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PNP 613- Tim Sexton Leaves+ TPF 5 Rad 1 VERY Bad+ Is Potter FOMO Magically Dissapeared?+ Keri Wing Soars!

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 18m·analyzed·Apr 1, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Tim Sexton leaves Stern; Carrie Wing wins TPF women's title; top TPF moments reviewed.

Summary

Orbital Albert discusses Tim Sexton's departure from Stern Pinball, celebrates Carrie Wing's comeback victory at Texas Pinball Festival (winning the women's championship after being down 3-0), and reviews his top-five favorite moments from TPF including discussions of new machines like Merlin's Arcade and toppers. He also touches on community tensions including a disagreement between Christopher Franchi and Bruce Nightingale over Evil Dead's merit.

Key Claims

  • Tim Sexton has left Stern Pinball and will no longer be working there

    high confidence · Orbital Albert cites Tim Sexton's LinkedIn profile and Don's Pinball Podcast as sources for this information; notes uncertainty about whether code for John Wick will be completed

  • Carrie Wing won the women's championship at Texas Pinball Festival after being down 3-0 to Kaylee Campbell

    high confidence · Orbital Albert provided detailed play-by-play of the finals, noting Wing won four consecutive games on Foo Fighters, Deadpool, World Cup Soccer, and Iron Maiden

  • Kaylee Campbell is a dominant recent women's tournament player who won at least one of the last three majors

    medium confidence · Orbital Albert states 'She's been winning everything. I think she won like two of the last three majors I watched her at. I could be wrong about that.'

  • Christopher Franchi was upset that Bruce Nightingale (Slam Tilt) doesn't like the Evil Dead pinball machine

    medium confidence · Orbital Albert reports this as community gossip: 'apparently the beefs got to such a big size now' and notes he hasn't directly spoken to Franchi about it

  • Medieval Madness is the third pinball machine Orbital Albert became serious about after Twilight Zone and possibly Attack from Mars

    high confidence · Personal anecdote describing his entry into pinball approximately 12 years ago (around 2013)

  • Stern released a new $200 mirrored topper with LCD effects at TPF

    high confidence · Orbital Albert describes it as featuring 'mirroring effect all the way back with all the LCDs, with all the lights going and moving'

  • Merlin's Arcade has a problematic topper that is flimsy and overly tall

    high confidence · Orbital Albert provides detailed criticism: 'The topper was flimsy. That was floppier... It's floppier than a floppy disk from the 80s'

  • Orbital Albert finished third at the Fredericton Flippin' Arcade tournament, his first with both his sons competing

Notable Quotes

  • “The question is, will John Wick ever get its code finished now? And you know what? I would say with Tim Sexton gone, there's even a better chance that someone comes in and saves the day.”

    Orbital Albert @ early in episode — Addresses the immediate industry impact of Tim Sexton's departure on a major unreleased Stern title

  • “Carrie Zen Wing, she freaking zended out, man. She just got in there. She's just totally in a meditative state. She's totally in her flow, totally in her game. And that's what you need to do. Whoever can get into a flow state faster will win in a pinball tournament.”

    Orbital Albert @ middle section discussing TPF finals — Key insight into competitive pinball psychology and Wing's mental approach to winning

  • “Evil Dead by all accords is the best spooky game of all time. Does that mean it's like the best game ever? No.”

    Orbital Albert @ middle section — Attempts to mediate the Franchi/Bruce tension while acknowledging legitimate differences in opinion

  • “Two things can be true. The artwork is incredible, no matter what anyone says... And, you know, at the same time, Franchi, don't be as easily offended. Everyone's not going to love every single pinball machine you ever worked on, okay?”

    Orbital Albert @ Evil Dead discussion section — Direct advice to Christopher Franchi about accepting criticism professionally

  • “It's okay if Bruce doesn't like the Evil Dead game because Ron likes it so much he's buying it. So that just made even on it.”

    Orbital Albert @ Evil Dead beef discussion — Pragmatic observation that different opinions balance out in the market

  • “I don't think he took enough time. Like, they do such a great job making the undercarriage... the underside of the playfield, make it look so beautiful, and it's not all nested... but now the price has gone up substantially, the shots seem to be worse”

    Orbital Albert @ Merlin's Arcade criticism section — Detailed critique of Merlin's Arcade design and production choices

  • “I am your 20th favorite Twippy award-winning podcast. I'm your fifth favorite pinball podcaster, and I am your most degenerate, degenerate of all time, D-Jenny winner.”

Entities

Tim SextonpersonOrbital AlbertpersonCarrie WingpersonKaylee CampbellpersonChristopher FranchipersonBruce NightingalepersonRon HallettpersonDeborah Tallmanperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Interpersonal conflict between Christopher Franchi (Spooky artist) and Bruce Nightingale (Slam Tilt) over Evil Dead game reception

    medium · Orbital Albert reports: 'apparently Chris is not very happy that Bruce doesn't like Evil Dead' and advises both parties to accept differing opinions

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Nerds Podcast fundraising goal exceeded; community-driven financial support for content creation

    high · Orbital Albert: 'we have reached and exceeded our fundraising goal... I'm going to be listing not only every single person who has donated'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Women's pinball competitive scene gaining visibility and community enthusiasm through tournament coverage and livestreaming

    high · Extensive celebration of women's tournament performances at TPF; detailed play-by-play analysis and player interviews

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Medieval Madness reissue features vibrant purple color scheme; positioned as premium/nostalgic rerelease at Texas Pinball Festival

    medium · Orbital Albert: 'Medieval Madness was probably the third pinball machine... that I really, really got into playing digitally before I sought out my first pinball tournament'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Merlin's Arcade features problematic topper design (flimsy, oversized, poor shot quality) and raised pricing concerns for first-time boutique buyer audience

    high · Detailed criticism of topper flimsiness, height, and shot quality; questions about value proposition for younger/price-sensitive buyers

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.235

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed syrup and honey, hopes to laugh with his family And a random tangent, stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're going to get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 613 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, I am so excited to let you know that we have reached and exceeded our fundraising goal. At the end of the show, I'm going to be listing not only every single person who has donated since my last show about a week ago, but I'm going to be thanking profusely every single person who helped me get there and just giving them their proper shout-outs. Now, if it sounds like I'm talking a little bit quieter, it's A, because my oldest son is sleeping, coming off midnight shifts, and B, because my voice is very, very, very stressed, I did have a pretty bad sinus cold until a couple days ago, which, yes, I did probably pick up from the pinball tournament in Fredericton there at Flippin's Arcade, where I managed to get third. Yes, that's right. I not only beat both my sons, even though Hayden was in first place about halfway through the largest tournament in East Coast of Canada. I'm going to talk a little bit about that at the end, but also shout out and thank you, thank you, thank you to both my sons for coming. That was the first tournament, guys. You guys know how much I love my sons way more than anything else, and I got to spend an awesome day with them at a collectible show in Moncton, and then we traveled on to Fredericton, and we got to go there, and we had an absolutely great time.
2:16
Hayden maybe had a bit too much of a great time, but I will talk about that later. There's so much to talk about. We're going to talk about Tim Sexton. This is the biggest news that came out. I saw this on Don's Pinball Podcast, and he shared it from someone else. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. It appears as if, and according to his LinkedIn as well, that Tim Sexton has done the old, I'll say the old switcheroo. I'm not going to say he's retired from pinball, because I don't know that to be true for sure. He has said on his social media he's retired from talking about pinball on his social media, and it looks like he's now left stern and will not be working there. The question is, will John Wick ever get its code finished now? And you know what? I would say with Tim Sexton gone, there's even a better chance that someone comes in and saves the day. But who knows? I don't know.

high confidence · Direct personal claim with details about beating both sons and son Hayden being in first place halfway through

Orbital Albert @ middle section — Self-deprecating humor establishing his podcast's community standing

  • “I've had 45-minute games on Deadpool and got like I think 390 or something or maybe 420 max like I don't think I've got a half billy”

    Orbital Albert @ during Deadpool gameplay discussion — Personal context for evaluating Kaylee Campbell's 930M score at TPF

    • Emily Relhanperson
    Leslie Ruckmanperson
    Louise Wagonsonerperson
    Anna Nealperson
    Jane Versaillesperson
    Cassidy Milonowskiperson
    Lumiperson
    Elizabeth Gieskeperson
    Markperson
    Chris Turnerperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)event
    Merlin's Arcadegame
    Evil Deadgame
    Medieval Madnessgame
    John Wickgame
  • ?

    design_philosophy: Merlin's Arcade undercarriage aesthetics surpasses previous boutique standards but overall machine design lacks cohesion (halfDrop Root, half Merlin's design elements)

    medium · Orbital Albert: 'arguably, they've done a better job than even Haggis... but like the other parts of it i'm like i don't know you can tell it's kind of half from deep root and half from here'

  • ?

    event_signal: Fredericton Flippin' Arcade tournament held recently with Orbital Albert finishing third alongside both sons competing

    high · Personal participation: 'I got third. Yes, that's right. I not only beat both my sons... at the largest tournament in East Coast of Canada'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern's $200 mirrored topper with LCD effects positioned as aggressive competitive alternative to expensive boutique toppers ($500-$2,000+)

    medium · Orbital Albert notes Stern may have 'shot ourselves in the foot by sending out a $200 topper' that outperforms their expensive models

  • ?

    community_signal: Christopher Franchi increasingly sensitive to negative feedback about his artwork; interpersonal dynamics tension in designer community

    medium · Orbital Albert: 'Franchi, don't be as easily offended. Everyone's not going to love every single pinball machine you ever worked on, okay?'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Tim Sexton departs Stern Pinball after significant tenure as code designer

    high · Confirmed via LinkedIn and reported on Don's Pinball Podcast; raises questions about unreleased titles like John Wick

  • $

    market_signal: Merlin's Arcade pricing increased substantially while shot quality apparently decreased

    medium · Orbital Albert: 'the price has gone up substantially, the shots seem to be worse... I don't know who this speaks to if you're 12 to like 16 years old and you think this artwork style looks really cool and fun and whimsical can you afford to pay this much'

  • ?

    product_strategy: John Wick code completion uncertain following Tim Sexton's departure from Stern

    medium · Orbital Albert speculates whether Tim Sexton's departure impacts completion: 'The question is, will John Wick ever get its code finished now?'

    • 3:02
    I also want to talk about the top five rad things that happened at TPF. Like I said, I had a really bad sinus cold. My sinus cold is about 80% better. I haven't had any cold medication for two days, but my throat has still been bad. And honestly, my tinnitus came back. and as appreciative as I was that we hit our fundraising goal and I don't have to bug y'all for any more money or beg, beg, plead and steal for money, get down on my knees, get on those knee pads and get ready to spike the ball back up because the fundraising is done for the year. It's great, it's great. And I only wanted $10 per show that I do. Listen, I don't think this is a $20, $30, $40 show, but I think for the four to 500 people that listen to every episode, you know, for me to get 10 bucks per show, that's like, what is that? like five cents a person it's nothing it's nothing so thank you thank you so much everyone who donated we're going to be talking about the top five rad things that happened at tpf and the one really really really really bad thing now some people would tell you me having a degree in marketing doesn't help me be a pinball podcaster and those people are wrong because i can tell you from a marketing standpoint the one really really really bad thing that happened over there. Let's just save it. We're going to start by getting right into the most, mostest, goodest, bestest, newsest story of the day.
    4:23
    I'm not going to say, like, my girl, because, like, I don't know her that well, but I've been cheering her on. For those of you who have been listening to the show, probably just Glenn the Skateboarder and maybe Ray Day. I don't know. Ray Day, do you still listen? I hope you do, buddy. I haven't heard from you in a while. But maybe Raymond Davidson's been so busy with doing that code with Tim Sexton leaving because if we're just hearing about this now, it probably happened some time ago, especially if it's been on his LinkedIn for a while. I think Don shared that it came from the Texas or the Paris Pinball Addicts Facebook page. But I wanted to say shout out to Carrie Wing. Carrie, I used to call her Carrie Zen Wing, but I've learned better. Deborah Tallman has taught me you must only give a nickname to someone who wants that nickname. So when I meet Carrie Zen Wing, when I meet Carrie Wing, I will ask her if I can call her Carrie Zen Wing. Because this woman was so freaking calm. She was going against Kaylee Campbell in the finals in the top two. And Kaylee Campbell's just been on fire in the last year, okay? She's been winning everything. I think she won like two of the last three majors I watched her at. I could be wrong about that. At least one of them, one of them. She's been doing well. She's been getting far in all the tournaments. She's playing great. in fact I was watching her on this one old machine and it wasn't Mata Hari it was some setup like that I would say it was probably late 70s early 80s pretty sure it was a solid state and she wasn't shatzing and she wasn't tap passing she was kind of doing this weird mixture between the two and even the commentators who were very skilled and know what they're doing and know way more about pinball than me were all like I don't know what to call that. It's a tip pass, shats, you know.
    6:13
    No one knew it. Tap pass. No one knew what to call it. So that was so cool. Congratulations to all the women who did so great. It was really cool to watch. Shout out to Mark from Backhand Pinball. That dude was like live streaming like 12 hours a day. Let me just bring up the Excel note that we were all following. I was in chat for a lot of that. I did fall asleep. You know, I would fall asleep at night. but did get to watch Deborah Tallman, something really cute that she did. She showed her phone to show us what she was listening to, which I love it when people do that. I'm so curious, what are you bopping out to? If I can kind of sing along to your song and see you bopping out to it while you're playing, it gets me more into the game that you're playing. So I think if you're listening, Rape Meow, and you're a tournament player, do that for all of us. Can you do that for all of us? That'd be really cool if you did that for us. Just show us what you're bopping out to. Anyways, this is really cute what she did. she put up this, she showed us that she was listening to Rent, and I've never seen Rent, I'm not a big musicals guy, my wife is, but I'm not, but she was bopping out to that song from the D'Genny's, I think, and I only know it from The Office, like the 9,426,000,000 minutes till Steve Carell's character's back on The Office, or whatever that song was, I definitely, definitely cannot sing at this point. I can barely talk at this point, so I definitely can't sing.
    7:38
    Thank God. Thank God winter's almost over. There is no snow on my lawn for the first time in a couple days. There was a wild ice storm back in Ontario where I'm from, and half a million people are without power. But thank God winter's over because I was researching it, and tinnitus is actually three or four times as common in January and February because you're getting sinus and cold issues and everything else. Everyone's getting less vitamin D. Everyone's been indoors for longer. All the crud. And then over and above that, I went to a beautiful market in Fredericton, which go check out their farmer's market there. It's incredible. Go to Kuntz. Yes, you heard me right. That's how it's pronounced. I think they're German. But they make these incredible schnitzels. Oh, my God. These German schnitzels are, oh, God. Get the schnitzel. Get it on the bun if you have to. If you want to go keto, just get the schnitzel. You'll save a couple bucks. Make sure you get it with the honey mustard.
    8:33
    And I always ask for double kraut, double sauerkraut. Get in there. I like the sauerkraut on the top and the bottom, not just on the top. You know what I mean? I want juicy, crunchy sauerkraut coming in from... Anyways, I've gone off topic. But Carrie Zanwing... Sorry, Carrie Wing, you soared like an eagle. Go get them, girl. So she won this, and she was down 3-0, I believe, to Kaylee Campbell.
    9:00
    So I have to shout out the Canadian champion, Emily. I didn't hear anyone say your last name, so I don't want to mispronounce it, but I know you're from British Columbia, so shout out to you. And British Columbia has probably some of the steepest, especially in the women's category, and men's, but especially for the women's category of pinball nerds out there. So for her to have dominated so far, and I believe she made it to the round of 8 even, or the round of 16. So congratulations to her. Emily, her last name is R-E-I-L-H-A-N. Relhan? I'm not sure. I'm sorry.
    9:35
    Leslie Ruckman did really well. She played Louise Wagon-Sagner. Wagon-Soner, sorry. And the cool part was I was watching Leslie and Louise play and both of them have been interviewed right here on the Pinball Nerds podcast. So it's like, I was explaining this to my wife. I knew two of the three commentators pretty well who were commentating at the time and then either that game or the next game was Leslie's and Louise's and like I've been in chat I think Game Time Television is Leslie's well she goes by Al Rucko as well sometimes on Twitch but she used to stream pinball all the time I don't think she does anymore and they're on the opposite coast as me and I you know so I do her and her partner her boyfriend I believe used to stream all the time on Game Time Television don't know if they do anymore but she still plays in tournaments, and she's like an incredible player, and she was playing Louise Wagonsoner, and I got to not only play with, Louise and I both made it to A-Division at Pemberg, and after I got to play with her, I did a quick interview chat with her, which was really cool. She was one of the 69 people that I interviewed at Pemberg, the final Pemberg, well, not the final Pemberg, because Pemberg's back, baby, oh yeah. Who else, who else?
    10:50
    Anna Neal, of course, from Hot Nudge. Unfortunately, she had to play Jane Versailles. I call her Jane Very Wise, but again, I've learned you should not give people nicknames they don't want. But Jane, if I ever get to meet you someday, I'm going to ask you if I can just nickname you for my pod, Jane Very Wise. Because she's very wise. Like, she made such great decisions while she was playing. Anna Neal's an incredible player as well. Great at saving. Knows a lot of the rules. I mean, they're both on Hot Nudge, right, which is probably, I would say, has been one of the top, if not the top, women's Twitch pinball channel. Just one of the top Twitch pinball channels if you want to learn rules and have fun. And, of course, so two-thirds of Hot Nudge had to play each other, and only one Hot Nudge could go on, and that was Jane. So congratulations to Jane. She actually swept that, which I was pretty shocked by that. yeah she won all four because Anna's such a great player I thought that would be very very I thought it'd be a little bit closer Leslie Ruckman moved on Emily from Canada moved on oh and then Cassidy Milonowski who won one of the top five rad that I met on my trip to Wisconsin last year she actually took out Emily so that was hard to watch because I was cheering on Cassidy Milonowski who took me out of a lumberjack Johnny's tournament play Emily the last Canadian left uh Lumi Lumi and Leslie Ruckman played in the next round and Lumi won. Lumi was very interesting, very fun to watch, very, uh, uh, had neat mannerisms. I like active players when you're moving around and being funny. That's just my favorite people to watch. She had this funny, like, cool thing in her hair or something. I don't know. Uh, anyways, she seemed really fun. Uh, but Carrie Zenwing got it done. Uh, was this Ashley Weaver and Cassie Milonowski had to play in the second last round? Um, Zoe I really like her commentating. She does great. Her and Debra together are probably my favorite, one of my favorite commentator teams, if not my favorite. I don't know. Maybe Bruce and Ron from Slam Tilt there as well. Who knows? Oh, and speaking of, as a side note, many little, I report the little beefs in a kind yet constructive way, but I do report on them. But apparently the beefs got to such a big size now, I didn't originally report on it, and I have not spoke to Christopher Franchi about it. Shout out to Chris. hopefully you're doing well but apparently Chris is not very happy that Bruce doesn't like Evil Dead. Now Evil Dead by all accords is the best spooky game of all time. Does that mean it's like the best game ever? No. Do I even think it's probably in the top 10 games of all time? Probably for mechs and toys. Would it be in the top 10 wide bodies of all time? By far. Like by far. Is it in the top 10 games of all time? Probably not. They don't have as good of a coding team over there, of course.
    13:41
    I'm surprised Tim Sexton didn't go over to another pinball company if he wasn't happy at Stern. Because, wow, like, I mean, he would just... To be honest, like, I think it is pinball's loss that we're losing Timmy. So, Timmy! As they say on Slam Tilt. But, no, Bruce is allowed to not like a pinball machine and I respect Bruce for being open and honest when he doesn't. And I'll be honest, I hate the theme of Evil dead. I've never seen the movie. I tried to go back and watch little parts of it. I don't know. I'm not a horror guy. I'm just not. I love comedy. Comedy's at the very top. That's why I try to be funny sometimes on the show. It doesn't always work when I'm very tired and I've had no caffeine. But shout out to Carrie Wing. She was down three nothing. Let me just bring this part back up here.
    14:28
    Oh, and Elizabeth Gieske. She got a Billy on Jaws. That was so fun to watch. I'm like, yeah. I was trying to troll in the chat a little. I was like, I don't think she knows the rules that well, but she's got great flipper skills. No one, thankfully, no one took the bait, but I was just joking around. I wanted someone to take the bait and be like, I know that. I am your 20th favorite Twippy award-winning podcast. I'm your fifth favorite pinball podcaster, and I am your most degenerate, degenerate of all time,
    15:01
    D-Jenny winner. Oh my God, that reminds me. I was really sick and Joe reached out, I believe, for my address. And now that I'm talking about it, I remember I need to get back to him. But yeah, so Kaylee Campbell won on Viking. Viking was the one she was doing these incredible, like, go watch that. If you go watch one game in the finals, go watch the whole thing when you get a chance. But if you only can watch one game, go watch Kaylee and Carrie Wing play on Viking. And just whatever she's doing with the, like, she was just doing magic. There was magic done on Viking the whole time because it's one of these ones where you can bump your way back in, I believe, as well. And I'm just trying to remember who. It might have been Kaylee Campbell as well.
    15:41
    I can't remember who it was, but someone had like a two, three-time hit that came off the bumper from the out lane and went back into the in lane. They got it back on their flipper, and that was really incredible. I live clipped that or whatever. Jack's open, she went on. Then Frontier, she carries in wing, heard crickets on because she lost a million to 700,000. and both of those scores are just incredible. But then she won four games in a row. Carrie Wing won on Foo Fighters, Deadpool, dog soccer, that's right, World Cup soccer. I love that they put it in there as dog soccer. That's what it really is. Bring back more sports pinball machines. What's going on? I'm going to talk about that coming up soon. And Iron Maiden, and then she won on Iron Maiden. And she is just zen. Carrie Wing just kept playing her game, kept staying calm. And not that Kaylee ever played poorly, because she's putting up good scores here. Like, she put up 140 on Foo Fighters to 195. That's not a blowout. You know, Deadpool. Kaylee lost on Deadpool, and she got 930. Like, I've had 45-minute games on Deadpool. Now, I aim for shats. Like, I'm not a good aimer. I suck at aiming. I'm decent at saves. I believe I'm very good at nudging. but I've had 45 minute games with extra balls on with extra balls on at a bowling alley in Moncton on Deadpool and got like I think 390 or something or maybe 420 max like I don't think I've got a half billy and I can guarantee you the foo fight or I can guarantee you the Deadpool at the bowling alley in Moncton is not set up nearly nearly nearly as hard as this one was because these pins were set up with very tight tilts, you know, not outrageously, like not all the rubbers removed and everything, no, like nothing crazy, crazy, horrible, but they were definitely set up far harder than your average pin at your average bowling alley or your average league or bar, right? And Kaylee Campbell got $930 million on it, like with all that stress, knowing that if she wins that game, she is the world women's champion. And she knows that. And there's a free pinball machine on the line. And she still did that. I felt so bad for her because Carrie Zen Wing, she freaking zended out, man. She just got in there. She's just totally in a meditative state. She's totally in her flow, totally in her game. And that's what you need to do. Whoever can get into a flow state faster will win in a pinball tournament. That's why you go there. You don't go there to practice. That's why you go early before a pinball tournament starts. Or you play at home for a while to get into that zen. Because if you haven't played for a couple days, it could take you a good 45 minutes to an hour to get into it. And wow, not only was Carrie Zen Wing into it, but she stayed in it. Because she got 2.9 Billy.
    18:30
    Oh, Draco Franchi. You know he's coming in here. I took him out for the world's longest walk. He went to the bathroom and he decided, hey, if you say D-O-G soccer, that's probably what he heard. He heard D-O-G soccer and he thought I was talking to him. That's what I thought. I don't know who's beefing more, me and Franchi here or Bruce from Slam Tilt. Okay, two things can be true. Number one, it's okay if Bruce doesn't like the Evil Dead game because Ron likes it so much he's buying it. So that just made even on it. there's a freaking ladybug on my microphone stand. I am getting, my ADHD is getting tested today, bruh. All right, so, but Carrie Zen Wing, cheers and salute to you. I will briefly just say that two things can be true. The artwork is incredible, no matter what anyone says. Anyone who says the artwork on Evil Dead isn't incredible is just, I really think they're wrong. Even if they I mean you know the artwork is incredible the toys and mechs are incredible it sounds like the code getting better on every Spooky pin The customer service you can say anything bad about the customer service over at Spooky And, you know, I saw even recently, like, I think it was Bug or Spooky Luke or whoever was, you know, on social media saying, I'm sorry, we haven't been on social media a lot recently. It's like, yo, you guys are busy as hell. You're at every show. You're at TPF. You're everywhere. You're allowed a week off. Let yourself, like, let your throat relax and rest. And at the same time, Franchi, don't be as easily offended. Everyone's not going to love every single pinball machine you ever worked on, okay? So that's just how it is. I don't think Bruce liked Munsters either. You can't start a beef with Bruce just because he didn't like Munsters. Now, again, anyone who says Munsters Premium isn't the prettiest pinball machine on planet Earth until that glittery son-of-a-bitch Elton John came up. Come on. Like, that's a gorgeous machine, that black and white Munsters. Franchi didn't even want to do it. He's probably going to kill me just for saying that. I love you, Franchi. I love you, Bruce. I can love both of you. I love you, and I'm in love with you now. Let's get back to that show. So as far as the TPF, Texas Pinball Festival top five, I'll say number five on the list was probably Merlin's Arcade, okay?
    20:50
    The one thing I really didn't like with Merlin's Arcade was that topper. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I know you're the nicest dude in pinball, but Chris Turner, something needs to be done about Toppergate. And there was another Toppergate there that could be, arguably could be in the top five and might be. But the topper was flimsy. That was floppier. Oh, God. See, I almost made a, I'm trying to, oh. I don't want to make any, it's floppier than a floppy disk from the 80s that had been outside in the rain for a week, okay? That's how floppy it was. It's floppier than a Domino's pizza. I don't know. It didn't look good. It looked bad. I'd be like, please, could you just... And then the topper's too tall, and it doesn't look great as it is. And then I did hear from Ron, and I trust Ron on this.
    21:41
    He said that the shots weren't really that great. I know a couple other podcasters said the shot... It doesn't shoot that well. It's okay, but it's not great.
    21:50
    Everybody loves the finesse flipper. I'll give the finesse flipper that. Everybody seems to love the finesse flipper. That seems fun. That seems interesting. It doesn't seem like that's the type of pinball machine you would absolutely need it on as much as a lot of other machines where you'd need to be doing tap passes where there's only one really good valuable shot on the left or one really good, or say like, well, even on DOG soccer, because I'm not going to say that again and wake up Franchi over there, all right? But top five is definitely,
    22:19
    the first one is Merlin's Arcade. I would say most people said they loved shooting that spinner, and Ron did just mention on Slam Tilt that the spinner reminded him of another spinner, the one from Mike Myers.
    22:35
    Hold on a sec, hold on a sec, I need a sip of the old Spritz up here. I'm drinking my Canadian Cola, okay? Big up, big up to Spritz up.
    22:45
    Austin Powers. So Austin Powers has a mini-me that spins around kind of like that. So I was like, oh, I've never seen anything like that foosball spinner, but I had. I actually got to play that at the final pinberg. Surprise, surprise.
    22:59
    Why is my laptop getting so many pop-ups? Alright, so number four from TPF, number four, was Toppergate. That's right, the Pulp Fiction Toppergate from the Electric Playground, with both of the main characters' faces basically blurred out. Now, I think the topper is so cool with the miniature little pinball, shooting out of the gun. It is going back into the other gun, which is kind of like sus, but I will say this about Toppergate.
    23:32
    I don't care that they're blurred out. I think it's a bit pricey for what it is. Obviously, they did not, and the Kineticist covered this, so thank you, Colin, for doing that. Did a whole interview with them over there.
    23:44
    I think it's a bit expensive, even for what it is, but I also think that it's really cool. I don't think it's as cool as the Pulp Fiction Topper, but the Pulp Fiction topper was only for like the one level. So would I get it? Maybe. Would I be annoyed that their faces were blurred out when I paid that much? Hells yes. Now, if I could buy it used on the market and get it for like 300 bucks and I had that ball moving around or whatever, sure. And this is what I will also say. This did not make my top five, but Stern had their new topper slash sign there for 200 bucks. Wow. I'm not going to lie. I'm guessing their marketing department or their future products department, their merchandising department, whoever, may have argued back and forth, guys, we're shooting ourselves in the foot by sending out a $200 topper, that I think that $200 topper looks a lot better than tons of their flat plastic $500, $1,000, even $2,000, $1,200, $1,500 toppers they've made that aren't nearly as rad as that $200 mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror. It's like a mirroring effect all the way back with all the LCDs, with all the lights going and moving. It's so cool. That is like, honestly, I'm not a topper guy. No one's ever called me Orby the Topper King, okay? That's not my designation. I don't love toppers or really care about toppers. But in this particular case, I could see when I sell the farm, when I sell the farm in three, five, seven years from now, and drop target Danielle and I move off to a nice little ranch, small little house, not 2,000 square feet with seven acres to take care of. When we move away, I could see me getting five or six nice pinball machines and definitely these things, if they're $199 now, maybe use their $150 or you could buy five for $800 or $700 or something in the future. Who knows? Because I could see me putting that on. If I did, I do kind of like things to be matchy-matchy. So if I was going to have a couple tasteful toppers, you know, you don't want to have the one that doesn't. And if the one topper I needed was like the Mando topper or like the Walking Dead topper, which they're both incredible, but they're like thousands of dollars and they're hard to get and they're probably not rerunning them or remaking them. I would just get the $200 Stern topper and be happy with that. Like I'd be like, whoa, okay, not as rad as the Mando topper, but saved me thousands of dollars. So that was, I would say that was number four. And to say that a topper was higher on the most rad list, to say that a topper was higher on that list than an entire machine, I'm sorry, it sounds like Ninja Eclipse was a better machine. Like, I don't know. I don't know what the future looks like for Turner Pinball. I think he's a nice dude. I don't think he took enough time. Like, they do such a great job making the undercarriage, do you call it that? the underside of the playfield, make it look so beautiful, and it's not all nested, and, like, I, I mean, arguably, they've done a better job than even Haggis, who had, had the prettiest under playfield of nothing else until then, right, so it's like, he's a nice guy, he has great customer service, he's not overcharging for his pins, but now the price has gone up substantially, the shots seem to be worse, the toys are slightly better, but the shots are worse, you know the i don't know i don't know who i don't know who this speaks to if you're 12 to like 16 years old and you think this artwork style looks really cool and fun and whimsical can you afford to pay this much for a pinball machine especially because there's not really any known coders that work there and like i think your first pinball machine is a boutique company a lot of us pinball podcasters and media youtubers we all give kind of like the nod like well they were trying their best the next one's going to be coded better the next one's going to be a better theme the next one will have better toys the next one will have better shots i think we can all say the toys are better but i don't think the artwork's better i don't like the artwork better i i like some parts of it the back glass is okay but like the other parts of it i'm like i don't know you can tell it's kind of half from deep root and half from here that you know what i mean so but this is not a Merlin's Arcade, nor is this a Pulp Fiction topper podcast. Let's get on to number three from TPF, which was Medieval Madness. So how am I more excited about Med Evil frickin' Madness? Because that purple is fire, all right? The purple is gorgeous. I love that pinball machine. That was, Medieval Madness was probably the third pinball machine, like, after Twilight Zone, I think, maybe Attack from Mars, that I really, really got into playing digitally before I sought out my first pinball tournament and started looking for pinball machines on location again back in London, Ontario. This would, just to give you an idea, this would have been about 12 years ago now, so this would have been around 2013. I started playing Twilight Zone because it was free on, I think, Pinball Arcade or Pinball FX, I forget which one, I think Pinball Arcade, and then from there I ended up buying Attack from Mars and then buying Medieval Madness. and when I was playing the digital version of Medieval Madness and I got to like I don't know three or four hundred million and I was like oh top 10 players of the day and like top 1000 best scores ever I was like you know what I might be okay at this pinball thing I'm gonna go try it some more and then I remember at one of my very first pinball tournaments ever I didn't have time to do more than one practice ball on it I had never played medieval madness in my life it was at Ray, shout out to Ray there in London, Ontario, the Lopple League, and I got like 55 million, it's probably honestly, I think it's actually still up on the website, I got like around 50 million on Medieval Madness, which isn't like a great score, it certainly wouldn't be a hold up nowadays in a pump-a-dump tournament, but for how tight the tilt was set up, for how hard Ray's machines were set up, and I think it was like, I think only my buddy Mark beat me and got a higher score than that, who doesn't play pinball anymore, which is really sad, shout out to Mark, but I ended up getting second out of everybody, and it was after that tournament that I went, whoa. Now, I only got like 15th out of maybe like 50 people in the whole league, so I wasn't like, whoa, I'm so good, but like, because of that one Medieval Madness score, that was the first time I got like a top five score in the league, because of that score out of like 50 players who got to play it out of the whole night, I was like, wow, I might be okay at this pinball thing in real life, not just digitally. And then so on and such forth, started playing more. Here we are, 13 years later, I'm on podcast 613. All right.
    30:33
    I better go quicker because my voice, I can feel the frogs are hopping on in. Okay, it's time to trim the mustache. getting a little spritz up across the mustache. You got to do a little sucking afterwards to get rid of the old, the dippins, the drippins. What do they call that at the bottom of the can? You got to take your, when you're drinking a can with someone, your sippins, your drippins. Doesn't matter. Let's go. Number three is, of course, Medieval Madness. It wasn't just how pretty it looked. It's that it sold out that fast. That shocked me because this is like the third, fourth, fifth iteration of Medieval Madness. There was the OG. then there was the first one from CGC you know what I mean then there was the next one then there was the Royal one and now there's this Merlin's one which is kind of funny because it's Merlin versus Merlin how many Merlins are we going to get at once here guys anyways it sold out that quick or at least sold through look I love Tina Fey you guys know how much I love comedy I love SNL hopefully Tina Fey's shout outs isn't as close as we get to an SNL pin and pinball but I love that pin my heart longs to play it more um I am happy to see more of them coming out though because that I mean it's forever going to be like a pinball nerds pinball machine you know what I mean like attack from mars twilight zone medieval madness other people just won't get outside of pinball why we love especially like medieval madness what is that like what is that that has nothing to do with anything right all right number two on the top five most rad things that happened at TPF is Portal. That's right. I heard it from the Triple Drain guys. I heard it from Loser Kid agreeing with it anyways. And I heard it from multiple other people. I think even Eclectic Gamers. Okay. Tony and Dennis admitted that Portal was, go listen to all their shows. Don't quote me on this. Okay. Don't quote me on this. I wasn't writing it down while I was boiling off maple syrup for the third time this year. All right. But
    32:40
    they all were saying that it was the hit of the show. Whether or not it was their favorite pin they played there, and for Ron, I don't think it was. It sounds like he had a pretty quick game. He didn't get to start a lot of modes. The lineup was very, very, very long. He didn't get to play much of it. Ron actually put a deposit down on Evil Dead, so I will say maybe for Ron of Slam Tilt, it wasn't his game of the show. We know Evil Dead wasn't Bruce's favorite. He doesn't think it was game of the show. Bruce wasn't there. I wasn't there. I've got to listen to the other pinball podcasters and really reflect upon what they're saying is the game of the show, because I trust their judgment. And from almost everybody I heard, including a couple YouTube recaps, I believe, it seems like Portal had the longest lineups, and Portal was game of the show. Evil Dead was the game of the show at Pinball at the Beach, and Portal, hands down, across the board, was... And the thing is, it's hard for me to say I don't have any biases, because two of the three designers are tribe members. like of the 50 tribe members ever on earth i believe ian and drew have completely shut it down there will be no more i'm proud tribe member 26 here okay uh a franchise also a tribe member so you know it's you know i i do have these slight biases right where i try to see through them and i thought maybe a lot of pinball podcasters i thought maybe it'd be split i thought some of the pinball podcasters would come out of tpf going no merlin is by far the game of the show. Portal was alright, whatever, people seem to discredit P3 so quickly in Multimorphic, which is really annoying, because it's such a fun system to play, and it's got so much potential, and it's came so far, and now the whole, even if your argument was, I don't like that most of the stuff's on the top one-third, well, now they've got the extension kit, and they've got, like, ramps closer than, like, any other pin I've ever seen, maybe. Maybe, like, the Mousetrap game has that middle ramp closer.
    34:34
    So anyways, Portal was game of the show. Congratulations to Steven Silver. Congratulations to Ian Haywer. Congratulations to the entire team over there. And Mark Silk's doing all the call-outs. People have been loving that. Mark Silk, of course, was on the show before. He arguably has been on two episodes of the Pinball Nerds podcast because he was on the episode I released and then he was on the episode that he released. now of course the one I released only got like 300 listens the one he released with the good audio got like 5, 6, 700 listens so in total he got like a thousand besides good old Craig Bobby I want to get Craig Bobby on the show I did mention I am bringing back interviews since y'all were so generous and in your generosity I've decided to bring back interviews so I'm looking at different bluetooth speakers to get so I don't have to like change my whole setup when I go to record so it's easier to record with Draco Franchi running around here. Also, so I don't have to disturb my son if he's upstairs sleeping and I go to do a podcast and I want to steal his Bluetooth. So I'm going to use some of those awesome funds that I got from all you generous pinball nerds, and I'm going to use some of that to make my show sound better, right? Which is what you should do with at least some of your funds. Some of them I did buy some Pokemon cards and had a great time with the family. We made a whole event of it. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later. let's get into that number one thing the most rad thing that happened at TPF by far is very deeply connected to the worst thing that happened and look it's April Fools today so I don't want y'all to think I'm joking okay quick if there was a top six list Don you getting your chest signed by all the spooky people especially Franchi there just going in loops around each one of your nipples wow That was so artistic, Frangie, the way that you did that. Don getting his whole chest signed by every member of Spooky Pinball. And the nice part was even the cafeteria staff, even the janitor, even the maintenance workers who only come in every couple months to work on the furnace and the HVAC systems, they all signed a different part of Don's body. And it was great. It was exceptional. It was so fun to watch. Don, I don't want to troll you and say that you're number one. Because I'm sorry, Jack Winery showed you up, buddy. He showed you up. He admitted that Harry Potter was next. And that is so rad because I am the world's biggest... I don't know if I'm a bigger Pokemon fan or Harry Potter. But they are my two biggest passions and have been for years. I've written Pokemon fan fiction. That has started arguments online, okay? And within my family and within my group of friends. And I was right about Snape, y'all. Anyways, that's not the point. The point is I have read every Harry Potter book, including those last two ones that were like 900 pages each, I've read them all seven times. You know why? Because every two years in the summertime, I'm a little bit of a speed reader. I have a gift slash an annoyance called hyper aphasia. And if somehow, some way the worlds collide and I can get my left side of my brain to shut up and let my right side of the brain read the fricking book, well, the other side of my brain is just visually showing me what's happening in the pages and I don't have a second screen coming into my brain or the ADHD is like calm and mellow I've had enough gummies enough CBD whatever I can actually just sit there and just braze through a book like even just enjoying reading it I can get you know I'm a very my dad was like one of the top three or top five he's probably top five speed readers in London Ontario after he skipped a grade they had tested him and he was reading like he could read five six long novels in a night easily quickly with like pretty good retention you when you're speed reading anyone understand speed reading I tried to do a little bit when I was younger I'm not great at the speed reading I'm just a very fast reader and I enjoy reading as such and I'm usually like it's kind of hard to explain but part of my brain is one sentence ahead and the other parts enjoying the words and the only time I slow down is when I hit a whole bunch of words that I don't understand what they mean and then I'll slow down but I mean in Harry Potter because I've read the all six seven books so much and I'm so familiar what's happening in them I speed read them very quickly but still enjoy them that's not the point I've gone off topic so the number one thing is that we heard all of the assets are there from Jack Guarnerian okay and say what you will about Jack but he uh he's an honest guy and when he tells you he's got all the assets for any pinball machine you know he telling you the truth they got a hundred percent they got every single they got everything They didn just get Hermione and Ron and the Weasley twins and Harry Potter and Hagrid and Dumbledore. They didn't just get Hagrid. Or sorry, they didn't just get Snape.
    39:31
    They got every single voice. They got every single video. They got every single movie. They got every single book. He said not even 99.9. They got everything. So Jersey Jack, if there's one gosh darn tootin' thing missing, you're going to hear from it from us. If you didn't include the golden snitch, if one of those balls is not golden, if you don't have a golden ball like the ceramic ball, get it in there now. Implement it. Rate. Meow. That one's free from Orbi, okay? And you don't even have to invite me down to America because I don't think America wants me right now. I love Americans. I don't love having to try to get through border control right now because there's bad stuff happening. There's like two chicks that are like way more, I'm like a CCC C-grade pinball celebrity. These girls are like in a huge band. They sing folk music.
    40:28
    They're not political whatsoever. And they were detained and held for three and a half days, including multiple daily anal searches. Why were they anally searched multiple times per day? Where are they getting this stuff to put up their bum? And what is so awesome in America that they couldn't just send back here? Neither of them have criminal records. Neither of them have face tattoos. Neither of them have anything political on any of their social media. Yet they were held for three and a half days. There's stories like that everywhere. Just because you're Canadian, you're getting held and you're getting stopped from going across or even worse, you're getting held. So I'm really sorry. Even if, even if Ken Cromwell gave me the Chris Kulriss treatment and paid first class for everything, like, you know, Trump Hotel, Downtown, Penthouse, first class American Airlines. I don't care. I can't go right now. So there you go, Ken. Not only are you off the hook, I gave you the golden snitch. And your buddy there, who I would assume, I mean, Ken is the marketing manager. Ken gets to decide who, where, and when announces. You have one moment in time for FOMO. So Ken obviously told Jack to announce at that moment because there's no way Jack, just being a figurehead, not nearly as important. I mean, a figurehead of the company is not nearly as important as the marketing manager who makes these huge, giant decisions. Now, if Jack, some people are saying Jack is going through health issues and such, which probably 95% of people his age have, you don't get to that age and have just like no health issues. So it's pretty normal to have some health issues. But it sounded like he was, you knew what he was talking about when he mentioned Harry Potter and talked about it multiple times. I think it was rude to do that in front of Mark Seiden, even though it was the truth. I think if he was going to announce Jersey Jack, I'm going to do a little mini top five. Many of you guys know I used to do this. Here's five ways it would have been more appropriate or more fun that would have built way more FOMO. Because this is a million-dollar mistake by Jersey Jack to announce it in this way. Even if he had just said, if Jack O'Neary, obviously they knew they were going to announce this. You don't just announce something like that without talking about it with your team. Like, come on. You would be immediately fired. Like, I have mental health issues, and I have the good spina bifida, and an autoimmune disorder that we're still trying to figure out and tons of other things that are happening.
    42:55
    And I still don't get a pass at work. They don't go, oh, well, okay. I don't get a pass on this show. You know what I mean? And I shouldn't. Everybody should be... Look, I want to say within reason. If Jack is so sick that he's doing things he's not supposed to do, I really feel like Jack should maybe step aside and just go deal with his mental and or physical health, whichever it is. But if Jack was told that he should have announced it, and he announced it, and they all knew he was going to announce it, I don't think Mark Seid knew because he looked surprised. That man looked, you could use facial recognition software all day long and show how surprised that man was. You don't have to be like a top 0.03% of all poker players on planet Earth like I was for quite some time to know that without a doubt, Mark Seiden was shocked that this man was stealing his moment. Even if it didn't, everyone else is saying, oh man, it took so many sales away from Avatar. I don't care about that. That might have cost them 20, 30 sales of Avatar they might have got after the show, Max. Max, you've cost Jersey Jack either, and I don't want to put this on Ken because I have no clue if he has anything to do with it. And Ken just recently accepted my friend request, I don't want to have him unfriended me this quickly. But, I mean, if Jersey Jack wanted to announce it, this is what they could have done. Just literally off the top of my head. He could have said, after Mark Seiden was done and everything, and by the way, we have a big announcement. Everybody now, reach under your chairs. We have a little present there for you. And even if it was just a $2 chocolate frog from Laura C. Kord or wherever, just find the nicest artisan $2 or $3 little chocolates in the shape of a frog. Anyone who's even seen five minutes of the first movie of Harry Potter knows that their favorite thing is getting the chocolate frogs, which come to life and jump, you know.
    44:52
    If under every chair there was a chocolate frog, that would be better. And that would have cost $100. Not $100,000 like the video that they normally do. $100. They could have knocked everyone's socks off. Everyone would have cheered. It would have made such a FOMO moment that every pinball podcaster would have to talk about it. every YouTuber would have to talk about it and guess what that also means it also means that we're all getting excited for Harry Potter instead of being excited we're all like wow if that's the care and time they put into their announcement I don't think there's going to be any good Toys R Mechs that interact with the ball in it I have no confidence that they got all the assets after he does that I have no confidence that it's going to be a fun to shoot machine I just don't I'm sorry, I hope I'm wrong but you've ruined all the FOMO. You had one minute of FOMO. Even if a thousand less people buy this because of Jack's oopsie. Okay. Even if a thousand less people buy this at $20,000 US, they're out $2 million from that. I would have to guess at least 500 pinball people don't give a crap now about Harry Potter because of that wasted moment. You get one shot. I feel like I'm in, I feel like I'm Eminem. I'm not going to sing today but I might rap. Jersey Jack, you get one shot, one opportunity in a lifetime. Okay, sorry, I don't know what the lyrics are, but there you go. That's all you get. Jersey Jack, the biggest bad of all TPF by far was Jersey Jack's announcement. So the chocolate frogs could have been one. Number two, Jack could have stood up and underneath his big jacket, he could have had on the cloak. He could have had on a cloak and he could have put out a wand and said, Harry Potter's next. That's it. That's all he had to do. Remember he did that? He wore the glasses. He wore the glasses and the jacket for Elton John. Why couldn't you give Harry Potter that respect? Why? This is such a lost opportunity on the biggest, even maybe arguably bigger than Pokemon in pinball anyways, not in the general Dysperia or whatever Don used to say about that. okay but this was a complete lost moment that will never be recovered that can never get back and look if it is because jack is sick i feel bad for him but i think that he should go i think you should just never be doing live like on a hot mic or a live stream or going out to public events anymore i'm sorry it like because that's costing them millions and millions that's costing them probably decades of Jack's salary. It just doesn't make any sense.
    47:35
    And it doesn't even matter what they do after this. During the video, during the release, during the launch, we're all going to be saying but if it wasn't announced so crappily we might have got excited about this game at some point. But now I don't care. The pinball machine outside of maybe Back to the Future and Pokemon I would be the most excited to see is Harry Potter and I don't care about it anymore. I don't care. I'm going to report Ford on it. I'm going to do a top five rad and one bad. But why would Jersey Jack himself, the guy's name is on there, not only ruin the moment, ruin the sales, ruin the confidence, ruin the fun, ruin the swagger. Let's get back into it. Okay. So number one is the chocolate frogs under the seats. Number two, he could have stood up with that. Number three is he could have said, guys, now that we finished Avatar, make sure you put in your orders for Avatar. We want to show you one quick thing before you leave. And they could have just showed like a 30 seconder. It didn't have to even show any of the artwork. It just had to say, like have some of the dynamic background music that they already obviously have the rights for if it's coming out soon. And just say like, just on there, just show two or three members at the factory using a wand and all of a sudden, boom, poof. And there's the pinball machine right there. Even if it's covered buy a blanket. You don't want to show us anything yet. You know, like, like just a quick 30 second teaser video that would cost not a hundred thousand, probably a thousand. Okay. And it just says Harry Potter. And then it doesn't have to say the date you're coming out. Just says coming 2025 or coming early summer or coming in the fall. That would have been better. The number two way would be to get any actor, any B actor, any C actor that was in Harry Potter to show up there and just come out at the very end of the thing. After you've already celebrated Avatar and how beautiful it is and how hard Mark Seiden worked on it, then you come out and you bring any actor. It could be the worst actor there. The only charge is like, you pay the worst. I've seen many of the Harry Potter, even the actors people know for four or 500 bucks on Cameo. You get them to do a Cameo message where they say, that's right, Harry Potter fans. You've been waiting two decades for it. And coming out soon is Jersey Jack's newest pinball machine, loaded with magic. Harry Potter's pinball. Like, do a cameo. That's number two.
    49:59
    And number one, by far, the way that you could have knocked everybody's socks off is by everybody, everybody, like every member, after they saluted that, they said, hold on everybody, we've got a little surprise for you. And they went backstage and they quickly threw on a cloak and a freaking whatever, like a cloak. Maybe one of them threw on like the Dumbledore magic hat or the sorting hat or something like that. And everybody came out with like spectacles, the Harry Potter spectacles. It would take them 20 seconds and like $100 at any Spirit Halloween, okay? Or on Amazon, because I know all the Spirit Halloweens have gone for the season. They'll be back next year, don't worry. Probably at Jersey Jack Pinball if they keep screwing up like this. but what the hell man like from this is a this is in my 10 years of covering pinball a decade almost of covering pinball this is the biggest marketing fail ever this is worse because barry o's was announced and released in a horrible way guys i'm losing my voice guys and gals guys and gals and i have to shout out everybody still so So I'm going to whip through this quicker, but I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed, Jersey Jack.
    51:17
    If Ken was like, please, whatever you do, Jack, don't mention Harry Potter yet, and he still did it, then I'm sorry, Jack. You probably need to either get media training. You need to do a timeout. You need to, like, if it's a mental health thing. Jack, long before there was any health issues, Jack spoiled everything forever. Jack's been doing this for the whole decade I've been in there. He basically always opens his mouth and says something silly. So I don't know if him saying something silly is related to his health measures, in which case I feel bad for him, or if he's just being a jerk. I don't know which one it is. Are we going to go all the way back to when he made fun of Kale and told Kale he's going to teach him how to run a pinball arcade? The guy who him and Rachel won for electric bat for the best fricking pinball arcade in the Twippies, and gets, like, they get, like, 120 to 150 people on a random Tuesday out at a pinball tournament. They're getting, like, the most people in a weekly league in the entire world, and Jersey Jack doesn't even know enough that they're not only the best pinball podcast, come on, even monthly, even monthly they're still the best pinball podcast, to it be award-winning. He's so out of the pinball scene that he doesn't know anything about the top two arcades in North America and hasn't heard of them and doesn't know the owner's coming, didn't do five minutes of research on the media coming like so he's been messing up for long before he had the shakes in any videos or anything so i don't want i just don't think it's fair to be like oh poor me like if if he has such bad health care things then just then let him go deal with his health that's what i'm saying go prioritize your health because being stressed out and having to deal with stuff like that is the worst thing for your health jack if it's just that you think that you're you were helping the company then the company needs to step in and be like dude you're done. I'm sorry. This is it. That you're done. You're ruined too much. You cost us too much money. You're too big of a liability. I mean, people are never going to forget what he did to Rachel and Kale. People are never going to forget what he's done here. I'm not going to ever. Like you ruined Harry Potter for me. I wanted to be excited for Harry Potter forever. And as the biggest Harry Potter fan slash podcaster on planet earth, and I mean out of the non-pinball podcasters as well, I'm looking at you, Joe Rogan. I wanted to get hyped up and have FOMO and get excited. I was willing to talk to my wife about extending our HELOC, like literally going to the credit union to see if we can take the differential of the extra money now that our house has gone up in value. I was willing to pay $2,000 to have a home estimator come to my house to get a new estimate after all the improvements we've done to the house to expand my home equity line of credit to possibly buy a Harry Potter. And now I don't want one. And now it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many toys are in the game because I don't want one. And most pinball nerds just don't want one because that was the most sad, stupid, infuriatingly dumb way. He could have stood up and just said, Alohomora, which is like everybody knows that. That's like that's how you lift something. OK, he could have just said that and they could add a string attached to Ken Cromwell's head and it pulled up a magic hat in the air. and that string cost 99 cents or you could probably get it for free.
    54:33
    And that would have been a better way than how they announced it. You could hear there, and thank you Retro Ralph for sharing that, you could hear nobody cared. That was the worst. Like, I just, I don't understand. I have, like, I have like a $20,000, basically like a Cracker Jack box diploma from a local community college in marketing and I know how terrifically stupid that was for that fucking, it just, it grinds my gears and I'm sorry, there's my one swear word of the day. I apologize. But it just grinds my gears that this was a lost moment and it needed to be coordinated. When you get Harry Potter as your theme and you're a pinball company, imagine how much they paid. However much they paid for that, they've now paid double. Even if they paid more than the Beatles, more than a million for Harry Potter, even if they paid two million, Jack has now destroyed that because there's so many people like me who morally and ethically are uninterested in what JJP has to say about anything in the future after the last three times that Jersey Jack has interacted in the public. They've made fools of themselves, all because of Jack Winarian. So anyways, the top thing they could do is try to build back hype and build back the community. If I were them, I would just come out and say, we humbly apologize.
    55:58
    moving forward, we're not going to have Jack being the face of our company and doing stuff like that. And we're so sorry, and we hope you can forgive us. And maybe Harry Potter will be so good, we're hoping that you could begin to start to forgive us for how rudely we've treated every pinball podcaster, the award-winning Twippy, top podcast, making fun of their arcade, and now this? It's like, yo, get rid of this dude. He is toxic. He is sabotaging your company. He has done more damage to Jersey Jack than any podcaster on planet Earth, all of them combined, any Pinside Warriors, anyone. He has done the most damage in the last year. So anyways, Jack, Jersey Jack, I hope to meet you in person. I hope your health is good. I love you as a person. I hate you working for Jersey Jack because you ruined what could have been such a gorgeous, beautiful, and people who don't love Harry Potter don't care that Jack ruined it. I heard Kaneda saying in his free show, I don't care that Jack ruined it. You don't like Harry Potter. You don't know anything about Harry Potter, Kaneda. Go back and get your socks on or something, okay? Go put more pinball machines in front of windows and make fun of people for doing it. Go poor shame more people for having a pool for their dogs to cool off in in the summer. Oh, I'm sorry I love my dogs and I got Elowen and Franchi a pool to cool off in in the summer. Oh, you're such a loser. You have no money because you have to have an above ground pool. Everything you make fun of, you end up doing. So it's like, you're probably going to get an above-ground pool this summer. They'll go, oh, but it's for the dog. It's for Killian. It's for the baby. It's for, it's not, it's not. You're going to get above-ground pool. We're all going to slay over it. Anyways, I've gone off topic here. This dude, this is due to Jack. I've not, I mean, other than Cheeto Face, I have not got this hyped up about an actual pinball thing since being uninvited and having to threaten to do an upper decker. Well, I'll tell you this. I dislike Jersey Jack so much, I wouldn't even go there to do an upper decker in Jack's office. That's how much I dislike Jersey Jack right now. So, good riddance and God riddance. Let's move on here, guys. So, Timmy Sexton has switched it up, and he's gone over to Play Mechanics. Now, I was kind of forgetting what Play Mechanics did, so I did ask Chat GDP what it did, and Chat told me Play Mechanics is an American arcade developer funded in 1985 by George Petro, a former designer at Midway Games. the company is renowned for creating popular titles such as big buck hunter aliens uh extermination and terminator salvation so yeah they make a lot of the big buck hunter and a lot of those big arcade machines that you see so it makes sense that tim would be going over there because he's a seasoned software engineer of course and uh tim just really hasn't been vibing with pinball lately i think we've all seen that so i'm not going to judge him for it like when he came back to social media last year he said without a doubt I am not I am not going to talk ever anymore about pinball and I think he said that because he had a lot of backlash But why do you have a lot of backlash Because I'm on Tim Sexton's YouTube channel right now. He did a video which got 7,700 views. Like, cheers to you. I've never got anywhere near that on anything. Well, I mean, my craft for a TV show, but why I retired from competitive pinball. So he came across, I'm sorry, Tim, I love you, bro. You don't listen to Pinball Podcast, so at least I know you won't hear this, but you came across as a negative Nancy and a Debbie Downer when you said that competitive pinball tournament sucked because you might have to wait a while for it to potty or the bathroom might not be as clean or smell as nice as you like. It sounded like you were a cityet. I'm sorry. It sounded like you were from a big city and you were complaining because the only way to get 100 people out to an event is to kind of do it in the burbs or the outskirts because it costs too much freaking money. Like even New York City, they had to get someone generously donate an entire floor for one time, like the Adam Schultz guy or whatever, I forget his name was, but he had to donate this whole area because you just can't find a place big enough to house thousands of people for a big pinball tournament in most downtowns, okay? In Chicago, you can't. New York City, you can't. In LA, you can't. So you kind of got to go out to the burbs. And that's why we see like Indus not happening right downtown LA. That's why we see even Chicago Expo happening out in Schaumburg, right? Even TPF, not right downtown Houston, right? So anyways, Jack O'Neill has got me all worked up. Done got me at my cortisol spikes, sir. You got my truck nuts twisted up. All right, so Tim Sexton,
    60:34
    I don't know, good riddance, dude. I don't know. You didn't do a great job. We don't know how much of what you did with Zeppelin was yours, but it seems like you didn't. From what everyone's telling me, I've never played John Wick, but from what everyone's telling me, what I'm hearing from Retro Ralph, what I'm hearing from Don, good old Donnie over there, Donnie, what I'm hearing is that nobody likes the code and it's not finished and it's a year in and it's still not at 1.0. And it's like, nobody likes it, right? Nobody likes it. Even people are coming around on James Bond at this point, but nobody is enjoying John Wick other than maybe Keanu Reeves, man. Did you see that man play? He loved playing. He loved playing with himself. All right, let's get back into it. And you could tell that Tim was getting away from competitive pinball because 11 months ago, he goes, how to nudge and tilt a pinball machine. 16,000 views. If I could do a thing on nudging and it got 16,000 views, I would keep doing YouTube content on it. He's beloved in pinball, but he just doesn't love pinball. And that's okay. We don't all have to eat, sleep, and breathe pinball as much as Orby does. But come on, Tim. We love you. We wish you stayed in pinball. you just don't love and i'm not saying he doesn't love the people he doesn't like pinball tournaments where they don't have enough proper bathrooms and a bidet and everything and he doesn't like it when there's not enough good food places nearby he doesn't like waiting in line he likes it all to be prim and proper and that's fine because he's a city dude that's that's it's totally cool but like his last video was do not let this man give you a free massage and it has 16 000 views like it has more than any of his other like there's one one pinball video that has close to that so it's like oh wait no no no no popular videos a year ago okay no he has 27 000 views on do this don't do this pinball tips how to flip post pass and stage pass so like the man can make incredible content but recently he's only made content about massages so i feel like he's just not into pinball anymore. And then he left Stern. So that's probably verified it. Anyways, love you, Tim. Hopefully you come back to pinball. And dude, if you go play in a pinball tournament again, spend less time and energy complaining about the facilities and spend more time enjoying talking to your friends and having fun and just being appreciative and grateful of the fact that you're an incredible pinball player who we basically all love. Like, instead of just concentrating on the negatives at the tournament, I think you'll just have a more rad time, bruh. alright but maybe he's done playing competitive pinball as well why are you retired there you go so he's retired from playing pinball he's retired from making pinball content he's retired from doing pinball social media sounds like you've left us buddy I'm not going to say good riddance because I lie I used to watch pinball's content all the time found he was very entertaining as a live streamer he could have a whole career in pinball whenever he wants to come back he can come back and I don't know why he left Stern no one you know I don't know why, I don't need to know why, I don't care why. All I know is I think it's because he just isn't in love with pinball anymore. And you should love what you do for a living, if possible, if you can all afford it. Or the best case scenario, like my oldest son says, he doesn't hate it. And that's good enough for him at his age. So if you don't hate what you do, that's at least good enough. Now I'm just watching this video of this Asian man massaging this woman in the park, and I'm like, ugh, okay.
    63:50
    All right, okay, hold on, let me do a... Wait. Okay. Bring back the voice. Bring back the cheddar. Give me 10 seconds. And then we are going to shout out to all the incredible pinball nerds that brought me here this year. And I'm thinking of a cool way to thank each and every one of you. I don't know if it will be in song. I don't know if I'm going to fire you guys off something. I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe on a t-shirt. That would be kind of cool. I'm going to do something to thank all of y'all. But I did want to say this. and because I have not said it so far. So if you're, say, a pinball content creator, which not one, and I know a lot of pinball content creators, not one pinball content creator has supported me. Is that weird and wild? If you're a pinball content creator listening to this and you enjoyed today's show, or if you're someone who wants to anonymously send me money, because I have not given that option yet, it will be tallied to my final. I'm going to have Danielle on the show to thank everybody individually and help either announce if it's going to be a song or a t-shirt or what we're going to do to thank all of you. but if you're a content creator and you don't care about getting your comeuppance, you don't care about getting your thank you, you don't care about being anonymous, hit me up at angryalpacatea at gmail.com, PayPal, or if you're someone who wants to donate to me but you want to stay anonymous, do that as well because I will not be announcing anybody. The cutoff is done. It's done. I hit my goal. I appreciate it. You're not going to hear me try to, I'm going to try my very best to not ask for donos until next year. I'm like PBS, I do it once per year. I had a great time. I had a wild time. It was fun. It was weird. Go back and listen to the whole week. It's almost like, it's almost like episode one, two, three, four. I think it was fun. It was a very fun thing to do, but I'm glad also to be off for a while. And after hearing my voice today, y'all are probably happy I'm off for a while.
    65:41
    All right, let's go in backwards order. I got to start with Darby Stewart. Thank you, Darby. Darby says, I enjoy your podcast and I'm happy to help. Your open and honest commentary is always appreciated and entertaining. Thanks, and I look forward to more. Darby, that's literally what I try to do here. I try to bring you a tiny bit of information, be slightly entertaining or a little funny from time to time. A little outrageous, a little wild, little things that make you go, hmm, like that. All right, thank you, Darby. Darby, 34.95 Canadian, that's 25 US. Darby sent me off 50 cents per show. Thank you, Darby.
    66:20
    All right, this next one is a purchase that I did for a pin. That's not the right one. We'll just say that. All right, oh my God, $69 Canadian. That's 50 US, and this is from Jason Von Lembeck. Probably said it wrong, Jason. Are you Dutch? That's pretty awesome. Okay, you hit your goal.
    66:45
    I didn't know you were going to read that all on air. P3 does have great service. It was just one thing after the other. Diersian, I'm from Colorado, home of too many good pinball players, at jasonvonbloop.com if you ever want to talk shop. Jason, I'm going to hit you up, my dude. I've been sick for like the last week. Jason donated an extra $16.49 to get me over that hump, to get me to $700 Canadian, $500 US. It's a little bit over that now. I am going to do the full tally. There might be one person left who's like, yo, I should have donated. I couldn't afford it then, or I don't know why, whatever reason, I didn't donate. And one of y'all are going to donate. And if you do want your message read, just say, please read this on the air, because then I will read it on the air. And if you don't want it read, then I won't. Okay?
    67:35
    I'm going to keep going backwards here. Russell Dagger, I already mentioned you. $12.50. Russell, that's only $0.25 a show. Fine. He's my only Australian who donated. I'm hoping there'll be at least one more, though. Okay, and then Jason sent the $50, then he sent the $16 after that. So thank you so much, Jason. I think I just read the total there.
    67:58
    Just going backwards here, we have Death Save Pinball Streaming. Make sure you go check them out on Twitch. He's also all over Facebook. Really good player. He said, love the show, my friend. Sorry you don't like my president. as a U.S. steel worker, I love what he's doing for us steel and our economy. Hope things get better for you. So I do hear where you're coming from. And on a personal level, of course, like say my son, say I lived in the States, which hopefully someday I will because I love the U.S. that much. But say my son worked at a steel factory and my son went from being part-time to like full-time and getting extra benefits and extra pay. Of course, I would be like, well, I guess the tariffs aren't bad, right? So, Death Save, I hear where you're coming from. I get what you're saying. I'm glad your life is going better. I just kind of feel like we had a fair deal where the U.S. was doing pretty damn good, Canada was doing pretty damn good, and now the deal is less fair. However, I'm not talking about politics. Ain't no way. But thank you, Death Save.
    69:06
    Here we go. none of this matters okay so next on the list is Ari Jones Ari thank you $55 Canadian thank you so much a buck per show Ari had no message here but Ari you're awesome I think the only tribe member that hooked me up with a payment so thank you so much for that and the tribe thanks you next is Darren Walker $68.89 basically $69 Canadian Donation as requested. Now go buy American products. I did. In fact, I can let you all know that I bought an American booster box of Paradox Rift. I didn't do great on it. We have one gradable card. If that card grades a 10, it's like 200 bucks. So we basically broke even on it. So thank you so much for that. I also was able to buy my sons some fast food. And believe it or not, when we all went out, the only thing they wanted was KFC, Dairy Queen, and Taco Bell because they haven't had it in so long. We don't have those three things within an hour of us here in River Hibbert. So after the pinball tournament that I went to that I had a great time at with my sons,
    70:18
    we went to the food court and I said, instead of telling you you have to buy Canadian, get from wherever you want. So we split a giant Blizzard from DQ, which is very American, and it has Reese's Pieces in it, which again, very American. Even though I've been to the Reese's Peanut Butter Factory here in Canada, we do make some Reese's here too as well. If not all of them, I don't know. No, I think Hershey's makes, I don't know. Maybe it's a different company.
    70:41
    I hope I haven't forgot anybody. I think I've got all the way back up to Death Save here. I definitely forgot someone further down.
    70:52
    Let me go to the bottom here. Okay, okay, okay, because Ari was a bit further. Gosh darn it, so many people.
    71:00
    This is a payment from me. Antonio, I know that for sure. oh my god here's Antonio Antonio you are incredible oh that was from Ray Day that's further back I typed in the word PayPal to find all of this so okay that's Ari sorry guys I'm the worst I'm the worst you know what I'm going to include everybody in a song and a thank you and I should have had this better set out because I know I announced Ari's right above Ari's is Darren Walker thank you Darren wow I know I am missing a couple and I will find them.
    72:01
    I will find them. Antonio Verdesco? That seems to ring a chime. Damn, why would you not put this in order of date? Gmail?
    72:14
    Okay. Anyways, guys, thank you so much. I appreciate everyone who donated. Thanks for sticking around at the end of the show. I really appreciate it. I'm going to find a way to thank you guys even more. My heart is full. I'm ready to do interviews. I need my voice to get better to do that.
    72:31
    But I do want to really quickly just say shout out to Hayden. He chose life. This man chose life. Hayden could have chose to not drink at all and be the DD. In fact, I even hung the little carrot in front of him and offered him an extra $50. I would pay for all the gas to Fredericton and back in his car if he was a DD so his dad could drink some beers, have a couple gummies, play some pinball. And he said, no way, dad. I haven't got to play a pinball tournament in a year and I was a DD for that one. You're the DD today, dad. Now, I did get to have a craft beer when I first got there. Shout out to the Hugh John Hops. Love them. Incredible beer. Huge shout out to Dylan, who owns Flippin's Arcade, who won. Also huge shout out to Doug Parsons out of Halifax, who got second. I haven't got to play in a tournament with him for a couple years, so that was really fun. But I got third. Shout out to me. Somehow Hayden was in first for most of the tournament. Somewhere around his fifth, sixth, or seventh beer, he pulled something like his dad, where he was a little bit too inebriated, and he lost his one game in finals, and he ended up tying for 12th place. And he tied David Dennis. So I said, who would win, David Dennis or my sons? I put the challenge out there, and the answer is, well David Dennis they taught they Hayden was hired going into finals but David Dennis beat him in finals because David Dennis got through that round I believe so congratulations to David Dennis congratulations to Hayden and even Owen worked his way up from last up into like 30th which with so many good players there and I will say this getting third in the largest tournament on east coast history in all of the maritimes plus Newfoundland don't think they have tournaments there, but maybe someday. Come on, Dildo Newfoundland, you guys need tournaments. I had a great time, but by far the best part was, and I told my sons this, and I almost teared up.
    74:28
    We went for a really long walk afterwards. We walked down by the water. We walked by the longest land bridge in at least the Maritimes, definitely not Canada, but beautiful pedestrian bridge there. We saw the historical buildings. We walked by the Comic Hunter, all these cool places downtown, maybe made a stop at the New Brunswick marijuana store. Totally legal here. And not for me, not for me, by the way, because I was driving, but possibly for someone else in our group. And the only one of age to actually do such things, of course. And wow, I told them, guys, my favorite part of the day wasn't getting third, winning all those juicy whoppers. I think I got like four or five whoppers for third, which for out here is really good. So my favorite thing was getting to play a tournament with my two sons because I haven't got to play a pinball tournament with both my sons since February 18th, family day of like 2019. So it's been six years since I got to do my favorite hobby with my favorite two dudes on planet Earth. And so Hayden and Owen, you made my day special. I love both you dudes. And what was even cooler was my little pastime of talking into this dumb $40 snowball microphone from Orby's couch, surrounded on my left by Elowen, on my right by Franchi,
    75:48
    earned me enough money, enough American dollars, enough kind-hearted, generous, and loving Americans, whether or not they agree with me politically, enough of them contributed that I could say to my sons, go ahead and buy American. And that was just such a nice thing to do. So until, I mean, Pokemon starts printing Canadian cards, I can't really buy any more right now. I don't want to be shunned by family and friends. And frankly, monetarily, even though we're out of the woods with Hayden, it looks like Hayden's going to get to keep his job for now, which is great. Like, that's by far the most important thing.
    76:24
    I'm almost 100% sure there's going to be way less people and tourism. And maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I'm wrong. I hope maybe more Canadians come instead of Americans. And maybe they will travel more and stay in Canada. I don't know. But I think we're not going to do as well at the market this year. and I got destroyed. Many of you did see my last PSA.
    76:45
    I got a 20-card PSA return. So PSA is the top grading company in the world, even though their labels aren't the nicest, I'll tell you that. And we got destroyed. I only got back eight 10s. You lose money on pretty much everything that's not a 10, or maybe break even.
    77:03
    I think we lost money on 11 of the cards that we sent away, maybe 12. So it was tough. It was a very, very, very tough return. So it was really nice to know that y'all had my back and donated so much money to me. And even right now as I'm thinking about it, I know that there's at least two people that I forgot about in there. So I will have a full list of all the donos. But thank you everybody for donating. Thank you for getting through the sludge of me begging you for donos. Thank you for listening to the show. I really appreciate it. I love it.
    77:35
    I'm not going to lie. I am being tempted with doing more other content that's more video content and stuff that's outside of the podcasting realm. But I still want to keep doing this. I'm still excited to do it. I don't know if I'll ever do five shows in a week like I did again during the telethon.
    77:52
    But who knows? I don't know what's coming up. What I do know is I'm going to do more interviews. I want to start doing more video. I'm going to bring back, well, I'm going to bring back hopefully Twitch. I want to start live streaming pinball. I want to start live streaming even just talking about pinball. So who knows? Go join me on the Pinball Nerds Podcast Facebook page, and I'm going to try to use that more as well. So anyways, pinball nerds, have yourself a wonderful day. I'm just rambling now. Get back to it. Have a wonderful day, and remember to get out there and play some pinball. Until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Jackwinary, what were you thinking?