just hired. It would say if it was hired. Here, we just hired, you know, Lyman Sheets and Josh. Well, a few paragraphs down, it says, We are pleased to be working with Lyman and Josh on this project. Their knowledge, enthusiasm, and excitement has been instrumental in taking this game to a level beyond our expectations. So that tells me, yes, they are either done or currently working on it. Yes. So, Bruce, Lyman Sheets. Okay. Josh Sharpe. What the hell is he doing? No, no, no. This is very simple. This is so simple. Lyman Sheets. Is George Michael. And Josh is the other guy from Wham. He's the other one from Wham. Wham. The reason I say this is because everything I've heard and been told by people in the know is, Lyman does Lyman. He works alone. He does his own thing. You get the full Lyman experience. It's all Lyman. So it's just weird. I have two theories behind this. Okay, what's your theories? One, Lyman's working on it, and Josh is the coffee boy. Okay. And he likes two creams and a couple sugars. That's how he likes his coffee. So Josh, don't fuck that up. The second thing is, maybe he is, I don't know, maybe a consultant. You know, Josh has a pretty good pulse with games, and his father does also. Playtester. Yeah. He's playtesting for the less skilled players. Because he is the second best player. There you go. We figured it out. In this family. Lyman's too good. Yes, Lyman's way too good. Lyman is a world champion, don't forget. I don't know if you touched on this, but it says here that from Pinball News, it's saying that the code is now finished. Oh, okay. This just in. This is turning to Cactus Canyon Remake. Ryan said Chicago Gaming has worked with some of the original Bally Williams design team to add additional features, which will make it more like the game and the original team wanted it to be. The code is now finished, he said. The Playfield toys have been upgraded, and some of the decal artwork has been given a more complete look, Ryan said. although they never touch the original playfield artwork. Can we have John on all the time? He researches better than we do. Well, we suck. We suck. It's the trifecta. There's always safety in numbers. That's true. You can have me on any time. I love this. Well, let's see. The other thing that I have heard in multiple places, and I will say this is just a rumor, I have heard that Lyman is actually working for Walt Rills. Yes. which then that would make a lot more sense if Josh was on the front. For those who don't know, Josh is the CFO at Raw Thrills. So, I mean, he's contracted to do this. There's no way he would ever leave Raw Thrills. He's a freaking executive. I think he's been there for like 10, 15 years. Yeah, he's been there for a while. He just wants his dollar. He just wants his dollar. He wants his dollar. Give me your dollars. He's having linemen put a special code thing in that just gives a dollar to IFPA for every game played. Yep. I mean, I'm excited. I know there's probably people listening to us right now saying, hey, you said he wasn't a CGC. I didn't think he was. I thought he. Well, technically, he's contracted to do this. Yeah, he can go anywhere after this. Well, maybe he could work for CERN again. Who knows? Hey, you come work with us, Lyman. We fix everything. He's going to come to Pinball Brothers? No, he's not Italian. Hey. Yes, but the thing is, he just threw me totally off there with your stupid Italian stuff. I totally forgot what I was going to say now. Crash and burn. Crash and burn. I'm excited. I'm excited. The thing I'll mention is Lyman this month is going to be on an interview on the Super Awesome Pinball Show, where supposedly a lot of this is going to get cleared up, like what he's been doing and all that. So there you go. Recording this Saturday, actually. I have the inside information on that. Wow. You are such an insider. So I can check that off. So Cactus Canyon. So you're going to buy one now, right? No, but I always liked it. I liked it more than most because I'm a sucker for the old Western themes and stuff, and it's got freaking guns on it. Come on. Here's your bounty. Yeah, I always, yeah. Here's your bounty. The lock is lit. and Fava! Everyone knows that. All the parts. All the different parts. It says that they have over 850 playfields currently ready to start assembly, so I think that they're planning for it to be a hit. Yeah, got that right, Pilgrim. But we still don't know pricing. Uh, no. Now, hold on. I am really scared for this pricing. Yeah, now that Lyman is involved, This makes it a little different. The pricing's increased probably, I'm thinking $1,000. Easy. I would agree. Easy. Now, is Lyman doing this just to keep their streak up? Because think about the games they've done. Medieval Madness, Lyman Game. AFM, Lyman Game. Monster Bash, Lyman Game. Wait a minute. Is this all of them? Yeah, this is like, so now the one that wasn't a Lyman Game will become a Lyman Game. Yes. That should be their thing CGC all linemen all the time Then A that means good luck for you then in the future Demoman I like Demoman the way it is. There's nothing wrong with Demoman. I'm thinking more like Champion Pub, the lineman edition or something. No, we can find out about the three seashells finally. The three seashells? Yes, we can finally realize what they are. All right. I have a little game I want to play. And this is good because we have John on. Okay. This is very easy. It's a guessing game. I want to do this because when Godzilla was first shown, everyone always says the same thing. When they see a key game, it's like, he's got to have a higher bill of materials than everyone else. There's so much more on his game. There's so much more on his game. There's so many more. And with Godzilla, there's so many more cool mechs now. He actually has a game of cool mechs, et cetera, et cetera. So I wanted to do a game where I'm going to give you two games, and you have to guess which game has more mechs. Very simple. And these are all more recent games. And you're going to distinguish between LE, premium, and product? Yep. Okay, so we're on the same page. I'm going to let you know what a mech is. This is what we define as a mech here. A mech is basically, there is a page in the CERN manuals where it's got the drivers. Basically, anything that a transistor is firing, I'm going to consider those mechs. Except for a knocker. We'll exclude knockers. We'll exclude the shaker motor. We'll exclude the coin counter that no one ever uses that's just used for mods, like on every stern. We will also exclude two coils that are used in every game, which is the trough kicker and the auto launcher. Those are not part of it. So what we are including are clippers, pop-uppers, ejects, anything that fires a coil, magnets, and motors. So do we got that? I'm all good with this. Okay. Are you good with this, John? Yep. Yep. Okay. Okay. You ready? Deadpool and TNA, which has more mechs. These numbers are courtesy of our own Zach. Okay, Bruce. Which one? I'm counting. I'm all in. I'm counting. Oh, wait. He's cheating. He's counting. I'm actually counting in my head. Oh. That's what I'm doing. I have nothing. No. I'm saying TNA. I said TNA as well. Okay. You're correct. TNA has 12. Deadpool has 11. Most people will be like, what? You're forgetting two pieces that are very important in that game that would make it actually what it is, is the gates up top. the gates up top. The gates up top. That loud ball that you play around with. Yeah, they're included. They're included. I don't think. That's what people don't remember about that game. Well, it has the individual drops, which each of them is its own coil. Yes, right. But also you have two kickers up top. You have three flippers, which is the same as Deadpool. By the way, that was Deadpool Pro. I shouldn't. These are all pros, unless I say anything else. Mandalorian. Monsters. Pros, right? Mm-hmm. I'm going to try Munsters. I'm going to go Munsters also. All right. You're going against the grain on purpose because you're going to get them all right. No. Munsters is correct. I won't give the totals yet because I'm going to say Munsters or Black Knight Sword of Rage. Pro. Pro. Okay. I'm going to go with Munsters. I think it's the Munsters. Nope. Black Knight Sword of Rage is 14. Monsters has 13. Mandalorian has 10. Hmm. Okay, here's one. I'm going to give you a good one here because everyone says that this game is completely barren. Godzilla or Led Zeppelin? Pros now. Led Zeppelin has more. John? I'll go with Zepp as well. Correct. It has way more. Godzilla has the least amount of mechs. Well, we define it as mechs of any game in at least the last five years. All it has is a magnet? If you remove the flippers and the slings, it literally has a magnet, one pop bumper, and the scoop. That's it. That's it? That's it. Raise the price, reduce the mechs. Yes. Well, for those who He has a higher bill of materials Depending on how much stuff above the play field Yes, he's got a lot more of that stuff there But actual things that move That they fire It's significantly less And here's the sad part about Mandalorian Having 10 while Sword of Rage has 14 You still get the crappy Plastic rams on the pro Alright, here's another Good one for you Guns and Roses This would be the LE We'll do the Ellie on this one. Guns N' Roses, Ellie, versus Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, premium. Guns N' Roses. I think the turtles. Guns N' Roses. Okay, we got Guns N' Roses and a turtles. Answer, turtles. 17. Guns N' Roses, 16. Wow, I thought those lights in the back would have helped. We'll end it with, I want to get a good one here to end this with. Some of the ones that are interesting, I also have the remakes here. MMR, Attack from Mars those are interesting because Attack from Mars remake 17 mechs Medieval Madness 15 yep they got a ton Black Knight Sword of Rage premium or Godzilla premium still Black Black Black Knight yes 17 Godzilla 14 Yep. For all the Sterns released in like the last five years, actually maybe more, seven or eight years, which one had the most mechs? It was a premium. Premium LE. It had 21 mechs. It's got to be, what's it called, X-Men. No. No. Really? With the pop-ups and everything? Wow. That was a pop-up. That was your guess. Yep. It comes to mind, it's Tron, but I don't think so. No, Tron had 14. The game is Star Wars. Huh? Yeah. All the motors, all the magnets floating around. There you go. Just thought that was interesting. Especially the Godzilla, the Pro only having eight total. That was, because what brought this up, I was looking, the Godzilla Pro Manual just came out. That's how sad I am. I'm like, ooh, a new manual. So I'm reading through the manual, and they have the page with all the coils on it. And I'm looking at it, and it's like, there's only like three things here. Really. That aren't the usual that all the games have. Well, actually, all games have pop-bumpers. But the single pop-bumper, the scoop, and the magnet. That's it. Yeah. I was like, damn. I told you they're probably pretty sparse. Yeah, but, well, okay. how much do you think the premium has? 14. Yeah. Which I'm trying to think. I think it has the motor for the building, the motor for the bank thing in front of Mechagodzilla, the magnet on Mechagodzilla, the VUC to lock the ball in the building, and then the release. So it's really just two areas that has all the extra mechs. Yep. and I think well worth the price. So you think that's $1,200? How much more, though, is it? What are the prices now? $700, you said? Well, $700 more. I think it was the original, what is it? $67.99 or $68.99. I think it's $69.99 because I think it was $62.99, and it's $700 more for the Pro. And then I think you're talking almost $8K. Yeah, over 8K. I think it's $84. $84.99. I still think it's, well, you know, I'd rather have the premium. That was my deal. How many mechs? I do have another note here. If you were going to Expo to grill Mirko about their playfields, you're out of luck because he's not going to be there. Bum, bum, bum, bum. That could be COVID. That could be many things. It's not necessarily. Burpees. Jesus Christ. Okay. That was him, folks, not me. Hi, my name's Ron. Herpes too. Okay. All right. Let's see. We had a tournament over the weekend. We did? A world-famous tournament. World-famous in our minds. Does John know what it's called? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. It's called the Slam Tilt Oh My Pinball Tournament, or Stomp for short. If you haven't noticed, our mascot is George Takei. So that's why we say things like, oh, my. And we have a life-size George Takei. What do you call those things? Cutout? Whatever. Cutout. Hardcore cutout. Yep. And if you play in a tournament, you sign George. I have a spot area. He travels to Stomp, wherever it is. At this time, he was at the world-famous Rochester Pinball Collective, in Rochester, New York. Really, Bruce? Where's the address if I wanted to go there? When are you open? We are open Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and on Saturdays from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. And we are located at 349 West Commercial Street in East Rochester, New York, suite 2965. Come on down and check us out. 47 pinball machines ready to go. I know for John that's like nothing. You know, he's got 100-plus machines, but, I mean. Yeah, but these are all set up and working. I don't – Oh, there you go. We got him there. Our oldest is 1955. Oh, what's that? What's it? Let's see if you can get it. Scott Leaves. Not super straight. Straight shooter. Straight shooter. Yeah, straight shooter. Wood rail. Oh, 59. That was my first wood rail. Still have that, too. Wow. Wow. Sam Harvey says it's the only wood rail that plays like a wedge head. Yeah, it does play pretty quick. Yeah. And it's got some strength in the flippers, definitely, too. I will agree with that. I love that game. It's a great game. Yep, we have it at the co-op. I got excellent. You did get excellent. You were very good. See, John would actually know what that means. On the back glass, you get different ratings depending on your score. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. And the top one, genius. Genius. We actually had someone get genius. So we had 27 players We were supposed to have 33 But of course Canada Did not open Well the United States didn't open airports To automotive People You can fly in Which makes no fucking sense Right Yes you can't bring COVID in in the car But you can bring it in You can bring it in with the car but you can't bring it in on the plane Yep planes no trouble You can fly it on in no problem Fucking fuck nuts. Our government is. Well, isn't there like quarantine stuff involved there too? No. Oh, you can literally just fly in and fly back? Okay. You literally, if you were flying in, a Canadian person can fly in and do whatever they wanted to and fly back out. But if you drive in, you can't drive through. Isn't that opposite of what it used to be? Because they were like having people like fly into America and then they were hiring an Uber to get them into Canada or something? That's what they were trying to do, but that got stopped really early on. Yeah, it's just stupid. It really is. So we were supposed to have 33. We had 27 great players. Ron made A finals. You sound surprised there. Yeah, I was very surprised. I was more surprised you and Zach did not make A finals. Oh, we were in B. We finished in B. Bruce Sandbag to get into B, which he then won. I did win. Fail. Yep. And then A was a really good matchup between Rabin Davidson, Towley, which is one of our local guys. Towley is not a local guy. He's New York State. He's New York State. New York State is a small little state. He's like five hours away. Jerry Bernard. And our fourth person was Joe Lemire, Massachusetts. And who won? Well, here's the thing It was going really well Oh god, here we go Until the end And if you've listened to the podcast before We've brought this up And it keeps happening No, it's not the longest playing game Me and Zach have proven that So, I didn't even get into that yet So, the final match They basically ended up being a three-way tie Yes So they had a playoff on Lord of the Rings And we're streaming this And thank god I brought extra batteries But Raymond was the top, well, he wasn't actually the top. He was the top seed remaining. Remaining. He was the third seed. He picks Lord of the Rings. And never have I seen a situation where he pitched the game, everyone that was still there that was watching the finals was like, ah, shit. Everyone watching on screen was like, ah, shit. Everyone in Raymond's group who was going to play against him was like, ah, shit. That says it all. And they played for 45 minutes. We had to watch. And it wasn't the longest game still. I proved that to Zach. It wasn't as long as the last time you insisted on putting Lord of the Rings in, which was an hour. No, no, no. In that tournament, that was not the longest game. That's fine. That should not be in the damn tournament. I'm saying that's the longest playing game. It is not the longest playing game. No one wants it in the tournament. No one wants it in the tournament. No one wants it in the tournament. Longer. This is an ongoing thing, John, if you want to always argue about this. Two games longer. Can you name the two games that were longer? Oh, probably like Guns N' Roses. Nope, wasn't in the tournament. Yeah, it was. No, it wasn't. It was in the finals. It was pickable. It was pickable in the finals, not during the tournament. What was the two longest games in the tournament? Alice Cooper. Nope. Mando. Nope. Okay, I have no idea that. Star Wars. Two minutes longer. AFM, four minutes longer. AFM, I could see. But Star Wars, your favorite game, was longer. I love your, when he pitched this and no one wants it, and Bruce was there, well, if you can't have Lord of the Rings, you can't have Star Wars. I'm like, okay, fine, take it. I don't care. I'd rather have them both out. Yeah, I know Zach doesn't. I don't care what Zach, whatever. I'm sure if you told that, like, can we not have Star Wars and then we'll not have Lord of the Rings. Bruce just refuses to remove this game And that's it Everyone counted as the longest playing game And it wasn't You do realize Bruce it wasn't the longest playing game Because three people were on it Not four Guess what On the Star Wars it was a three person game also Who the hell was playing Star Wars for that long A lot of people Hold on Give me two seconds You're pissing me off now This is ridiculous Match play He could have messed play my ass. Again, take the damn thing out. Take them both out. I don't want to see that in the damn tournaments anymore. No one wants that game. Look at that bitch. I blame Raymond. Oh, I do blame Raymond for that one. I mean, he picked it because it was the game that he had the highest degree of skill involved. So he would have the advantage, I would say. That's why he picked it. But he could have picked dialed in. Why didn't he pick that? It's just so annoying. I wish he did. That would be more fun. By the way, if you haven't, Raymond Davidson won. Congratulations. Congratulations, Raymond. Congratulations. Congratulations. We all expected you to win. Poor Raymond. Like, anything other than winning would be considered failure. It was. That's got to be when you're that good where you just expect to win every tournament. And if you don't win, you fail. And they got nice trophies, and they got cash. and our next tournament is scheduled for November 13th. Ah, November 13th. Is it going to be a special, is it going to be a luck party or anything? Oh, God, it's a two-day qualifying. Yep. You can only qualify in six games. What it's going to be is you qualify in six games, you get one or two mulligans, you get to play them twice. When's the final, Sunday? Saturday afternoon. So we're going to open early on Saturday. You said two days, though. Thursday and Saturday. Oh, okay. So Thursday or Saturday they can qualify and then play. And you can buy mulligans. So the tournament's going to be free to entry. So if you enter, it's free to play. But you can buy mulligans to take away and get another chance at that, which is kind of cool. First time we're doing that. And then we're talking about a flip frenzy in December. Yes. Of course, they'll make it when it snows, so I won't be able to go there. Just fucking going on right now. in there. But you always have a place to stay. It snows a lot in Rochester. It snows every day in Rochester. Yes. Right. It does. That's why John moved to California. That's why I moved to California from the Midwest. I've had enough snow. Yeah. You are smart. Very smart. Except for I don't know how you can afford it out there. It's fucking ridiculously priced. Yes, so, man. Don't even get me started. Oh, I can imagine. How's those gas prices out there for you? How much do you pay for a gallon of gas? five bucks a gallon. Yeah. You know what I paid today? Or yesterday? $2.97. Where? Costco. Really? Yep. I got $2.99 at BJ's and there was a line. Yeah, there was a big line, but $2.97. Yeah. Costco out here has a huge line. I mean, we're talking like 20 to 30 minutes to wait. Damn. But if you're saving 40 cents on $5, hey. Oh, absolutely. Actually, I dropped off the Easy Pinball cabinets at the shipper on Friday, and I had to fill up the rental truck with diesel, and Costco was 80 cents a gallon cheaper for diesel than the normal run-of-the-mill stations. Ouch. Big shout-out to Costco. Oh, I love Costco. I love my Costco. So thanks, everyone, who played and stopped. Yes, thank you, and we're going to have some more stuff coming up. Thank you, Rigg, for working. That was nice. That's it, Rigg. It was pretty good. You know, we had a couple starters. Yeah, and I found out some other stuff I got to fix on there. But still. It's a work in progress. It's a work in progress, but we actually got the whole thing filmed. We didn't lose cameras all over the place. We had – it's all uploaded already. So if you go to the twitch.tv slash ROCPinball, you can see the finals, all the qualifying. You can also check out the RFC Pinball YouTube channel, and it's all already been uploaded. And a special thanks to Ron. Ron did do a lot of stuff behind the scenes. And I made the finals, which is weird. And I got through a round. I got into semifinals. You did. Didn't you go up into the buzzsaw? What did I do? Oh, I had a huge game of Star Trek. Yeah. Which I listened to that back to hear your commentary. And I loved your comment, like, I should have never sold the game. How could you sell a game you're that good at? Yeah. Kobe asking me to rue. I finished Kobe asking me to rue. I actually got into the second round of modes, and I was playing one of them, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't finish it. But I realized, well, no, I had to hit the side ramp. That's one of my issues with Star Trek is that they have no insert for the side ramp. It's just literally the thing above it with a light that flashes, and you're supposed to notice that. You have to notice that. Why don't you? Yeah. But you didn't do that shabby on Star Trek, see? Well. What's next? Repairs. Oh, we know John must know about repairs. He's building cabinets. He's got 100 games. He's probably fixing things all the time. I got my soldering iron right here, right here while we're talking. Ah, there you go. Let's have an update. You had the blackout situation, I think you mentioned in the last episode. Yeah, I have a blackout with a rotten dog board in it, and I started going through all the coils. To review, the issue is basically it just locks all the coils on and then pops the fuse, just intermittently. No rhyme, no reason. No reason. You could run the thing for a day without having a problem, and all of a sudden it does that. Boom. And the problem is he fixed it for the dude, and it keeps going to his house and keeps having this issue. So now it's been staying at the co-op. So what I did first is I actually shotgunned it. I put all new diodes on all the coils. Then I forgot about one coil that's still hooked up. Hmm. Which coil do you think I forgot about? Coindor Interlock. Coindor Interlock. So I cut that out of the position, and it hasn't blown in two days. So in between is actually like we have Ron's, what do you call those? Kahoot boards. Kahoot boards that are honestly incredible. There's a lot of extra data you have with the LEDs for every switch, every solenoid that fires. It actually has a corresponding LED on the board to tell you what's firing, which is incredible. If I can get a set of these boards, I'd buy them in a second, which I don't know if they're making them yet. They said they were going to be doing it, but are they? Well, you keep going. I'll check their site. And Zach pulled that board, you know, the rotten dog, put this board in and Ron's board in, and for two days it worked perfect too. So now we're up to four days straight. So I'm like, okay, well, I can't leave this board in here. Here you go, Bruce. September 14th update. Main MPU boards and driver boards, which is what you had, are unavailable again due to part shortage. We are unable to build more boards at this time. We anticipate receiving parts at the end of October. These boards should be available again in November 2021. I'll probably buy a set. Literally, just because of having the goodness of these boards for a test board is incredible. So I then put the old board back in, the rotten dog one, and I put the old – I also had a power supply in there from something else. I put a new power supply in there. Now with the old power supply, it hasn't failed in another two days. So I'm going to give it two weeks. If it doesn't blow up a fuse in two weeks, it goes back to the guy. But I really think that front solenoid – like every front solenoid – we don't have a Williams early system in our place. and I was looking up on the internet and they're saying it's like between 400 and 500 ohms, which everyone's like, what? The Bally and the Stern kick-out coils are almost 550 and 530. Coin lockout. Yeah, the coin lockout, sorry. But when I tested the one that was on the blackout, it was only at 190, 200. That sounds low. Exactly. Looking for constant duty. Exactly. So I cut it the hell out. That could have been a big drawer. even though it doesn't sound big it's always on at that amperage and that coil's been hot for 40 years and it's starting to get a little crusty and next thing you know windings start shorting and the resistance goes down and for home use there's really no point in having that thing done so hopefully that's it I'll know another week and a half so next time you hear us we'll see if it goes back to them or not or if it blows again and thank you for all the people who actually commented and talked about it, mostly bashing Rotten Dog. Well, we'll hear that. But we have pinballpcb.com is the site. Check them out. Buy their products. They're excellent. They've been around for 15 years. Their main board and driver board combo when they're available. I shouldn't say combo. They're two different boards. They're $425. And the good thing about it is if you want to use the 40-pin connector, you can use it. so you could ask for it to be populated. Otherwise, if you buy them as a combo set, they'll just give you, like, an old IDE cable, and that's the 40-pin. It was great. Yeah. And they sell, like, PowerBoard. They sell most of the crap that's in the Williams system you can get. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very nicely done. So I will be probably buying one of these when they do come up. And if you do custom ROMs, this is also another one. It's the way to go because you can just burn them and use them just like the original boards. So next, big game. Oh, the big game. I got to experience this. Yes. So basically I'll try to give a quick version of this. Big game's on the floor. Blows the solenoid fuse. So they replaced it with a one-amp slow blow, which is what's used to put it in. It keeps blowing. So they've tried everything as far as just desoldering all the coils, putting them in one at a time, trying to find the bad coil. However, it seems to be more a number of coils. Once you get a certain number of coils on there, it just blows the fuse. There's ten coils on there. Any variation of seven out of ten, it's good. As soon as I put any of the eight coils on there, it blows the one amp. So wait a minute. Now, here's the problem I have. I'm confused the way you word that. So it has ten coils total. Yes. So as long as you hook seven of them in, it's fine. Yes. As soon as you put the eighth one in, it blows. Yes. Okay. And it could be any combination. Like it could be three drop targets, three kick outs, a slingshot. And as soon as I hook that second slingshot, pop. Yep. You tested all the coils' resistance. They're all fine. They're all the same. All the mechs are free. so then we ran a whole new power wire we ran a power wire right from the rectifier board up to the fuse took the flippers right out of it still blue same amount of coils then we were really going to go drastic and cut out like you know run the power to each coil differently and Zach's like I don't think it's that I think it's just the age of the machine getting too old so I had fuses around I'm like, oh. I got, you know, like, asked some of the guys, like, hey, what fuses do you have in your box? I'm like, one guy's like, I got 1.25, because that's what Flight 2000 calls for. Pop a 1.25 in there, blows that like that, too. So I know it's above the draw of 1.25 amps. Another guy goes, I got a 1.5. Put the 1.5 in there. Not a problem. I usually check the games when I first get them for all the fuses. I did not check that game originally. It might have had a 1.25 amp fuse in it. Or a 1.5 or a 2 amp or something. Yeah, and I did check it. One of the guys who also works at the co-op just ran, looked at the thing, said, oh, it needs a 1 amp fuse, pulled it, popped the new one in, and it kept on blowing. So I don't know if somebody overfused it beforehand or not. But everything, ohms-wise, tests good. Any combination I'm using out of the power bus, as soon as I get the 8 out of the 10 coils it pops it so guess what I'm doing 1.5 don't do this at home well you guys have a captain card there that had interesting fuses oh my god so Zach got a captain card from at home in Victor and he likes it because it's a high hand add a ball and we pop it open first time he sets it up now when we got there it powered on He looked at it. He noticed that not everything was working. He's like, here, here's your $500. Done. Grab it. I want this game. So he grabbed it. We opened up the game for the first time, put legs on it. He bought a, he got a plate from me because one of the plates was stripped out. Mounted up. He pulled the play field open. I look. I go, wow, it's really clean in here. And I go, oh, my God. And I look. There's three fuse holders. There's a machine screw in one. there's a wood screw in the second one and then there's brake tubing in the third one all three direct line fused they're direct alright they're direct and I have the picture and I sent it to everyone and they're like what and then one of our friends will just say his name is Josh I didn't know I had that many 10 amp fuses in my house meaning the screws wow It also is missing where the coin box would be. They cut it out. Somebody broke into it a long time ago and took the cash box, what the key was. You just cut the bottom of the cabinet out, reach in there, and grab the coin box. That's what this also has. That's like, you know, like a reverse sunroof. Reverse sunroof. So, yeah, that was interesting. That was interesting. So big game's going to go back on the floor. Luckily, we're always there when the power's on. I'm not too worried about it. Honestly, for the coil draw, that much it's going to be. You have to hit a lot of coils before it actually would heat up and go to the 1 which it never did for us That 1 we kept the coil test for 20 minutes Didn pop that 1 so I don think And guess what If it melts something and blows something up now I know what wrong I'm not worried about it. The old smoke test. Yep. Obviously, I don't even care. Rick and Morty will be coming into the co-op in the next two weeks. Joy. I know. You can't wait, Ron. I can't wait to not play that game. Oh, it's going to be in tournaments. Everything. I'm sure it's going to be in tournaments. You ever play Rick and Morty, John? I haven't. You're not missing much. Comedy-wise, it's funny. Video assets are really good. Oh, yeah. The software is fine. The play field is... The play field is... Yeah. Ron, I'm looking at you. I've got the old stuff laying around, so I don't get out much. We both have old... We're a big old stern in Bally, so we definitely like the old stuff. but I think Ron is more new than I have now. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I think so. But yesterday I was working on the Quicksilver. And? I was just doing a shop job on it. I never really went all the way through that game, because for the longest time it was like half mine, and then it was like kind of just stored in a room, wasn't set up. Now that it's set up again, I've got the plea feel that, well, I think on a previous episode I said about the wiring that I kind of fixed. or put it back in the wiring harness so it wasn't sticking out for some strange reason. Got the plate filled out of the game. Just found a few miscellaneous screws and stuff at the bottom of the cabinet, which I ended up using because I found where they fell out of. Rebuilt all the mechs, which there's not that many mechs in the game. No. It's like two swings, the eject, three pop-uppers, the two drop banks. I'm not touching the out-hole kicker because on the sterns, whenever I put into a coil sleeve, I clean everything, and then the out-hole kicker will always be too strong, and it'll fire the thing, and it just goes right back into the – it goes half into the – underneath the apron and just stays there. Yeah, the trough exit there. Yeah. Yep. See, I would say, and John could confirm, at least on the sterns, it's like they fire it too hard, and it bounces and it goes right back in and then it just sits there, not far enough to actuate the switch. So you're just stuck, so you've got to, like, tilt the thing to get it out. I just didn't want to touch it because it's always worked fine, and I know if I clean everything in there and make it all nice, it's going to fire too much, and then it's going to be a problem. Right. It's not much on that play field. I have all the plastics off. I put all the LEDs in. Bruce, you'll be happy. Love LEDs. Mm-hmm. Nice warm white LEDs. And it's still kind of dark, even with all those LEDs. Green absorbs it all. The green absorbs it all. Right. All the penises absorb the light. The penis, yes. Yes, it has penises on the play field. So I'm just waiting. I got some rubber kits coming from Titan. Mm, great. Did you put a reproduction play field in that? Not yet. Not yet. We have them. We have them. But, see, I'm going to let Bruce do it first so he can find all the things that are wrong with it. That's what always happens. Yeah. Well, I thought maybe you were still letting the clear coat harden. My guy actually takes it down and then redoes the clear. Gotcha. He's really good. Just in case holes aren't in the right spot or something. I'm hoping to come back and it'll be like, everything was perfect, Ron. I'll be like, okay. Now I feel more confident. Now I'm going to try my first one. Yeah. I think that's all I have. John, have you done any repairs? I'm in the process of rebuilding an Elvira in my garage right now. It's going to go down to the local barcade where I've got some machines on location. So just kind of giving it a nice little cleanup and getting ready for that to go down there. Is this Party Monsters or is this? This is the Scared Stiff. Okay, Scared Stiff. And like you, I very much prefer incandescence for home use, but when I put it in commercial use again, I do switch it over to LED. Nope. All the games at the co-op that are mine, if they're not LED factory, incandescent. Okay. I'm an asshole. Everyone commented on it, too, like, wow, it's really dark. Yeah, it's really dark, Bruce. Well, those old ballys and sterns, those connectors fry up so bad when you run so much GI on them, so I've realized that it's just a saves the service call. Yeah, well, I look at it as this. I always put new rectifier boards in now. new rectifier board, new pins, new connectors, and then usually they don't burn up. I've had one burn up, even with the new stuff, and that was my Stars. But that's the longest playing game on location I've ever... Longest playing? Longest playing, yeah. This stuff is made very, very well. It just needs a little freshening up after 40 years. Oh, yeah, no, I don't even bother, because all those leads and everything, I just get the rectifier board, $65, it's the cheapest $65 you can do, and then just make the new connector on the other end done done I didn't have anything else except we'll finish it up with the ball bag yes and it will bring us into another thing so that's what we call our mail bag John of course the ball bag because we have to be different we have to be vulgar at all times we're big pervs and big assholes well if you listen to any of our episodes you'll notice they all start with a Beavis and Bunhead clip That should give you a good idea of what you're in for. Yes, I've definitely listened to enough to know about the ball bag. All right. There you go. There we go. The first one is from Dave. Hi, Dave. Hi, Dave. It says, hi, guys. Tune into the final games of the Mando launch to hear Bruce's Mando rant. I totally agree with Bruce. Fuck yeah. See? Redemption. when the pinball world champion is asking in the chat, why is the shot worth so much? You know things aren't good. James Mutant Ninja Turtles is the same. The scoring is totally unbalanced. So bad. On the Head to Head podcast years ago, Ryan asked Dwight, when are you going to fix Ghostbusters? And Dwight angrily replied, what's wrong with it? That was the end of Dwight's games for me. Yeah. Oh, there's more. With the Rotten Dogs System 6-7 board, those are shit. I've had four. Two are good. Two are shit. I had all sorts of issues with them. Rotten Dog never replied to my emails. Check that the mounting brackets aren't touching the solder pads on the back. That's a known issue with those boards. They put the pads on. Yeah, because it was one through three. I have version four, which they fixed that. One is pretty close, but I then used, you know, electrical tape. They said the pads are way too close to the screw holes. Okay. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for redemption. Hello. Redemption against who? Are you talking about Mando? Yes. Okay, just because you hate Mando. No, I hate Dwight Sullivan. Yeah, you asked him to retire. That's pretty mean. Yes, I did. That's pretty mean. And point. Now we have our tech. Scott, he says, look into yopsicles for the LEDs. A yopsicle? I like my yopsicles. My nominee for product of the year. Wow. You replace the socket and lamp with a small circuit board, just like a small, like a little circuit board, like a little light board. He's got them in warm white, which looks great under yellow and white inserts. Blue-green on is great, but still acceptable. The new ones come with a 470-ohm resistor in them. You know I used to hate LEDs, but these are close enough for me. Wow. I'm actually doing a Xenon right now, and three-quarters of the light sockets were bad. So I contacted the guy whose machine it is, and he goes, Well, needless to say, I have about 100 Yopsicles. I'm going to send them to you. We just got them Saturday, and me and Zach are looking at them, and these, unfortunately, do not have the resistors on them. He must have an earlier batch. So now guess what we've got to get? Resistors? Yep. He's going to start making them in strips as well. So the electrical tape on the harness is really common. Yes, the electrical tape was in a different part of the harness. And actually, on the Quicksilver, it didn't have the electrical tape in the usual part of the harness, I see it, which is great when it comes out of the plate feel. They put it on so when it rubs against the side where the prop arm is, the metal edge, it doesn't, like, cut the wires. Yeah. Let's see. Rotten Dog Combo Board. It's likely the blanking, just like WMS boards. As you know, they suck. A race to the bottom in terms of pricing. Their best product they have is the Gottlieb System 80 board, since it's a straight copy of the Gottlieb board, but with NV RAM and a combo ROM. Yeah. Because you have to get the blanking to react faster. Someone really needs to come up with a delay circuit for that, like a reset generator for the solenoids. That would be nice. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. We have Greg. He has a suggestion for a segment. He says, hi, fellas. I'm updating my pinball wish list, and the question always pops up pro or premium. Out of all the commentators, your perspectives on the matter I value most highly. Oh, my. Oh, my. It is well thought out. You don't get overexcited by gimmicks. You understand value, especially Bruce. And your opinions accord very closely with mine. Instead of trawling through 100 hours of your old episodes, oh, come on, what's the problem with that? What the fuck? You've got a dedication to this fucking thing. Yeah, how about you do a segment or two or three, and which is best, taking into account value, pro or premium, for each of the machines. Then maybe at the end, you can have some awards for best manufacturer, designer, pro category, best manufacturer, designer, premium category. Okay, so Ron, I'm leaving this up to you. Well, okay, Greg, just give us some games you want us to say which ones we think are better. For example, I could say Guardians of the Galaxy. I would always take a pro. Me too. There's not enough. And I played because they have a LE at the co-op, and the hands don't really bother me. And what does it have? It has the LEDs, the color changers that the other one doesn't have. It has the three magnets. It has the three magnets, but I don't feel it's near enough value to justify getting a premium. No, no, no. I definitely get a pro on that. So give us a list of 20 or 25 games. 20 or 25 games. It's like all of them. Well, no, no. He wants to cut out. He just wants to listen to 100 hours. Oh, so we have to go through everything? It's easier, and we can break it up into multiple episodes. We'll call it the Greg segment. Yes. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Greg. We have an email here that says, not a hugger shirt. Not a hugger shirt. He sent a link to a shirt that literally says, not a hugger for me. What I was telling him before COVID was, you know, John, we'll get you to this one. I tell everyone to come up to Ron at a tournament or at a show and go hug him. But now with COVID, I tell everyone now to not hug him, just go up to him and do the demo man, wave your hand in front of the other person's hand and just wave and say hi. Okay. Because Ron's so friendly with, like, you know. I'm still friendly. Yeah. Parnell. Hi, Parnell. Hi, Parnell. He's got to be one of our. Oh, yeah. He says, love the show still. He's been emailing us forever. Ever. Check this out. He links to a Pinside topic, which actually I believe was from Scott. Our Scott. He's working on Lightning and Catacomb software mods to change the multiball locking behavior. Nothing more frustrating than getting multiball going on these two games, and then, yeah, you relock them, and the multiball's over. Or does it in Gamertron? And he wants to put spinner counters in and et cetera, et cetera. Farnell says, can't wait to hear the next episode. Hope you guys can play Godzilla and let us know. I did get to play Halloween at Tilt in Minnesota. Didn't like it. The inline dribble and hit a scoop and never know where it will come from. Sucks hard. I did see a Halloween stream, actually from Tommy from this flipping podcast, and he's a better player too so I got to see, and just him explaining the rules, like yes you have to hit this ramp six times to get in the upper place, I was like, ugh half the things look like placeholders in the graphics, it's like it has no clips but supposedly they're having an update this month and there will be 15 clips added. And it needs it, man. I think Ultraman's going to be the way to go. Yeah, I think it's funny. An Ultraman next to a Godzilla. Next to another Godzilla. It's almost like the Afterthought game is now going to become the more desirable of the two. It's kind of funny. Yes, it is. Okay, so that's that. Then we got Josh. Josh says, hi, guys. I'm new to pinball within the last two years. Love the show. I recently heard an episode that said you would change out the coil stops on newer CERNs. Which coil stop do you recommend to buy? I get the Marco ones. Marco ones are fine. Actually, I get all my coil stops from my local place, which is Amusement Plus, which is right down the road from the co-op. Amusement Plus. Where are they, Bruce? Actually, they're about two miles from the co-op in Rochester, and it's actually called the Can of Worms. You're like, what the fuck is a Can of Worms? Yeah, what is that, the Can of Worms? It's like six highways are going into one area, and if you look from above, it looks like all these highways are going into one area like a can of worms. Okay. That's what they call it. But they do have a website, Museum Plus, and they're very good guys to deal with. They also sell games, and they sell brand-new ice machines and everything like that, so they're really great guys. But I get all my parts from them when it's local stuff and stuff I want right away, and I'd rather keep the guy local in business. Hey, Mikey, can you show me your story? If I need something in an emergency, I can actually call him on a Saturday. He'll meet me at the shop and go inside there and get it for me. That's nice. That's good service. That's awesome service. Awesome service. Let's see. I have, this is the last one from Alan. Alan, does Ron Bruce please pass this on to Zach? Uh-oh. It's an ad. It's a Facebook for sale. Even though I would like to buy a volley, I need to see it in person first. But Zach mentioned on the Stop 4 Twit broadcast that he wanted a second volley for the back glass and plastics. So he sent an ad for one that's in California. Oh, boy. So John might pick it up instead. It's $650, but it's been repainted to look like the American flag. It's stars and stripes. It's the most patriotic volley ever. And unfortunately, it's been sold. So I can't get it now. But, yeah, they put stripes on the cabinet and the stars on the head. Wow. There you go. Super patriotic volley. Yeah, wow. Nothing says Patriots isn't more than tennis, I think. Right. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think of Gottlieb's? Oh, God, he asked the question. I asked the question. EM or solid state? Solid state. I think the later ones were awesome. The early solid states, I think now that we have the reproduction boards and some of the, shall we say, the kinks ironed out of them, I think they're pretty, they're solid games. They're built like tanks, no doubt about it. Once you get the electronics, you know, as robust as the mechanics, I think they're, and some of them are really darn fun. All right. I agree. And some are turds. Oh, boy. Did you ever hear the whole thing of how Gottlieb got into Rockwell? Well, I think they went to him because their experience in space, or anything like that, and they thought they would be the best thing. Make our boards for us. Make it work like it already works, but make it electronic. Yes. That's correct. And they provided no expansion. Nope. Meanwhile, the other manufacturers were like, whoa, what can we do with this solid state? We could do new stuff. How can we make new features, make it do different things we couldn't do with EMs? Well, yeah, let's use Motorola. They're just down the street. Yeah. What annoys me most about early Bally's, though, is the non-use of diodes on the first Solid State game, on the Freedom. Oh. Did you know that? I do not have diodes on my Solid State bow and arrow. I see. In fact, I bought a Freedom, I sold a Freedom, and then I bought another Freedom like 10 minutes later. so I'm still willing to take delivery of it. Yeah, they don't have diodes either. Okay. So just to give you a heads up, it could be sometimes a little, ugh. That stuff is so robust. It's made it this far. It's probably a good idea to put diodes on it anyway, though. Yeah, definitely. But I love the system. I love, you know. I love that family stern system. I just love it so much. We're going to keep on making it. Yeah, that's Gary Stern. I loved it so much, I reverse engineered it and ripped it off. buy the company right that's my url that would be great to get Gary on and then we're going to talk about old stern why did you rip off that the first question just hangs up that's the end of the call we must have got disconnected here because the funny thing is like the one video I've seen that exists of the old stern factory from back in the day the guy they interviewed was Gary even then it looked like he was kind of in charge, even though technically his dad bought the company. But, you know, we're here with Stern president or whatever the hell he was. Gary Stern. I never saw that video. You never saw that video? No. What are they building in the background? I never saw it either. Oh, you never saw it? I think it's a local news spot, and I think they went to the factory twice on two different occasions and spliced it into the same story because some of the stuff doesn't make any sense. They show one clip, and Ali is on the line. Then they have another clip, and I think it was Big Game on the line. Oh, yeah. So I think they were there two separate occasions. They show Mike Kubin on his drawing board doing Sea Witch. Nice. Yeah, because I was always wondering just how the factory was. Yeah, it's cool because everyone there, they're, like, smoking cigarettes and stuff in the factory because, you know, it's 1980, and, you know, I guess you did that back then. Oh, I have to comment on one of your comments that you did on your show. I have to comment on one of my comments of what I did. Yes, John, I'm on another podcast called Silver Ball Chronicles, far classier than this one, where we talk about pinball history. And usually Ron gets something wrong. Yes. By the way, that's Silver Ball Chronicles. This can be heard on the Pinball Network. Yes. I could definitely check you out. I'm very much into the history of this old stuff. You would like that. But you were wrong about one thing about Data East. Oh, okay. You were talking about how Data East was in the same location the whole time? I think I said, like, Data East and Sega and all that was the same building. No, it's not. Oh, okay. Yeah, when did they move? They moved just after they were bought from Data East to Sega. So Data East, they were always in one building, and they moved during Sega. There you go. And then they stayed in that building all the way until they moved again, you know, five, four years ago, three years ago. Okay. So, John, when you hear that, I'm wrong. He corrected me. I always correct him. There's always people that know more, no doubt about it. Oh, yeah. And Bruce will have any trouble telling you that either. Okay. And he thinks I do that too. All right. That's the end of my list. That was a lot of stuff. Yes, and we'd like to thank John for coming on for us. John, plug away. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. See us at Dixon the end of this week. See you at Pinball Expo the end of October. Easypinball.com, easypinball at gmail.com. We're making reproduction classic stirring cabinets, but would definitely be interested in doing others if there's a need and a demand. Make light insert panels for Quicksilver and for Stargazer currently in stock, and we can do any other insert panel that you might want. All precision CNC machined. Check us out. And we're also on the social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, even every YouTube channel. So thanks a million for having me on, guys. Ron and Bruce, I can't say thank you enough. No, no problem. And we'll get you on again maybe like another six months from now, see how it's going and see what the future holds. When you start making Williams cabinets or something, whatever is requested. Whatever the next great thing is. Ron? Bruce? I have a job for you. My job is editing this two-hour podcast, which will probably take four to six hours. What do you want me to do now? Mechanical project engineer. A mechanical project engineer. What does that mean? You need three years minimum in a design environment. This individual is required to have demonstrated ability of designing complex mechanical mechanisms, manage a project with specific timelines, and develop ideas into manufacturable products. So does designing toilets count? Maybe. You work as a team environment with game designers, software engineers. And what company is this for? Stern, 19 days ago. Ooh. You can work for Stern, LinkedIn. Which means I'd have to move to Chicago. Yep. Which I have no desire to do. You can become a buyer or accounts receivable coordinator or accounts payable specialist. Hey, maybe I can get my wife to go there. And Carl Weathers sucks there, too. Although, you're in Rochester, so you're kind of used to the Carl Weathers sucking. Yeah, exactly. Plus, I get to hang out with some cool guys, be like 12th or 15th best player in the area instead of like 1st or 2nd. Excellent. But, yeah, they have a couple jobs up there right now. So you've heard it here first. Check out Stern. Yes. Well, you might as well say something nice about Stern after just dashing their Mando game. At your point? Yeah, exactly. But I like Godzilla. I can't wait to play it. I'm actually looking forward to that. I am looking forward to that. Will there be any Godzillas coming to the co-op, Bruce? Yes, there will be. Of course, because you're in Rochester. There's probably at least 10 of those 1,000 LEs are coming to Rochester alone. I'm thinking three or four. Wow. And two will be at the co-op. Why two? Because one isn't enough. One is never enough. We need two for our lunch party. When's the lunch party? Probably when they come out, so probably November. All right. But, yes, we will have two Godzillas. Like, we had two Mandos. Yeah, John, they had two Mandos there. Two Mando L.E.s for the lunch party. Like, why? When one Mando isn't just enough. Yes. You need two. You need two. Well, our own Zach has three Spanish eyes. Yes, yes. Ooh, what a game. Ah, yes. Gamitron. I have two Gamitrons. Yeah, we talked about that when we were doing the deal for the cabinet. Yep. So how sick is that? That is pretty sick to have two of them. Just stealing them from other people. A Gamitron that could be with someone else, but you have to have it. Don't feel bad. I had three Voltans at one time. Oh, God. There you go. Voltan escapes cosmic doom. Hey, baby, we're on our way. I love that. It's just so much text in that backbox. Do they want people to read that? I think the only game that had more text than that might have been Dr. Dude. Yes. That has a ton of text in there, but it's hilarious if you actually read it. Did you ever hear the explanation for what Dave was thinking when he made Voltan? No. Okay, so Dave had decided to take employment outside of Chicago, and I met him at Pinball Expo when he was doing artwork for Harley. I think this was in the 90s. And so I asked him very poignantly, I said, so what was the preface for the artwork for Voltan? And he had had a few cocktails at this point. And he goes, well, I was going to leave Chicago, so I decided to blow the puffer up. I can see that. I have met him a couple times. So Chicago blowing up and he's leaving with the woman, of course. With the woman. Yes. All right. On that note, that's a good ending. That's a very good ending. So this has been episode 174 of the Slamtail Podcast. We can be found online at slamtailpodcast.com. Look in the upper right. All our links are there, our Twitch, our YouTube. I even streamed a couple times in the last few weeks. I saw that. Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Dragon Fist, new code. How is it? What do you think? It fixes pretty much everything that was a little screwy. There was a lot of stuttering and stuff that I was experiencing, and this fixed all that. Good. Also got, actually, I should have mentioned this before. I also have new Quicksilver code. I might have mentioned it in the last show. It's got two spin counters for each spinner. Yes, yes, it does. Yes, you said that. But there was some other, wherever he had newer versions of stuff, I downloaded them and installed them. This is our own Scott. Our own Scott. And big shout-out to Scott. What was I saying? Yes, we can be reached. You can email us at swamptillpodcast at gmail.com. Hi, Zach. Hi, Zach. Fun with bonus. Everybody in the entire universe in the pinball world, everyone in our chat group. Don't forget my other podcast, Silver Ball Chronicles. You better start plugging us. I'm going to be really pissed. Plug us in the last episode. We will be recording soon. I can't say what it's about. It's a secret. Hello, the lines. I might be seeing the lines this weekend. Doctor and Mrs. Oh, Doctor and Mrs. Penn. Yes. I'll be seeing them hopefully this weekend at York. Since I'm going to York, Pennsylvania this weekend for a pinball show. Wow. So if you want to meet and hug Bruce Nightingale of the Slamtail Podcast, please go to the York Pinball Show. Please. Yes, please do. I'll be there Friday and Saturday morning. Nice. Friday and Saturday morning. So you must be picking up something. No, I'm not. Actually, yes, I am. Now I am. I wasn't as of yesterday, and now I am. Okay. I'm buying a pinball. I'm buying a stern head, a pinball head, a pinball, a pinball back glass, and a pinball play field. Oh, it's a game pinball. Yep. It's a better condition than mine. Do you have a solid state? Solid state. Thatty boy. Yeah, well, I would love to find an EM one, but every one I've seen is roached, especially the back glasses. Yeah. This one's not that bad for what I'm getting for it. I'm getting the head, the play field, and the back glass, which is better than my back glass for $150. I can't. That's a no-brainer. That is a no-brainer. Yeah. The parts alone, especially those stupid drop targets and pinball, they suck. Oh, boy. Think you want Stampede or Raw Hype is the only one that uses it? Yep, exactly. So if I can get four more, win-win. Okay. Well, that's the York show again. You can hang out with the world-famous Bruce. You can make fun of Ron. You can make fun of me and all the editing I'm going to be going through. Thanks to John again for joining us this week. We have another guest lined up for next week, our next show. Oh, my goodness. And it's somebody we've never had on also. Oh, my goodness. Oh, another good thing. All right. Well. How's that for a teaser? That's a teaser. Thanks to everybody out there Until next time Say goodbye Bruce Goodbye Nolan Donnelly To keep you alive Oh my Oh my Oh my Oh my I'm old. Yes, you are. And Ron's catching up to me. That's not how it works. Yes, it is. You are always older than me. That's not... No, no, no, no. You are always catching up to me. It's a percentage number. Always you're getting lower. I don't understand your logic. No one understands Bruce's logic. When I was 40 and you were 38, the percentage of years you were around was greater. Now, between 50 and 40, it's a little minuscule difference. Do you understand what he's saying at all? Oh, yeah. You take all the days of 48 years versus all the days of 50 years, and the ratio changes. It does change. See? I have somebody with knowledge and brains with me now. Wow. You're actually right. You've probably been right about everything this whole time. And there's questions about this? Oh, my mind is blown.