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The Super Awesome Pinball Show - S1-E8

The Super Awesome Pinball Show·podcast_episode·2h 28m·analyzed·Apr 19, 2020
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TL;DR

NBA vet John McCullough discusses his pinball collection and operator experience on Super Awesome Pinball Show.

Summary

The Super Awesome Pinball Show hosts Christopher Franchi, Ed Vanderveen, and Christian Line interview NBA veteran John McCullough, a serious pinball collector and part-time operator who hosted IFPA 12 in 2012. Discussion covers McCullough's 30+ pinball collection, his 2011 Pinball Expo tournament win, current favorites (Jurassic Park, Rick and Morty), operating pinballs on location, and celebrity pinball collectors. The episode is largely anecdotal and social rather than news-focused.

Key Claims

  • John McCullough won the 2011 Pinball Expo tournament, defeating notable players including Lyman Sheets and others

    high confidence · Todd states he won the 2012 Expo tournament (likely referencing 2011 event) and names specific opponents: 'I took out Elwin in the first round, and then I went against Andy Rosa and Josh Sharp and Lyman twice.'

  • McCullough hosted IFPA 12 World Pinball Championship in 2012 with 64 players from 12 countries in his basement, guest room, garage, and outbuilding

    high confidence · Todd states: 'IFPA 12 was here in 2012, so 64 players from 12 countries around the world came here to do battle in my guest room, my basement, my garage, and our outbuilding.'

  • McCullough has approximately 30 pinballs in his basement and 10 in an outbuilding, plus 70 other coin-operated games

    high confidence · Todd describes: 'I probably have 30. I'm in the basement of the house right now, and there's almost 30 pinballs here. And then in the outbuilding, there's probably 10 pinballs and 70 non-pinballs.'

  • McCullough played 4 seasons in the NBA: 2 years with Philadelphia 76ers (made Finals vs Lakers/Shaq/Kobe), 1 year with Nets (made Finals, lost to Lakers), partial season back with 76ers before foot injuries ended career

    high confidence · Todd recounts: 'I played there for two years. In the second year, we made it all the way to the NBA Finals and lost to the Los Angeles Lakers and Shaq and Kobe. I accepted an offer to join the Nets the following season, and that team won the Eastern Conference and went back to the Finals and lost to that same Laker team.'

  • McCullough is 6'11" tall (podcast hosts jokingly estimate 9 feet, but he corrects to '9 even' which appears to be joking, then clarifies '6'11', 13'16'', ultimately stated as 'basically 7 feet')

    medium confidence · Hosts joke about his height; Todd eventually clarifies: '9' even. 6'11", 13'16". Ho, ho, ho. Green Jacket. So, yeah, basically 7 feet.'

  • McCullough operates 25-30 pinballs and a couple other games on location in the Seattle/Bremerton area at various establishments including Walt's Market, a pizza place, and a brewery

    high confidence · Todd states: 'maybe 25, 30 mostly pins out there, a couple of bids. And so it's mainly about relationships...I've got games at Walt's Market and a locally owned pizza place and the brewery and all these places.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I think we picked the right hobbies for being at home for extended periods, didn't we?”

    John McCullough @ ~10:00 — Reference to pandemic quarantine context for the episode recording

  • “Living the quarantine dream, brother. We picked the right hobbies for being at home for extended periods, didn't we? Especially when you have a freaking pimped out basement like you do.”

    John McCullough @ ~9:00 — Shows episode was recorded during COVID-19 lockdown period; normalizes pinball as quarantine activity

  • “It takes a lot to irritate me, but nap time was sacred.”

    John McCullough @ ~15:00 — Anecdote about German tourists visiting his house unannounced; shows accessibility of his collection

  • “Why would I stand in line to play those 10 when I can play these other 400?”

    Ed Robertson (paraphrased by McCullough) @ ~35:00 — Philosophy about tournament vs show experience; explains McCullough's shift from competitive focus

  • “I call it getting an STPD, a socially transmitted pinball disease. Fantastic. Some people get it. Makes them stupid. Socially transmitted, incurable pinball infectious disease.”

    John McCullough @ ~70:00 — Humorous term for pinball addiction; reflects on why some people engage with the hobby and others don't

  • “Scott Denise put everything he wanted into the game, and Charlie didn't take anything out.”

    John McCullough @ ~58:00 — Endorsement of Rick and Morty pinball design philosophy—no feature cuts, fully realized vision

  • “It's just so immersive and there's nothing else quite like it. And I'm thrilled to see that other people...getting their hands on it and saying, you know, this is really fun. This was always fun. I forgot about it.”

    John McCullough @ ~90:00 — Reflects on pinball's unique appeal and renewed mainstream interest post-revival

Entities

John McCulloughpersonChristopher FranchipersonEd VanderveenpersonChristian Line (Dr. Pin)personRick and Morty (Spooky Pinball)gameJurassic ParkgameBig Lebowskigame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: McCullough's collection and operator status serve as community touchpoints; hosted IFPA 12; actively involved in local leagues (Bremerton, Seattle) and shows; integrates pinball with family life

    high · McCullough discusses hosting IFPA 12 with 64 international players, operating machines at local establishments, playing in local leagues, and introducing his children to pinball

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive sentiment toward current pinball manufacturer output; McCullough states all manufacturers 'are doing a great job' and appreciates the combination of classic playfield design with modern audio/visual assets

    high · McCullough: 'I think everyone's doing a great job, and I'm enjoying all the fruits of all the company's labors. I love it all...I think a lot of the companies are doing a really good job with the total package of having the video assets now and still keeping the pinball classic'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: McCullough shifted from tournament-focused play to social/casual experience at shows; notes young players' reflexes and online learning (YouTube/streaming) accelerating competitive skill curve and pushing older players down rankings

    high · McCullough: 'I think with just the Internet and videos and YouTube and streaming, the learning curve is skyrocketing. Some of these young guys with their reflexes are getting really good and that's pushing me down the rankings...I've been as high as 85th, and I'm way down now.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Rick and Morty intentionally designed as challenging, adversarial playfield following Steve Ritchie design principles (ball attacks player); includes workarounds for difficult shots to avoid bottlenecks

    high · McCullough: 'Scott Denise has that same thing going with that killer loop' and explains the upper flipper garage shot has a right orbit workaround: 'there is another way to get up into the garage. So if you can't hit that shot, you can always shoot the right orbit'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.446

0:00
I think we're alone now, doesn't seem to be anyone around. I think we're alone now, getting over all through the only time. I think we're alone now, doesn't seem to be anyone around. Tune in to the Loser Kid Pivotal Sports and Ball Players Podcast. Special when...
0:30
I know I'm drunk. The following is an ad-hoc radio production. And now, ladies and gentlemen, time for the show.
0:47
Sit down, kick your feet up, grab a cold one, get ready for... The Super Awesome Pinball Show That's right, it's time for everybody's favorite pinball show With your host, pinball artist Christopher Franchi Texas Pinball Festival's Ed Vanderby And Dr. Pin himself, French in line Sponsored by Chicago Gaming Company the home of your favorite top-quality pinball remakes like Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, and more. Visit chicagogaming.com. And by Cointaker, distributors of new in-box pinball machines, mods, accessories, and frangy pinball wear. That's cointaker.com. Also by backalleycreations.com, creators of the most badass pinball mods, black pearl pinballs, and the easy slide play field support bracket set. That's backalleycreations.com. Settle back now, content, comfortable, well-fed, and ready for some fine entertainment.
1:49
Hello, Legion of the Silver Ball. It is the Super Awesome Pinball Show Season 1, Episode 8. How do we keep doing it? We keep bringing you shows. We're supposed to be bringing you shows every three weeks, and it's now been every week. Amazing. Ed and Christian, how are you guys doing? I'm doing great. How's everybody else? I'm doing great. Happy to be here. Awesome. Well, we've got a great show. We've got a special guest joining us. We're going to talk about our past week in Pinball Mount Weeks, because we've just delivered a sweet-ass show for you last week. We are going to talk about the pandemic pinball news. We've got an interview with Hot Wheels game designer and game coder, Joel Balser and Josh Kugler from American Pinball, and maybe some more random junk. But let's bring in our special guest.

  • Rick and Morty pinball (Spooky) produced 750 units

    medium confidence · Todd states: 'I think all 750 people that jumped on that are going to be happy.'

  • Sarah McLachlan is into pinball and was looking for a Quicksilver machine; Ed Vanderveen helped facilitate this

    medium confidence · Todd mentions: 'I know that Sarah McLachlan was looking for a Quicksilver. No kidding. I'll give her a Quicksilver. Oh, boy. Well, the whole Sarah McLachlan, Ed called, and I got him hooked up with that.'

  • Other celebrities known to collect pinball: Rob Zombie, the actor who played MacGyver, Karl Urban (Star Trek), Dr. Phil

    low confidence · Todd speculates: 'I feel like some of them come out of the woodworks...Rob Zombie is a pinball collector. I feel like the guy who played MacGyver, apparently he's a pinball collector. And I think Carl Urban, who played Star Trek...Dr. Phil, I think he's a big love for pinball.'

    • Market Zero
    game
    Elvira House of Horrorsgame
    Black Knightgame
    Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factorygame
    T2 (Terminator 2)game
    Quicksilvergame
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Chicago Gaming Companycompany
    IFPA 12event
    2011 Pinball Expoevent
    Pinbergevent
    Scott Deniseperson
    Clay Harrell (Pinball Ninja)person
    Sam Perkins (Big Smooth)person
    Kyle Forberperson
    Lyman Sheetsperson
  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival credited as significant driver of mainstream pinball adoption; McCullough attributes broader enthusiasm to hands-on exposure at shows like TPF

    medium · McCullough: 'I'm not surprised it's taken this long...I'm thrilled to see that other people, and I think Texas Pinball Festival has a lot to do with that. And just people coming and getting their hands on it and saying, you know, this is really fun.'

  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball Rick and Morty produced 750 units; market response positive with collector purchasing commitment and first-hand owners expressing strong satisfaction

    medium · McCullough states: 'I think all 750 people that jumped on that are going to be happy. I have a friend that's getting one. He's quite a bit further down the list...He's like, I am so glad I'm getting this thing.'

  • ?

    product_concern: McCullough experienced operational issue with Caribbean pinball where auto plunger prong broke, causing balls to disappear into right-hand corner, leading to incorrect 'missing pinballs' error messages

    high · McCullough recounts: 'what had happened is the auto plunger, one of the prongs had broken off. So every time somebody went to plunge and pulled the plunger back, the ball fell into the bottom right-hand corner'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Rick and Morty's co-creator involvement in pinball design enabled high customization and speech content; producer (Charlie) retained full designer vision without feature cuts

    medium · McCullough states: 'the level of participation on the part of one of the co-creators just to really personalize the game and have so much speech. It's absolutely hilarious' and 'Scott Denise put everything he wanted into the game, and Charlie didn't take anything out.'

    • 2:31
    Ladies and gentlemen, he's number 11 in your programs, but number one in your hearts, NBA superstar, John McCullough!
    2:46
    Oh, so sweet. What's going on, fellas? Welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Let me turn on these earphones. So what's going on with you guys? Living the quarantine dream, brother.
    3:03
    We picked the right hobbies for being at home for extended periods, didn't we? Especially when you have a freaking pimped out basement like you do. That doesn't hurt. It helps to have games down here. It helps to have an outbuilding with some stuff. and my son and I are having a good time playing everything. What's your setup over there, man? I've heard that you actually had the pinball, was it the World Pinball Championships held there at some point? Yeah, IFPA 12 was here in 2012, so 64 players from 12 countries around the world came here to do battle in my guest room, my basement, my garage, and our outbuilding. So we had people spread out in different zones, but it was an honor to have so many cool people from around the world walk down the driveway every morning to do battle in my basement. It was really kind of surreal. That's cool. For anybody who doesn't know, why don't you describe what your collection is like? I think I probably have 30. I'm in the basement of the house right now, and there's almost 30 pinballs here. And then in the outbuilding, there's probably 10 pinballs and 70 non-pinballs. So coin-operated stuff like pitch and bats, four sit-down Sega Daytonas linked up, Two Atari Road Burners motorcycles linked up. Some maybe 10-bids four-player horse racing game like at the fair where you roll a ball up, and then there's these horses in the back box. Wow. You know that game from the fair where you roll a ball up and it's faster? So that's the riot at parties. There's a big ball bowler that's broken. There's some antique stuff, and the media room is about maybe 10 games up in the media room. And then the lower basement area has 20, 26. A lot of games from the 70s and some interesting mannequin stuff like mannequin bowlers, mannequin skee-ball, some EM pins. So there's good variety. Stuff dates back to the 1930s. So we got stuff from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, up through today. Is that... Oh!
    5:01
    You got a sign out front on your lawn that says, Todd and Busters? Nice. Todd and Busters. I don't, but I might as well. I was here one day with my kids. My wife was out. One kid was napping, and one kid I was holding in my arms, and I rang at the doorbell, and that was going to wake up my napping kid. And I was already a little bit irritated. It takes a lot to irritate me, but nap time was sacred. And I answered the door. I was like, hi, can I help you? And the guy's like, hi, I am Hans from Germany. I'm here with my wife, and I've heard that you have a wonderful pinball collection. I'm here on Baybridge Island visiting my sister-in-law, and I'm here for one more week, and I'm wondering, I've heard from time to time you have these pinball gatherings and get-togethers, and I'm wondering if in the next week this will be happening. I'm like, no, I don't have anything on the books. We speak English, not Spanish. So I was like, how about now? Are you busy now? And he's like, no, I'm fine. Honey, my wife was so embarrassed she couldn't believe I was in it. She wouldn't even come down the driveway. Honey, it's fine. I told you pinball people are nice.
    6:01
    Bring in the six kids. Yeah, so they brought their kids in, and we played. They were totally harmless, and they were super nice, and they invited me to their place in California. I've never gone, but it's just my wife is like, you're insane. You shouldn't let people in. But it ended up being just fine. I feel sorry for your wife because you have kids. You should. And if anybody's seen you, I mean, you're what, 9'4"? 9' even. 6'11", 13'16". Ho, ho, ho. Green Jacket.
    6:29
    So, yeah, basically 7 feet. But if you saw Todd, you would say, was it like 8 feet tall? You just seem taller. So your wife having your children must be like giving birth to a three-year-old. Yeah, because wives are only like five-two.
    6:49
    She's about five-seven, five-eight. So I did feel bad. Unfortunately, our kids were eight pounds, five ounces. That's not too bad. I was ten pounds, eight ounces. So I really feel bad for my mom. But my wife did pretty well, and the kids were pretty average size at birth. and now they're sprouting up. My daughter is 12, and she's about as tall as my wife, so she's 5'7", is a 12-year-old. And my son's the tallest kid in his class. So they come by it honestly. They get it from me. So, son, for people who don't necessarily know your backstory, you were an NBA player for four seasons. Is that right? Yeah, that's right, four seasons. I played college basketball at the University of Washington, got recruited out of my hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, took a full ride to the University of Washington, and that's where I met my wife at school there and got drafted in the second round after my senior season. I was the 47th pick in the second round. To the Philadelphia 76ers, played there for two years. In the second year, we made it all the way to the NBA Finals and lost to the Los Angeles Lakers and Shaq and Kobe. I accepted an offer to join the Nets the following season, and that team won the Eastern Conference and went back to the Finals and lost to that same Laker team. And then at the conclusion of that season, I got traded back to the Sixers, played about a half season, and then couldn't go on beyond my foot issues. And so that was the end of my playing career and decided to do five years of radio broadcasting for the Sixers after that. And now I'm a full-time dad, part-time pinball operator. Full-time Laker hitter. No way. Much respect, but not a lot of love.
    8:22
    You're an operator, too. You told me once that you're kind of dabbling in being an operator. Yeah, maybe 25, 30 mostly pins out there, a couple of bids. And so it's mainly about relationships, which is a huge part of the reason why I love this hobby, are people like you that I see at shows and then people I see locally and play in the Bremerton Pinball League with, I play in the Seattle Pinball League. And I love a lot of local shop people here. I've got games at Walt's Market and a locally owned pizza place and the brewery and all these places. And I just love going in there and talking to the owners and seeing people enjoy the games and introduce the games to their kids, and it really makes me happy to see people showing a new generation these games that I love playing. And so, you know, it doesn't hurt to make a few dollars out of the games and put that back into the industry and get games for my collection. And so I'm trying to have the hobby self-fund itself. Did you have an electronics background? Because you're, I mean, with that much of a collection and being an operator, how do you know how to fix all this stuff? I know how to cut a check or pay. Ah, nice. There you go. All right. There's no shame in that, Todd. I need help. I love to play them. I love to collect them. Not so good at fixing them. I mean, this is an example of why I probably shouldn't be operating, and I have gotten a little better since then. But I had one at a local place, and he called me up and said, Hey, Todd, your game says four pinballs missing. I was like, well, that's weird. Like, you know, maybe they're stuck on the play field. That's strange. And I was fired from the Caribbean Stern, and I think it maybe only had four balls. So I go, and sure enough, I think I find one on the play field. I'm like, all right, if they're not in the play field and nobody's broken into this thing, they must be in the cabinet. So I lift up the play field, and I don't find them in the cabinet. I'm like, wow, they must have just disappeared. So let me just fill this thing up with pinballs again. So I put brand new pinballs in there, and he calls back the next day, and he's like, yep, your game says four pinballs missing. I'm like, what is going on? So I looked, and what had happened is the auto plunger, one of the prongs had broken off. So every time somebody went to plunge and pulled the plunger back, the ball fell into the bottom right-hand corner, and I missed it. So I realized as an operator, if it says missing pinballs, you don't just put more in there. You don't know where those went. So fortunately, I have some friends that really help me keep my games running, and they know a lot more than I do. It's a community, and people help, and they like having games out there, so they help me keep them running. That's very cool. So, I mean, not only do you love the game, but you also are a damn good player. I mean, you've won, I think I saw the 2011 Pinball Expo tournament, and that was against some of the biggest names like Lyman Sheets and Bowen, Karens, and you took first place. So do you play at a lot of tournaments? Because I looked at your IFBA ranking, and for your skill level, it's impressive, but it's not in the top 100. So is it just that you're not playing a lot of pinball? I'm not playing as much competitively. My kids are 12 and 10 now, so I don't get to as many events. is I used to go to a lot of conventions and play in the tournaments. And so that 2012 Expo tournament was a special one for me. I took out Elwin in the first round, and then I went against Andy Rosa and Josh Sharp and Lyman twice. And it's just not supposed to happen for me to win. And it was just kind of those guys are going to beat me 99 times out of 100, but it just happened to be that one time on that day. So I'll always remember that. So I know I'm a good player. and when I have had the chances to go play at tournaments, I haven't necessarily taken advantage of the opportunities that I've had, but I still enjoy it and I feel like I'm getting better now, but so is everybody else. I think with just the Internet and videos and YouTube and streaming, the learning curve is skyrocketing. Some of these young guys with their reflexes are getting really good and that's pushing me down the rankings. I think I've been as high as 85th, and I'm way down now. But hopefully I'll be able to hit that back up. But I do love to compete, but I've found sometimes I would get frustrated when I wouldn't do well at tournaments, and it would maybe ruin the rest of the show for me. And so I decided sometimes I'm going to skip the tournament and just enjoy the social aspect of the show. And so I'm not playing in as many tournaments. I used to be – I'd spend the whole time in a tournament area pumping money into 10 machines, and there'd be 400 machines out there to enjoy. and people like Ed Robertson would help me realize. I was like, why don't you play this tournament? He's like, why would I stand in line to play those 10 when I can play these other 400? I'm like, that's a pretty good point. So I lost out of the TPF a couple of years ago. I was bummed out. I was upset. And Ed said, how's the tournament going? I go, terrible. He's like, are you free for lunch? I said, yes. Are you free for dinner? I'm like, yes. And I realized I had time to hang out. And so I looked at it a little bit differently. Well, that's the conundrum for a lot of tournament players They miss out on a lot of the shows, and there's some great stuff that you're just not going to see if you're waiting in lines and pumping dumps and all those other tournaments. But you made it to Pinnberg last year. I saw you there. We hung out for a little bit at registration.
    13:29
    So you make it to the biggest event in the world. Do you think that that's going to happen this year? Have you heard anything? I haven't myself. I haven't heard anything. I certainly hope so. I guess it will go on if it's safe, and if it's not, then it won't. So I really hope that things are somewhat back to normal enough for Pinnberg, because that is my favorite tournament, like a lot of people. Likewise. And it would be, I missed it a few years ago by forgetting to check in. Oh, no. Yeah, so I missed the log in. I was 184th on the wait list, and then I ended up, you know, watching that shrink down to about 100th on the wait list. This was two Pinnbergs ago. So I decided, you know what, I'm going to Pittsburgh. I booked my flight. I got my hotel, and I was waiting for them to call the names, and they didn't call my name. And someone said, you know, what number did you get to? And they said, we got to 130. I said, oh, I was at 100. I think you skipped me. She's like, yeah, but did you check in 15 minutes ago when I made the announcement? I was like, no, I didn't. So I missed Pinberg, and people are like, you didn't get in? Did they not get your number? I'm like, they got to my number. I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, yeah.
    14:39
    I don't want to talk about it. I have nobody to blame but myself. Well, you played last year. How did you do? I didn't really look at the rankings. Really bad, really bad. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think I did terribly. It's the worst I've ever done, and I had about as good a time. I think the best I've ever done is second in B, so I took home some money a couple years ago, second in B, and I thought maybe I could get back to that level. And I think I did qualify for C finals this past year. That's great. Still had a blast, yeah. Well, I was in U Division, so C is a whole lot better than that. So that's good, man. You beat a ton of good pinball players if you're in C. Does E stand for enough? I'll take it. That was my first pinberg, so I'll take it. So what's your latest games that you've bought? I know you, being an operator and stuff, have you bought some new stuff. What's your favorite current title? Loving Jurassic Park. I'm playing the heck out of it. You know, just one game of the year. That doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me. My son, he's 10, and I'm trying to get him back into pinball. We've got a lot of time on our hands, and I'm trying to get him excited about it. And we're playing split flipper, so he's got the right side, so he's got the upper flipper. And I've got the left, and we're putting dinosaurs in jail. We're trapping them. We're doing this and that. He's like, this is so fun. This is so, I'm like, this is so fun. So it's kind of cool to be able to have that experience. And that's the first time I feel like he's just really immersed in it and digging it. We played some Big Lebowski, and I put the family mode on to make sure that there's no bad words. And today we often focus on bowling, trying to get to the end of the bowling matches, and that's been great. But today we started to focus on Market Zero, so by getting the inlanes and outlanes and going through all six of the Market Zeros. And we got through it, and apparently that family mode has not extended to Mode 6 of Market Zero. All right, it's fucking zero. So there's a bit of an F-bomb that gets dropped in there. Oh, no. I had to try and bleep that one out and explain that one to my wife. So he's 12? He's 10. My daughter's 12. He's 10. I mean, he's heard the word before. I just don't want to listen to it. Don't let him listen to this show.
    16:54
    Why the fuck not, asshole? Also, I've got a Rick and Morty that I'm loving, and I'm playing that a lot. I'm playing Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Nice. I am playing Elvira House of Horrors a lot. I'm playing Black Knight. I'm playing a lot of the recent stuff and just having a ton of fun with it all. I love it. I think everyone's doing a great job, and I'm enjoying all the fruits of all the company's labors. I love it all. I'm sick. I'm addicted like crazy. With a collection like that, what's the turnover of your games? I mean, how often are you bringing them out and bringing them back in? I try and keep them all I hate it when I have to sell them and so I think that's part of the reason that I operate is to be able to still own them and get them out there and create room for new stuff so I'm excited by the new stuff I think a lot of the companies are doing a really good job with the total package of having the video assets now and still keeping the pinball classic but really accentuating it with all this really cool audio visual stuff, so I get really excited about the new stuff coming in, but it doesn't mean I don't like the old stuff, and so I try and just find a new home for it, and I thought that maybe my games on location would be destroyed or vandalized or abused, but they're just being enjoyed and played and being respected, and so it makes it a little easier to put them out to not to pasture, but to go to work for me a little bit. Well, I'm going to send you my address and I will respect the... Quit talking over me, Franchie. God damn it. I'm going to send you my Badgers, Todd, and I'll respect all those games. You son of a bitch.
    18:34
    Is there a delay or something? Because I was, like, talking before you, and then you just went right over top of me. Go ahead. Well, you know, what I have to say is more important anyway, so. No, actually.
    18:45
    Todd, since Rick and Morty is so new and a lot of people haven't played it, can you give us, like, your 60-second review of it? Yeah, I'm really enjoying it. I became a fan of Rick and Morty the show after the pinball machine came out, and that's pretty standard. I started watching Game of Thrones when the game came out. I started watching Walking Dead when the game came out. So I watched the show to understand the pinball machine more. And so I love Spooky. I think I have purchased all of the Spooky games that weren't their contracted games. And I'd love to see their growth and their passion. And Rick and Morty, now that I'm about, I'm getting close to finishing two seasons so far. and there isn't a better theme in terms of fun and just creativity and just the level of participation on the part of one of the co-creators just to really personalize the game and have so much speech. It's absolutely hilarious, and the family mode on that one is extremely necessary. So it's a challenging play field. Scott Denise likes to make a challenging play field, but I am okay with that. I tend to gravitate towards my games maybe like Iron Man. that are a little tougher as opposed to maybe something like Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit where you can maybe play longer. So I kind of like those butt-kicking games, and it definitely fits into that category of it. It's difficult to keep the ball alive, but that keeps you on your toes, and having a pop bumper down below is just crazy and wild, and I'm starting to get the use, get the hang of the ball saver on the right-hand side, and the button is right there. and instead of it being like the Black Knight sort of range where you hit the button and basically if you get it, you get it, and the magnet will just grab it and stop it, this is more of a pulse. And so if you see that thing going towards the outlaying and you start to get in the habit, you start flicking that thing, assuming you have battery power, and that magnet will just take it and throw it, and it's really satisfying to save the ball from the deaths. And so I think Scott Denise put everything he wanted into the game, and Charlie didn't take anything out. So they really kept it all, and the animations and the immersion is excellent. And so I'm really enjoying it. And it looks like they're going to be continuing to update code and include different episodes. And they've got just incredible animations and sound call-outs, great speakers, and just a really nice package. That's what she said.
    21:11
    I think all 750 people that jumped on that are going to be happy. I have a friend that's getting one. He's quite a bit further down the list, and so I was really excited to have him over. And we played one game. He's like, I am so glad I'm getting this thing. It's just, you know, he wasn't worried at all after playing it. So it's been really fun. Have you dialed in the upper flipper shot to the garage? I have not dialed that in yet. So much the same as I'm not a great tech, I'm just kind of waiting for this thing to be over, and I can have a friend come over and help me move some things, address some rails, and maybe tighten up some screws. It looks like maybe if I remove a couple screws, I can smooth out that rail, but I don't like taking ramps off, and so I'm waiting. And so right now, every now and then, I'll get a shot through on that upper loop, but often between the rail and the spinner, I'll be able to get enough revolutions to charge up my portal to change dimensions, but it's not possible for me to loop it a couple times, but I know that it is going to be fixable, And so I'm just enjoying it as it is. And I can hit that lower shot off the tip of the flipper up into the garage. It's not easy, but I think my flipper positioning is perfect, where if I hit it right, I can hit that. And Scott Denise did a nice job, too, where, you know, since I can charge my portal gun, there is another way to get up into the garage. So if you can't hit that shot, you can always shoot the right orbit, and the ball ends up in the same place. So he made it as a difficult shot on purpose, and there's a workaround. So it's never a bottleneck. If you have trouble hitting that shot, shoot the right orbit and you'll get there. And so he's really thought it through. And the U-turn is at the top there with the locks. It's multifaceted with the lock balls that can loop around. It's very smooth. And so the game is satisfying to shoot, but it keeps you on your toes. And I've heard Scott Denise say before that he wants Steve Ritchie, he's his favorite designer, and he wants the game to be adversarial. Steve Ritchie wants the ball to attack you. He wants the ball back on your flipper, and Scott Denise has that same thing going with that killer loop. Yep. Well, you're one of a few people in the pinball world that are celebrities and also vocal about being into pinball, and there's a lot of articles that have been written about you and that you like pinball, and Ed Robertson is another guy who's a huge name, and he talks about pinball. Are there other people out there that you know that are celebrities that are into pinball that just aren't on the radar as much as you guys are? That's a really good question. I feel like some of them come out of the woodworks. I mean, we saw during the Twippies that Sean Askin came on there, and that was really cool to see.
    23:48
    You know, I think Rob Zombie is a pinball collector. I feel like the guy who played MacGyver, apparently he's a pinball collector. And I think Carl Urban, who played Star Trek, I think he really enjoys the game. So I think there's a number of people that really enjoy it or maybe have small game rooms. I think Dr. Phil, I think he's a big love for pinball. So it kind of happens. I know that Sarah McLachlan was looking for a Quicksilver. No kidding. I'll give her a Quicksilver. Oh, boy.
    24:22
    Well, the whole Sarah McLachlan, Ed called, and I got him hooked up with that. So it was pretty cool. That is very cool. Sarah McLachlan is Sarah's favorite artist, so I'll have to tell her that she's into pinball. Makes her even cooler, right? Yeah, so I always keep an ear out to see. I mean, I have a former teammate who's actually still playing. His name's Kyle Forber. He's currently on the Milwaukee Bucks. And when I was a fourth-year player, he was a rookie. And so I always think of him as a young player. And now he's one of the elder statesmen in the NBA. And I wanted to share a pinball with him. And he had a nice house with a shuffleboard and a pool table and a dartboard. And I was like, dude, you've got to have a pinball machine. And besides, I'm running out of space and I could use a free spot. So I loaned him my T2, which is a great game that I love. I keep it in the collection. I just needed room for something new. And after a while, he called me. He's like, yeah, nobody's playing it. Can you come pick it up? I'm like, are you kidding me? What's wrong with you? What a dick.
    25:18
    Why do you not want a free pinball machine in your house right now? So it surprised me that more athletes, more friends of mine from the NBA just didn't take to it for whatever reason. I think it only bites a certain percentage of us. I call it getting an STPD, a socially transmitted pinball disease. Fantastic.
    25:39
    Some people get it. It makes them stupid. Socially transmitted, incurable pinball infectious disease, and not all of us get it. Who's your buddy Sam that lives here in Dallas that had a couple of games that we had to find someone to fix them for him? You texted me a long time ago, Sam. Yeah, I think I might have been a friend of a friend. Maybe somebody had asked me if I was a friend. I think I was helping out a friend. So hopefully that worked out. Well, he was a former player. Yeah, we got him. We got him taken care of, but he was a former player. Oh, was it Sam Perkins? That sounds right. Okay, yes. He was a great former Sonic, and I don't know Sam personally. I mean, Big Smooth was his nickname, and everybody loved him. I mean, as a Seattle fan, he was a part of a very special Sonics team that made it to the finals in 96. And so he was just a cool cat, even though I didn't know him very well. and I think somebody reached out and so I appreciate you helping him out. So I want to help out a former NBA brethren even though I don't know him well. But he's an awesome guy from what I hear. And Clay Harrell, you guys know Ninja Clay, Pinball Ninja? Oh, yeah. I know Clay. He fixes my games. He lives about 20 minutes with me. He's helped me out a lot as well and he used to tell me some stories where he'd get some calls and he's like, Todd, I got a call from Larry Brown. I think he was your coach, which he was my coach for the Sixers and the Hall of Famer and an amazing person, and he had a, it's like he called me to fix his pinball machines at a space jam and something else, and so he goes, and he's like, yeah, this beautiful basement, I'm looking at the games, and look at all these jerseys on the wall, and there was a Jordan one over here, and a Barkley over here, and there was an E-Wing, there was an E-Wing jersey, I'm like, do you mean Ewing, Patrick Ewing, I don't know, it said E-Wing to me. A-Ron. I was making fun of his basketball knowledge, not so good. So I think some techs probably have some good stories about going into maybe some celebrity's homes and working on their games. But I'm not surprised that pinball has caught on in the recent years the way it has. I'm surprised it's taken this long. I just think it's just so immersive and there's nothing else quite like it. And I'm thrilled to see that other people, and I think Texas Pinball Festival has a lot to do with that. And just people coming and getting their hands on it and saying, you know, this is really fun. This was always fun. I forgot about it. How do I get a game? And places like that are just so special. So I can't wait for next year. Well, thank you. Yeah. We're all waiting for next year. Damn, this sucks. Well, what about Expo? Are you going to go to Expo? Chicago Expo? That's my plan. I love that one, too. And really happy to see that show going on the right trajectory in terms of what they're doing and participation and all the fun that they've had. I think last year I decided to forego the main tournament and do the haunted house tournament where, you know, people were yelling at me and people were wailing and screaming and saying, oh, he'll be very unhappy with you.
    28:31
    And then there's the pinball Olympics at Jay Brand's place. And that's probably the best pinball experience I've ever had is just competing in the pinball Olympics and having a blast. So Expo. Whirlyball. And then we got Whirly Ball. Chris, have you played Whirly Ball? Christian, you guys played Whirly Ball? I have not. What is that? I have. It's bumper cars. Basketball, basketball mixed with lacrosse, but everybody's in bumper cars. And there's one not too far from the Expo Hotel. So if you get into the Expo, you know, before noon or something, check it out. The first time I went, Bo and Terrence had told me about it, and I showed up. And I was expecting them to look at me and say, oh, you? You're not going to fit. But I walked in, and nobody made a big deal about my size. So I thought, you know what, maybe I'm actually going to be able to do this. So I jump in a car, and I have to lift my tummy a little bit. I get the seatbelt buckled, and then it's go time. And I'm a good athlete, good hand-eye coordination. I'm catching, I'm passing, I'm scoring. My team wins, buzzer goes off. Now we're out of the game, and 10 people are in. And I can't wait to get back in. But I get into a car with a smaller seatbelt, and I can't, no matter how much I lift my tummy up, I can't click this thing. I'm like, you know what, I'm not sitting up. I'm just going to pretend that it's on. I'm not even going to do it. And as we play, I went for a ball in the corner, and I ended up sitting out of my seat a little bit, and it got T-boned, and I fell out. My ass is on the floor.
    29:50
    I've been ejected, and I don't know if I'm going to get electrocuted, and people are still driving. We've never seen that. And the referee was reading a book and hadn't noticed it, and she's like, she finally noticed it, cut power. It said car 17. I'm like, they're going to throw me out of there. She's like, would you like a seatbelt extension? Oh, yeah, that'd be great. I didn't know you guys had one. Thank you. You got to use some Whirlyball. Christian, it's a lot of fun. There's no other game like it. That sounds incredible. I'm definitely in. Yeah, it's fun. We'll get to the details. Actually, I have a funny Whirlybird story. In the condo that I live in right now, just out of convenience and timing and all that, I just happened to rent a condo from a friend of mine who, 10 years earlier, before I even knew her, hit her in the face with a Whirlyball racket at her mom's birthday party. I just went back to catch a ball and hit her right in the face. And she hated me for, like, years after that. And so she got to know me, and then I ended up renting her condo.
    30:44
    That's a tough way to start. Yeah, there's plenty of smacked hands and stuff when you're playing. I smacked somebody's hand while we were playing. I felt really bad about it for about a half a second.
    30:57
    Yeah, good times. Todd, I have a ton of pinball T-shirts, but one of them is the Tom McCullough Basement Arcade T-shirt made by Ryan Claytor of Coin-Op Carnival fame. And how did that come about? I mean, how did that T-shirt get made? He actually sent me that shirt, but I don't know the backstory behind it. I just had met Ryan at a show, and I don't think there's a nicer guy in this hobby or in this world, and so I just really enjoyed talking to him, and I told him how much I liked his style of comic book art and some of the t-shirts and designs he'd done for other conventions, and he really appreciated the kind words I had. I said, you know, I love your style, and I would love for you to do something for me, and I don't even know what I want, but can you just kind of do one that you would do for a show and maybe have me in it and have basketball and have my love of Slurpees and throw a whirlyball in there because that's fun and put some machines in the background? And he said, yeah, I think I can draw some up. So he drew me a little sketch and concept and put it on. I'm like, that's it. That's what I wanted you to do, but I didn't know how to describe it. And that's it. And he said, I've done a lot of thinking about the colors. What do you think of this? I said, those are the perfect colors. That's what I want it to be. And he's like, you are the easiest client I've ever had. It was just so fun to, I would call it collaborating, but basically he did all the work, and he just made it this really cool shirt that I'm super proud of, and some of my friends have them. I'm glad you have one.
    32:20
    He's just an awesome person and a big asset to this community. Yeah, for sure. He's a great guy. it all makes sense now why you were in a bumper car on that shirt. I didn't really understand that, but now with Whirlybird, it kind of all comes together. Yeah, it's not like I have a Whirlyball center in my house without his blood. I would have that represented. He said, you know, I think the shirt doesn't really come through with the resolution, but he said, you know, I might be able to write the names of some basketball games or pinball machines in the background. What would you like? And I said, well, let's do my daughter Carmen's canine. She really likes dogs. and my son Dylan, let's do Dylan's Diner, and let's do my wife, Janet, the Great, and then there's Wizard of Todd, and then there's Canada's Most Taunted, and then there is Monster Rash is the last one. Monster Rash. Love it. Nice. It's awesome.
    33:10
    So he's got a good sense of humor, too. Yeah, he's a good guy. Every time your name comes up, you're speaking of Slurpees, all I can ever think about is, like, well, Todd invited me to his house for a Canadian Dr. Pepper Slurpee, and damn it if I haven't got a chance to get over there yet and have one. Yeah, the offer's still there. Slurpee machine. I've got orange going right now. I ran out of Coke, but I've got a supplier, so I need to get some more Dr. Pepper. And there is a bottle of rum and usually vodka and maybe whiskey or whatever you want to mix in there if you want to mix it. I learned the hard way that Slurpees and alcohol, they can work if you mix them together. And when I was 16 and the drinking age where I grew up was 18, but I think I might have been a little ahead of the curve there. And I wasn't even really a big drinker, but there was a concert. Spirit of the West was my favorite band, and they were coming to town. I'm like, this is going to be the best night of my life. I want to get drunk, and I want to enjoy this. So a friend of mine, we were both 16, and we jump in his car, and we go to the liquor store. And even though it's 18, I'm like 6'10", and they sell me. I'm like, I don't even know what to get. I'm like, I know vodka is an alcohol, and I know tequila is an alcohol. So I got a bottle of 13 ounces of tequila. We went to 7-Eleven, got one large Slurpee with two cups, poured half the Slurpee in mine, half in his, half the tequila in mine, half the vodka. My friend, fortunately, yeah, awful. Big mistake.
    34:32
    My friend, the driver, fortunately takes one sip and goes, this is awful. I'm not doing this. I'm like, good, you're the driver. You shouldn't anyway. But I take the Slurpee and I want that. So I drink my Slurpee. And it turns out with Slurpees, the alcohol goes right to the bottom and the Slurpee floats right to the top. So I was basically just drinking it straight. So 26 ounces later, I vomit on the sidewalk before the concert and end up having an amazing time. I had rebounded nicely. I chundered, and I was ready for the show, and I had a blast. And we're driving home. I'm hammered, and fortunately, he's completely sober. And that's when the cops pull us over, and I go,
    35:08
    Drunken shit. I go, I'm going to let you do the talking. And he's like, that's probably a good idea. Shut up. He's coming. So the cop comes over, and he shines the flashlight in the back seat. And he's like, what are you guys doing? And he's like, I was just coming home from a concert. Can I see those alcohol containers, please? I'm like, oh, man, we're here in so much trouble. So I give him the rum, and he opens it up and tries to pour it a drop. Nothing happens. And I give him the vodka. He opens up the cap, tries to pour it up. Nothing happens. And he's like, well, there's no law against empty containers. If you're going to drink, drink it all. And I was like, I'm so glad I drank a drop of that. Even the cops in Canada are nice. That's ridiculous. Yeah, so he got a 7-kilometer-per-hour over-speeding limit, and that was it. That's huge. For those that don't know, Todd, years ago, I'm kind of changing the subject here, but when you first came to the Texas Pinball Festival, it's been five, six years ago. It was a sports center that did a little special called Where Are They Now? And it kind of focused on you and how you transitioned from basketball into your love for pinball. and they followed you around for the whole weekend, and everybody was really like, oh, my goodness, this is super cool. And that was kind of your first introduction to Texas, and that's where you and I met, and that's kind of how you came on to the pinball scene was through that. So if you haven't seen it, it's still out on the Internet somewhere, I think. Yeah, I think it's there somewhere. I had retired, and I was making no secret of my love of pinball, and I think Sports Illustrated did an article on it, and ESPN thought, you know, this is interesting. ESPN, that's what it was Yeah, ESPN did the story But I think maybe they'd read about it in Sports Illustrated And said, you know what, let's look into this So they said, we want to feature you In an upcoming little featurette And we want to come and talk to you and your friends About pinball, we'll come to Bainbridge Island And is there a convention coming up? You know, you talk about these tournaments And I looked at the schedule And I think I hadn been to TPF I wanted to go But it was just hard for me to add in all the shows That I wanted to go to But it made sense to go calendar year That was the next one And brought the film crew along and I had a bunch of friends get interviewed here And we simulated just a night of hanging out, shooting pinball. They were going to do all these time-lapse things. And my friends were all excited about being on SportsCenter. And then we get down to Texas Pinball Festival, and they were just going to film some stuff. And I was going to play in a tournament. I said, they're like, are you good? I'm like, I'm okay, but I've never won anything. And they said, well, you know, we'll be there just in case something happens. and I'm thinking, you know, I'm not going to win anything. And for the first time in my life, I took second place in an electromechanical tournament, took home a trophy, and all my friends ended up on the cutting room floor, and nothing more of a piece ended up with the tournament with me being successful. And so all my friends didn't make the cut, but it was kind of cool to see pinball featured prominently on ESPN, and hopefully some of the next years. It was.
    37:56
    Yeah, so they were great, great people, and it was a ton of fun to do that. Well, thank you for that because, honestly, people in the hobby want pinball to get more exposure. And, you know, I'm sure you heard about Stern Pinball and the Ocho and how that kind of fell through. And it's being hard to get pinball out there and into the mainstream, even though it's picking up in popularity. So guys like you and Ed Robertson and, you know, Chris or Jeffrey Starr are definitely bringing it out there and getting more people interested and hopefully, you know, getting more people into the game. Yeah, I want the game to be around for a long time. So I think the more exposure it gets and the more games are produced and the more locations that have them, the longer it'll be around. And so I think at this rate, we're going to be good for quite some time. And even with other really cool entertainment mediums coming on with virtual reality and things like that, I think there's nothing that quite encompasses pinball. It just really, really puts you in the driver's seat. And in this day and age, having the ability to kind of forget about your worries for a couple minutes at a time and try to keep that ball in play, it really takes all of your attention. It isn't like a video game where you can hit pause and maybe be looking at your phone and stirring the pot. If it's pinball and that ball is live, you can't be doing anything else. And I think it really takes all of your attention. And there's just something, I'm sure you guys feel the same, but many games will mechanically lock pinballs, and then maybe you start a new game, or at the end of the game, the game will reset to its baseline, and it'll eject those things, and I'll still rush to hit the flippers knowing they're not even activated. People always come, and there's just something innately wrong. Like, I have to stop that pinball from going down the drain. Yes. And there's just something unnatural about just letting that thing roll down past the flipper. And when my son was little and I was introducing him to pinball, he loved the shooter lane. He loved the shooter run, and he would let the ball drain just so he could plunge it. I'm like, what are you doing? Don't let it. He's like, no, I want to plunge it. And then he went to plunge it, and the auto plunger shot it for him. He's like, huh, auto plunge. What are you going to do? Auto plunge. Right.
    40:02
    Speaking of other forms of entertainment or other mediums, I've got two words for you that I need an explanation for. Chappelle's Show. Oh, that's awesome. Chappelle's Show. You want to hear that story? How did that happen? Good question. Okay, this is a good story, I think. I have a friend named Craig Gass. He's a very funny man. He's a stand-up comedian. He used to be on the Howard Stern Show a lot, calling in as the voice of Sam Kinison, Back from the Dead. So he's a phenomenal impressionist and a very funny comedian and is a Seattle guy. Got to know him, and then he moved to New York to make it, and he's been a working comedian ever since. He does a great Gene Simmons, too. Yeah, he does some incredible voice. So I like to do impressions of his impressions, like, you know, How strong you are. The force is strong in you. That's good, man. That's really good. So that's my impression of Craig Gaspew and Yoda. And then he does his Sean Connery's like, yes, are you ready for the gold vinga?
    41:04
    So he said, hey, I was with the Sixers in Philly. And he called me up and said, hey, man, I see that the Sixers are playing the Knicks in New York on this day. And when you come up, I have a comedy show at the Boston Comedy Club, which is kind of funny that a comedy club in New York would be called the Boston Comedy Club. And he said, get all your teammates together. Anyone who wants to come, I'll hook you guys up front row. It's going to be a great show. And so I'm excited. I love his comedy. My wife came up to New York with me. My friend Pepe Sanchez, a teammate from Argentina, and his girlfriend at the time. So those are the only people I could get interested in a night of comedy in New York City. And so we go out to dinner with Craig beforehand. And he does this Yoda and he does this Sean Connery. And I had seen his act so many times. I said, Craig, do this character and do that joke. And so he kind of did the highlights for all of us, and it was a very entertaining dinner. And he's like, okay, guys, we've probably got to go. I'm going to be on stage here in 15 minutes. So we go across town, and he's about to get up on stage. We walk into this comedy club on I don't know what night of the week it was, and there are two people in the audience, and there is a woman up on stage. There's no electricity. There's no energy. There's no atmosphere. And he's feeling a little bad, but he's promised this amazing night of comedy, and there's just nothing going on. And so this woman is up there, and she's like killing time, basically, just trying to work on the material. But we're not hearing that other couple laugh at all. And she's like, okay, so what else is going on? Well, the Knicks are going to kick the shit out of the Sixers tomorrow night. And the owner goes, hey, these guys play for the Sixers, by the way. And she's like, oh, I did not see that coming, and that's my time. Good night. So she leaves stage, and my friend Craig is up, and he's like, oh, I feel so bad. I dragged them out here. There's nobody here. I just did my whole act of dinner. So he's like, I need a cigarette. I need a break. So he goes outside to smoke, and he's smoking on the sidewalk.
    42:52
    And a car window rolls down, and the guy goes, hey, man, can I get a light? Craig's like, yeah, sure. And he's like, Dave Chappelle? He's like, yeah, I'm Dave Chappelle. He's like, dude, please, you've got to bail me out. I've got some friends in here. I promised the night of comedy. Will you please come save me? He's like, yeah, sure. Let me smoke my cigarette. I'll come in. I'll do a set. He's like, thank you. So amazing. And, you know, Dave Chappelle gets up and does 45 minutes of impromptu comedy for my wife and I and my buddy and this other couple. And just was amazing. And so that's how, I don't know if Craig knew Dave Chappelle or if that's when they met, but they became friends. And then he reached out to me maybe the next year and said, hey, you know, Dave really enjoyed meeting you. He's a big basketball fan. And he's got this new show coming out on Comedy Central. And he's written a skit. He's got you in it. What do you think? We want to film some stuff. Let me send you the script. I'm like, yeah. I mean, he's so funny. and I don't know what this show's about, but I'd love to be a part of it. So they send me the script and basically it goes into all these details and it talks about, like, hey, is there anything different without the African-American players around us? I'm like, yeah, my penis feels bigger or something like that. And I was like, I can't be a part of this show. This is crazy. And I just don't know how cutting edge the show's going to be, how relatable it was going to be. So I sort of, I say no. I'm like, you know, thanks, but no thanks. I just, so they basically went ahead and did it anyway. And a teammate of mine that year came and was like, hey, you were on the Chappelle show last time. I'm like, no, I wasn't. I said no to that. He's like, well, you're in there. So they just went ahead with it. They just didn't film. I was going to play one-on-one, and there was going to be an actual interview. Basically, they just basically went with the script. And we're pretty much open source. I mean, when you're a public figure like that, they can put my picture up there and it ended up being really, really funny. And so that was a pretty incredible show. That's how that came about. Well, that worked out, even though, you know, it could have been a missed thing. But I totally get why you would have tried to distance yourself from that script. Yeah, I thought about David Stern saying, Todd, did you really think this would be a good way to represent yourself in the NBA? And it turns out it was very, very funny. But the whole premise, it was pretty, it seemed a little risky to have that kind of a show. but it was obviously very well received, and his honesty and some of the subjects that he would bring to light and be able to laugh at really got people talking, so it was very groundbreaking. I just don't think I was quite ready to jump on board not knowing how it would be received. Right. No, that makes sense. Well, dude, we are at an hour, and that has been awesome. It's been so good talking to you, man. I can't wait to maybe share a beer with you at Pinberg this year if it actually happens. Yes, I certainly hope so, and hopefully it's Pinberg. and if not, whenever they let us pinheads get together, let's all hang out. Thanks for letting me be a part of the show. I look forward to seeing you all as soon as I can. Yeah, man. You were great. Thanks, Todd. You guys were great, too. Thanks, fellas. Thanks, Todd. See you later, man. See you. All right, thanks to Todd McCullough for joining us, and we'll be back right after this. We'll be right back.
    45:51
    Guess what? I got a fever. And the only Christmas. This is the Super Awesome Pinball Show.
    46:08
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    46:41
    There's nothing out there like Microsoft Pinball Arcade. I know, I checked, it's the real deal. Authentic pinball right on your PC. All the ramps, all the flippers, even table bump and tilt action. Come on, send it flying, give it a bump. Watch that flipper. It's the most authentic pinball action ever on a PC, with no quarters required. The real pinball action like you remember, there's only one. MicroStark Pinball Arcade.
    47:14
    Hello, Pinball Land. This is Dwight Sullivan. I'm currently deep in my lair, underground, working day and night to save pinball from a pandemic. And the last thing I want to do while I'm down here is listen to that super awesome pinball show. Those guys are fuckers. Okay, wait, wait, wait. Ed and Dr. Pin are not fuckers. But, you know, you get what I mean. Later.
    47:40
    Now, back to our program. Well, it's about frickin' time. I am the God of Hellfire, and I bring you... The super awesome pinball show.
    47:51
    It's a cool show. And now let's talk about our last week in pinball. Our last week in pinball. All right, guys, we're providing so much awesome content to our listeners over this quarantine pandemic that we don't have. Our little jingle says our past few weeks in pinball. Hey! And it's only been a week since our last show. So, honestly, I personally haven't done much more other than play. Oh, and wait, I've got a story for you. So, you know, you guys know about the Jaws Translates. Heck yeah, right. Well, I'm getting all that stuff ready to go out because I'm getting bombarded on a daily basis from people about that stuff. Chris, tell people how to order that because I've got a few requests on Facebook for people who really want that but don't know who to reach out to. Well, because none of that's been revealed yet. And I think those people one at a time are friending me and then asking me where the hell, you know, are there any left? They're all left. This whole thing was designed to be sold at TPF, and since that didn't happen, I still have them and have not put them up for sale yet. So, you know, the entire run of 75 of the basic one and the run of 10 of the super deluxe plexiglass version are still up for sale. They're going to go on sale Monday afternoon. All the information will be basically put out for you there. I don't have a web store. I don't have a website. It's just on Facebook. It's just going to say, okay, gates are open, ready, go. There will be a PayPal address for where you go. There will be all the information on how much the translates cost and what the shipping is and all of that. It's all going to be spelled out. So all you have to do is go to PayPal and make your payment, and then they're going to be – that's part of my funny story. I have a porch full right now of shipping tubes in boxes, like, just stacked up. Like, I don't even know how I'm going to get all the stuff in my house. But, yeah, so everything's going to be ready to go, and it's going to go out fast. The problem was getting the tubes, but now that I have everything to go, it's just going to roll out within the week. So all the information will be there. As far as people who wanted to know about the special limited edition coasters, that's basically, like I said, when I first showed them, that's for the first 25 orders. So if you want to get one of those, get your order in right away. All I can tell you now is it's probably going to be like around 3 o'clock p.m. Eastern time on Monday when it goes up for sale. So just watch. I'll put a post on both my heart page, which is Metal Luna 5. Are you talking like this coming Monday? Yeah. We're recording this on April 10th. So if this doesn't come out before Monday, they might think it's the following week. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. If I want this plug to be in here, well, shit. let's just avoid all of that then because yeah they're going to go on sale monday and this probably this show probably won't be out honestly by then it probably won't be out until wednesday so just skip all that so let's just return back to the beginning you probably edited some of that out dude i mean you went into a lot of that shit yeah no don't edit all of it just edit the monday part out because i mean you covered a shitload of stuff there um oh well no i just i don't want any of that in there because it's all spoken from the perspective of it's going to be on sale and by the time people hear this it's it's already going to be done so okay um i will just i'll reword what i was going to say originally um okay so all right well because of the pandemic and the fact that we've uh hang on i gotta redo that well what the hell i'm trying to remember how i said that when i came in um well with this pandemic and the fact that we're all shit in our house we've been providing so much content that we don't actually have a few weeks in pinball like the jingle says it's only one week in pinball and the only thing that's really happened to me is because of the sale of the Jaws Translite, I have a porch full of giant boxes of shipping tubes and boxes.
    52:06
    Like I had to shove it off to the side. There's like basically a wall of product that divides my door from my neighbor's door because I didn't even have time to carry it all in. And apparently the UPS guys were confused because my address was above my garage door, so they just dumped it all there. which I can't see from my front door. So I walked out to come into my office to record the podcast, and there was a giant stack of shit, like, right in front of my car. It's like, oh, okay, awesome, great. So I had to drag all this crap to the front porch and just leave it there because I didn't have time to drag it in. We're talking boxes that are, like, two and a half feet by two and a half feet by three feet tall, and there's four of those, and then a big stack of cardboard boxes. So, anyway, that's going to be my week is dealing with getting all of that stuff out to everybody. But luckily I'll be able to do it now that I have all the supplies that I need. I'm just going to be carrying a shit ton of tubes to the post office. But other than that, playing pinball, playing more pinball and brushing up on my skills and spending more time on the monsters now, trying to figure out how that – the one thing I can't figure out is – and any of you listeners out there, feel free to write us at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. Let me know if you hit the zap button to hold your jackpot, how do you build that jackpot after you've held it? That's what I can't figure out. There's no information that tells you how to do that. You don't actually hold the zap button. You just tap it, right? You hit it. Right. Yeah, you hit it. No, but what I mean by hold is like, you know, So when you get the ball in the Dragula thing, that's where it wants to award you your jackpots if you've finished doing the Herman feature or the Eddie feature or the Marilyn feature or whatever. Right. You can hit your zap button and hold the jackpot. It won't give it to you. It will hold it so you can build it. Oh, I got you. I don't know how to build it. So it's just kind of like I keep holding it and then, you know, nothing really happens. I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do? I don't know. So maybe I should just call Dwight and ask him. You have his cell phone. Just give me a call. Yeah, I do. Yeah, Dwight, if you're listening, please call me and figure this shit out. So anyway, that's it. What have you guys been up to? Ed, take it away. Well, I've got three things. First, I was going to CoinTaker. For those of you that don't pay attention, they've got a deal of the day. And just a couple days ago, they were offering shaker motors for the Stern SAM system for just $45. bucks. And I was like, holy crap, that is a deal. So I just happened to need one for my Batman Dark Knight. So I ordered a shaker motor from Coin Taker. And while I was on the website, I grabbed a LED kit from my Wheel of Fortune because that's my only game I don't have LED'd out. So I did that. And then for those that may have seen it, Brian Allen did remakes of the Medieval Madness Translight, and he also had one for Monster Bash and Attack from Mars. So they're kind of, it's kind of a new take on the original Backglass. So I went ahead and ordered Medieval Madness and a Monster Bash Translight from Brian Allen. I'm excited to get those and see what they look like. But the big thing everyone will be excited about is my screen printer got our final TPF order finished, and I just picked that stuff up yesterday. So we've been getting all of that counted. So everyone that's been so patiently waiting for their TPF swag, the shirts and stuff that we were waiting on the screen for, as I said last episode, they got shut down because of coronavirus. They were able to, I don't know if they snuck in there or they opened up or they, you know, figured it out. But they got an order finished and I picked it up. So this week and then next week we'll be shipping everybody's order out. So hopefully everybody that's ordered merchandise that's waiting on it, you will have it shortly. Yay!
    56:07
    I know, right? Follow-up question. The Brian Allen backlash, did you pay him for that? I did. All right, well then, why am I giving you a Jaws Translate for free?
    56:20
    Because you don't do a podcast with Brian Allen, Frenchy. Yeah, but doing a podcast with Ed is like, I should get paid. Hey, Dick Wad, let me resend you that text message. I'll do a screenshot of it where I say, I'll pay for the Translate. I know. And Christian, go back and look at the back. I know. You did say that. Don't say that because that ruins me trying to make you look bad.
    56:44
    Don't try to make me look bad, Frankie. Oh. Okay, Vanderhoof. Whatever. Listen. Let's tone it down, boys. I used to go to school with this, like, real, how do I say this without sounding mean, really large, really large girl. And her last name was Vanderhoof. And I'm just like, you know, man, that's tough to have both of those. Like, I'm editing this out. Yep.
    57:13
    But that is a funny story. And you're right. I went to school with a girl named Hooker. Her last name was Hooker. That's a tough one to live through. Was her first name TJ? No. I went to school with Mickey during the height of that old Mickey You're So Fine song. Oh, no shit. So that's what I've been doing. Christian, what you got for us? I've got very little for you, buddy. It's been about a week since we last recorded, and, you know, life has been pretty much quarantined out. We're doing the homeschool thing and enjoying the home life. And I've done a few pinball repairs, so I can bring it back to pinball that way. And my Liberty Bell is the only thing I haven't fixed yet, and that is an EM. It's a 1978, I believe. And I've been told that you have to kind of play EMs to keep them working. and if you don't play them for a while they can kind of go to shit so I turned on my Liberty Bell which was working perfectly let's say a week or two ago when I last played it and now it just completely I turn it on I start the game and it just registers points over and over and over again it doesn't stop so there's a switch being hit somewhere I just have to go through it and figure out what that is and what's being triggered to continue getting that score going but like all EMs with bells and chimes it's just a constant ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So I had to turn the game off because it's so freaking annoying. Well, we can slide yours up to my Captain Fantastic and set them both on fire. Is it the same thing? No, it's just that flipper problem. I can't fix it. I've got to have Clay come out and fix it for me. So outside of that, we've been playing a ton of video games, so outside of the pinball world, but the game that my daughters have been playing nonstop is called Animal Crossing. Oh, my God, dude. It is just this freaking game where you literally just live on an island, and you live your life, and you pay a mortgage, and you water flowers, and it sounds like the most boring experience ever, but they're so into it. So I got into it as well. And, of course, you can make your house, and you can put whatever you want into it. And the one thing that you can put in there that I had to find immediately was a pinball machine. And there's five different pinball machines you can put in.
    59:23
    So there's a ton of pinball people who are playing this game, So I reached out to a few of them and been talking to Chris Stevens, who is a really big competitive player. He's almost won Pinberg a few times. And he hooked me up with the pinball machine. So we threw that in there. And now my house is complete on the island. I don't understand. Like, this game has been around forever. Like, who? I was going to say, my daughters played this on the Nintendo DS back when they were little. Yeah, my daughter had that. Remember that cube game that lasted about a year and a half? GameCube? GameCube. Yeah. My daughter had it on GameCube. Oh, yeah. This is a Nintendo property that's been out there forever. So they have it on the Switch. They have it on the iPhone. How did it just come out of nowhere and be like this shit? Because that's all I hear about. Here's part of the reason, man. This game is so cathartic. You log into this thing and you're on an island and you literally have no worries other than catching bugs and fishing and doing random mundane shit that is so... It doesn't sound like fun, but when you play this game, it is so relaxing and so like, you know, you just kind of zone out into this another place. And with all the coronavirus stuff and, you know, all the drama in life these days, it's the perfect prescription for just, like, chilling the heck out and having fun. And my girls are so into it that it makes it fun because it's family time. Oh. So go get your Switches and buy Animal Crossing. That's my advice to you guys. Yeah, no. No. You guys don't seem like gamers. Video gamers. I mean, that'll be good. It used to be. Back when I was young, I was really big into the NES and the Sega Genesis and even the Atari 2600. Game Boy. Once I kind of got into it, I found out I could own my own arcade games and pinball and stuff. I just kind of stopped with the whole home console thing. I just don't do it anymore. It makes sense, man. I mean, it's a bigger and better toy when you've got a pinball machine in your house, but not everybody has that. Definitely fun to go back to the video game world every once in a while, though, because for $60, which is a steal compared to the $6,000 you're paying for a pin,
    61:27
    you can get a lot of fun out of it. Cool you. Yeah, man. Okay, so that does it for our personal weeks in pinball, and next up we have a new feature. Do you guys remember when Jack Guarneri last week talked about the pointy elbow people on the old Williams back glasses? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We were going to figure out who did that. Uh-huh. Well, we all three know somebody who is a brainiac when it comes to pinball, and he's going to tell us all about it in our new segment called the Super Awesome Knowledge Bomb. I love that name.
    62:02
    Super Awesome Knowledge Bomb. Hey, Jonathan Houston here as I go to the Pinball Magazine. Following a previous episode in which Jack Guarnieri several times referred to a Williams artist that was known for his pointy elbows, I looked up who he was referring to. With the help of Gary Plower, I found out the following. As it turns out, there were actually two artists applying that style of artwork. Some referred to it as pointy people, or spiky artwork, or, like Jack, pointy elbow artwork. It appeared for the first time on a Williams game named Pot of Gold from June 1965. The artist was Jerry Kelly, who was a freelancer at the time. Although Pot of Gold didn't include any people, the spiky style is clearly visible in the fish pictured on the playfield. The first game with pointy people came out a year later, which was named A Go-Go, also with artwork by Jerry Kelly and manufactured by Williams. Jerry Kelly did one more game for Williams, which was B-Time, which, as you might remember, is sort of like the first bootleg Beatles game. After that, he only did artwork for belly games, in which he consistently used the pointy people style. Kelly's last game was Belly Skater, which came out in June of 1969. The other artist that used the pointy people style was Frenchman Christian Marchais. A third game with the pointy people style came out in December of 1967 and was named Jolly Roger. The last game that included artwork from Christian Marchais was William's Tri-Zone from July 1979. During his career in pinball art, many of his games featured the pointy elbow style, but he also used other artwork styles on his games. Christian Marsh worked for advertising posters who provided the artwork for Williams, Valley, and Chicago games at the time. Marsh did artwork for far more games than Jerry Kelly did. As a result, people may be more familiar with Marsh's artwork than the artwork of Jerry Kelly, or even credit the points that people sent to Marsh, although Jerry Kelly was the first to introduce it. Hope that helps.
    63:58
    All right, thank you so much, Jonathan, for the info on the pointy elbows that we've all been dying to know. You know what I love about Jonathan Houston? Did you all know that he brings Stroopwafels every time he comes to the United States? Have you all ever gotten any of these from him? Stroopwafels? No, Stroopwafels. I've not gotten them from him, but I've gotten them before. It's like crack cookies. They're so delicious. They're like these waffle cookies that have caramel in the middle. They make them in Holland. He brings them by the truckload from the Netherlands when he comes. If you ever catch him at Expo or TPF or whatever, And if you ask him for them, he'll hook you up with a few usually. But he brings Kim and I tons of them, and they are so delicious. And I just want to say thank you, Jonathan, for hooking us up with those. We love those cookies. Kristen, do you know what a pizzelle is, the Italian cookie? It's like that, but they're smaller. They're about a size of a little bit bigger than maybe a silver dollar. But it's like a little cookie like that, two of them. And then in the middle, it's just like an Oreo, the middle white stuff. Instead of white stuff, it's a little disk of caramel. That sounds phenomenal. And it's so good. It's like maple syrup caramel or something like that. Yeah, I think the maple flavor is in the cookie part. In the cookie itself? Yeah. Oh, they're so good. I think I got those. My introduction to those was on a flight somewhere one time. That's how I got to know all about those. And then I went on to Amazon and bought a huge box. All right. Well, sorry to interrupt, but yes, on to the pandemic news. Here we go. Moving on to the important news of the day. the 80s arcade podcast they talked to george gomez about a beetle sequel and i'm gonna go ahead and give you george's quote here while he was talking to them george said it's funny you should say that we have talked a little bit about the obvious thing is to do a yellow submarine version so it's been discussed but i don't know if it's ever going to happen but it was discussed that imagery is cool. There's been a lot of talk about it, but we have to figure out a way to make it worthwhile. So, you know, hearing that by the time it gets to Pennside, they're definitely going to do it. Absolutely. You heard it here first. They're going to do a yellow submarine. They're probably making them right now. Yeah. Well, I'm here with reality. Reality is knocking on the door. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, George. But that's how rumors get started, right? You know, that someone takes a little snippet like that and they take it out of context or they tweak it a little bit and then pretty soon, you know, that's what's happening. It's kind of misleading and, you know, I don't know if George was being, you know, I can't speak for George obviously, but, you know, I don't know if he was just being playful and, you know, trying to start a little controversy by the way he worded that. But what he said is true. But what he left out was the fact that this was all discussed before the first Beatles game ever came out. And it hasn't been mentioned since. Now, you know, we all know that, you know, the Beatles was a tough seller. It sold well, but it was a tough seller because of the price. And certainly, you know, it left a lot of people out that couldn't afford it. You know, when it boils down to it, and I'm not speaking for anybody, but, you know, basically the Beatles is what it is, and it's not going anywhere. So the Yale Submarine is not coming out. It's not in consideration. There was something that was discussed back when this whole thing started. Let me do a follow-up on that, though. If you were to see that game come out and Stern got the license and they said, listen, we'd like to revisit Beatles, obviously they would do it through Cam and Cal with Kapow Pinball. I know you're no longer at Stern, but would you be involved in the art? Do you think there would be a chance for that? Would the door be open given that it's a Kapow title? Well, I would do anything for Joe. So if Joe came to me and said, I want you to do the art, I would be there in a flash, anything he wants. How that works out with Stern, I don't know. You know, if Stern tells Joe no, you know, then that doesn't happen. You know, can they tell Joe no? I don't know. That's their relationship, and that's for them to work out. All I can say is if Joe asked me to do it, I would do it. But, you know, it's pie in the sky. It doesn't matter because it's never going to happen. Well, but in reference to George's quote, though, I mean, he's never say never. So I think, you know, he's not going to come out and say, no, that'll never happen. And he can't say, yes, that's absolutely going to happen. So, I mean, the fact that it comes up in discussion is kind of a nice thing. Whether or not it happens is to be seen. But he's not going to shut them down or he's not going to say yes one way or the other. Well, yeah, if you don't say never say never, like I would say, okay, that's true. there's a .05 chance that it might happen. You're saying there's a chance. If they did do another one, it would be Yellow Submarine, right? I mean, there's no other movement of the Beatles that would be that big. Here's a little bit of inside information. When we were working on the Beatles, when it first came up to me, Joe basically called me up and he said, okay, well, we've got a choice between two different things. We can do Yellow Submarine Beatles, or we can do 1964 Ed Sullivan Beatles. Those were the only options that were given. So if another game was ever to be made, it would be Yellow Submarine. That does seem like it would be the next title, then, if they were going to do it. If they were going to do it. But that was never discussed after the first discussion, which was before I think the game was even designed, before I even touched paintbrush to canvas. Yes. Well, moving on, but staying in the same vein, the Beatles, I just saw on Facebook, on a post that you put up, was nominated for an award. You want to talk about that? Yes, I do. I don't know a whole lot about it, but it just was brought to my attention that the Beatles pinball machine was nominated for a Lima Licensing International 2020 Excellence Awards. So what they do is they go through how licensing applies to different categories, and in the category, which is kind of strange. It wasn't like toys and games. It was under like household and automotive or something like that. You know, some of the other things that are in the same category that are up for the award is like some sort of a placemat, like a child's placemat that does different things and some kind of cooking set thing. And actually what's really weird is that there's also a Beatles turntable in the same category. So there's like five things that are up for this award and two of them happen to be the Beatles, which is just kind of kooky. Like a DJ turntable backing up a little bit? I don't think so. I think it was a phonograph. So it was like a record player you could buy for your house. That was themed with the Beatles. It didn't really show it. It just said what it was. But this is worldwide. This is licensing worldwide. So narrow it down to five things, and two of them are Beatles. I thought it was interesting. But I don't know what the chances are of winning this. But when I think of all of the licensed products out there worldwide, no less, and being one of five that's considered for this, as far as I'm concerned, I already won an award just by being nominated.
    71:04
    That's awesome, dude. The two things that come to mind is, one, you guys should be a shoe-in based on your competition in terms of what else is on there. And two is, do you think the Beatles being in there twice is because they're such a hard license to nail down? It could be. It could be, but I think the awards are based on what you do with it. It's not like if you're equating it to best theme in pinball, where you're just basically saying what's the hottest property, regardless of how shitty or how great the game might have been. This is more of how you integrate the license into the product. So I don't think it's got anything to do with how difficult it is to get the license. It's just that apparently they felt that these two products had taken the Beatles and put them into this product, and the marriage was just perfect. I haven't seen the record player, so I don't know, but that's basically how it works. But yeah, I mean, worldwide, to be in the top five, that's amazing, and I'll keep you posted on what happens with that. I forgot to check when the actual awards were, so I don't know, because they just announced the nominees now. Congratulations to me and Joe Camenco and all the guys at Stern, George Gomez and Jerry Thompson did a great job on sound and everybody else. So, yeah, that's cool. And also in the news, Kaneda just had an interview with Robert Mueller of Deep Root, and Robert threw him a bone and gave him a little chunk of an image of the Raza cabinet art. And I'm here to say, big fucking deal.
    72:36
    Just little, like, it's like half of a creature's face and then, like, some sparks. It's like, clearly it's a big deal because we're talking about it. I mean, you're so hot to talk about Kaneda. Oh, my God. Girl, listen, who leaked it? Let's talk about the art. So do you guys think... Kaneda didn't leak it. He was given the image to display. And my thought is basically, artwork aside, like, it's been three and a half years. Like, couldn't we get the full side of the fucking cabinet? I mean, so, Ed, you can probably speak to this. I mean, do you know anything about what Deep Root was planning on revealing at TPF and what their plans are now? I mean, I know that you're not going to spoil anything, but they clearly think... No, they were going to bring Raza, and I don't know what else. I don't know what their plans were as far as any other games. They were going to have six in their booth and six more games out on the floor and a handful of games up in their VIP room. No, I don't think they were going to be all Raza, but I don't really know. I don't know. They talked about it in the interview, and he made it sound like it was going to be a bunch of Razas and one or two other sort of whitewood type, nothing complete. Maybe that's it. Me as a fan, looking at this artwork and just even seeing a cropped image of it, it does seem pretty cool. I mean, I like the look of the alien. I like the look of the sparks coming off of the back. And Kaneda had mentioned just subtly in his post that he thought that maybe the artwork had lights behind it that could light it up, glow behind the cabinet. I think he said he hopes, yeah. Well, you know, the thing in the artwork looked kind of like a monster or something like that. No not a monster but like an alien I thought this was like atomic zombies or something Yeah no the story kind of convoluted man Apparently the aliens come down and they crash into an amusement park I guess and the aliens crashing releases something that causes zombies. So it's like multiple different layers and multiple different monsters. So there's aliens and zombies. Yes. Okay. All right. But have you guys ever heard of a cabinet? You know, this might be one of the new things that Jeepers are coming out with, right? Like a cabinet that actually lights up. Is that something that you guys would be interested in or think would be cool? Well, you know, that's funny you say that because when we were working on the Monsters, if you look at the LE art package on the side of the back box is the door knocker, that like sort of dragon head door knocker that was on the Monsters door. Right. And I originally designed that to put lights in there so that the eyes lit up. Cool. But it ended up not being, you know, they couldn't do it. I think I saw Star Trek or something. I think it was a Star Trek game based on the movie, the newer movie, had some sort of light-up feature where they had, like, that shield, the Star Trek shield kind of sticking out of the back box or something. It rings a bell. But, I mean, I know that there are definitely back boxes, like pin blades, for instance, that makes light-up cabinet decals that you can stick on there. So there's definitely a precedent for it. That would be a really cool feature. Basically, all you'd have to do is you'd have to make your cabinet like you would a play field. You'd have to have inserts. You couldn't just drill a hole in the wood and then lay your sticker over it and put a light in there because some idiot would stick their finger in there and break the vinyl on the artwork. So you'd have to have some sort of insert in there with a light behind that. It's doable. It's just how much do you want to spend? You know, it adds, you know, a new dimension to doing your cabinets. You know, it's not as easy as it sounds, in other words. But, you know, definitely cool. Something I, you know, was interested in ever since I got into pinball was, you know, stuff like that. You know, rather than just having a big hunk of wood with art on it, you know, can we light this thing up and do something fun? Have you brought that to stirring, Chris? Have you said, listen, it would be really cool if we lit up X feature? I mean, you know, I know you talked about the knocker and monsters, but have there been other instances? Yeah, there was. I couldn't tell you offhand what it was, but, you know, I'm just that kind of guy, you know, like when I got something to do, I'm always asking the impossible, like, well, you know, what if we, you know, can we put like a, you know, a Dr. Pepper dispenser in the side here, you know? So, yeah, I'm sure Greg, Greg Freres, the art director at Stern, he just had a joy working with me because that was me always asking those questions. Well, what about this? Well, can we do this? I just wanted to expand upon things. And so, yeah, that stuff was definitely discussed. But, you know, usually it was just too much of a pain or cost and too much expense or, you know, too much lag time in manufacturing and whatnot. Right. All right. So next up, we're going to talk about a good friend of mine, Ken Cromwell. He was a founding member of the TPN or the Pinball Network. And before that, he was part of the Special One Lit podcast, which was one of the best podcasts ever made about pinball. They did an awesome job. and now he is leaving TPN for the next big adventure in his pinball life, which is working at Jersey Jack Pinball as a communications specialist. I don't know exactly what that is, but I know that Ken is an awesome dude, and whatever he's doing over there, it means good things for Jersey Jack because he's just a great guy, and he's very well-spoken, and he clearly knows how to communicate because he's been doing that for a long time in the pinball world, and I can't wait to see what happens with that. I'd say a consummate professional as well. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I've been friends with him for a while, and I've been on his show, and he's always been super nice. Yeah, so congratulations. That's awesome, Ken.
    78:10
    My understanding is that it's got something to do with basically like social media and podcasting and things like that. I was going to say he's going to be in charge of social media. Yeah, yeah. So I think there was a hint maybe, and I could be wrong, so don't cool me. this, but I think there's a hint that he might be starting a Jersey Jack podcast. Cool. Well, that's not cool. That's cool for Ken, but then that would mean they would go, well, we're not coming on your stupid awesome show because we got our own. Yeah. Thank God we just had Jack on, right? Last week we had Jack, so we're okay now. Yeah, I called him up today and I'm like, hey, I can meet and tell us about Ken. He's like, ah, you know, I wanted to let him do it the way he wanted. So yeah, well, it ended up that he told everybody about it on Monday and that's when our show ran so had we known about it it would have coincided really nicely but oh well well hopefully we can stick it eric muneer on and uh and talk to him but i'd love to have ken on as well i mean he's just a great guy to talk to and he's super knowledgeable about pinball stuff so jjp has picked up uh you know a solid dude with him with his hire i believe so also and i guess that's going to wrap it up for our big action-packed exciting week of news All right, joining us now, direct from Chicago, from American Pinball, Mr. Joe Bouncer, game designer extraordinaire and codemaster, Josh Coogler. How are you guys? Hey. Welcome to the show, guys. Good to be here. Good to have you. How are you guys doing with this whole quarantine business? Ah, just living what we need to live, right?
    79:47
    That's all we can do. Are you guys getting fat? Because I am. I can't stop eating. Actually, no. I think I'm losing weight because I'm eating at home all the time. And my wife's cooking all this healthy food. It does go well with the chicken.
    80:06
    And I'm not getting, like, French fries. And I'm not getting the kind of food that, you know, I eat when I'm out of the house. So I think I'm probably losing weight. Yeah. How long has it been since you guys have been in the office? It's two weeks. So, yeah, I think it's two weeks ago Friday we got word not to come back. And the last thing I did before leaving the office was actually throw a machine in the back of my truck. Smart. There you go. Well, so I've been able to be productive for the last two weeks because I've been basically camped out in my basement with a Hot Wheels game. And without interruptions, it's actually been really good. Now, I was going to ask you, was it Hot Wheels or did you throw in any, you know, Whitewoods, future Whitewoods to kind of get a jump on that? No, I'm totally focused on Hot Wheels right now. We're in that final stretch trying to get the polish into the game, filling in things that are missing. We're still working with Mattel on approvals, but this is my focus on this. Joe is obviously focused on the next thing. Okay. All right. Because you're doing the code, so you need the finished product before you get into that, I guess. Well, even with the next game, every time Joe does a layout, and he chooses to kind of share as he gets to different points, we'll start to talk about the rules and how they're going to fit in with that layout and the theme and how those things start to come together. My very first day at American Pinball was Joe showing me the layout and us talking through it the first time, and that's pretty much how we've always done it. That's cool. So you come in right from the beginning, basically, or does he have most of the play field done, and then you come in and talk about it? Joe usually will tell us some ideas he has, but then there's a certain point where he decides he's ready to show it. That's what she said!
    81:47
    And that's still early in the process, but when he's kind of got his first cut of what he thinks he wants to do. Now Joe's going to tell you where I'm completely wrong on that. Not at all. I mean, we talk early on about, you know, features we want to see with a certain title, and then I'll go off, if I could come home for, you know, a month, work out of the house, whatever, just get some alone time with a layout. And then, you know, when I get it mostly filled in and leaving areas for, you know, special mechs or unique mechs, then I'll come back to everybody. We start talking about it and we kind of decide what direction to go with it. It's kind of an open thing at one point. It isn't like I come in with a layout and this is it and this is what we're doing. That's just not how it works. You got to get everybody involved. Everybody has to have a piece of that game that makes you get into that game more when you've got something that, hey, I had an idea and we put it in. And that works out better overall for the entire layout, really. Yeah, that makes sense that it's a group project. So before we get too far into it and talk about Hot Wheels, let's just talk a little bit about American Pinball and maybe just a brief overview on you guys and what your roles are in the company. Yeah, starting out, I mean, I was pretty much the first hire after the initial debacle that went on at American Pinball. And, you know, we had a title that they had a trademark on, and that was Houdini. There was a layout that existed that just wasn't really going anywhere, literally.
    83:27
    They wanted to show it. They wanted to continue with it, but it just wasn't going to cut it in today's market. It just didn't make sense. So at that time, we started to look to put together a team, which is kind of difficult to do when there's two or three other companies out there that have the majority of the pinball talent out of Chicago. so you're kind of picking and choosing and finding who is the valuable ones out there who are who are the people that want to get involved um you know from the get-go trying to do a game in a short amount of time we wanted to make a splash as soon as we could to kind of get that proverbial monkey off our back and then the monkey seemed to follow us around anyway right but that was uh that was unintentional but um once it started out once we started to get people in place obviously that's when you know we started to see light at the end of that tunnel so people in place we were the same company yeah you know it was a difficult thing at first it was hard to find you know guys to come in to make this thing happen but you know with patience and uh you know a lot of luck uh we got some really good guys on board and we were able to move forward. You know, the truth of the matter is that, you know, Joe knows a lot of people and he got a lot of people to do favors and to bend over backwards and to break rules, to do things to help us get Houdini done in four months. And he undersells that. Getting people in pinball is not as easy as people think. It's hard to find people who know what they're doing. That's obvious since they hired me, who had never done a pinball machine before, other than the custom game. Right. So I think it's amazing. And obviously I know it will help a lot more now than I did three years ago, however long it's been. I guess it's three years. And it only amazes me more to look back at what we accomplished from, like, November 15th to March 20th, whenever we showed Houdini down in Texas. It's just mind-boggling to me still what I know now that we actually were able to do that and pull that off and have that game where it was at that point in time. And a lot of that was Joe just knowing how to get things done quickly, who to call, and where to get the right help. You guys had a, in 2016, I guess, is when you first announced Houdini. And you, from announcement to actually bringing it to a show, it was a ridiculously short amount of time. I don't know what that time frame was exactly, but it was months, correct? Yeah, I started right before Thanksgiving. And at that point, Joe had just done his first cut of the layout. And then we showed the game March, whatever it was, 15th, 20th, whatever it was. So it was about four months. And since that time, you guys have had Houdini, you've had Oktoberfest, and now Hot Wheels. Has the release schedule changed a little bit? How have you guys modified your development time? And what have you settled on now in terms of what you think your average time is between games? Yeah, we've probably got a window, like a nine-month to a year window, to where we get to a certain point that we feel comfortable. Using that collateral or using all those favors on the first one, that was something that needed to be done. You know, coming in with a reputation that was out there with American Pinball, that had to be changed not by talking about it, but by doing it. You know, to come to TPF in 16 with three games that had a, you know, pretty much complete artwork, you know, had some animations, had full color play field working for us. It was more of a complete game than many expected. And that's exactly what we had to do. So, you know, we had guys showing up 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night at the factory with parts that I had ordered a couple days before that. they were just jumping through hoops to make it happen for us. Like I said earlier, it had to happen that way, or you can talk and talk and talk, and if you don't show something, I find that this industry, I could tell a boss or I can tell a group that this is what I want to see or do, and I think it works this way in pretty much any industry. They want to see it. Show me. And, you know, us coming to that show with a game that looked complete, obviously it wasn't code-wise, it wasn't even mechanically, we still did some tweaks to make it right. But, you know, we pulled off kind of a pinball miracle by getting that done with a small staff and just the help of the whole community as far as vendors went to make it happen. I was going to cut in and tell a funny story about those first Houdini's coming to the Texas Pinball Festival. And, Joe, you might remember. So I remember you being a little nervous that this was the first time everyone was going to see these games, and you all had sent extra crates of pretty much everything just in case. Yes. So then you set those games up, and there was one thing that you forgot, and we were just laughing so hard because, do you remember? I certainly do, but you can go ahead with the punchline. Flippers. They forgot the pinballs. You have no balls, and your fathers had no balls.
    89:03
    They had no pinballs for any of the games. They had no pinballs. It's not easy to find them at a pinball show. Exactly. You would think, well, sure, we could find pinballs at a pinball show. I think Marco Specialties was the only one that had pinballs available that we could put in the games. Nice plug for Marco. But I'll tell you, every show we've gone to since then, when they're there, I go to the booth and ask them if they got any pinballs for me. Nice. Next time I'm at an expo, maybe we're in a shirt that says Joe Balser has no balls.
    89:36
    You talked about your heart sinking because for a minute there, even I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And I was just going to go shut down four of their games on the floor and just steal the pinballs out of them if we had to. But luckily, we were able to find some. Yeah, that's a little hidden gem that goes right along with Houdini.
    89:55
    And vanishing balls. I also turned out to be our Houdini because they're like, of course we've got balls. How many do you need? Thank you so much. Joe, you've worked for Sega. You've worked for Stern. You've worked for JJP and now American. Has anything ever come close to the amount of stress that you had with Houdini in terms of like a launch window? I honestly say no, not even close. And one of the little running memories that guys bring back or we talk about is when I finally had, you know, Josh was on board. Jim Thornton was on board. Had a few other people that were on board. You know, Jeff Bush for art and getting some illustration stuff done. We got together. We're talking about the game. And it was, I guess, probably December or maybe early January. Let's call it December 2015. and when we all worked together, I said, okay, so we're going to have Houdini done and we're going to make it to TPF.
    90:57
    And everybody really thought TPF 2017, like the following year. I said, no, TPF in March. And you could hear a pin drop besides a few lucrative descriptions of who I was at that time because they all told me I was full of shit, really. But, you know, maybe it wasn't. I never said that because I said, well, Joe thinks we can do it. What the hell do I know? I think he thinks that we can do it. Well, yeah, it was, you know, there was a moment there where, you know, you put that out there to a group that thinks they've got some time to do what they do. And you shorten that up to about 90 days. You know, you see some looks on people's faces that you never thought you'd see. So, you know, I think that was it. once people bought into that once our vendors bought into that we were off to the races i mean we were we literally didn't have games you know screenplay fields in a cabinet shooting until a week before texas and we were putting the third game in a box as the truck had waited an extra two or three hours at the dock for us on the day we were shipping so it was that tight but hey you It proved that it can be done when it needs to be and how people can pull together and make it happen. Right. And Josh, from your end, I mean, I remember being a pinball, just getting into pinball around that time and seeing on pin side you handling all of the back and forth between all the pinheads who were very excited about the game. And, you know, you were one of the most vocal company men who were on that site actually talking to people and informing them and, you know, being part of the conversation. And I was very impressed then, and I still am, because you're continuing to do that, about how much you're actually talking to the pinball fans and relaying, you know, what's going on. So how was that for you? I mean, was that you seemed to always have a very level head. Were you stressed out during that? Did it ever wear on you that all these people were asking so many questions about it, or did you enjoy that part of it? Well, talking to people online, I was an enthusiast first. I'm new to the industry. Obviously, Houdini was my first game. So because of that, I understand that people want to get that peek behind the curtain. They want to know what's going on. They want to understand that and have a part of that. So for me, it was great to be able to share that with people, what was going on, to be able to communicate that. I think we certainly did a lot of that after, especially after the reveal, as people wanted to know, follow our progress as we were getting to production. You know, it's tricky being up inside. You have to have a very thick skin. The number of times I write stuff and, you know, I write it knowing I'm never going to hit send because you can't. But, you know, especially for the owners of our games, I really like being there for them. it allows me to really help answer questions for them help them feel engaged, really support them and they support us we're nothing without our customers so it's always great to be online and like I said I stay out of a lot of threads, the stuff I look at is crazy and I don't respond to things but hopefully we can continue to participate, I understand why a lot of the companies don't, it's very hard the slightest thing you say can get twisted and blown into something else So I think that's sort of the tricky part.
    94:19
    I got into it with a few people in a non-American pinball thread one time regarding, you know, another matter that went to the FKR. I got to back away because, you know, it's going to be a problem. But I can understand why companies are very cautious about their employees participating. Yeah, I've had to quit going to Pinside because, for one, too many times I had to swipe and delete the words, fuck you, you fucking fuck. I just don't go. I don't pay attention to you anymore. I can't. You don't need, as a creator or an artist or whatever, if you're involved in making pinball, you don't need thick skin to be on pin side. You need a suit of armor. Well, and I think particularly as an artist, more than almost any other thing, maybe code or necks, but art is so subjective. Everybody thinks they're an art critic. And it's amazing how quickly people will make these incredibly strong definitive statements about an art package that they've seen a blurry photo of. It's mind-boggling to me. When Houdini was first, there were a couple little snippets of the cabinet shared by our marketing guy, which kind of really annoyed Joe and I, because at that point, we weren't sure we'd have a flipping game to go, and we decided right from the start, we were not going to show a game unless it was a flipping playable game that could function, had rules, had animations, had sounds, and weren't going to bring a box of flashing lights. We weren't exactly happy when the marketing the guy started, like, posting little images. But people were ripping on these little close-up shots of parts of the cabinet. And I think the Houdini art package is phenomenal. I told Jeff when we got started on the next game, I said, you're going to have a hard time matching it. It really just came together beautifully. The steampunk looks, the whole thing. I really think it's a beautiful art package. But there's lovers and haters, and the art package is the first thing people will start to comment about. Well, you know, it's interesting you bring that up because I've known just from listening over the years that some people prefer the original art package to the second version, and some people prefer the second version over the original version. But it seems to me with having a four-month window to get the machine out, why was the decision made to redo the art package? Obviously, you have to redo the play field, but you had cabinet artwork that was already done on that. Why was the decision made to, even within that small window of time, redo the art package as well? Well, from my perspective, I think it was important to really separate it from John. You know, obviously, he was pretty toxic at that point. John was making changes to the play field that was going to require some changes. And I think Matt Andrews is a phenomenal artist. And when I actually saw him at Texas that year, I took him aside to say, the fact that we didn't use his art was no reflection on the art package he did. It was more about wanting to ensure that this Houdini was our Houdini. Right, right, right. Right. So, I mean, you guys went from Houdini and then Oktoberfest to now on to Hot Wheels. And obviously, you know, picking a theme for a game is tough. And Joe, you've been equated to the George Gomez of American pinball in that you kind of help guide the decision as to what themes are made. Is that true or is it more of a group decision? How much is the, you know, the Dobbles and other people in the company, how much are they involved in that decision? so decision on what themes what titles to go with really lays on engineering you know the owners don't have any suggestions when it comes down to you know going a certain way or going after a certain title or license or non-license however you want to look at it well the theme was picked before you got there Right. Houdini was there.
    97:59
    At Okapest, we went into believing it to be marketed and moved towards the barcades and the whole kind of revolution of barcades moving forward.
    98:13
    Being one of the largest parties on the planet, it just made sense moving forward to go with the Okapest theme. It's a theme that I've always kind of backed and wanted to do over the years. Never really got to it when I was with Jerry. I mean, that was all licensed product.
    98:35
    And also, you know, moving over with Jersey Decks, same thing with the licensed product. So that thing just kind of sat there for, you know, 15, 20 years of me being around pinball, and we had an opportunity to do it. You know, we wanted to make a bigger game for game two. obviously octoberfest is a big game you know i don't think you'll see a bigger steel ramp on a game ever because you can't fit one under the glass right you know the double the double uh horizontal looping everything that's going on with that game up down ramp you know that's a fully loaded model that the company we agreed on moving forward i don't think it hit the right market at the right time i don't think it was pushed in the right direction at the right time I think it still is open for that game to, you know, move. I think it still has, you know, legs to move. Josh and Joe did an incredible job, you know, working with the rules to make it more understandable, easier to obtain goals. And, you know, it's really a fun game to play. People that do have it now with the updated code really, you know, really enjoy the game. It's my favorite game. We hear a lot of good things about it. So, you know, it really lays with engineering. And one of the things that's kind of one of our, I don't know what a good word would be to say, like looking at game three with Hot Wheels. You know, we were looking to do a driving theme. And once we started to talk with Roger Sharp, we found out that, you know, the Hot Wheels was available. So we moved in that direction. and instead of just a licensed theme, we wanted to do a licensed theme with a better price point. So you get a win-win to the customer end, to the end user. So we get you a licensed theme, a lower price point, and a game that plays well. Make it a good shooter and just keep it more of a non-cluttered play field, not a lot, not a super lot going on, just a nice flowing game, give you some loops back and forth, get on your flippers a lot, and have some fun with the game. So, you know, to answer your question, I mean, the titles that we pick moving forward definitely come out of the engineering department, and that's kind of how they get started. Okay. So, I mean, you guys have always kind of, you picked your prior two games were themes that were not necessarily licensed themes, but they were very well-known themes. They were titles or very recognizable names, whereas now you've moved into, you know, with Hot Wheels being owned by a major company, they obviously have a say on what the assets are that are included and that sort of thing. Do you find that, you know, having those assets is a nice thing, or do you like coming up with that yourself and having the creative freedom to use, you know, kind of a hybrid licensed but well-known title where you can have full control? Well, there's no doubt a license creates a whole different set of constraints and challenges to work with, but it also brings a lot of positives to the table. So it is an interesting balance. And for me, this was the first license game we've done. So it's been interesting learning that process. But, you know, we've got some great assets from Mattel. Mattel has been a great company to work with. I recently heard somebody comment otherwise. But they're great to work with. They're incredibly responsive.
    102:03
    As I think you might have heard, at least we know there were multiple companies who wanted the Hot Wheels license, and one of the other companies publicly stated that this week, so I'm comfortable to say that. There was another company as well, so we were actually lucky that Mattel decided they wanted to work with us on the game. They've really been a great partner to work with. You played with Hot Wheels as a kid. I have strong memories about it. Obviously, you see Hot Wheels everywhere you go, and now that I'm conscious of it, I realize they're everywhere. The supermarket, they're at the hardware store. I was at a craft store. They had Hot Wheels cars on the shelf. They're everywhere. And, in fact, we've been doing this for about 20 minutes now. So while we've been on this call, Mattel has manufactured 20,000 Hot Wheels cars. And 10,000 of them have been Batmobiles.
    102:51
    Probably a big chunk. and you don't realize how big Hot Wheels is. I mean, the numbers of what they do is mind-boggling. So it's really turned out to have really been a fun thing to work with. And one of our goals with this game was to be able to make progress with operators, to make a game that operators would want to put on location. I think all the companies believe location play is really important. It's important to our company for our growth, and we wanted to create a game that would be appealing to location play. So we were really looking for a fun family theme. And what I love about Hot Wheels is I played with Hot Wheels. I wish I still had some of mine because they were from the original six team. And, you know, our kids have played with Hot Wheels. So it has both a, you know, family current theme and it has a nostalgic aspect for us guys who grew up playing with them and collecting them and racing them. When you brought up, you were talking about, in quotes, somebody else. Might be the deep root interview with Robert Mueller. Well, normally I wouldn't have picked up on it, but somebody contacted me and said that, I guess, Robert had said on his chat with Chris that they had the license. I'm thinking, well, they never had the license. So I actually went to go listen to hear what he said, and that's not what he said. He said they were pursuing the license. And, you know, a few years ago, I was thinking of starting my own pinball company. I was delusional at the time. And I actually reached out to Roger Sharp, because I knew he was the licensing guru, to meet with him, to learn about licensing. And I had actually talked to a couple of companies about licenses that, you know, potentially to pursue, and I was trying to get educated. And I offered Roger. I had never met him. I emailed him, got his email from wherever, and reached out and said, can I buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brain? Three o'clock. That's what I'm talking about.
    104:42
    He was gracious enough to do that. And, you know, one of the things we talked about with licensing, he said, The most important thing is, you know, I can get you probably any license you want if you can prove you can get games built. And I think that's a fundamental thing. And any license that's worth having, any company who's got it, is going to want to make sure they're working with somebody who they believe is going to be able to deliver the product and deliver it and bring their brand and their, you know, to life and do the right thing for their brand. And I think that's part of the challenge of getting licenses is to be able to do that. To get your first game out the door, even for us, you know, for our first games, we've been a licensed game, would have been a big challenge. It's hard to do that in this world today, you know, unless you can prove you can actually deliver. Right. Now, with the Hot Wheels license and working with Mattel, I'm curious what the basic, you know, root of, no pun intended, of what Robert said as far as being difficult to work with. Now, there's been a little bit of controversy with some people talking about, like, you know, what does dinosaurs and gorillas and snakes have to do with Hot Wheels? And, you know, obviously it's part of a particular program that they have rolled out themselves. Was that version of Hot Wheels something that was fed to you by Mattel? Like, you know, if you want to do a Hot Wheels game, you were able to choose from that? Well, why don't you explain what the process was? So I'm not, you know, obviously I didn't deal with getting the license, so maybe, you know, there were challenges there. They've been great to work with since we started working with them as far as when I need something, they are incredibly responsive to get us stuff. They work hard. At one point we said to them, we need like hundreds of cars, images of cars. And our contact worked long and hard to really find this. We said, oh, these are good, but what we really want is this. And they were really great at doing that for us. They provided a ton of assets. And what happened with the dinosaur stuff is we came across, you know, we're looking at all, you know, you get a thing, you're embedding everything you can into it. And they gave us some materials. And some of the materials they talked about in the East Creature Battles. None of us even knew what this was. So we started Googling and learning about it and came across this Hot Wheel City YouTube series. And it's just fun. And it makes you smile. And we said, hey, Roger, do you think we could use this stuff? And he said, well, let me check. And we thought, no way, we're not going to be able to use it because it's, who knows, who created it. But they came back and they said we could absolutely use it. And the more we watched it, the more we said, we've got to funnel this into the game. We've got to find a way to incorporate this into the games. It's just fun stuff. And it really captures a lot about what they're doing with the product today. So I think they were happy with that because, you know, for kids today, it's not just playing with cars. It's cars battling dinosaurs. And they have these really cool play sets. and it was kind of something we fell into, but we were pretty happy with it. The more we worked with it, the more we really liked it. That's cool. So talk to us about the reveal of the game. So I know that you were originally planning to unveil this at TPF and you had a lot of big plans for that. Can you tell us a little bit about what we missed out on? I know Ed had touched on that a little bit, and on your Pinside post you had talked about what you guys were going to bring there, but for the listeners who may not have seen that, what would you have done at TPF? Yeah, I think this was the thing Joe was most upset about with TPF being canceled, because I know he was so excited about the presence we were going to have there. We had plans for, we were going to have two full-size Hot Wheels cars there. I think it was Rip Rod and Bone Crusher. You know, these full-size cars, you know, that are just, you know, those are Hot Wheels originals that people have then actually built real versions of. We had plans for a large Hot Wheels track for, you know, kids, and I'm putting kids in quotes here, you know, to play with and enjoy. And we had, you know, the plan for eight games. Hot Wheels games could be in our boots. So everything was in line for that, and obviously the universe had other plans for us. But we were pretty excited about that. You know, we had to work with Ed to get a pretty big chunk of real estate, which is anybody who goes to that show knows real estate is a challenge there. So I was really excited about it too, I think, to have that kind of a presentation. I was very excited about it. I was really looking forward to it. It was neat trying to do the choreography and, I mean, that's not the word, but just getting the floor plan and deciding how to put it all together was going to be pretty spectacular. I was really excited about it. And we were looking to make a statement. You know what I mean? It was time to get out there, kind of a coming out party to say, hey, we are American Pinball. We're here. This is real. and, you know, we're getting into the licensed product. You know, we chose a license that there's over 40 million collectors around the world. You know, you guys were talking numbers where they make, you know, 2 billion cars a year. They're the number one selling toy on the planet and have been for years. It was just, it was time to know if we put American Pinball on the map with Houdini, followed up with Oktoberfest, this one would have kind of brought us back out to say, look, these guys are real and they are working. They're doing this licensed products. They're giving us a price point that, you know, that we can really work with in a better way. So, yeah, it was a big disappointment. I was on the phone with Eddie about a month before and said, you know, hey, what's going on? You know, we've got all these things happening in the world with this virus he said hey it's it's full steam ahead i talked to my guys overseas they're all planning to be here um we're not we're not doing anything unless we're told to and then you were told to so right right it it changed uh it changed the feeling where we're at we're still as pumped as you know pumped up as we can be about the game it's just a matter of how to get it out there how to make people understand that it is there and just hope that this thing gets lifted and we all get through this in a good way and it goes back to somewhat normal one of these days. So Joe, to your point, we've seen the game so far in some nice articles that have been on the web and a few high-def pictures, but to get a feel for the gameplay, all we've really seen is some cell phone images from the Amusement Expo in New Orleans. And I know on Pinside you had mentioned, Josh, that you're working through some licensing stuff and you need to make sure that the assets are all clear, but how far away do you think that we are from an official reveal with gameplay, like a Jack Danger kind of stream where we can see the game in its glory? I think we a couple of weeks away from that still And that first stream who knows who it be or how we do it but based on what happening in the world today i actually have much better streaming equipment now here it was the only way for everybody else to see what going on with the game we actually upgraded our equipment so that you know our sound guy matt kern you know he needs to be able to see gameplay he needs to see how the sounds are coming together our animation team needs to see how things are fitting in you know joe likes to you know pipe in once in a while and throw his two cents into of the mix. So it's actually been helping us do that. We actually have just submitted, this week, I submitted a bunch of stuff to Mattel, our latest and greatest stuff. And at this point, we're taking the opportunity, since we can't be building these for a couple of weeks, to get the code where we want it to be. So my guess is we'll work through those approvals over the next week or two. We obviously work at their schedule. And like every company, they're struggling to, I shouldn't say struggling, they're trying to figure out how to make all of this work. And depending on what we're getting approved determines how many departments at Mattel have to review it. And because of the Hot Wheel City footage, I think the studio involved in that has to get a look at things too. So part of it is just the logistics of getting everybody to go take a look at it, see if there's any concerns or issues with what we're doing. So far in all the things we've submitted, this isn't our first, we've gone through. So far everything's gone really well. There are a couple of minor things they'll come back with where they'll say, this term or this word, we'd like to use it differently, just things that are important to them and their brand. But I know we have a calendar that I just saw today with some stuff. It's got some things penciled in. So if things happen, we're in a couple of weeks, we're back working. And then I think you'll see some streams happen then. And if the stay-at-home goes longer, then the first stream might be me in my basement. All right. At least we'll get some images and some video. That'll be good. And Joe, when you were designing the game, how much was Mattel involved in the actual physical design of the play field? And what were your goals when you were making this game, given that there are a bazillion assets out there for Hot Wheels and you could go in a million different directions? Yeah, I mean, early on, and this pretty much holds true, unless you have a really hands-on licensor, the initial layout or the contents of the game are really not dictated by or suggested by the licensor. um well you're trying you know what we try to do is give it give the game more of a driving feeling so one of the things that they that Mattel did like was that we're kind of putting the player in the car which isn't really a part of Hot Wheels but it is with Hot Wheels City so you know having you're actually building a track and then driving you know driving that track basically you know they like that idea moving forward. The looping, the colors of the ramps, actually the spinning car mech, these were all things that kind of came about as the game was being put together. We were trying to keep a lower price point, obviously, as I've said a couple times already. And it not necessarily limits you, although it does, you know what I mean? Like, you want to do certain things and you just figure out that the cost to do it, the interruption on the flow of the game to do it. We all started to believe that, you know, some of these things we wanted to put in were really without, I don't like saying not worth it because I love loading up pinball machines and putting as much as you can in it. That makes sense. But we had to draw a line in the sand and say, look, we're going to make this the best shooting, the best playing, the best rules that we can. And that's going to carry this thing. And that's kind of, we got to a certain point and said, okay, you know, on the finance side, you know, the material side, we're looking to do this in this window on a sales price point. So we did have to kind of draw a line. Obviously, I'd love to go back and add the vertical loops and jump ramps and all these other things that, believe me, I wanted to do. This was Hot Wheels. Right. The big Hot Wheels guy. You know, I had hundreds of them. And it just wasn't going to work right. I was losing too much of the flow of the game to justify moving in any other direction. So, you know, the spinning car, it's been out there before. It's a simple mech. But, you know, we had to learn how to integrate it into the game rules. And now, once you guys get to shoot the game, once you get to see what's going on with the game now, we do have the car integrated. The car is not distraction, as people were saying, you know, from that initial view of it. You know, we were going with an RPM value and the car was spinning at a slower RPM up to faster RPMs, but it was constantly spinning. And, you know, we found that that was not necessarily distracting, but it just wasn't giving that feel that the car was interactive the way we wanted it to be. So now we've reprogrammed Josh's coming up with a few different ways of doing it. We all kind of put our input in. And now I believe it's not distracting whatsoever when you play the game. And it's just there as a nice piece of eye candy. But it's also a visual to know where you are in the games per the game rule set. because the RPM value works with your scoring in real-time scoring as you're playing the game. So there's a little twist to what RPM means, and you keep your RPMs up, your scoring is higher. So, you know, now we've worked it out where, like I said, Josh has done a really great job of interacting it more with hitting the RPM targets. We'll give it a little jolt where it'll spin fast a couple times and come back down. It shuts down when it needs to. It comes back when it needs to. So it's just a lot more fun, a lot more integrated into the game. So I think with, you know, obviously when the game was shown down in New Orleans, which a lot of people were confused by, but that's a huge show for the amusement industry. It's actually held twice a year. So it's a show that we've been to in the past, and there was a lot of debate, do we show Hot Wheels now or not? And even as I said, our goal is to, you know, grow our operator market and our location play. It was a show we needed to be at, and that's why we had the game there. You know, I guess there was a little part of us that said, gee, maybe it'll stay quiet, and obviously that's not likely to happen in the end.
    117:56
    But that's why we were there, and, you know, obviously Texas was for us really the big reveal for the pinball community, and it's unfortunate people saw it that way, but we weren't, you know, it was sort of the, you know, we're damned if we do, we're damned if we don't, but, you know, I think it was the right thing to be there because it's, again, an important audience for us. And not to say the collectors aren't. People say, oh, they do this for operators. No, we created a game. We designed this game from the start that we could bring it at a little bit of a lower price, which everybody wants. Operators want games at a lower price. Collectors want games at a lower price. But still create a game that is incredibly fun to shoot. And one of the things I love working with Joe is this is the third game he's handed me now, and the layouts are all completely different. Right. And, you know, from creating a rule standpoint, and Chris, I heard you made a comment like a month ago. You were talking about Hot Wheels. Maybe it'll be like Steins, where you collect this stein and it gives you different powers. And you're going to collect cards and it'll give you different powers. And I'd say we certainly considered and thought about that. And I probably said those words. I'm probably, I guess I'm betting it was Joe Schober who said, we just did that. We're not doing that again. And he's absolutely right. Joe does a different play field each time and we try and create a rule set that's different each time that fits the theme and fits the layout and so that's one of the great things with Joe and the spinning car thing that Joe was talking about, so when we had the game in New Orleans at that point, I think the code it would spin and it would ramp up as the RPM ramped up and we've tried a couple of different things and everybody has an idea and so I was amazed at the comments about it because to be honest, when you're playing the game you don't really notice it. You're not focused on it. But, you know, because we've had lots of conversations, and the latest rules that Joe is referring to, they talk about, you know, we've changed it so that it's more noticeable to the player when it starts and stops and changes speed. And that's critical if you're somebody who cares about score, and some people do and some people don't. You know, some of us, like I know, Ed likes to just shoot and enjoy, but other people are about the points. And if you're all about the points, So you want to get your RPM revved up high because it's basically, for all intents and purposes, a playfield multiplier. And you rev it up, and as soon as you rev it up, it starts to come down. And you then need to go back to those RPM targets to rev it up again to get that higher. And so the change we made, the basic change with the card behavior is it doesn't start moving until you get to a certain level. And then it changes after a few more. So it's more abrupt changes. So it's a better indicator to the player that says, oh, it stopped spinning. All right, I need to go back to the RPM target because otherwise my scoring level is going to drop. If you don't care about scoring, don't worry about it. You guys have talked about how this game has been built from the beginning as a game that's going to be at a lower price point. And you're possibly going to really push this more for the distributor model or the operator model, I should say. Was that the goal initially for this? And who is the target audience for this game? Is it the home collector? Is it the operator? You know, I know American Pinball has moved into making a machine for amusement companies in the, I'm trying to remember the name of it, the Flying Dutchman. Flying Dutchman, yeah. It's the real Flying Dutchman!
    121:20
    Are you trying to move pinball more that way, to have more pinball like at Dave & Buster's, or more of the home location, or both? Well, you know, it's funny, because when you asked the question, I was thinking about, in some company, I forget what, and people say, well, you're ignoring half the market, right? If we ignore operators, we're ignoring a large chunk of the market. So if we want to be a successful company, we want games on location, we want games in people's homes. And I think the people who own our games will attest to the quality and the build of our games and the enjoyment level and the depth of rules and those types of things, and Hot Wheels has all of that.
    121:57
    In case I get worried that the rules are too deep, and then I say, Well, as long as a novice can step up to the game and get to some really cool stuff and get excited and be surprised, then that's what we're looking for. You can come up to the game at an arcade and immediately have fun and enjoyment and be entertained. And for that guy who's got it in his basement, who's going to play it hours on end, there are some things in this game, challenging-wise, to get to, to achieve, that will really require you to develop and improve your skills as a player. And we've worked really hard to run that gamut. But if we're going to make progress in getting games into family entertainment centers and on location, you're not doing that at the actual best price point. Right. And I totally get that. And that's the challenge of most pinball companies, right, is to attract both the person who wants the high-end pinball machine and the operator model. So has American Pinball ever just ever thought about doing a tiered model of games where you put more into the collector version and maybe less to the Dave & Buster's version? or is that not something you ever want to delve into? It's something we've tried to stay away from, but I could see a differentiation where there's more blame, where we offer something where here's a package that has more of the amenities that a collector is looking for that an operator won't justify in the price. So I think that's sort of where I think we might end up as we go forward, as we try to navigate through this. But what you're going to find with this game is it's not like we cheapened out this game in any way whatsoever. As far as, you know, it's still the same materials, the same lockdown bar, all of that. It's, you know, we found some ways to reduce our costs on some supplies. We put a constraint on a few things. We said, you know what, we're not going to do the pop bumper toys this time. There's a few things like that we'll give up in order to bring it in at the price point we get, which I think is a very attractive price point. Sure. Do you see this being moved? Is there a big push by American Pinball to get these into amusement centers like Dave and Buster's environment? You know, have you guys been trying to market that to that sort of setting? Well, I think obviously with Oktoberfest, as Justin said, that was a game really targeting towards, you know, barcades and adult establishments more so. This game obviously we think could be very appealing to that audience, and if it is, I think we'll make some progress there. So we're certainly going to increase our marketing efforts in that area. And now that we have three games, we've shown we're here to stay. We can produce games. We can produce high-quality games that are reliable. I think that's part of that direction.
    124:31
    But, you know, the collector market is still going to be our bread and butter. I've got a question. Being a pinball artist, I guess I've known this guy who always asks the art questions. But, you know, you guys were talking about assets from Mattel, and I was wondering if the play field is, I don't want to present original, you know, because it has to be, but like the cabinet and the back glass and all that, is that all original art that was created for this game, or was any of that pulled from Mattel? Well, I think there are elements that Jeff got. I can't speak to which of the elements he got and incorporated, which were things he created from 100% from scratch or which. Joe, I don't know if you, I kind of followed along with Jeff's development and following the approval process because I was trying to learn that, but I was not involved with his day-to-day creation of it. Yeah, right. At the very beginning, when we talked about Hot Wheels, you know, Jeff was in a very creative mode. He was trying to come up with a lot of different ideas. When we made the turn, when we came to that intersection and said, we're going more towards the Hot Wheels City look, all the assets and everything else that he could get from Mattel were put into his art package. So as far as any, you know, from scratch art, I think there's a lot of blended art and a lot, you know, as far as background and everything else works out. But he tried to stay very true to their artwork, you know, their style. And that helped move the artwork package through, I believe, a lot quicker than it would have if we tried to deviate from it too much. This is our first, you know, our first licensed product. This is probably one of the bigger licensed products that Mattel does, you know, when it comes down to the size of a pinball machine. So we tried to work with them. I think a lot of sketches and that went back and forth between us and Mattel to show the direction we were going. So we had a clearer path to approval, I guess is the best way to put it. But I think it's worth noting that, I mean, when it came to the art package and some of what Jeff did, they were pretty particular. In some cases, they say, is this car in the exact right proportion? And we think that this angle isn't reflective of how the car could really be. There was stuff like that they would come back with that says, or there was something on the back glass at one point they said, you know what, I don't know if one of our cars would really do that. You know, so I will say they were pretty particular how things are presented. And I get that. That makes a lot of sense that they're trying to, you know, protect their brand in that way. But it was just interesting. Some of the things, I'd look at things and say, hmm, I bet you they're going to comment about that. And then they did it. and something I never would have thought would be a concern for them, they would raise as something they wanted adjusted or tweaked. You cannot create a car in the wrong fit. If the car didn't come in that color, you sure as heck can't use the car. That makes sense. Now, me being an artist, I can imagine the frustration that Jeff went through doing that. Did that have anything to do with Jeff's departure from American Pinball? Or was that American Pinball's decision? Or what happened there? Because that was shortly after the reveal of Hot Wheels, it was known that he left the company. Right. Well, what happened with Jeff, more or less, is he went from full-time with us to a contract guy. So, you know, by far there was no firing of Jeff Bush. There was no, you know, he's done, get rid of him kind of guy. You know, that wasn't what happened. Yeah. Or to, you know, we have, we're not a big staff company, so we don't, we're pushing the next game out once we start to sign off on the last one and it's going in boxes, you know what I mean? There's not, we don't have too many whitewoods in process. I mean, I've got two layouts I'm working with right now. One is definitely going to be, you know, game four moving forward. So we try to, you know, we all wear so many hats. And, you know, Jeff, I think it was more of a, I don't know what move you would say, just to pull him from the full time and just put him on contract. So, you know, Jeff's work will still be around with American Pinball. It's just a matter of now it kind of opens things up for him also because he does, you know, he does a lot of art for other different industries that, you know, he loves to get back into also. So the relationship is still there. You know, Jeff and I go back a long way. You know, nothing negative came out of it from both sides. And that relationship is as good as it was from day one. So he's not necessarily not a part of the company anymore. He's just, you know, on standby more or less until the next project comes along. Yes. Okay. All right. So you mentioned Game 4 having a Whitewood already. And it kind of reminded me that there's a lot of Internet super sleuths out there that really want to know what the next title is from their favorite companies. Including Christian. Yeah, heck yeah. And why are we mine? Well, hold on.
    129:30
    At some point in the past, you know, some people have uncovered some possible themes online, and these are no secret, so I'm going to list them off. Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Valkyries, and Poker Run. Is it frustrating for you guys when this information is uncovered? And, you know, do you see any positives in this, in the fact that, you know, people are curious about AP's games and they put in the time to seek this stuff out? I think it's funny how much effort people put into seeking that out, although I guess some people, it's just a regular thing that they look for. What's funny about it is the response you get is certainly interesting, the themes that people like or don't like, and hearing their ideas on them. As I've said previously, there's no way in hell you'll see us do all four of those titles, but you can probably bet that you're going to see at least one of those four at some point. But I think that was part of the fun of it, was throwing some ideas out there. There's one on the list. I'm like, I don't even know where that one came from. But it makes for good conversation. And what's nice is I haven't heard any rumors about what our next game is. Right. Because it makes for a good diversion, too. Absolutely. This is something all to talk about. Yeah. So, I mean, you guys have put out a lot of new and unique features in games with, you know, the corkscrew mech and the Houdini catapult. Moving forward, do you have other big ideas like that? Are you going to try and, you know, what's your plan? Because you've gone from a lot of, you know, a packed machine to something that's a little bit less packed for maybe a Dave & Buster's environment. What is the goal moving forward? Are you going to try and have a mix of different game types? Well, the one thing I want to say about Hot Wheels, too, is that, you know, there's five cars that are on the game. One is on the spinning mech, and then there's four other cars mounted on brackets around the play field. So the one thing that I definitely wanted to push for, no matter how we did it, we were looking at injection molded holders. We're looking at how to do this where the operator, the owner, the end user, if you've got five of your favorite cars or, you know, cars that mean something in your life, childhood, or your kids that have their cars now. using that click lock which is basically an industrial velcro each and every car on the game and we're putting extra click lock pieces in the final pack so if you want to pull off the cars on the game and swap them out with cars that you'd rather have on your game that's an option with this game that's cool that's very cool it was pretty funny i was at a pinball league event an open league here in chicago and talking with the guys there who commented that you know he's still has his original cars, the original 16 from when he was a kid, and he was excited if the Hot Wheels was our next game because we hadn't really said anything at that point about it. He said, yeah, it'd be really cool if I could put some of my cars in the game. And I said, you know, a designer of such a game might have planned accordingly for just that type of thing. Yeah, Chris had mentioned that this is the probably most moddable game ever made just because there's so much Hot Wheels stuff out there and everything that they make could potentially be modded into this game by the home user. Absolutely. It's definitely worth it because guys love to customize their games, right? And with Hot Wheels, you can go out for a dollar and get a new car. So you can customize this. You could add cars to it. You could add track to it. You know, there's a lot that you can do as an owner of a game to kind of customize it the way you'd like to without getting into a $1,000 update. you know what I mean so right got that in mind as we were trying to do this I wanted to put cars on the game I didn't want it to be too much with the cars and I think you know I've got them around the game the perimeter of the game and then on the spinner mech um so it's not too much but you know like I said it's easy to swap them out um some cars they don't have a real flat bottom so we you know like a shark cruiser if you're familiar with any of them it looks like a shark and its mouth opens in front and everything but the bottom of it is not a flat bottom so we actually put holes put a hole in the center of the pads for all the mounting brackets so if you had a unique car that really isn't a flat car to use the click lock you could drill a small hole in the bottom of your car with a number four number six screw and you could screw it to the bracket also so it gives you at least the option of using cars that hey you know what we couldn't do this in production because of trying to keep the same type of bracketry, but for the end user, the guy that's got it at home, the collector, there's a lot of different variables you can do with it to get your own cars on the game. You can tell Joe's the engineer. This has got to be the first game in history where you would put all of the modders out of business and you can literally trick the shit out of your game at Walmart for like $20.
    134:34
    You would fake that. I've already heard from at least one modder We're looking for insights on how to mount his mod into the game and connect it. So the mod is flying away, I assure you. Somebody out there make a sizzler gas pump because it definitely will.
    134:49
    You guys have been awesome. I just have a few more questions. Thank you for sticking with us. Glad we have a place to go. Nice. So I borrowed a Houdini from a buddy of mine because it's a theme that I'm really into. I love the game. Played it for a long time, a few months. and Josh, a question for you when I played this I set it on pretty easy settings because I'm not the best pinball player in the world and I got nowhere near the end of this game there's a bazillion mini wizard modes there's a master magician mode at the end of all of that which I never even came close to so you've kind of known for your deep rule sets has Hot Wheels, because you're trying to make this a more operator friendly game, have you dialed that back a little bit? Well, so, you know, I made one big mistake on Houdini, which is really the factory settings are way, way too difficult on the game. The factory default should really almost be extra hard. So putting the game on easy is the right thing to do because then you can actually make some pretty good progress through the game. And if you set up the second letters at reasonable levels, you can get to Master Magician. Because completing all of the secret missions is, you know, you take a lot of luck and a tremendous amount of skill. But one of our big goals on Hot Wheels was to ensure that even on Houdini, as you know, if you step up to the game and you're not very good, you're probably going to get seance multiball. Right. And you're going to get to experience the magnets. You're going to get some pretty cool stuff. So our goal here is to take that a step further for that novice that there's a lot you can get to very quickly in the game. You can get to a multiball with just four shots. You get to, let's call it track multiball the first time. It gets harder after that. There's a mode called Redline Mania that if you can get the tack to redline, it kicks into just a really cool mode. And it's one designed for people who don't know much about pinball, that they understand, ooh, if I just hit those targets in the middle enough, I'm going to get this really cool, exciting mode to happen. So we really spent a lot of time thinking about, again, how to make sure that for the novice play there's there, but there's still a tremendous amount of depth to the game, more really breadth to the game, because it's width that I think is even more important than depth. There's so many different things to go for. So when you walk up to play the game, you can decide, I'm going to go for the race today. I'm going to try and work through the shots to get through the 12 positions and get to victory lap multi-ball. Or you might step up to the game and say, I'm going to battle the creatures and try to get to the deep draven, which is the mini wizard mode, in a sense, for the battles. Or I'm going to focus on these multi-balls over here. So we try to create that there's a lot of different things to go for and to focus on so that the collector has a lot to do without necessarily creating where you, you know, it's like if you never get to Valinor. Right. That's cool. I'm excited to play it. And, you know, there's always got to be something approachable or something easily obtainable. And then obviously some goals that are a little bit harder for the expert player. But that sounds like it's a good mix. And by the way, there is a cheat code to get to Master Magician. Okay. And this is the first time I've ever talked about it. Oh, exclusive. Very nice. And what I will say is those with the beta code have a clue as to how to find out how to get to Master Magician without having to actually work your way there. Very cool. All right. So, all right, I have to touch on the American Pinball Monkey mascot a little bit here. So he's had a controversial history, and he has a sordid backstory. He had the backlash drama on Oktoberfest. Is this monkey sticking around? Is he anywhere on Hot Wheels? Is he like an Easter egg in the code or something, or are you guys kind of moving away from that? Well, I don't think there's any doubt that the monkey will reappear at some point. Whether or not he's in this game, well, time will tell. Okay. Yeah, I was going to leave that to the coder for that. So, I'm wanting to match that. Don't be surprised. Okay. So, a buddy of mine, Joel DeGuzman, did a really good logo for you guys with Amy Tinn, and she got a ton of positive feedback online. Do you see her being used in the future? I think she'll be used in a variety of ways to see how that fits in with the things we're doing. I think it's a great image. And the color version is really nice. And one of these days, hopefully, I'll get a T-shirt with that logo on there. So I think you'll see that logo used in conjunction with other things. And, again, I think with the monkey, he's going to always be kind of a little bit of a running joke, I think, a hidden mascot. Of course, I will tell you right now that there is a gorilla in Hot Wheels. Right. Right there. Some might just believe it's the monkeys grown up a little bit.
    139:29
    But I think you'll see the Amy pin get used. I know somebody came up today where it was being used for something. So, yeah, I think you'll see that. The monkey will always be there. I keep pushing for us to get stuffed monkeys made because I know we can sell a ton of them. That's awesome.
    139:44
    The only other question I have personally is what do you guys see as the future of American pinball? Where do we go from here after Hot Wheels? I expect we'll be making Hot Wheels for a while, once we're hopefully able to start doing that. And we're ready to, you know, as soon as, you know, the things are lifted, you know, we'll be hopefully cranking games pretty fast. Once we're able to get back and have people back in the factory. Our goal is to, you know, continue to get games out quicker and quicker, you know, the time between different games. What you saw here with this game did come out because of the coronavirus. virus, but our goal was to be able to ship games right after we show it, and that's where we had, we were on target to do that. That at Texas we'd be revealing the game if people would be able to start getting the game, and so hopefully we'll get back to that pretty quickly after things go, and we'll be wrapping up the code over the next few weeks, and then I'm looking forward to getting to work on the next game. Awesome. And the title of the next game would be... There's already Harry Potter. There's already speculation that it's apparently a music pin based on T.T.D.? I don't care.
    140:55
    You guys are doing Guns N' Roses, right? I heard that. I don't think it has anything to do with bingo either, just so you know.
    141:03
    We know, we know. It's the Bay City Rollers. I'd rather not do a music pin at all, obviously. That's not something that's appealed to me, and hopefully we won't do that, because I think is I think Steve Ritchie commented when he was on the show with you guys about if you're not into the theme you're working on, if you can't get passionate about it and really enjoy what you're working on, it's going to come through in the game. And I'll tell you, I was a little concerned with Oktoberfest when Joe first brought it to the table. And I started doing the research on it. After I did the research, then I realized, okay, I can get into this. Once I understood what Oktoberfest was really all about. I had a few rubber ducks, to be honest. that's very true too he comes back and says hey man you're not going to believe they have these octoberfest rubber ducks i'm like get out of here we're not making targets make these inserts look like ducks right yeah you thought i was crazy but uh so i think that's always important so yeah maybe we'll do a rock theme pin one day but that's not too high on my list because i just don't know that's something i feel i could really sink my teeth into like you can with something like hot wheels or houdini or octoberfest or never mind yeah king kong oh mean did it in kong is game four a licensed game or is it non-licensed yeah that one uh we're pushing to continue with the license theme and we haven't kind of signed off on that at this point but you know um it could be one of those four that are still sitting out there but we you know since we dove into the licensed market um we definitely don't want to be walking out of it at this point so i mean assets and everything else that come along with the license theme really helps move a game along um without having a gigantic staff to create so yes we're hoping to continue on the license theme side of it but i think some of our other themes that got out for the trademarks would make some pretty good pinballs too. So we shall see. That's awesome. All right. Thanks, guys. Yeah, we're looking forward to seeing what's coming next and to get our hands on some Hot Wheels and give that a go too because that looks like a fun shooter. Yeah, I can't wait for you guys to shoot it. It's come a long way. You haven't had an opportunity to shoot it, and I think it'll put a smile on your face when you get out there. I don't know if they told you, but part of the deal of being on the show is we all get free games. You can take that up with Michael. He handled all the arrangements for that. Michael Grant. It really is a fun shooting game. It's a very fast shooting game. It's got a lot of flow to it. It's a very different layout than the last two.
    143:56
    There's a lot of people out there who own both of our first two games, and they're going to find this is a nice complement to that because it's, again, a very different style of play in a very different world. Cool. Well, we wish you guys the best of luck with this game. I can't wait to shoot it as well. And certainly want you and your families to stay safe during this crazy time right now. And look forward to, well, I think we all look forward to getting back to seeing our pinball pals and socializing and flipping games all over again. So be safe. Take it easy. Thanks very much for being on the show. And we'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you, guys. Be safe. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. Take care, guys.
    144:39
    Don't forget, we have a contest going through Cointaker. If you go there now and you buy any me shirt, so go to I think it's Pinball Apparel and then there's like Franchise shirts or something like that. All you gotta do is buy one shirt. There's four different designs. Pick your favorite and once you buy the one, you are entered to win the other three that you didn't buy. So that's pretty cool. And I talked to Chris and he hasn't decided yet how many winners there are going to be, but there's going to be more than one. Knowing Chris, that probably means two.
    145:09
    Just kidding. So yeah, do that. Cointaker.com. And what the hell is all that clunking? Not me. Not me. Ed, you were clunking before.
    145:20
    No, but not me. Have you guys got anything else you want to pimp or whatever? I just want to say I love you guys. That's quite the game. That could be the tequila time. I love you guys, too. I just want to punch you in the face sometimes. Screw you, Franchi. Yes, I've got to live up to this thing or we won't sell any shirts. You've got to say that more often, damn it.
    145:44
    I'm putting that in there. That's going to be part of the T-shirt offerings. But I was thinking of changing it. If you guys remember, it just says, Screw You, Franchi. I was thinking it might need a little head at the bottom. Put his mouth open like he's staying. you know, put a little cartoon bubble around it. Taking his fists? Yeah, you know. I'd be down for that. Like those Monty Python, you know, where they cut out the magazine pictures and make them move and all. So it kind of looks sort of like that, you know. It's just a black and white image of Ed with his angry face and his mouth open. Yeah, so Ed, when you're doing your head shots, send me one like that, too. All right, that's going to do it for this week. And we will probably not be back next week, but we are planning some new interviews, and we'll be back soon with another episode. So until then, everybody stay safe, stay home. Again, do not think that you are someone special because you're not. It's not selective. It will get you. It will get anyone. So stay in your house. Don't infect your family. Don't infect yourself. Other than that, on behalf of Christian and Ed, this is Mr. Franchi saying so long. So long. See you. Bye. If you'd like to drop us a line or ask a question, we can be reached at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. Questions or comments may be read on the air. The original content of this podcast is copyright 2020 ASFAT Radio Productions.
    146:57
    The commentary and opinions shared by the cast and guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the sponsors, Cointaker, Chicago Gaming Company, and Back Alley Creations. Their sponsorships of this show only serve to add to their continuing support of the pinball community.
    147:27
    Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. It's the back song. The back song. Okay, bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Later, Jizz. Goodbye, goodbye, good friends, goodbye. Is this over or do I say it's over? Bye-bye. Bye. Good day, sir. Get the fuck out of here. I gotta go. I'll see you later. Bye. Okay, okay. Show's over. Bye-bye. Hasta la vista, baby. Hey, you fucking chalupa suck, shit.
    148:13
    Good morning, everyone. Eat my butthole. Wow. Jesus Christ. Wow. Sorry. Oh, sorry. Are you not entertained? I do not entertain Is this not why you are here?