The Special When Lit Pinball Podcast is sponsored by Two Brothers Pinball Pale Ale, a juicy, hoppy pale ale that takes your taste buds on a flavorful ride. Woo! Coming at you out of St. Charles, Illinois, the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast starts now. Thanks for hitting that start button and taking the plunge. Here are your hosts, Ken Cromwell and Bill Webb. Hey, what's going on Pinball Land? This is the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast and it's episode 15. I'm Ken, my co-host is Bill. And when we left off last week at Scott Danesi's house, we went on a Mexican excursion, road trip. Yeah. Right. So Scott specifically asked me if you wouldn't mind critiquing this restaurant that we frequented after the podcast to give your formal review. So, formal review. Number one, their salsa, their green salsa verde is awesome. Not the best I've ever had, but it's pretty close. Their steak is really, really good. And what I was surprised is, is that their al pastor was also really, really good. It's not the best I've ever had. I mean, that's a big bar. But literally all around, that's probably the best place to go for everyone. I was a lawn mower and crammed it into a thing and I was eating it and it was like chunks of stuff. I think I'm a Chipotle guy. Okay. Even in a pinch, a Taco Bell will do. A Taco Bell will do, knowing that it's Americanized. I don't think I appreciate what's going on with authentic Mexican food. All right. Just in all honesty. So if you're in Sleepy Hollow, you might want to check out Salsa Street. Yeah. We'll give them a shout out because that was pretty good. Actually, I had that for lunch today, too, just to verify my thoughts on it. And if you're in St. Charles, Illinois, I recommend the Chipotle off of Randall Road for those that are Americanized. Or Chipotle nearest you. Right. Check it out. Hey, whatever works. Whatever floats your boat. So quite honestly, not the busiest week in pinball, but we're going to do our best to keep you informed and entertained here for the next 30 minutes or so. What's going on in the life of Bill Webb? Life of Bill Webb. We got our Project Whirlwind over the weekend, which was kind of exciting until I saw it. Now I've nicknamed it Project Whirlwind because it's kind of a turd. It was a little rough. Yeah, with some work it could be rough. Yeah, well. Yeah, but you know what, I mean, there was a few more. Serviceable for sure, I mean. It is. You know what, honestly, I knew the cabinet was kind of rough, which is not a total concern to me, but whatever. We're upside down building it. Yeah. You know, I built enough machines and been upside down enough doing this that I don't want to be in that state anymore. So you know, honestly, I mean, this Whirlwind will be kind of close to where I bought it to what it'll be worth when I'm done. But you know, it'll be an interesting journey. You know, actually, it's kind of funny because I was, you know, sold the game and once I bought it basically and talked to my buddy that bought it and he's like, yeah, I ain't—we'll see you next time. We've only been here once. It's worth owning. How many times, Ken? I don't know. Twice. Yes. Okay. Scared Stiff, Twilight Zone, X-Files, Earthshaker. I've never owned the same pin, the exact same pin twice in three days. All right. Well. So you set the record on that. Set the bar. Right. Okay. We've got Pinball Expo now 20 days away. Yeah. So. Getting exciting. It is getting exciting. And I think it's time right now. It's perfect timing for Expo just because, as I stated earlier, there's not a whole lot out of the box, we have the Oktoberfest pin, which I think is going to be revealed. That's kind of the only pinball machine that I'm aware of. In fact, next week on the show for our industry buzz segment, we will have Nirmal Vasini on the show. He's the marketing strategist over at American Pinball. So he's going to come on, he's going to talk a little bit about what American Pinball is all about and give us a little preview about the Oktoberfest. So if we play our cards right, I believe we might have some new information on Oktoberfest that has not been divulged yet. So that'll be fun. Good times. Good times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, I think this year I'm going to focus on getting into more of the seminars. I don't typically do that. The Oktoberfest, if it is revealed, I would like to be there. That's Thursday at 8:30. And then, I'll tell you what, man, I'm still excited about the Deeproot seminar. I want to see what Robert Mueller and staff have in store for us. And that is going to be, I'm sorry, that's Friday at 5:30, I believe. And the Oktoberfest reveal is Thursday at 8:30 p.m. Yeah, that sounds right. What is your plan of attack at Expo? I'm great at six because that's always a good time to check out stuff before it gets totally mobbed or stuff winds up disappearing. And you found some pretty good deals in the vendor area early on the opening night of… Yeah, that's when the deals are to be had is like the first night before people really scavenge and… I suppose the last night's good too but it's picked over at that point. Yeah, you're just getting deals on stuff that you've already seen. But yeah, so then that's our plan for that part of it. And then obviously hit the show at 8:30. Yeah, 8:30. I'm sorry. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And then Friday we got Pinball Life Party. So we're going to be going to the Pinball Life Party early, I think closer to noon and probably leaving before 3. And that's just to give us enough time to get over to Expo, grab some food, and then head into that 5:30 seminar with Deeproot, right? And then we have something going on that Friday night too, don't we? Friday night's up in the air. I know there's going to be a lot of people that have requested getting a chance to kind of sit down and hang out. There will be talks being had and some drinks being consumed, so that'll be a fun, fun evening. I'm glad you brought up that you're bringing your Transformers into the Pincab booth because Scott just recently this past week he did release that Ryan Bell add-on to Pincab or I guess it's a standalone product. Did you get an opportunity to look into that at all? I have briefly. It's been kind of a crazy week with trying to drive down and go get that game and whatnot but looks like a cool product so looking forward to seeing it on a couple games. It'll be fun to see it at Expo. Scott was recently on Head to Head Pinball Podcast, Ryan and Marty out in Australia and they, Marty had done an interview with him and it was interesting because you kind of got an inside look at Scott's personality and his perspective on the actual launch of Pincab. If there's one thing that I know I can vouch for Pincab because I was I think one of the original people that kind of purchased the product and installed it on a machine, wasn't paid or comped or anything and I liked it so I ordered multiple sets. I know that he took a little bit of backlash because of what was perceived as aggressive or overly—
I mean, I wish Scott luck with this. Yeah. And again, I'm looking forward to seeing it in action at Expo. He's so meticulous. I don't really see him missing the mark or missing anything, but we'll see. No, he's meticulous. He knows what he's talking about. He's very, very thorough. He knows what he wants to see. You know, him and I have talked on a couple occasions, and I like how detailed, detail-orientated he is. Yes. You know, just very, very thorough. I still want to see it in person, but I'm excited to see it. Oh yeah, definitely. And I know there's going to be some streaming going on at Pinball Expo this year. And the reason I'm bringing up streaming is because myself and Bill, we had talked about dabbling into doing some pinball streaming. And we're going to leave the absolute streaming and YouTube videos to the professionals, you know. And that's Jack Danger. Zach and Greg is straight down the middle. We are going to attempt to take a little bit of a different approach to pinball streaming, and I think it will be fun. It will offer some bonus content for those of you that have been listeners to the show, to new listeners coming on, and it would be fun to kind of get a little bit of the streaming audience involved into what we like to do with our pinball podcast. So it's something that we're looking to get into after Pinball Expo sometime. Yeah, and honestly doing that, I mean a big part of it too is just to be able to interact with live while streaming, you know, and be able to talk to people and get their feedback and, you know, I mean we've been getting a decent amount of feedback through the email and Facebook, which obviously you guys are definitely encouraged if you like the show, please like us on Facebook, send an email, questions, comments, concerns, don't like to talk about Mexican food or Baywatch, send it in, no problem. We're kind of touching on some topics that we normally wouldn't, like pinball streaming and our Facebook page, but it'd be great if you guys get on there and just check it out. If you don't like it, don't thumb it up. We're not asking for handouts, but we like to get to know everybody that's listening to the show on a little bit more of a personal basis. Oh, yeah. Yeah, honestly, on the Facebook, too, Ken didn't touch on this, but project stuff, definitely post that. I love looking at that. I have a friend whose name is Mike Burke. I know who Rob Burke is, and it was just a slip of the tongue when I said Mike. So my apologies to Rob and to anybody that I might have confused. I was speaking about Rob Burke, who promotes the Pinball Expo. Consequently, I had spoken with him today. He's currently out of the country, but he will be on the show next week as well, I believe, just to kind of give us some additional information about Expo, maybe like a five or ten minute segment with him to kind of, you know what, build some hype. It's our hometown Expo. It's undergone a lot of changes this year. I believe that will all be for the positive, and I want to do what I can to create a good show. The show that was in my apologies, but the show that was just in Canada, the Vancouver pinball show, but this is Chicago. And this is like here. I mean, the best way to put it is, you know, this is Detroit to cars. I mean, you know, when they do start launching all the auto shows every year, where do they start? Detroit? Yeah. Then Chicago. You know, I mean, we should have a really, really good show. And honestly, from what it sounds like with all the people that are jumping back in, I think we will wind up having a really good show. All flights, man. I just watched that show Manifest last night. Oh, geez. How was that? Well, dude, I don't want to get there five and a half years after the show. Yeah, don't spoil that show because I know that's what the premise is, but I actually want to see that. Okay. I don't like flying, and it's not because I'm afraid of flying. I just, I don't like being encapsulated with a couple hundred people. I can't get out. In an enclosed area? We'll be right back, use the bathroom. It's just not comforting for me. So see, I don't mind flying. I just like driving more. Well, you know, I don't like driving. Oh, I know. Well, dude, you can put your feet up, have a Two Brothers Pale Ale, sit in the backseat, dude. And I was gonna say, you can't be drinking Two Brothers Pinball Pale Ale while you're driving. Well, I wouldn't. No. No, no. All good things. All good things. All right. You know, a quick shout out to our buddy Joe. Joe Kaminkow, Automated Amusements, rad cabs or side art panels on cabinet. John Popadiuk, Bowen Klyce, Zach Menny, Multiball, backglass, Johnny Pinball Podcast, INDISC, Scott Danesi. I'm shooting what's blinking, so I need to figure out some scoring strategies. If anybody has some tips on how I can break the 10 billion point mark over on Star Trek: The Next Generation, feel free to contact us at specialwhenlit pinballpodcast at gmail.com or go ahead and post on the Facebook page, which is also SpecialWhenLitPinballPodcast. Well, I do have some tips about this game. Don't move one if you can get out of it. I went in the back and at the very back is the crazy science lab of Scott Danesi. And if you go back there, there's always crazy things going on. He's always in the middle of creating something. But anyways, long story short, I had noticed this time when I walked in the office, I said, hey Scott, what's up? Terry has a Lexi Lightspeed. He's like, yeah man, he's like, you should go check it out. And I'm like, yeah. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think it's important to revisit some of these things that people may have passed judgment on in the past. I had originally played Multimorphic. It had to be maybe three years ago. So it was still in the very early stages. You know, it was in the middle stages maybe. And I played it and I just wasn't really into it and I was thinking to myself, all right, this might be something that's fun for somebody that's just looking for something completely out of the box, somebody that's not into pinball at all. To me, it kind of felt like a high-end redemption game where I was going to, playing I was going to bring this ball around the playfield, it was going to hit some stuff in the back and then at the end I'd get some tickets, but it didn't give a pinball experience to me personally. So, you know, unfortunately for myself, I just kind of wrote it off and I didn't keep up to date with what was going on with Multimorphic. I've never spoken of Multimorphic because I just didn't consider it anything that was in my general interest. Going into Pinball Life, Scott recommending that I fire up Lexi Lightspeed, I was like, you know what, it's fine, I played all these other games, might as well just see what's going on. I have to say this. I was extremely surprised, and I mean extremely surprised, on how far along that whole platform has come. It offered an experience like nothing else that I've played in pinball. Is it better? No. Is it worse? No. It's just a different experience. The playfield was very interactive. The game itself was integrated so well within the LCD playfield. There were physical blocks that came up through the middle of the playfield at points where you had to break those down to get into different modes. The animations were fun. The flipper mechanisms flipped well. I'm excited talking about it. My biggest regret is that I don't know that I will ever really have an opportunity to get a lot of time on one going forward unless I'm stopping in the Pinball Life. But hats off to Multimorphic for what I think is a really cool pinball experience. All the best for your career. And if you guys want to send one over here to the Two Brothers Pinball Pale Ale studio for some extensive review, we would not shy away from taking one of those. But it's really, really cool. So, anyone that's passed on looking into this in the past because of something that you experienced a couple of years ago, I thoroughly recommend jumping on one at Expo or at a show. I'm going to go ahead and get some videos, see what's been done with this, because I was pleasantly surprised, and I'm excited to talk about it. So you think it's an underdog, huh? I don't know that it'll ever take the place of a regular pinball machine. That being said, it's absolutely a very cool alternative. And it's still pinball. You're still flipping and you're hitting mechanisms. You just have this crazy playfield that isn't just static. I'm pretty picky about what I would own. Now, all this being said, come around full circle, it was only a few games there at Pinball Life. So, I don't know, maybe after 20, 30 games it loses its luster with me and I get bored because it wouldn't be the first time that happened. But I just remember just how that feeling that I had was completely different than what I had a few years ago when I played it at Expo. So, again, very, very well done. See, I've never got to play one, so I really have to just make it up to Terry's and actually Pinball Life. It's come to the point out here in Chicagoland where if something gets listed, if you're not prepared to literally have $5,000 or $6,000 cash on you at any given time and get to the destination within 30 minutes, there is no guarantee that you're going to take this, that you're going to be able to pick up the pin that you agreed on. There's no like, hey, can I give you $100 on PayPal? It's just very, very cutthroat here, which is unfortunate. The good thing, the great thing about it, it's really allowed me to not look for pins on Craigslist or anything anymore. Networking has definitely been a better source of finding games lately, it seems like. Well, I know you've been contacted a bunch just by mentioning some games on the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you've—you should have like a Bill's Bargain Basement segment. A basement segment. Or you can talk about your buying and selling. And on that note, if you feel like selling any pins and you want to post them on our Facebook page, feel free to do that too. Yeah, right. And if they sell, we'll just take like 10%. You know, we ain't greedy. A way to monetize. Yeah. Yeah. Well, someone's got to pay for the studio here. I know. The Two Brothers Pinball Pale Ale Studio. Exactly. It's in need of a little upgrade. Yeah, maybe not. I'm curious to see what Nirmal's reaction will be when he comes into the Pinball Pale Ale studio next week. Because we offered to go on location, but he preferred to come in studio. Well, maybe he wants to bring you a Houdini and then unload it so we've got something to play. I will take a Houdini and an Oktoberfest. You know, and this is the thing too, manufacturers, we have no problem taking a pinball machine on loan for four weeks. Okay. This Week in Pinball, Knapp Arcade, Stern, Jersey Jack, Deeproot, OOB, Butser, American Pinball, Predator, Monster Bash Remake. I think it fell off the face of the earth, bro, because it's not anywhere. Yeah, I'm curious to see what happened with that, if they're just waiting to release it closer to Halloween, Expo, or... I think they're waiting for Expo, like the 35th anniversary of Expo. Is that next year? That's next year. Yeah, so maybe they're going to reveal it then. My gosh, how long are we waiting for this? A long time. I mean, everyone was talking in March that we should have been seeing it. Well, it was supposed to, yeah, Texas Pinball Festival. I know it was possible for them waiting for person finally finalization from the licensor or something that it's like I'm not the best, I think is the last man RAM. Yes, this site is a broken record at the state site whereas it was last as it was, but but literally, where's it, with a house event and till the age of you know, I'm sure Stephen would properly release it by no one you know, and I'm sure they have the reason why they haven't, but... So they had the people that came in and played it under NDA, and so, I mean, those people kind of know what's up. Yeah. But my, I mean, come on already. Just release the pin. You think it'll come to Expo? You think they will release it at Expo? You never know now. Or reveal it at Expo, I should say. I mean, honestly, if you were to ask people, you know, put a hundred bucks if you think it'll be out before June, everyone would have taken that bet. I'm just kidding. Yeah, right? You might have another vault. Yeah. But yeah, so this will be our turn. I'm going to predict that the Monster Bash remake will be revealed over the next seven days. So when it doesn't happen, we can ask This Week in Pinball, or we can ask Head to Head Pinball, or we can ask Eclectic Gamers Podcast, or we can ask Kaneda's Pinball Podcast that will pass the baton to them. They'll do the similar prediction where they get their week, and it'll just be kind of—there's nothing wrong in there. I think they'd be a good time. Another interesting thing that I heard again on Head to Head Pinball Podcast was that I guess they were talking about... Did you hear this? Another edition of the Wizard of Oz from Jersey Jack Pinball that might be coming to fruition. I have not heard that yet. So the last one was the ruby red, right? Yeah. Seventy-fifth anniversary ruby red. And that's kind of the flagship. Yeah, that was the one to, that or the ECLE, but the ECLE was the first run. Right, so what they had talked about today was a yellow brick road edition. Interesting. The ruby red was cool because there was the red armor. You had the red that was up in the topper. I just like how that pin. We could top her on that one too. Right. Yeah. You had the Emerald City edition, which was like, it had the green. And the wood apron. The Wood Apron, that was like the limited edition. So now when you go into potentially having a Yellow Brick Road edition, do you really want to see yellow armor on a Wizard of Oz? No, but I'm curious. Well, maybe, maybe not. I'm curious to see how that would look, though. I mean, that's... I don't like yellow on that. I don't know. I guess, yeah, you can't count it out, but it's like a mustard... Well, yeah, but you never know, though. I mean, honestly, it could be just, you know... And the Black armor. You need a Witch Head edition. Yeah, the witch. The Wicked Witch of the West. Yeah, that'd be cool. Or the East, whichever one it was. Either way, dude, a witch head edition would be cool. You just have like the feet sticking out from the bottom of the cabinet that kind of curl up. Exactly. Or kicking in inappropriate places when you lose a ball. Yeah. So then, hey, what a fabulous week. I'm just trying to pull a lot of news here, guys. We can name it after the wife. Hey, you know, the Wicked Witch Hood edition. I got this for my wife. Yep. You know, whatever it takes. Nah, I'm kidding. Love my wife. So I've got some good news for you, Bill. We've passed 30 minutes. So I think we've done what we can this week. All that we can. All that we can. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? It's kind of like the night before Christmas. Well, weeks before Christmas because you got Expo coming. You know all this stuff is on the horizon. It's just, you know, the calm before the storm, you know. Yeah, interesting that you say that. We are just sitting back and waiting and waiting and waiting. The difference being, at least you know the night before Christmas that at some point you're going to fall asleep and wake up and it's Christmas Day. I feel like we're in Groundhog Day, where right now we just go to sleep, wake up, same day over. Go to sleep, wake up, same day over. But it's all anticipation because in 20 days... Soon to change. Expo. Expo. Yeah. Do you have anything else you'd like to add to the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast episode number 15? No, I just want to thank everyone for listening. It's been a great 15 episodes. Looking forward to seeing where the rest of this goes and that's about it. Yeah, 15 episodes in and everything's feeling great. Again, thanks to everybody for taking the time out of your day to give us a download and give us a listen. And, you know, if you do want to contact the show, I'll just mention it one more time. You can reach us. We've got that Gmail account set up, which is SpecialWhenLitPinballPodcast at gmail.com. If not, jump on Facebook and search SpecialWhenLitPinballPodcast. You guys have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day to play some pinball. For Bill Webb, I'm Ken Cromwell. This is the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast. So long, everybody. The Special When Lit Pinball Podcast is sponsored by Two Brothers Artisan Brewing, makers of Pinball Pale Ale. You're passionate about all things pinball and great tasting craft beer. Two Brothers Artisan Brewing is a firm believer in pursuing your passions. For over 20 years, Two Brothers has had an unparalleled passion for their craft, their customers and their community. Two Brothers Artisan Brewing wants you to follow your passion and drink theirs.