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#100 Under Pressure - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 48m·analyzed·Feb 28, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Dave debugs a Lethal Weapon 3 flipper failure caused by wrong contact type; Rush market floods post-award.

Summary

In this 100th episode of The Classic Pinball Podcast, hosts George and Dr. Dave discuss Dave's sale of a Rush pinball machine (which won awards but faced secondary market saturation), a technical deep-dive into Dave's repair of a problematic Lethal Weapon 3 machine where a previous technician installed incorrect high-voltage tungsten flipper contacts instead of low-voltage gold-plated contacts (the root cause of intermittent flipper failures), rising parts prices from vendors like Marco, and progress on a Centaur restoration project. The episode covers themes of music pin fatigue, collector bargain-hunting behavior, technical troubleshooting methodology, and the challenges of managing long-term restoration backlogs.

Key Claims

  • There were over 20 Rush pinball machines for sale on Pinside simultaneously

    high confidence · Dr. Dave stated this directly regarding the secondary market flood after the game won awards

  • Music-themed pinball machines see rapid depreciation due to listener fatigue with repetitive soundtracks

    medium confidence · George and Dave discussion about why Rush and Guns N' Roses machines are being unloaded en masse

  • Data East Lethal Weapon 3 uses opto circuits for flippers, not traditional leaf switches

    high confidence · Dr. Dave's technical explanation of the flipper switch technology in 1990s Data East solid-state games

  • Tungsten flipper contacts require high amperage to function properly; gold-plated low-voltage contacts are correct for solid-state flipper games

    high confidence · Dr. Dave's detailed technical diagnosis of the Lethal Weapon 3 repair; verified by similar Pinside post

  • Marco is the only vendor selling the correct low-voltage switch for Data East solid-state flipper applications

    high confidence · Dr. Dave stated 'only Marco had the switch no one else had it' and charges $18 per switch

  • Pinball parts prices have increased significantly in recent years (switches from $5-7 to $15-20)

    high confidence · Dr. Dave observation about price increases for flipper switches and other components over time

  • Marco recently raised coindoor skin prices from under $50 to $100

    high confidence · George and Dave discussion about Centaur restoration parts costs

  • Steve Young's pinball parts inventory is depleting and he may be exiting the business soon

    medium confidence · Dr. Dave speculation: 'Steve Young, I think he's ready to, hopefully, exit the business too soon, but he might be getting depleting some stuff'

  • The Centaur restoration customer has been waiting over two years for completion

Notable Quotes

  • “They're sick of hearing the same music over and over and over again from the same band. It's a music pin. They're good for a little while. You get sick of it, move it along.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~03:00 — Identifies the core market problem with music-themed pinball machines — listener fatigue drives secondary market dumps

  • “I basically cut off, I gave him like a 30% haircut. I basically just charged like 60% of what I usually charge... I did almost like a little pro bono work a little bit because I felt bad for him.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~27:00 — Demonstrates Dave's service ethic and community-oriented approach to difficult repairs for customers in financial hardship

  • “You don't want to put a tungsten contact in a solid state flipper game you want to use a low voltage because a tungsten contact needs a high current to make the circuit complete”

    Dr. Dave @ ~33:00 — Core technical insight that solves the Lethal Weapon 3 problem — identifies the exact root cause of the intermittent flipper failures

  • “Someone else had the exact same problem, exact same. Someone put tungsten contacts in there, and everybody was trying to say, oh, it's this, it's this, it's this. Someone chimed in and said, no, it should be a low-voltage contact.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~37:00 — Validates the diagnosis by referencing a parallel Pinside forum case, suggesting this is a systemic technician error affecting multiple machines

  • “I actually went online on Pinside, put the stuff in there too. Someone else had the exact same problem... He took the advice, did it, and said, that did it. That fixed my game, the low-voltage contact, the little gold-plated one.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~37:00 — Shows how community knowledge (Pinside forums) validates technical troubleshooting and prevents repeated mistakes

  • “God bless you, dude. It's all free. Don't worry about it.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~40:00 — Shows Dave's final decision to provide the second repair visit at no charge after the customer suffered from a previous technician's negligence

  • “I kept spending thousands. Every parts order is thousands of dollars.”

Entities

GeorgepersonDr. DavepersonRushgameGuns N' RosesgameLethal Weapon 3gameData EastcompanyCentaurgame

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Music-themed pinball machines (Rush, Guns N' Roses) experiencing rapid secondary market depreciation due to listener fatigue with repetitive soundtracks; over 20 Rush units listed for sale simultaneously on Pinside after initial award win

    high · Dave: 'They're sick of hearing the same music over and over and over again from the same band'; 'I went out and looked because there's a run on Guns N' Roses, too. People are just unloading these games left and right'

  • $

    market_signal: Collector community shows resistance to paying premiums for modded/restored machines despite significant sunk costs in parts and labor; preference for bargain acquisitions

    high · George: 'The collector community they don't want to pay up for anything you did they just want to get you know get it for a dollar everybody wants a bargain'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Critical single-source dependency identified: Marco is the only vendor supplying correct low-voltage Data East flipper switches; prices rising ($18/switch); other vendors like Steve Young facing inventory depletion and possible exit

    high · Dave: 'only Marco had the switch no one else had it'; 'Even his stuff, a lot of his stuff is out of stock. Steve Young, I think he's ready to, hopefully, exit the business too soon'

  • $

    market_signal: Significant price increases across pinball parts over recent years; flipper switches up from $5-7 to $15-20; coindoor skins doubled from <$50 to $100; restoration parts orders routinely exceed thousands of dollars

    high · Dave: 'The amount of money they've gone up in the last couple years is incredible'; George: 'Every parts order is thousands of dollars'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.324

0:30
Pressure, pushing down on me, pressing down on you, no man that's more. I've got pressure, but when you feel me down, it's just a fantasy.
0:44
But people on the streets, I'm the man, the man, the man. Feed it up, feed it up. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and I'm here with my co-host, a man whose red barchetta just drove off into the sunset, Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Someway ask why. Why Z?
1:19
Well, I know there's a story here. We'll get to the main part of this podcast in a minute. But why don't you tell the audience that you finally sold your Rush pinball. Didn't take you too long. And given, or I'll forget, did you see how many of those were for sale on Pinside? I kind of lost count at one point. How many was the last count? It was well above 20. And then I went out and looked because there's a run on Guns N' Roses, too. People are just unloading these games left and right, and I'm wondering why. I'll tell you why. They're sick of hearing the same music over and over and over again from the same band. It's a music pin. They're good for a little while. You get sick of it, move it along. It's so great because now I can actually play some Rush music again and not being sick of it myself. So that's why. I think people are just sick of music pins. Right, but I think we talked about this in our last episode. Did the game win those awards when we recorded last? I was so happy it won the award, and then right after that, that's when the game sold. Oh, it was beautiful. Thank you for the marketing on that. So I think we talked about that the game was going to be up for an award. Yeah, I was. But I don't think it had happened. I was like, oh, goody.
2:39
So where did the game end up? him was it somebody who was a rush fan a pinball fan both he uh somebody you knew before nope this guy no i had an ad on pin side and i got some i got some tire kickers i got some you want to trade this and this for that i go no you want to do this trade meal cash they go maybe it's like no i just i have enough games i just want to get cash i i just want to basically break even with the game with what I paid for the game and the parts I put into it, all the mods I did to it. I put like a thousand bucks worth of parts into it. Never mind my labor. I kind of threw it for free. What was the list price of the game? List price for the game was 12, right around 12K. Okay. Yeah.

high confidence · Dr. Dave states 'I've got a couple of his customers waiting for like over two years'

  • Dr. Dave has over one year of in-house/in-shop restoration work backlog

    high confidence · Dr. Dave: 'I'm about over a year out with in-house work and in-shop work anyway'

    • George @ ~45:00 — Highlights the escalating cost of restoration work due to parts inflation, particularly from key vendors like Marco

  • “The collector community they don't want to pay up for anything you did they just want to get you know get it for a dollar everybody wants a bargain”

    George @ ~05:00 — Critiques collector behavior in secondary market — resistance to paying for mods and restoration work despite substantial sunk costs

  • “I'm not going to forget about you I'm going to make this right but I need more time to think about”

    Dr. Dave @ ~31:00 — Shows Dave's commitment to solving difficult technical problems even when stumped, stepping back to research rather than giving up

  • “I'm over a year out with in-house work and in-shop work anyway so no problem with that it's a welcome respite to get caught up”

    Dr. Dave @ ~44:00 — Indicates sustained high demand for restoration services, though Dave views a slowing of fieldwork as beneficial for addressing the backlog

    • Marco
    company
    Steve Youngperson
    Ian Flemingperson
    Power Playgame
    Harlem Globetrottersgame
    Sterncompany
    Pinsideorganization
    The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
    Ballycompany
    CPR (California Pinball Restoration)company

    operational_signal: Dr. Dave reports over one-year backlog for in-house restoration work; managing multiple long-term customer projects (Centaur customer waiting 2+ years); fieldwork slowing as a result

    high · Dave: 'I'm about over a year out with in-house work and in-shop work anyway'; 'I've got a couple of his customers waiting for like over two years'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Technical deep-dive into Data East flipper architecture (opto circuits with low-voltage gold-plated contacts) versus Bally electromechanical (direct high-amperage leaf switches); mismatched parts cause systematic failures

    high · Dave's detailed explanation of tungsten vs. gold-plated contact requirements; validation through Pinside forum post documenting identical problem and solution

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinside forum community knowledge validated problem diagnosis independently; previous technician and Dave both initially missed root cause; forum collaboration prevented repeated errors

    high · Dave: 'Someone else had the exact same problem, exact same... Someone chimed in and said, no, it should be a low-voltage contact. And he took the advice, did it, and said, that did it.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Lethal Weapon 3 solid-state flipper system shows chronic failure pattern; appears to be technician-induced through incorrect component selection (tungsten vs. gold-plated contacts) rather than design flaw; multiple service visits required

    high · Customer experienced flipper failures from day one; previous tech charged $200/visit repeatedly without fixing; Dave's root cause analysis revealed wrong contact type was used

  • ?

    operational_signal: Dr. Dave managing geographically distributed repair calls (45+ minutes away) with extended service time commitment; pro bono work offered to customers in financial hardship despite travel burden

    high · Dave drove 45 minutes rural service call, provided initial 30% discount, then second visit entirely gratis; indicates capacity constraints but community service values

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Centaur restoration in progress for Maryland customer; 2+ year wait; bottom playfield populated; new coindoor skin installed; high-end resto work prioritized but shuffled due to other commitments

    high · Dave: 'I've had this game for quite a while'; 'I've got a couple of his customers waiting for like over two years'; 'I got a lot of playfield done on as a CPR playfield'

  • $

    market_signal: Rush machine won award (Episode 99), triggering immediate buyer interest; Dave sold his copy shortly after; but secondary market then flooded with 20+ listings as music pin fatigue set in, collapsing resale value

    high · George: 'I was so happy it won the award, and then right after that, that's when the game sold'; Dave observed 20+ Rush listings on Pinside after award announcement

    • 3:25
    So, you know, I wanted to kind of, I wanted to get that back and then some if I could. So I had like a, I had like a 13.5 price tag on it at one point.
    3:36
    And, you know, a lot of people were biting on that i went down to like a 12.5 and a little more action on this but this still wasn't that great so i put it back up to 13.5 again so i'm just gonna wait i don't care and uh still nobody a couple people inside but some but you know the collector community they they don't want to pay up for anything you did they just want to get you know get it for a dollar everybody wants a bargain they get it for a buck and they you know just everybody wants a bargain one dollar that's what they want to pay it's more than one dollar so they do want to bargain but it's the wrong place to sell a game like that so so basically i had it on my youtube channel as well and then someone saw the youtube channel and that's how they contacted me because i basically wanted to um if i sold through pin side i definitely pin side they're due because that's what it says if you sell on pin side yeah they want some money granted fine no problem right well they gave you the platform i mean you got a kickback i will if it sold in pin side it did not sell it sold to my youtube channel i said how did you hear about this game on your youtube channel. Did you pitch it for sale? Yeah, the YouTube channel I did. Sure. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It said for sale. Is that the only video? I don't go and watch. Sorry.
    4:44
    You don't watch my YouTube channel? How dare you? I don't. I have watched. Don't ask me what game, but I have watched.
    4:55
    Did you have more than one video out there? Or was that the only rush? That's the only rush one. I only do one per game. Okay. Yeah, one game. that's pretty much it okay yeah so you didn't put one out early on is what i'm getting at no you didn't put it out until you're ready to sell it i was ready to sell it so i was ready to say actually you know what i did i before i actually was going to take it down because i had it in the showroom my game room it was like a like an albatross they're sitting this big massive game standing and then you these classic games next to it it's like this doesn't look right there i just don't like it there i just i don't really play it last time i was there when we recorded our blockbuster show. Thank you old and new listeners.
    5:37
    What was it? Doctor Who. Our marathon three hour and thirty five or forty minute show which I thought... Who done it not Doctor Who? Who done it? Oh, what did I say? You said Doctor Who. Maybe it's Doctor Who done it. Anyway, yeah. Who done it? Thank you everybody. It was great. I mean, the numbers were really strong and I thought nobody was going to listen because we were so verbose. I knew they would. I knew they would. We captured lightning in a bottle on that episode. Right. We were on fire. And today we're not at Dave's house, actually. We're recording from my kitchen. And if you hear the rumbling of an appliance in the background, it's because the dishwasher is on. So, sorry about the ambient noise. I'm guessing we'll be loud enough where you won't hear it. We have a new microphone, George, for season three. But Dave got here actually a little early today. He was a little west of here repairing a pinball game. A pinball game? Listen to me.
    6:39
    I haven't done this in a while now, Mark. I've got to come. I've got to get a grip. Where's the real George? What are you doing?
    6:46
    Anyway, we tried to do this last week, a week ago. We're recording today is, what, the 25th of February? So last time we recorded was a month ago, January 25th. Oh, what are the odds of that? That's pretty good. Right. Well, we've been, hasn't been a lot of stuff going on in the world of pinball, unless you're in need of talking about James Bond or Keith Elwin or the $20,000 pinball machine. Don't care. No, I got my own pinball world going on. that's much more exciting. Classic games. Do you know, I had this from the last show and I forgot to say it, do you know where the character name James Bond came from?
    7:38
    The character name James Bond? Well, I know the original writer, Broccoli or whoever it was, wrote books about him. Ian Fleming. Yeah, that guy. Ian Fleming, yeah. James Broccoli or whatever, he's the one that was involved too with making the movies. But yeah, Ian Fleming, he wrote, and I guess he was actually James Bond. He was actually no he wasn't i thought he was actually the covert he's on some island in the caribbean and there's an ornithologist at the island and his name was james bond and he thought it was a great name so he named the character of all his books james bond his word is his bond so there you go anyway what is an ornithologist somebody who studies birds i have another bird story Do you want to hear another bird story? I'd love to.
    8:27
    Well, they heard the stories about my parrot neighbor, right? Oh, yes. Squawky. Right. I have another name for him. Anyway, Birdman Next Door. So this one caught my eye in the news recently. guy is in his house and he's smelling something rotten and he can't figure it out so he calls an exterminator and says i think there's something dead in the wall so the exterminator comes and says you know i have to cut a hole in the wall to take a look inside and see if you know somebody's living in there.
    9:11
    Or dying in there. Right. Either or. Well, it could have been. Anyway, we won't go into the specifics. So the guy cuts a hole through the drywall and out pours acorns. As many acorns as you could possibly imagine. Jackpot.
    9:29
    Guy exterminator goes outside and looks up under the eave and he sees two holes. This was out west, I think in California. there's a woodpecker called an acorn woodpecker who knew i didn't know if you go out on the google machine and put in images for the acorn woodpecker you'll see these trees that have been you know basically delaminated all the bark off it and holes stuffed with acorns these stupid birds not so stupid, plucked a hole in the side of this guy's house, and started filling the wall with acorns. So probably the- 700 pounds worth of acorns. I saw the picture online. Okay, so this bird, what he wants to do in nature is make a hole and put one acorn in the hole and then go on. No, no. No, in nature he doesn't do that. Multiple acorns. He wants to put a whole bunch in a piece of wood or a tree. You've got to look at the picture. Okay. When you see this tree, it looks like a tree stump, but there's no bark on it, and there's holes everywhere, and they're stuffed overflowing with acorns coming out of it. So this crazy bird made the hole in the side of the house. It must have been no insulation. It's California. Again, I don't know what the building codes are there, and I don't care. It filled the wall up with acorns. I'm just wondering if the little birdie was saying, hey, I just put one in here, and it fell through. I've got to put another one in to stop this hole up. And because a tree, you'd figure you'd throw one in and you'd be done. There's no inside wall cavity to throw an egg cone in. So he'd probably say, oh, I'm not done yet. I've got to keep doing it until I can't put any more in. Right, well, eventually he sees that he can't stuff any more in. He makes another hole and he puts more in. Oh, another hole. Oh, more. Okay. But this hole, he just, you know, the dumb bird, he's like, hey, it's not filled up yet. Let's just keep putting it in. At some point in time, you'd think the bird brain would say, hey, you know, where are all these things going? How am I going to get them out of here? Very small brain. I have a buddy, my buddy Jim down in the Cape, and we were talking. He's got a natural shake home. He goes, oh, yeah, I've had woodpeckers peck through the shakes, but not through the plywood behind the shakes. He goes, oh, yeah, they destroyed this whole one spot on his house, pecked through. How do you stop them?
    11:52
    I think people put wire or some kind of mesh, but, you know, he's got a whole natural shake house. I mean, they must think it's like a bare tree and like, hey, that's a good spot. Let's go make a hole there. And then they finally give up because they can't get through the plywood. I'm guessing, but they were successful, I guess. Acorn woodpeckers are a little bit more handy than woodpeckers here on the East Coast. I know who can solve the problem, Pelican.
    12:19
    Yeah, that or a large cat. Yes. He was just telling me. He goes, you know what? They were in our neighborhood, fisher cats. You know what that is?
    12:30
    It doesn't look like a cat. It looks like a raccoon. No, it looks like a cat. Okay. It looks like an angry cat. As my wife calls it, the cat lion. Okay. It kind of looks like a bobcat, but not really. Kind of fierce. Yeah, you don't want to tangle with them. Well, we think, didn't we talk about this with the horse across the street from me? Getting busted out of the stable over there because a fisher cat got in with them. There's two horses that are enclosed. You're the horse who stomped it. No, the horse is freaked out. Did I never show you that video of the horse running across the front yard of my neighbor across the street? You had 1883 going on here, George. Awesome.
    13:13
    That's cool. Okay, enough of the animal talk. I like the woodpecker story. Okay. I like the horse story, too. Dave is here in the neighborhood because he was west of here repairing a pinball machine and you told me it's a lethal weapon 3 early 1990s data east which is kind of like early modern stern generation 1 are the parts hard to come by no they're kind of like the year 2000 kind of stern and their flipper stuff and it's some it's kind of similar to the modern stern stuff so what was wrong with oh boy i got the i got a call from this guy i felt really bad for him he's out of my service here this this he was like almost almost two hours away he's 45 minutes west of here yeah it's like northwest of here yeah no i know where he is he's up it's rural and but i felt bad he called me up and it almost sounded like he was drunk and he goes you know, I'm not drunk, I don't, it's like, okay, you know, he had a brain injury, and he had some medical issues, and all kinds of stuff, and he, his wife, for years, and his wife, he's trying to relearn things, and kind of get his brain back, and he has these puzzles he does, but his wife, bless her heart, wanted to buy him a pinball machine, so that he could work with that, hand-eye coordination, so. This sounds like the Eric Stone story.
    14:48
    Is? Yeah, the parents bought him. Oh, yeah, yeah, when he was, like, young, right? Well, Eric didn't have a brain problem. Well, some people may differ these days, but we'll leave that alone.
    15:00
    Some haters may have different thoughts. Maybe now he'll contact you. Yeah, maybe now he will. Wake up, Eric. Where are you?
    15:07
    We'll just poke him. We'll poke him a little bit. See if he's awake. So that's okay. So I felt bad for him, and he said, well, she bought this game, and she paid all this money for it. She paid $4,500 for a limping lethal weapon 3 that wasn't really gone through really, at least. And it's had flipper problems from day one. The flippers would work for about a couple of days and stop. And this person who was a tech... Oh, somebody else had repaired, supposedly? Who sold it. Oh, sold it and... And repaired it and charged them. Every time the person went up there, $200 a pop. and didn't quite, still would fail and fail and fail. And finally the customer said, hey, we want to sell this game back to you. He said, no, once it's yours, it's yours. It's not mine anymore. So then after a while, didn't pick up his phone calls anymore, didn't return phone calls. This tech person was done.
    16:03
    Sales slash tech person was done. So he called me and I said, well, I said, okay. It's something simple. It sounds like it's, you know, your flipper, basically his real problem was the flipper would flutter a little bit on the left side and then die and intermittently work and not work and you just couldn't play the game. The flippers would die spontaneously or just not work right. You couldn't play a game reliably. It's just very irritating. So I said okay, it's probably and the stroke switch problem, it's not making or it's breaking, but I figured this other tech Does it have a simple flipper switch or a multi layered flipper switch? I.e. is it like a I would have a simple like Harlem Globetrotters would have a simple flipper switch on the right side or a Mata Hari, a simple flipper switch where the more complex would be the multi switch for like a skateball with two flippers on one side or a simple because it only has two flippers in the game and not complex It's like a modern game with optos. A lot of the modern games in the 90s use an opto circuit. So you'd have a, when you hit the flipper, you're not hitting two pieces of a leaf switch and two pieces of metal contacting. You're hitting a plastic bar that makes or breaks this optical circuit on a modern game. So it's off or on. Oh, I didn't know that. Yep. So that's an opto. Those are the new ones. Those are all the new 90s stuff. And I think even. Even the new stuff today? I think the new stuff today, too. Like your Rush got that? not that you played with the flipper switches i'm not sure i didn't play with them so i didn't really recall that i would think so but i know the 90s ones did yeah i don't know i don't have a lot of flipper switch problems i'm guessing not on the modern ones no okay the older ones yeah so that's why i probably don't really reckon i'm sure they do but you know someone out there i'm sure someone's yelling at the freaking speaker right now hey listen dummy of course it's this i know We have to explain this, but we do probably to our newer listeners because, look, we don't have gobs of notes here. This is all off the cuff.
    18:14
    I have some notes, but I don't know what Dave's going to say, and Dave doesn't know what I'm going to say. Right, exactly.
    18:23
    So I go into this thing and say, okay, I'm going to study up and see what it is. Because this other person in the tech was, you know, reputation, fairly decent tech. So it's like they probably did these things and they had to do something to fix it. They didn't want to go back all the time, even though they got paid every time.
    18:38
    It gets old. Forget it. You don't want to go back. I don't want to go. You never want to go back. I don't ever want to go back. So I want to make sure those things are right. So I went up there and I said, okay, I'm going to buy. I knew this game was one of the first solid-state flipper games that Date East made, meaning that it's like a fliptronics board. so they use like a you know low voltage thing low amperage thing for the flippers to work it's more of an electrical like a circuit board making the flipper go versus a real your flipper on your power play in a ballet game that thing is making your flipper go pretty much directly it's like almost direct one to one these modern games it goes through some circuitry and then it comes back and it makes your flipper go so it has to go around a little trail first and then come back and make the flipper go so a little more complex so i said okay i bet you i've had that board go bad before a different game of star wars i worked on the time frame so i'm going to buy that board have it on me and uh go with that i'll go with uh you know all of the stern stuff i had all the flipper stuff i had some connectors i basically packed the car full of everything i can think of it's going to fix this problem went up there looked at it i'm thinking end of stroke switch oh it's gonna be the stroke switch i look at the look at the flippers there are no end of stroke switches on this game so it's like okay rats then you're gonna fix it okay next let's look at okay how about the flipper buttons well the tech before me put in some brand new tungsten flipper switches brand new those are nice and shiny uh the person even had a was troubleshooting intel because they put solder on it because maybe it was a little bit the the press fitted um tungsten contact maybe was loose on there so they kind of started in better so that a better contact and not loosey goosey maybe that's what's making her intermittent uh but nope that wasn't it and i said well for good measure i'm going to put new new tungsten flipper switches even though these are new i'm going to put new ones in again for whatever reason maybe these are faulty i don't know put those in there it seemed to work better but then uh all of a sudden it the whole thing died again then I want to go in the back box taking all the boards out looking at all the reflow points to see that those look good then I then I said okay told the customer to hit the flippers because it was totally dead now on the flippers and I moved some contacts on the main bore else and boom the flippers came back aha this is it this is contact that powers the flippers it's a it's a 1 5 6 connector with about four or five connections on it I'm just gonna rebuild that with brand new trifurc on pins and crimp them and boom did that the flippers came back it's all good and I didn't need to put the board in there and I basically I think for good measure I say well just in case I'm going to put some brand new coils in this thing too flipper coils because it could be maybe a winding is not quite making in there maybe it's half broken or something so that so so now he has a brand new connector in there flipper flippers he's got a brand new coils on there he's got rebuilt flippers that the person did before me and now he's got brand new cabinet flipper switches and I was flipping, flipping, playing a couple games. It was fine.
    21:44
    So, okay, I think you're all set. Now, this was like about a week ago on a Saturday. Driving out of there and then I said, you know, the bill for this is, you know, quite lofty, but, you know, I know you're having a hard time, this and that, and, you know, you're not in the best financial shape. So I basically cut off, I gave him like a 30% haircut. I basically just charged like 60% of what I usually charge, you know, everything. So I basically, I did almost like a little pro bono work a little bit because I felt bad for him. So, and that was fine.
    22:12
    So he was happy with that. On the way home, about 30 minutes in, phone rings. Hi, it's me again. The flippers are not, it's like, you could be kidding me. Oh, no. After all this work. And now I'm thinking, and I was at my wits end with this game. It's like, I exhausted all my possibilities. Like, what else could it be? I said, listen, I need to do more research on this. I need to think about some more. so give me a little time but I'm not going to forget about you I'm going to make this right but I need more time to think about I need more I got to step away from the game so as soon as I got home a light bulb went off my head it's like I know what it is I know what it is and then is this before you continue yeah is this a common problem with these games and did you find any information online about it. It probably is a common problem in this game because of techs make a mistake.
    23:12
    So what's the mistake? Technician-induced using the wrong part is a mistake. So what's the difference between the part you attempted to use and the part you now replaced it with today? Well, if you've got a solid-state flipper game, you don't want to put a tungsten contact in a solid state flipper game you want to use a low voltage because a tungsten contact needs a high current to make the circuit complete that's why when you hit that's what struck me when i was thinking about it when i hit those flipper buttons at first when i first did this game last week it was kind of intermittent when i went inside the cabinet and pressed on the flipper button the leaf switch with my finger it worked great every time i pressed hard it worked great work great work great flipper button not so great and the springy contact was fine but i had to press on it harder and i noticed there was no spark if you go downstairs and play your power play whatever you're going to see a big blue arc oh yeah it's all that current from going because those tungsten is it because tungsten is one of the densest yeah metals therefore if you don't have high current and amperage, not enough voltage will flow through? Right. That's my theory. That's what I think. Now, John Digg would probably answer better. He'd be an electrical engineer. Here he is. I'll tell you about that. I'm just doing that off the top of my head. And the reason I say it is because there's a company out there that sells tungsten spheres as a giveaway to a customer. You'd put your name on it because you'd pick up this small object and it weighs a lot more than you think it will yeah does that make sense makes sense so yeah i know it's dense right and current probably does not flow as well and when you just basically tap it real quick yes there's not enough time there for this for the circuit to be complete or it's weak no well true but even when i held the flipper in it wasn't working until i really pressed hard on the other side to really force those two contacts together really good contact then it would go so to overcome like with the high amperage it overcomes um resistance easier with a high amperage if you have a low voltage low amperage like on a solid state flipper you got more like five volts between between one and five volts with no amperage now it's like it ain't gonna flow it needs two gold plated contacts like you have on your harlem globetrotters whatever They have all the switches in those games for the pop pumpers. Those are all low voltage switches with gold plated contacts. You never want to fire. You just want to clean them with some cleaner.
    25:51
    Same thing with this game. So this game, so I realized I put the wrong switch contacts, and the person before me who's been in the business for a long time, they made the same mistake.
    26:03
    But I put two and two together. I'm thinking about the call. When I looked at one of the switches that person took out before they put in the tungsten ones. I noticed one side of the switch they took out was tungsten. The other side was a gold-plated 5-volt switch. It was kind of mix and match for some reason. Someone actually put it in there and it never quite worked right. So this thing has been messed with for a long time and never worked for a long time. That's why I can see the boards are actually in pretty good shape because this thing failed early for whatever reason. Sounds like a Sinbad, System 1 game. Yeah, kind of similar like that. someone yeah so I had to find this switch the other pace and only Marco had the switch no one else had it no wonder why I just did an order with them I just did too I've been going you've spent a lot I spent a lot more so no one sells a switch for for this application for for data East flipper switch the only market us and they charge was like it like 18 bucks a switch you know i went and looked through their catalog and i was looking at switches the amount of money they've gone up in the last couple years is incredible i remember buying switches for like five six seven bucks now they're 15 18 20 yeah oh yeah i mean i haven't bought anything from Steve Young in a while, but he's usually who I go to, but I'm guessing prices are up. Even his stuff, a lot of his stuff is out of stock. Steve Young, I think he's ready to, hopefully, exit the business too soon, but he might be getting depleting some stuff. We'll come to parts in a minute. I want to talk about another vendor in a couple minutes. Is there more to this story? So basically, I ordered these parts, I got them, and I called them and said, Like, I'm coming up, and I have good news. I am like 99.9% sure I have the fix for this game. And I actually did a check on myself. I actually went online on Pinside, put the stuff in there too. Someone else had the exact same problem, exact same. Someone put tungsten contacts in there, and everybody was trying to say, oh, it's this, it's this, it's this. Someone chimed in and said, no, it should be a low-voltage contact. And he took the advice, did it, and said, that did it. That fixed my game, the low-voltage contact, the little gold-plated one. So someone else had the same problem. they fixed this like this is definitely the same generation game so i went there today put it in flippers ran like a top strong it worked great um and then uh i was thinking as i'm going up there am i gonna am i gonna charge this guy something at least for my it's a long ride he's for gas or something you know but then i i took more renewable for riding up there it's like you know what i'm just gonna do a freebie so i i did a total gratis pro bono work today i said that you know i i said God bless you, dude. It's all free. Don't worry about it. But basically it's like, in the future, this is out of my service area. So I'm kind of like, I'm kind of trying to do the handoff here. I'm kind of done with it. But you don't owe me anything for today. I just want you to get into your running.
    29:09
    I know you've been working on this game. I have to be honest with you. I can't believe it's been 90 episodes since we did Centaur. that was our that was number 10 wow that was probably your centaur it was downstairs right was it yours or one I had in you're going to ask me this again like you I don't go back and listen to old episodes probably should but I have a centaur story but I'm going to let you go first because you're still working on it I am I've had this game for quite a while it like hey this is on the list yeah i know i know we do lists and then we don't come back to them but i know dave talked about hey these are the games i'm going to try to get on the rotisserie yeah this year right i know this is one of them this is i had this on the rotisserie this past summer and i got a lot of playfield done on as a cpr playfield involved in it and the customers supplied that as well as the game and uh you know for isn't this guy from like jersey or something Maryland. Oh, Maryland? Maryland. Okay, wow. Okay. So he brought it up a couple years ago. He's waiting a while. He's very patient. I've got a couple of his customers waiting for like over two years. But some of these customers, they want a real high-end resto, so I kind of – it takes a lot of time. So I've got to try to – I do some work, and I've got to shuffle it in and get something else done because I have so many people who take my money and get my game done. So I've got to shuffle games around and move things around and do a little bit here, a little bit there. so now I've got to it's the field work slowed down a little bit right now which I'm fine with because I'm about over a year out with in-house work and in-shop work anyway so no problem with that it's a welcome respite to get caught up so I'm going to spend more time on his game and I actually get the a new Coindor skin on there oh you did one of those? he wants this game to be does somebody sell those? they used to Yeah, Marco does. And now they're $100 a skin.
    31:17
    They used to be under $50. I bought four of them. I know. I keep spending thousands. I didn't see that. Every parts order is thousands of dollars. I keep spending thousands. Okay, so how far along are you on Centaur? Because I have a Centaur story. Centaur is, the bottom of the playfield is totally populated. The cabinet is totally done.
    31:37
    New side rails on it. brand new Weebly power board in the bottom of the game. Looks gorgeous. Coindor is all done. A brand new Weebly power board. The power board in the bottom of the game. The rectifier. Yeah, Weebly. Andrew. He makes one? Yeah. For how much? Pretty reasonable. I think around $100.
    32:01
    You want me to tell my story because it's perfect? Go ahead. So you got me motivated. you've got this game that you're working on and I'm going to come clean I've had a problem with my centaur for at least 7 months you never said hey I've got a problem with my centaur no so I got motivated the game worked in its entirety except for one thing no bonus lights at all anything that was switchable illumination the entire game is switch illumination except for the back box it's all switch illumination there's no GI in that play field oh maybe that's why there were no lights on it anyway so there's no lights on the game but the game plays it scores the sound everything's Working great. You got a problem with your limb. So I said, nope, nope, nope. So I sat there and said to myself, you know what? Let's start at the beginning. I said, it's got the zero insertion connectors. The IDC's. But I don't yank them in and out. I haven't touched them in years. So I said, that can't be it.
    33:32
    That's not it. And so I said, you know what? Let's break out the meter. Let's see if I'm getting enough power out of the rectifier board.
    33:44
    And sure enough. Bad bridge. Barely like one where it's supposed to be, what, five and a half to six? One. I'm like, okay, easy. Go to George's enormous closet. Yeah. Pull the old rectifier from Xenon. And when we're downstairs, I'll show you that. I'm like, oh, I've got to have a better one than this. I had another one.
    34:12
    Never repaired. I'm like, okay. I must have had this thing in a game because I wouldn't put it away if it wasn't working properly. Swapped it all out, cleaned out the cabinet, did all the crap. Perfect. Right on. But that's one part of the story. So I solved that. I was pretty proud. I'm like, okay, good.
    34:33
    And I was running out of, I repaired the board that I yanked out of there, or I'm in the process of it. I didn't have any more bridge rectifiers.
    34:44
    I'm like, oh. And I used to buy all my stuff from Ed at Great Plains because he had everything. Everything, yeah. And he was usually reasonable. Yeah, very reasonable. But he's no longer. Nope.
    34:55
    So I'm like, okay, what's the number on the bridge rectifier? and I pull it off and it's a on, what is it? On the Taiwan company. Online on something. On computer on something. Whatever. Okay, don't know. Pull it off.
    35:15
    See, it's on Digi-Key. How much do you think, have you bought a bridge rectifier recently? No, I bought a whole bunch a couple years ago. Well, that's a couple years ago. I have a nice stock of them. That's a couple years ago. Yeah, let's see. What are they going for? Let's see. I don't know.
    35:30
    Eight bucks a bridge? Well, not too bad. Six and a half, give or take. But I also needed, you know, the heat. Oh, yeah, the heat goop. No, the heat. Sink stuff. The heat sink. Yeah. No, the heat sink itself. I had the goop. The heat, you know, the heat sinks that you put on top of the rectifier and the mounting kits, the little screws with the little. You don't need that for your game. That goes underneath in your game. I don't put them in that way. I put them in the other way. Why? With heat sinks. because that's what I do. I looked at all my other games. That's what I've done. You do your game your way. I do my game my way. The manufacturer saw fit to put it that way. I don't care. I don't do it that way. Because you've got a big metal heat sink in the bottom. Anyway. Okay.
    36:14
    The long and short of it was the heat sink was only 40 cents. Was it big? Yeah, it fit. It was the right thing. It was the right one. Nice big one. All right. But here's the kick. The little mounting hardware, the little screw with the nut and the lock washer. How much do you think that little diddy cost? A dollar? $2.37.
    36:39
    Right. So I saved on the one thing. It was more money on the other. And I guess that's what bridge rectifiers. I remember them costing under five bucks. I would buy them five or ten at a clip. Yeah. Right. Not anymore. Oh, and then here was the crazy thing. I had to pay a $4 tax.
    37:04
    Hmm? Yeah, like some kind of import tax. I'll show it to you downstairs. I have the paperwork downstairs. Digi-key? Yeah.
    37:13
    There's some kind of tariff on that stuff. Wow. You know, you might have been better off getting a quote from Pinball Life. Look, I had it. I needed some stuff. They had it all. It was easy. And they're a good company. I just haven't bought stuff like that in a while. I guess what I'm saying is everything's gone up. So when you start looking at it, right, you were talking about the rectifier. Yeah. I found one that's manufactured in Florida. Forgive me. I don't know the name, but it's out on eBay. Looked good. Delivered $81.
    37:48
    For a used one. Brand new. Oh, brand new. Okay. Right. I didn't know Andrew made one. Yeah. I like Andrew's stuff. So long and short of it is, A, we're talking about buying stuff if you want to repair your own. Yeah. B, if you don't want to do that and you want to just buy one, you know what? To fix those, they usually don't even go bad. The weird thing was no fuses were blown. The thing was the rectifier was just dead. Typically with those, if I was going to rebuild one of those boards, and I have, you want to replace the light circuit fuses, the 20-amp light circuit fuses. those clips go brown and dingy and basically turn into resistors. You've got to replace the fuse clips. Yeah, see, I don't like doing those. That's the hard thing on those boards. Well, if you've got a nice solder sucker like I do, no problem. But you need the tools. I don't do it like you do. So the long and short of it is the price points are getting closer. By the time you buy all the stuff to repair one. Might as well buy a new one. Right. I mean, you can go out and buy a brand-new rectifier board. You know, if you want to build your own from Andrew, $35. bucks if you don't want to you go to like you said pinball life for 59 bucks and you buy theirs it comes with all connectors and all the hardware i've actually bought that too i've actually bought pinball life sells those uh for the games like for power play and those games matahari he sells those power boards um for like 59 bucks including all the stuff for it it's all you know so that makes it easy um i didn't know andrew had them too but i'd rather uh i try to spend the money around these days i buy a little bit from pinball life a little bit from marco some andrew stuff and uh pinball resource of course but uh i i know i keep spending enough money to pinball life because pinball life every christmas they send me a nice gift basket yeah you were talking about that last last well i guess i'm spending way too much money if i'm getting gifts baskets so that's my that's my centaur story again you got me motivated fixed it easy fix I showed you the picture, right? The centaur picture? The playfield picture? See how shiny that was? Yeah, no, it's nice. I spent a lot of time with that buffer.
    39:54
    I was like an old lady in 1883 on the prairie there with a spinning wheel, you know, knitting something.
    40:05
    What's up, Doc? But Star Trek Next Gen, so that problem, that was actually, that was like a some of these games instead of like doing my one day spa some of them take longer this is like a three day three days worth of day spa in this game but he wanted to be really nice so I did wouldn't it be easier just to take it back if they're so heavy and unwieldy and you gotta get out of that's enough sometimes I will like actually I've got a Star Trek next gen coming in there's one that she was she's gonna bring it to me because she wants me to go crazy on it she wants me to And at first, you know, I said, well, you know, day spa is going to cost this kind of thing. And she was looking for a couple of things and or you can do a full rest. Oh, I think the day spa is what I want to do. But I'm going to bring it to you. It's like, well, you don't quite understand what I'm trying to say with the concept. Day spa means I go to you and do it, not come to me. So she was about to bring it in. I said, well, snow is coming. Let's wait a little bit. Let's wait till the snow subsides and then bring it to me. And just so you know, you know, I don't know what your budget is, but what are you expecting? You know, here's what I can do. And here's a video. I did a beautiful Star Trek next year and I sold for way too cheap about a couple years ago.
    41:12
    And I went crazy on a mirror blade, it's color DMD, and just like the thing was gorgeous and it's gorgeous shape anyway to begin with. I said, do you want it like this? He goes, oh, yes, please. It's exactly what I want. And basically, you know, my wallet is open, so to speak, you know. Basically, she's willing to pay, you know, appropriately for that kind of level. Where was the game?
    41:36
    It's South Shore. coming up. So I'm going to make that game really nice. That's going to be fun. I like the Star Trek Next Gen. It's a fun game to play. But this particular one in Natick I worked on, he had a problem since day one. Again, he bought it from somebody that used car salesman-ish a little bit and it never quite worked right.
    42:00
    So much so that Star Trek Next Gen has this problem where if it doesn't sense, if certain senses aren't working, certain optos aren't working right, or certain switches aren't working right, Steve Ritchie did something with that game where he pre, when you turn the game on from just a setup thing, take the balls out, put them back in, it does something where it wants to pre-stage the game. It pre-stages three balls for multi-balls. It stages, so you turn the game on, it'll throw a ball up there before you even start a game into one section, throw a ball in another section, so that when you get multi-ball, you don't have to wait and keep plunging balls. The game will just start spitting out balls from these three different areas and you're good to go for multi-ball right away. No waiting. So that's what Steve Ritchie did. The problem is one of those sensors go awry. Now what happens when you turn the game on, it sends the ball out and around. It goes down. It spits it back out. Come back around. Over and over and over. You never can start a game. It's trying to stage a ball and it doesn't know where the ball is. It doesn't know that it's in its home. so um so i finally figured what that was it was a it was an opto that um that a receiver opto usually the sender opto is the one that goes back because the sender opto was like a flashlight after a while the flashlight light will go bad the receiver is just kind of receiving it like your eyeball receives light it doesn't usually go bad usually they last a long time there's just there's no really working parts like a light bulb hitting it so at this time the receiver was kind of going bad because what I did is I took the receiver out and put it against another opto pair and it still had a problem with it. So I moved the receiver on for a different section of the game. The problem followed the receiver when I moved it around. I said, okay, the receiver is definitely bad. So I went out there, put the opto back in and said, okay, I'm going to turn this game on. It's going to work great because I know it was definitely bad.
    43:53
    And what did it do, George? It did the same exact thing. Why? it had two problems. Just like this Lethal Weapon 3 had two problems. It had two problems exhibiting the same problem but two different. One was a physical problem one was an electrical problem. I fixed the electrical problem but not the physical problem. The physical problem was some tech prior didn't know that the opto was bad. So he a little lever that the opto kicks in to make a lever go and flip the ball to the right area under the game to pre-stage it he adjusted the lever the wrong way so instead of the ball coming down and opto kicks off and said okay a little uh lever flip underneath the game and throw the ball over here and stage it they had it they undid the set screw and put it a little bit half inch the wrong way so what it would do instead it would it would hit the ball trap it instead of instead of pushing it it would just like hold on the ball and push it against the side wall and eat the game just hold there then after a certain amount of milliseconds, release and do the same thing. It wouldn't go where it was supposed to go. It would just get trapped. So once it got in there it never left. Now with this game, you put it up in the server position, you put the whole play field up you can't mimic that game behavior because you cannot see that happening because the gravity is not going to work your way. It has to be down in the regular play position. How am I going to see that? So I have a nice new, nifty new phone I just got. I'm going to put it on video mode I put the camera in there facing up at where I think it's going to be there you go, and I recorded it a couple times it's like, okay, I'm seeing something okay, try again, move it a little more that's a really good idea and then I was watching it, it's like ah, there's the problem that freaking thing is not adjusted right and I adjusted it hit go, everything is happy with that game, that's all it was well those two things were all it was but yeah thank you that phone came in really handy for a video thing because hard to figure out what's going on unless you see it and it's hard to see without videotaping something like that so there's two for you george two darker dave fix-it specials right there okay i don't have i don't have a lot um i just gave you a lot no no You did real good.
    46:20
    It's just been like the pinball desert out there, like I said earlier. Not for me. No, no. That's why you're on the show. I've got plenty of stuff. Yeah. A lot of more. Okay. What else? Oh, I heard from a couple of people.
    46:38
    Me too. Who did you hear from? I heard from the person, Jake Danzig. the guy who did the Dukes of Hazzard game and he said Dave would not like my game I guess the Beast Lair Pop Bumper is a negative points if you hit that on the Dukes of Hazzard yeah I wouldn't like that you're correct I don't like that at all so he chimed in you're right with my little belt I don't remember. Ding, ding, ding. Oh, you didn't bring your bell. Did I bring my bell? Wait a minute. Let me see. Did I bring my bell?
    47:22
    Nope, sorry. No bell this time, guys. Hold on. I'll find a bell. You keep talking. And then we heard from Scott up in the Rochester area asking us if we were going to go to Pin Brew Fest in Ohio next month. Oh, okay. and I said no unfortunately we are not going I spoke for you as well because we had talked about this I don't know if we talked about this in a show but no I won't be going this year our next show or my next show is going to be Allentown I had quite a few people reach out to us and say hey are you going to Texas pinball show and I said no not going to TPF either so unfortunately it's Allentown in May for the next show looking forward to it I'm wondering if well we're talking about it we probably should give them a shout you can go out and look at the website I don't remember the exact dates I think it's the first weekend in April Pinbrew Fest in Girard, Ohio but I did bring something else up I think I talked to you about this but not in the podcast you know who Rob Burke is right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did we talk about him? Yeah, because he... Did we talk about him opening the arcade in Charlotte? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because his tech called, emailed me, wanted to get advice about shopping on games. Okay, we did talk. Sorry, folks. I forgot. And he has my beautiful cheetah I did with the... That's the game. With the new All-Star Playfield clear-coded by Bill Davis.
    49:00
    He is opening this summer the arcade called Past Times Arcade. so I like I like it's unfortunate I would I like his logo I like how he that logo there on there I like that it's very nice yeah so pastimesarcade.com where is it located somewhere in Gerard I heard it was an old supermarket okay so it's big it's gonna have a couple hundred machines it's just too bad would have been a lot easier if it was open yeah we're going to the show yeah Yeah, definitely. Two for one. Yeah, we got an eight plus. I do. An eight plus hour ride. Yeah, I do too. We got a long ride. So I don't know if we're going to have Keith on again. If we get to it, we get to it. If not, you know, we'll certainly promote it here. It's a great show. It is a great show. Good local show.
    49:52
    Obviously, it's got beer. Beer and pins go together really great. The people were real nice. Dave was not real happy with the game selection for the tournament. He thought there should be more classics. Yeah. I don't know if last weekend, did you catch any of the classics that was on last Saturday from Wisconsin? I did not. No, I did not. Oh, that was really good. Okay. What kind of games? What titles? Do you remember? Name something. Stargazer. Yes. Cook Silver. Yes. Wow. Okay. Oh, no. They had... Eight Ball Deluxe? Flash Gordon? Flash Gordon. Let's put it this way. It was great. Okay. They really... And they had a regular tournament, too. Six Million Dollar Man.
    50:35
    I think they did have that. Wow. They had a lot of stuff. I like that fraternity game. I don't remember. I didn't. Go out and look. It was really good. I'll see if I have my notes somewhere. I don't remember. I don't remember who made it to the end. I didn't write it down because I didn't think. Was Mr. Stone involved? No, he was not there.
    50:57
    He's a rapper. No, he was not there. No, but he did real well. He did real well in the classics. Oh, there you go. There you go.
    51:09
    Hmm. What else do I have? Oh. It was a good show, but recently, I'm going to butcher the guy's last name, but on Slam Tilt Podcast, they had the developer, the programmer for the new Keith Elwin game, the James Bond game. Yes. And he was talking about all the funny names that they named games. He had worked for Williams, Bali, I think back 30 years ago. And is Harley Davidson, who makes that game? Stern makes the game. Well, which one? I mean, Stern made it. Well, Sega made it. and then Stern took it over as a handoff and then Stern did the thing. Whoever he worked for, they used to call the game Hardly Any Fun.
    52:06
    Aww. I thought it was funny. I thought that's good. But then why would you sell that thing? Well, you should.
    52:15
    That guy can talk. What was his name? Pacheco? Something like that. Whoever he is. He can talk. I thought you could talk. You don't hold even a candle close to him. That guy had story after story. It was actually a very, it was their 200th episode. He was actually very, very good.
    52:40
    There was something else I wanted to share with you. How about 10 hours of Chinese Torture Bell? Let's see this one.
    52:48
    I already hate it. Shut it off. That is, you know what that is? It says 10 hours, Hotel Bell for 10 hours. Who would do that? Why? I guess because you can. But who would do that? Somebody had it. It has 7,000 views and 89 upvotes.
    53:04
    What is wrong with people? Here's a comment. I've been standing here for 10 hours trying to get someone to help me. The service here stinks.
    53:17
    Oh, boy. Okay. Where the heck is what I wanted to share with you? I had never heard this acronym before, and I wanted to ask you if you had heard of it.
    53:32
    I can, here's another comment. I can still hear it, and I turn it down to the volume and pause the video, and I can still hear it.
    53:39
    That tells you it's true torture. I'm going to use it again, George. This will be good. We'll keep that.
    53:48
    Oh, here we go. Here we go. Okay. so in the the same vein uh in talking about harley davidson i don't know where this came up but there was an acronym i was not familiar with Do you know what the acronym FTW means
    54:13
    There should be one fairly obvious. Four. No, that's not the four-letter word I was thinking of. Oh. Oh, okay.
    54:24
    Okay. For unlawful carnal knowledge. No, no, no. That's the F word. That's where it comes from. F the world is one, but that's not the first one. Forever two wheels.
    54:39
    Oh, it's a biker thing. I said Harley Davidson. That makes sense. Okay, yes. I get it. But I like this one, the non-biker one. We've got to start using this. For the win. Oh, for the win, yes.
    54:53
    FTW. So when we're playing pinball and you're just about to crush your opponent, FTW most people think you're saying F the world but free the whales for those wondering anyway you know I'm coming up short I'm digging for this time you're giving me crap for my 10 hour hotel bell I'm really digging deep here okay did you know this day is, you know, every day has like a theme. Every month has a theme these days. Well, right. Except for certain people. Today is National Clam Chowder Day. Of course it is. Now, I'll have to ask you. I grew up in New Jersey. So I am familiar with both types of clams. The Manhattan and the white one. My grandmother used to make homemade Manhattan. Which I happen to like. I never really ate New England clam chowder until I went to school and then finally moved here. So, I'm guessing you would call it like my father-in-law did, vegetable soup. Yeah, it's like V8 juice and some clams.
    56:18
    Some potatoes and maybe some onions. What did I know you were going to say? Okay. Get a celery stalk in there too? No.
    56:31
    Okay. I have something else. This plugs into, we had some listens on this, but not nearly enough. This day in 1964. I was born. No.
    56:46
    Muhammad Ali. Yeah. Then Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship. Hmm. Well, there you go.
    57:03
    Let's talk about Disney for a second. Why? Because they're brilliant. I don't know about that. They are in this instance. You'll understand why in a second. Okay. Enlighten me. So you've heard me and our audience has heard me speak of liking Mandalorian. the pinball machine and I had not until this morning ever seen I didn't even really know what Mandalorian was about, I'll be honest I just happened to like the game but I didn't know anything about the theme so what did Disney do last night Friday night they released on regular TV you know, rabbit ear TV non-cable don't need a subscription the first episode of Mandalorian now everybody else is like yeah George we know but for somebody who's never seen it was actually really good you know what they set the hook now I want to see the rest it was actually pretty good George Lucas knows he knows how to tell a story I don't think it's George Lucas is he doing it yeah it's all about Star Wars you know what it's about do you know what it's about Yeah, it's about Baby Yoda and trying to bring him back home to be Big Yoda. That was the final scene in Episode 1. He tries to get him to go to sleep. The Mandalorian is basically a bounty hunter. Right, like the bounty hunter from the original Star Wars. Right, and what struck me right away was he started talking, and I'm like, this is like Clint Eastwood.
    58:48
    Like a Wild West thing? just kind of the voice just the you know man a few words and then you know just ass kicking afterwards I mean there was this great I mean again I know probably most people who listen to us are like yeah George we already know the story but it was good I'm just going to say now I know what it's about I'm hooked I'm not going to buy Disney Plus because I went and looked they're only showing that episode on public TV it was because they got a brand new season starting in a week. Bring him in. And I was like, oh, my God. Whoever came up with this, you're very smart. So they hooked me. I found out something about Yoda.
    59:31
    Did you know that it's based on a demon from 1000 B.C. in Egypt? It looks the same as Yoda. And a 1300 A.D. in France. It's a demon thing. That's Yoda. Anyway, so there. So that trashes all your Disney stuff. Have fun with that one. It's on YouTube. The Real Dark Side of Master Yoda. Look that up on YouTube.
    59:55
    One of our not very popular episodes called The OG. Yeah, I think I came across someone. Yeah. Okay. Well, it was our episode and I played the Godfather theme and we talked about, you talked about a story of a game you had and the person worked for whitey bulger oh yeah so i'm gonna play that clip again because it's not too long because i thought it was a good story but is that it doesn't matter okay is that a true story yeah true story because i listened to it again and i'm like i'm not sure i believe him i'm thinking he's pulling my leg true story he said yeah how do you find me he said well uh someone related to whitey bulger knew you it's like huh what do you whitey bull let's explain because i've had to do this with some people around the world if you're not familiar whitey bulger was a i'll use the word gangster from boston uh he has since left us, but you can Google it, as they say, and look up who Whitey is if you're not familiar with him. Or DuckDuckGo is better. Use that. And the guy who knows Whitey Bode said, you've got to call Dr. Dave. Here's his number. Not even the website. He has my number. It's like, okay. I don't even know this guy. So you're not even familiar with the person that he got the number from? I have no idea who it is. Okay, so it got me to thinking about are you aware that Jersey Jack is going to come out with a Godfather pinball theme. Yeah, I heard about that. Okay.
    61:39
    I happen to like gangster type stuff. I like Cagney kind of gangster stuff. So let's talk about another pinball. The Sopranos. You ever work on one of those? I have. Yeah, a couple of them. You don't see many of those. Nope. Wasn't a very popular game. It is now. No, I know it is now. It wasn't back then. But they're not making any more of those. No. So I got hooked. And I know there's a movie, but forget the movie. The TV show is much better.
    62:11
    Do you know who Forrest Whitaker is, the actor? Black actor with the weird eye? Yeah, yeah, weird eye. Yeah, that guy. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. So he's got this. He takes your wits away. Forrest Whitaker. He's got your TV show. Whitaker.
    62:24
    Go ahead. Stop it. okay where's my bill I happen to be channel surfing and the Godfather of Harlem came up now there's a movie on that and I think it's with Denzel Washington and it was okay but the show if you like gangster movies you like the Sopranos you want to hear about the New York mob all the families is there violence going on? some hardcore stuff? I got hooked I binge watched like four seasons in like two weeks and there's like 12 episodes an hour long I was going crazy but it got me to thinking about the Godfather game that's going to come out and everybody's kind of saying why are they coming out with that I think it's I don't know how they're going to do it, but I think it's smart. Because I think there's a lot of people like me that watch a lot of these gangster movies.
    63:38
    You know, I was thinking about, you know, people have heard me talk about Joe Petsche and living next door to my grandfather. You know, his movies. Goodfellas, Casino. Haven't seen... Right, right. Not my thing. Oh, not your thing. I like a little bit of it. It gets too visceral. Especially when you put the guy's head in a vice and so forth. the eyes are popping out not a fan oh they did that too in Casino right but they also did that in The Godfather of Harlem wonderful yeah pass no thanks oh no they did some really the eyes are the winner of the soul you let that stuff in it stays in there for a while anyway but you know speaking of TV shows if you're done with your point on that one yeah I am you know we're hunting around for a show that's you know Hollywood stuff and TV stuff to this day They're always trying to sell you something, sell you an agenda. So many agendas they're trying to sell you. So I don't like to watch much TV, but it's very rare you can find something. I found something that actually was entertaining and good. It's Yellowstone. Oh, you played that one? Yeah. The biker clip, which is great. Right. Then after I do it with that one, it's like, what else did they get? Well, they also made 1883, which is like, because Yellowstone has seven generations of people on this ranch, 1883 is when they first started. That's the one with Harrison Ford? No, that's 1923. They made three things. They made three different things in this show.
    65:00
    1883, I think, is the best of them. They only made one season of them. It's only made one season. That thing is just like pure Americana. The people going across the country, Canastoga, Wagon, I can't say how you pronounce it. Calistoga, Canastoga, some of that. Calistoga.
    65:15
    All the hardship that they go through, great acting, great action, believable, no agenda being sold. just, the way it, when Hollywood, what it proves to me is Hollywood can make a great show with writing and acting if they want to. And they did. So much of it is pap and crap. But that was good. Yellowstone's good. 1923, it's good, but it's some agenda stuff going on there. It's very, it's darker. 1923 is a darker thing to it. I think that was another hook one where they gave the first one away. Oh yeah. And then it was like I need to get that. I'm like, okay. where's the other episodes? It's like, oh, you got to buy. Paramount Plus. Here's the deal. Paramount Plus, I did this the other day because I can get, I have a special circumstance where I can get some things. You have a special arrangement. I have a special arrangement where I can get some things. I know a guy kind of deal. But when I want to get the legit stuff and the really good quality, Paramount Plus did something seven days free. And then you can say cancel if you want to. It's like, great. So when I just hit the seven days free and watched the rest of 1883 and watched the rest of 1923, and then I said, see you later. I don't need the subscription anymore. So we just like binge watched through those. But those are the three. Then think about the pinball machine thing. That would be a great pinball machine to make is based on those three things. When was the last time a Western-themed pinball was made? A long time ago. Well, this is a hard sell. The guy, Taylor Sheridan, who made these shows, he was trying to pitch this show for the longest time to Hollywood. Hollywood said, no, the days of the Westerns are done. No one likes Westerns. That'll never sell. The guy said, trust me. People want a conservative show with conservative values. They want to have real men being real men. They're sick of the stuff from today's crap they're getting. They want something different. It's time. All right, we'll give it a shot. Now, most popular show ever on TV is Yellowstone. Five seasons of it. People can't get enough of it. They want more of it. Same thing. That's why they made 1883. That's why they made 1923. That would be a great theme. You just had, whatchamacallit, they just released, we're stupid, we're not thinking, the Cactus Canyon.
    67:29
    It's a Western thing. It is, but it's a one-off. I'm just saying. It's a remake of something that really wasn't with Bart or whatever.
    67:38
    I don't know. Are they doing the, speaking of the Western thing, what about Back to the Future? Are they doing a Back to the Future one? Isn't that coming out? I thought they were going to do that one too, again. everybody keeps saying it but who knows I think they should do the they write some of the 1883 and do the whole trilogy of that there's a lot of characters, a lot of good sound calls in it again, I've never seen it it's got to be one of those things people know about it if you ask any of your friends they'll say oh I've seen that show the Yellowstone I never have it's funny, I gave John Day on the way up to work on this Lethal Weapon 3 today. I'd like to give him a quiz. Yeah. I guess to see if I can, you know, stump the chumps kind of thing. It's all in fun, but I want to see, because he's, again, bright guy, trained electrical engineer, knows his stuff. So it's like, I want to see if my thought process of troubleshooting is the same as his. And so I gave him all the things, what's wrong with this game, and I said, okay, I figured out what this was. I want to see how you do with it. So here's all the stuff. what do you think? He started saying things and I go, yep, yep, you're right, yep I did all that, I did the same thing you were thinking, then he would go there and there yep, yep, nope, then I gave him some hints, I said solid state game tungsten contacts that I replaced again, didn't work I pressed on him, and I'm surprised he still didn't get it and I said, solid state game you know then I pulled back the whole curtain but look what you said with the feature lights on my game. The first thing you went to was connectors. I'm like, I don't know. I think it's back in the train even more. I don't think it's even at that point. Well, you had no lights at all. That's why I said, and I was thinking that too. I said connector because power connector because I said that game is all feature lights, the whole thing. I went and looked at the circuit. I'm like, wait a second. Okay, here's all the what do they call it? IRs?
    69:42
    No, what do they call them? not the feature lights. They have another name for it. GI. No, the other one. Not GI. The other one. You got feature lights, fuses, sounds like.
    69:59
    Switched illumination. Okay, GI. Well, that's GI. It's feature lights. Switched illumination. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, SI. GI, they're on all the time. Switched illumination means they come on and off. Right. Because of. Yeah, they're controlled. They call it switched illumination. So I go and look. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, this goes, oh, oh, it goes right to that rectifier. It's got to be that. Let's start there.
    70:23
    Nice. But I looked at the fuse. I'm like, usually when those go bad, it blows up the fuse. A bridge usually shorts. Right. This didn't short. It just shit the bed. Yeah, it shit the bed. They do go open. So I'm like, that's it. I pulled it out. I put the new one in. Off we went to the races. I'm like, okay, good. Yeah, we could do Mata Hari.
    70:47
    I mean, it's not much to it. I mean, I don't have any other ideas unless you want to just rest on this. I don't know. Well, we could do a little Mata Hari and maybe add that to this or not. But if we're not going to add it, we're leaving a tease to people right now that we're going to do it. So we can always cut it.
    71:10
    I don't know. Monohari is a good meat material actually speaking of Monohari though I have a customer who has a mint one he wants to sell so they don't go for a lot of money but he wants to get big money for it too and I don't know how to how much is big money over 5k not even close even for a CPR play field and everything done to it doesn't bring big money well what do they bring typically like a restored one $2,500. That's it? Really? It's not. Oh, boy. They made 16,000 of them.
    71:47
    Look at that. I bought mine for $400. No, $300. I think near me, right? In Worcester. Yeah. Yep. Years ago. Right. Yep.
    71:56
    I mean, it's just, I bought one for Jim Shanley down in the Cape. And his was in good shape out of Framingham, I think. I bought it somewhere by you.
    72:05
    I think I remember I got mine. His was $400 on eBay. and I put another maybe 150 it needed a lot of parts I got a couple of cheaper play files for that too right but again my game 1500, 2000 if you can find somebody it's a great game but a lot of people I don't think people pay up for it it's not a deep game I call it a meat and potato game I love playing mine but I'm just saying I don't think it gets as much love as people that game needs to be tuned just right some of the Maharas I play you can go the AB lane over and over and over again mine you have to really crank it to do that you might get two around if you're lucky two or three you can do it it's just you gotta really hit the you gotta hit the ramp the right way to get it high if it doesn't have enough oomph when it comes up and around it'll go through the center to go across rather than high because it's not going to it's still going to fall so if you don't get it up and around the arc it's never going to make it over if it's only, if you hit it and it goes up the middle, it's just going to come around and then hit and then it bangs against the rubber and it falls in. Mine works. It does work, but... I've tried it too. And I started watching it because of what you said, and I'm like, it's where you hit the ball. It's got nothing to do with the flipper strength or anything else. It's got to ride up that arc all the way. The angle of that arc coming out, you can adjust that metal exit point and entry point. You can adjust those too. Right, but then you don't want the flipper hop. Once you start playing with one thing, it takes... Well, I'm saying the entrance up top. I'm saying the top when it comes out of that A lane, out into the center of the playfield, back home. Yeah, I guess you could open it up, but... Yeah, I mess with that to try to get it right. It's so much fine-tuning to get that game. It's frustrating. Same thing with Stupid Flight 2000. I love the game. When I played that Flight 2000... There was a good one for sale on that recently. I saw it. It was all like home use only or whatever. It was pretty cheap money too. I mean, I didn't see the pictures, but I read about it. I forget where it was. It wasn't close. Wherever it was, it was. Someone found something in someone's basement. It was a gorgeous shape. It was really. What kind of money did they want for it?
    74:46
    Two, three? Yeah, it was. I don't even know if it was $2,000. Yeah, it's not bad. That's good for a nice shape like $2,000. I mean, I saw one for $2,800. I've seen one for over $5,000 recently. it depends, you know, it's like anything, you know, how fast do you want to move it? If you want to move it, you price it right, it's gone. Right. I don't think that one lasted. That might have been in Seattle. Wherever it was, it wasn't nearby. I'm like nah, it's really too bad. If it was nearby,
    75:17
    I would have bought it. Speaking of buying games, anybody out there looking for a project game, I have a Project Pinbot, a Project High Speed. Are you still recording? Yes. Oh, I didn't even know you were recording. Yeah, a Project Pinbot, Project High Speed, and a Project X's and O's. Oh, no, sorry, OXO, Williams game. The old one. EM. The EM, not the new one. Yeah, I need OXO. Not the caveman. Not the caveman, not that one. No, no, no. This is OXO, the Williams one.
    75:49
    So I get, that's what I get. So you're setting those loose? You don't want... Yeah, because I don't, I have so much other stuff there. I can kind of set those loose and get the quick nickel versus a slow dime for them. Okay. So those are out there in case anybody wants a project to work on. I get some for the right price. There you go. Just contact me at Dave at pinballdoctor.com. That's pinballdoctor.com, all spelled out.
    76:18
    What do you want to do? Let's have a beer and play some pinball. Okay. What do you think, audience? they're yelling yes. Please do.
    76:29
    So we're not going to record? Or we're going to record? We can record. Do you just want to just play and not record? It doesn't matter to me. I don't care. You don't have to record a whole bunch. You can record a little bit. I don't know. I have it on five ball. I know people are probably like, why? He's got five ball and he's got an extra ball for every 10,000 points. Yeah, right. No, I don't have that bad. I don't have it that bad. but um they can go on and on yeah you know maybe we just ended here but let me say the following we could have a beer now but grant technically you're right but i went 28 days up until today not having a beer or any alcohol. Sweet. Good job, George. So today's the 25th, but I stopped. I had a couple beers with you when we recorded. Yep. Had a couple beers on that Saturday with my buddy,
    77:33
    Jim. And that was the last time. So the 28th of... 28th? Is that the right day? Whatever that Saturday was. Last Saturday of January is the last time I had a beer.
    77:47
    So I'll have my first beer today with you. Awesome. But it's not the 28th. I didn't make it all the way to the 28th. But you know what? You're close enough. You're going to break the seal. That's what Jenna said. And you know what? We break the rules anyway. So here's another one. Another rule breaker. You know, and here's something. Now, we were just talking about Yellowstone, right? I open up my Google, and what's on there? Yellowstone. That thing was listening. Of course it was. Yeah, listening. Bastards.
    78:16
    I got a darn you phone. I don't know. These are a blessing and a curse, these stupid phones. I don't know. Bring back 1803. Do you have any thoughts on the whole balloon thing that went on?
    78:32
    I do. I got some thoughts. I know there was. I got some thoughts. Did you know that there was another sighting?
    78:40
    Of balloons? Yeah. Yeah, I know. No, no, no, no, no. Not the ones that were in the news. This one's real recent. Okay. It was flying over Los Angeles. Yeah.
    78:52
    Did you hear about this? No. Big, big balloon. Okay. And it was singing. Oh, that's sweet. What was it singing? Rihanna? Umbrella or something? No. Or Lizzo?
    79:05
    I knew you would get it. Could that make sense? Lizzo's a big balloon. She's singing. Fantastic. Now, I did not set him up for that. He did that all on his own. He set the table and I sat down and ate. I knew you'd get it.
    79:28
    I like that, George. That's good. I don't think you need to tell me anything else. I think we'll just leave it at that. Leave it at that? Okay. That's fine.
    79:38
    Here's something. You remember that, it's kind of weird, that, 99 Love Balloons Fly by that song. It's kind of weird that Why do you do this to me? I'm stealing your thunder? You know about that? You might be stealing the outro song today. Oh, alright, well, okay. I have some others.
    79:58
    Alright. I could do the German version. Yeah, that one there. Yeah, that one. You know, I learned all my German from watching Hogan's Heroes. I feel like if I ever come into enemy territory... I thought you were going to say by playing Mata Hari. No, no. My honor be true. That's what the little thing says in German there, on her little knife. My honor be true or something. Right. No, all you need to do, if you're behind enemy lines in Germany in World War II, just because you speak with a German accent, no problem. They'll pass you right through. I learned it from Hogan's Heroes. Speak with a German accent. I am Colonel Hogan Meyer. This is my friend Fritz Meyer. Okay. Somehow that passed. I'm not really a dumb officer, but they got through it. Good for them. I thought it was a funny show. It was a great show. I still like watching that show. We put it on, go to sleep at night with that show.
    80:56
    Who knew? Okay. Beer time. Beer steins. What do you want? You don want what you brought me No No Once you buy a prize it yours to keep George Well you have the choice of a Big Hoppy Big Hoppy always a good one I only have one of those. Okay. Something I've never tried, Castle Island Fiver, whatever that is.
    81:20
    I think it probably says Fiver. Like, give me a Fiver. Oh, Fiver. Yeah. Oh, what did I say? You said Fiver.
    81:27
    Potato, potato. And then we got some equilibrium beers, and then we got something from Kettlehead. Dream State. I think we might have had one of these at one point in time. Double IPA. So, that's what your choices are. You want to split a Kettlehead? Yeah, we can have this. Yeah, let's split that one. Let's try that. At the starters. You want to pop the top and do the honor since you're breaking the seal here? You can do it. Go ahead.
    81:58
    Go ahead. three two one roll them ah there we go okay here you go you get the fancy glass i get the weird looking glass oh no let's talk about that yeah yeah you know what you said right yeah What you want, the crab cake thing? No, no, no, no.
    82:28
    The song you were just singing. Yeah. And you said in the last show. That's not what you said. What'd I say? Michelob Light. Oh, both low and brow. I just realized. We get the two dots over here. I realized it afterwards. All these. Everybody's going. It's low and brow, you dopes.
    82:44
    Hey, you have a couple of beers and try to remember. It's a quiz. We knew it all along. So let's talk about our friend Grant. All right. so grant we're talking about grant so grant went to darwin australia yes and i went and looked at darwin australia lots of birds there i think there's a lot of wildlife and turtles but there were two things no there was more than two things okay first thing is did you go see them feed the crocodile. They don't have alligators there. They've got crocodiles, right? I'm not sure what the difference is between those two. Well, whatever. Whatever they are. There is a difference.
    83:28
    Anyway, whatever the big thing with chomping teeth. The evil thing. They take people out to wherever these things hang out. Give them a chicken, right? They put it on a stick. A stick with a string or a rope. and hang it over the boat, and the crocodile goes completely out of the water, these 8- and 10-foot crocodiles, to grab the chicken or whatever's on the end of the thing. And then grab the people. So that looked really cool. So that had me right away. I'm like, okay. You going to do that sometime? You going to do that, George? I think I could go there for like a couple months. There's so much fun stuff to do there. So this was the other cool thing. Like Danger Island. So they have something they call a mud crab.
    84:19
    So I'm looking at this mud crab, and I'm like, damn, if that thing doesn't look like a Maryland or a Jersey blue claw, call me a freaking liar. But those things, you don't have crabs up here.
    84:37
    We do, but they're kind of reddish. They're not the blue thing, so they're more of a red crab. They're not the Jersey blue claws. Are they kind of big? Are they big Jersey blue collars? Yeah, well, you can't take them unless you're sick. They can be when they're molting. But anyway, so they had that. That was cool. Here was the really cool thing. It was expensive, but man, it looked so cool.
    84:57
    Helicopter bar hopping. They take you to... I mean, okay, go on. So they pick you up on a beach. They fly you to some remote bar somewhere where you can't get there. I like it. Sounds good. That's what I said. I'm like, that looks like a lot of fun. Beyond that, I mean, I saw some nice pictures, but those were the three things I saw. That would keep me occupied for a while. Yeah, sure. Especially if we go to the bar and they had the alligators with the stick and the thing, and that was the entertainment. Can you be drunk and kind of feed the alligators? I don't know if that's going to go too well. If they want to call you Stumpy, I guess.
    85:36
    Wow. Why does that man have no appendage from the elbow down? well he was the crocodile feeder up until recently he has to retire unfortunately so I couldn't not forget Grant I had to go look I'm like Darwin I'm thinking right wasn't it snowing out wasn't Darwin like Charles Darwin wasn't he like the guy who cataloged all the different animals on the island named from him Galapagos Island. It's named by him, I think. That's the guy. Right, but this is Darwin, Australia. It's nowhere near the Galapagos Island. But he must have visited there and wrote his book. I don't know. Again, everybody in Australia is laughing at us. Everybody in the United States just tuned us out. And everybody else is just scratching their head.
    86:32
    Maybe it is 100. We can call this the 100. We can. And we want to get rid of it. And be done with it. We can call it the 100. We'll see. Yeah, but everybody has such high – why do people – You put pressure on yourself, I think.
    86:47
    Who's putting the pressure on it for the 100? I think the last episode we did, it was really the kicked ass, that 3R1. That thing got such high reviews, and that should be our 100, even though it's 99. Maybe it is 100. So what do you want me to do? Rename it and put that 100 in the one we released today and make it 99? Yeah, you should. And screw everybody up? Yeah, you should do that. But people will miss this one. They've got to try to go to the latest one and be 100, won't it? Or no, it will go out of order. I don't know how it would list it like that. I don't really care. At this point, you know what? I just want to move on. Right.
    87:19
    But we're breaking again the rule. We could go downstairs and we could play Mata Hari. We probably should record it, but I don't really feel like recording it. Oh, we don't have to record it then. Because the game is so simple, there really isn't much to the game. So what are we going to talk about? Okay, Jim Patla did the game. Great. David Christensen did the art. Great. Okay, we know that. Okay. You've also heard a million times that we put the blinking bulb in the boob on the back glass. Everybody gets a laugh. Well, what about the snake thing I did? I put it behind my snakes. Okay, well, you did that on yours, but, yeah, that's a great ad. Okay, great. Okay, so it's got four pop bumpers. It's got a... Three or four chimes. I think they have four chimes, right? Yeah, four chimes. It's got the hole up top. Saucer. The saucer, right. It's got the two lanes, A-B lanes. Great. Special software I have in mind that you don't have in your game, though. What do you got?
    88:16
    You get the drop targets down the first time on the ball, ball one or whatever. You get 50,000 points. Right. It's just like the regular game. You drop them the second time, you get 100,000 points. Because I turned the specials into 50,000 points. I like getting the extra ball. You will get the extra ball. Well, for special? No. First time down on my game is 50,000 points. Second time down is a free ball. Oh, you turn your game into all extra balls for everything. That's why. Oh, it's high score. We've had this. We have to go through this again. That's okay. I'm saying what Bally did back in this time frame, which is probably. I mean, I have mine on five balls. Okay. Why? Because I can. Right. Okay. It's my game.
    88:57
    You know, I'm not holding a tournament on it. What's George is saying is his games are handicapable. That's what he's trying to say. okay look we're gonna end we're gonna end this you don't have to do this but i'm gonna ask you the question anyway so i'm not gonna go to mike's dinner party unfortunately that is in two weeks yes you are going and he's got another new game that he didn't have the last time we were at his house right the galaxy correct that john did yes John Day.
    89:36
    Now, I'm guessing he put the Arduino in that thing. Are you going to talk to John about that? Yeah, we can do that. I can do a little something with him. Sure. I mean, we keep teasing this. John wants us over, so John's any time.
    89:50
    Maybe that's the next show. Unless you've got something... Between John and me talking tech, maybe the rest of us will shut up. We'll go four hours. That's fine. I'd rather have you carry it Because, like I said, we're in the dead of winter desert time here in pinball land.
    90:10
    You've heard me. I'm struggling today to come up with things to talk about. I'm talking about woodpeckers. I'm talking about flying balloons over Los Angeles. I mean, come on.
    90:22
    I'm digging deep. When I gave him that quiz today. Probably should have had a couple more of these before we started. It might have been a better show. we did fine when I gave him that quiz today over and over I kept giving him hints and hints when I finally pulled back the curtain and told him what it was low voltage fliptronic needs low voltage contacts he said oh that's a good one thanks for sharing so I mean like a light bulb went off in his head too because when I just said that what it was because a lot of these games they don't use these low voltage contacts for a flipper button they use the high tungsten contact, high amperage ones, or they use an opto. And you can't find these flipper switches. Only Marco sells them. No one else has them. You can't get them at Pinball Life, can't get them at Pinball Resource. I just bought, from Marco,
    91:15
    laying guides with the Bali insignia on them. Those are a Steve Young product. I thought Steve Young used those. No? Maybe not. Well, go ahead. Alright. I bought them because they had them. Red or yellow or white? Red ones. I wanted the white ones as an extra set for hotdogging. Order them. Call me back or send me a text. We don't have them. I'm like, oh. But also. That's clear. Also on Centaur, I'm looking at the game. We talked about this earlier. And all my lane guides are all chewed up. Are those a clear red? They're clear. They call them translucent red. Right. They're a little foggy, but they sell the duels, but they don't sell singles. So I went through, right, but I went through Georgie's amazing boxes of stuff. I have like five of them. I'm like, wow, where the hell did I buy these? Because they don't sell them anymore. So I must have bought them when I saw them at one point in time and just stowed them away. So, you know, I tend to do that with a lot of stuff. Just like stored away for a long time. I look at it this way. When it comes time to sell the game,
    92:34
    you can put a goodie bag together and say, hey, you want a goodie bag with all the crap that if it breaks, you got it? You don't have to go hunt for it? Here, if not, I'm going to sell it online because somebody will buy this because it's got all kinds of stuff in it that you can't buy anymore.
    92:51
    So, that's what... Notice how nice and shiny it is. I'm throwing the centaur picture right now at what I'm doing. Yeah, it looks real nice. Those have been buffed. I buffed every one of those metal things to a shiny metal, beautiful mirror finish. This guy wanted me to go crazy in this game. That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm making this. He said, I want this game to be your showpiece game. I want it to be your creme de la creme. So speaking about pressure for our 100th episode, there's pressure to get this game done. I got pressure to make this game super nice. So that's why I'm spending so much time on it, to get it really sweet.
    93:21
    So it's going to come out great. And I can't wait to play test it. And I'm going to keep it for a little while to play test as well. so come up with that maybe we can actually we can do Centaur part 2 it's been a while since Centaur we did the part 2 for Stargazer right how'd that work how'd that go numbers are just okay yeah okay well we can do it as part of another game I mean we did all these it's gonna be four years in June four years we started this podcast in 2019 no yeah oh no you think you're right don't yeah june june of 19 our first episode was just before um pintastic oh let's talk about that for a quick minute yeah any news with pintastic anything not really i was actually trying to get a prior hotel room out of them and i have not heard back so I'm not sure where that is I don't know what they're going to do but I was, I don't know, looking for something we'll see maybe they'll hear this and maybe they'll reach out to me I also was trying to find out about maybe doing some kind of little classic tournament thing I was trying to throw that out there to some people but I've not heard back from them either so, I don't know and I gotta still think about if I'm going to do that or not But that's something that's – there's a little teaser there. A little teaser. Yeah. I'm not sure it's going to work out or not. Maybe it will. I don't know.
    94:57
    There's a lot of moving parts in that. Yeah. And it needs some expertise thrown in instead of just – I'm giving it a less than 50% chance. Yeah, I think so too. It's a lot of freaking hell of a lot of work. And if it's not there, it's not going to work. I am thinking of bringing a game this time though. I was thinking to bring one too to Allentown oh no no that's too far I'm thinking of bringing I'd like to get in early like on a Thursday and get in free as a bonus too and bring a game for the tournament they have there because Levi, Crazy Levi runs a tournament and I bring an old school game a nice one I'm thinking of bringing a pinball pool and I don't You talked to him about it? No, yeah. Oh, so he's going to hear about this through the grapevine. Yeah, he's going to hear about it. But since this pinball pool it's in awesome shape and I don't mind putting it out there because I have a play field protector on it so it'll be fine. It's in gorgeous playing shape.
    96:04
    But I'd like to have an internum if it was putting out on the free play floor because any Tom, Dick and Harry and little snot-nosed kid kind of hit it. I don't know. I just with my games that are restored and so forth, I just want it more protected. I was thinking of re-uiting the game to Pintastic. For free play or for the tournament or what? Yeah, free play. I don't think Jim Swain would want an outside game in his tournament. I don't know. I think he's controlling that, I'm pretty sure. Well, I'm still pondering the booth thing. That's what Dave and Jerry are doing in Allentown. They've got a booth this time. Right, but I'm saying... But the problem with the booth is you're tied to the booth. No, not... How? How do you leave the booth? All your stuff sits, and we can swipe it. Put a cover over it? Bring a two-wheeler, wheel it back to the room, and shut down and open up again when you feel like it.
    96:59
    I was thinking it would be good if they would allow us to have a couple games. Hmm. Then we could have our own little tournament. Our own little tournament. Yeah, I see. Now that's something. well you don't even have to have high score you could have do whatever you have to hit down the target bank four times or you know whatever the game is come up with something alternative that could be fun I wonder you know you could even do how about this you could do a high score tournament you put your money you put 50 cents in the game or whatever it is quarter up or whatever it is. Winner takes all? Winner takes all. Yeah, but then you get into the gambling thing. It's not gambling. It's a game of skill. Roger Sharp proved that in a video. That movie's coming up, by the way. Or maybe it's already out. It's already out. Okay, well, I just saw a preview. I don't know why. He had someone else play him. He said, oh, I'd like that guy to play me. Did that guy have a really nice mustache? Yeah, he had the same kind of dumb mustache.
    98:09
    It's not 1883, Roger, okay? It reminds me of... Didn't Mark Spitz have that kind of... You know who I'm talking about? Yeah, Mark Spitz. Didn't he have that kind of mustache?
    98:21
    Sort of? It's like a porno mustache. Yeah. Maybe I'm thinking more... No, that's a little more Dirk Diggler. No, that's a little different. This guy is like from Tombstone. Is that Mark Wahlberg? Yes, it is.
    98:35
    We just started drinking. Yeah, I... I'm well aware of that. This is where the show always gets good. This is what goes off the rails more than a train in Ohio. Hold on. Bang. How about that? Bazinga.
    98:54
    You've gone too far now. No. I don't even want to go down that road because I'm going to say something that will piss some people off. Or down that rail.
    99:07
    You can't go there. You got to cut that one. No, I'm not going there. It's too soon. It's too soon, folks.
    99:18
    But you know the edgy people... It's not too soon. It's three weeks already. It's true. But we're going to milk this thing as long as we can.
    99:26
    They will. It's fear. They're going to milk the fear as long as they can. I'll just say this. Practice what you preach.
    99:35
    Brandon? I'm not putting any names all I'm saying is if you believe in the environment walk the walk and talk the talk don't turn a blind eye that's all I'm saying are you saying some people are hypocritical George? are you trying to say that would be a very mild statement I heard he's a nice man that's what I keep hearing and he does not have mean tweets so that's good I wasn't going to say it but now I am so I pulled this so you've heard I don't like dishonor president but I'm going to say the following what president is that? just listen for a minute and shut up give it to me so So, didn't he have the famous line of the pony soldier, right? Yeah, you dog-faced pony soldier. Okay, well, he's got a new one. He does? Oh, yeah. Oh, good. I like his new material. It's awesome. Can't wait to hear it. Okay, so. He's the best. Have you ever heard of a one-horse pony?
    100:53
    With macaroni in the hair? Wait, wait, wait. No, not really. What is the phrase? A one-horse pony. No, no, no. I messed you up. Yeah, you did. It's a one-trick pony. Oh, no, not according to our president.
    101:07
    Maybe this is newspeak. Let's see. It's a one-horse pony. Let's see what he says here. Let me see. Maybe I'm thinking wrong the whole time. Maybe it's not one-trick pony.
    101:19
    Maybe it's something else. Come on, you stupid. Thank you so much. Thank you. Merry Christmas, everybody. Thank you. It's actually Mother's Day. Oh, boy. Yeah, we've got to wait for the setup.
    101:45
    You're a one-horse pony. I'd say a one-horse pony. Does a horse ride a pony or a pony rides a horse? Just think about that for a second. You're a one-horse pony.
    101:54
    Wow. I don't even understand it. I don't think even he understands it. You know what? Maybe he needs a nap. So the pony has a horse? The pony has a horse. Yeah, it makes total sense. Again, if this is our 100. I think it should be our 100. My favorite line was the Kamala Harris line that we used. But there's so many. Deplane.
    102:16
    Sorry, that's still funny. But she was into it this week. Do you know what she... This week she was into Venn diagrams. I think I saw that. That was good. She gets excited about things. She's very helpful. She's excited about school buses. She's very excited about school buses too. I saw that. Then Diagram. You know what actually she is? When's she going to get excited about the border? I can't use any of this. Yeah, you can. I can't. Oh, be brave, George. No. Be cutting edge. No. You can do it. How about cut? People are expecting this from us. No, they're not. They know we're a conservative show. No, they don't. They know by now. It's four years in the running. They accused me of being on the fence. Yeah. Please.
    102:53
    They did. You just hide it better. I kind of wear it on my sleeve more. even though I drop breadcrumbs all the time we're done with this we're done with the breadcrumbs we're done with feeding the birds this has been fun I tried this about 20 minutes ago this has been whatever number podcast the classic pinball podcast my name is George his name is Dave hopefully we'll do this again soon I'm going away again don't go George where are you going? I've got to go watch the dog. You've always watched the dog. Well. And you don't even like dogs. Now I have to go to Virginia to watch the damn freaking dog. You don't even like dogs. That's the funny part. No, I like him. No, you didn't like him at first. You said, I don't like dogs. You know. I don't like owning a dog. Now it's like owning a dog and I don't own a dog. Your son keeps saying, here, take care of this. Right. Well, he's a little busy.
    103:52
    Take care of this dog. Take care of this dog while I watch another dog. Come to Virginia and take care of the dog for a week. But I'm going to go to a really cool bar slash pinball hall. That sounds good. Well, we talked about it in the last show. Ocelot. I need to go to a place. And I'm going to put it out there again. Folks, if you live in Virginia and you want to get together, have them over.
    104:17
    Yeah, you can have me over. We can meet at an ocelot. We can do almost anything. But I don't know anybody down there. So I'm hoping there's more than just this place to go play pinball. And I would think there's a little more of a conservative bent down there, George, than up in Northeast. No? Really? Bible Belt? I think it was a little more of that. Not so much? I don't know. I don't know what it is. Okay. I'm still discovering. My name is Dave, Dr. Dave, and this is the Classic Pinball Podcast. Thank you for listening. The Classic Pinball Podcast, numeral one at gmail.com. Be bold. be brave and email me because you are I can't even say that George be nice to people be nice, bad George, be nice down, down boy they're just afraid he doesn't bite unless he's in a bad mood then he might the only people that email me are the people who have emailed me in the past and we've already made fun of them.
    105:28
    And some of them like it and some of them don't. Maybe our audience is so old they don't know how to email George. Maybe they like to write letters.
    105:36
    We do skew old. Not that old. Maybe they're all Luddites, George. Oh, well. Anyway, this is a great episode. Yeah. Oh, sure it is. That's what it is. I'm going to be cutting like most of it out. We're slashing and dashing. Okay, we're done. We're having another beer. We're done. Cut.
    106:22
    Thank you. Opens up one eager eye, focusing it on the sky. Lansing on the Red Balloon's go-bye. Chief, may I have a riddle for you? What has big round shape, carries man and dog and flies? May give up. What has big round shape, carries man and dog and flies? You may not know either, but there it is.
    107:27
    It is balloon! Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron besides. I heard that. Thanks for the compliment. That was a good job This is a crappy job It's crappy and it's boring Hasta la vista, baby