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Episode 81 – Keith or Steve?

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·held·Mar 8, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Tournament recaps, Keith Elwin interview teases, and pinball hardware complaints.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast 81 covers recent tournament results from Louisville Arcade Expo and Vegas (Nationals, Women's World Championship, Pin Masters), with detailed recaps of competitive matches. The hosts discuss game strategies, feature a returning guest Steven Bowden, and cover industry news including Keith Elwin interview hints, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle updates, Star Wars accessories pricing, and complaints about podcast hosting reliability and LED bulb quality in pinball machines.

Key Claims

  • Raymond Davidson won the Nationals tournament and has been winning everything since winning the IPA

    high confidence · Host Ron Hallett, confirmed by episode content

  • Adam Becker won the Pin Masters (golf format) despite stating he hates pin golf

    high confidence · Host discussing Vegas tournament results

  • Karyn Kaiser beat Hannah Hatch in the Women's World Championship finals

    high confidence · Host announcing tournament results

  • Star Wars R2-D2 topper costs $500, shooter knobs cost $80

    high confidence · Discussed from This Week in Pinball news segment

  • Podcast hosting service Podcastly forgot to renew their domain on President's Day and let SSL certificate expire on Feb 28

    high confidence · Ron Hallett explaining technical issues affecting podcast distribution

  • Pirates of the Caribbean (Jersey Jack) costs $9,500 and is designed primarily for home collectors, not operators

    high confidence · Steven Bowden discussing Jersey Jack's market positioning

  • LED bulbs sold by unnamed vendor had 10% failure rate and exhibit ghosting/loose connection issues

    medium confidence · Bruce Nightingale recounting problems with LED installation on Spider-Man machine

  • Stern games consistently use problematic wedge-style sockets in in-lane area, causing ball contact issues

    medium confidence · Ron Hallett criticizing Stern design choice, comparing to Williams bayonet-style sockets

Notable Quotes

  • “He is a man on a mission. Well, he's a man on a mission. It's like he won the IPA and now he wins everything.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~15:00 — Commenting on Raymond Davidson's tournament dominance

  • “I hate pin golf.”

    Adam Becker @ ~20:00 — Ironic statement from winner of Pin Masters golf format tournament

  • “Mothra was the pioneer, the first woman monster. Really? Wow. It's a female monster, but her powers are all she did was fly.”

    Bruce Nightingale and Ron Hallett @ ~2:00 — Humorous opening discussion about Godzilla vs. Mothra before pivoting to pinball

  • “If you read between the lines, if you're paying attention... he didn't just dip out when you realized the Slam Tilt Podcast was just not going to straight disrespect a man.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~45:00 — Teasing details about Keith Elwin's unrevealed game based on interview clues

  • “LEDs fucking suck... At least six or seven didn't work out of the bag. Now if I had a place where I was selling 10% of my product was bad, I'd be highly embarrassed.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~65:00 — Venting about LED bulb quality issues, product reliability complaint

  • “Just, stop using the fucking wedge-style sockets in the in-lane area... Go back to the bayonet style. Williams knew this.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~70:00 — Criticizing Stern's repeated design choice causing recurring failures

  • “Jersey Jack games, they're built for a certain market, specifically the home market... Most operators are probably not going to be laying down 9K for a Pirates.”

    Steven Bowden @ ~90:00 — Market segmentation analysis of high-end premium machines

  • “You have to start in high school. Pick your lane, learn that subject... Then once you can use the button, pick someone else... College level is stacking multiballs.”

    Steven Bowden — Educational analogy for learning Pirates of the Caribbean rule complexity

Entities

Slam Tilt PodcastorganizationRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonSteven BowdenpersonRaymond DavidsonpersonKarl DeAngelopersonColin MacAlpinepersonAdam Beckerperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Multiple major tournaments occurred simultaneously: Louisville Arcade Expo and Vegas events (Nationals, Women's World Championship, Pin Masters), with extensive streaming coverage.

    high · Extended discussion of tournament results, final four placements, specific game selections, and streaming logistics across both venues.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Raymond Davidson showing exceptional competitive performance, winning both IPA and Nationals tournament, indicating momentum in competitive meta.

    high · Hosts emphasize 'He is a man on a mission' and 'wins everything' after IPA victory.

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Pirates of the Caribbean exhibits extreme rule complexity with 22 characters, 5 multiballs per lane section, potential for all 30 modes concurrent with multiball, requiring extensive practice hierarchy.

    high · Extended discussion using education analogy (elementary/middle/high school/medical school progression) to explain learning curve, comparison to Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit as prerequisite games.

  • ?

    product_concern: LED bulbs from unnamed vendor show ~10% failure rate out of box, ghosting issues, and loose socket problems. Hosts advocate returning to incandescent bulbs.

    high · Bruce Nightingale detailed experience installing 60 LEDs with 6-7 failures, ghosting on newer Stern, comparison of LED vendor success rates to business standards.

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern consistently uses problematic wedge-style sockets in in-lane area, causing ball contact issues on every Stern machine. Williams experimented with but abandoned this design.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.373

0:00
Now think about this. We are all mirrors for each other, but seldom do we reflect back the truth. Now look at the person across from you and tell them what you really feel inside. I think you're bright, you have a lot of energy, but I feel you hold yourself back, behind walls. Uh, I think you fuck. And uh, uh, uh, uh, let's see, um, you look really old. Um, I'm serious, you should look at yourself. You can do something about that.
0:43
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Chill Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host Ron Hallett, here with my co-host Bruce Nightingale.
0:53
Is it the future or the past still? We're in the present. Ah, damn it. And this is episode 81. Godzilla vs. Mothra. Technically it's Mothra vs. Godzilla. Oh, so Mothra's got the... Yeah, got the top billing. Mothra's lame. Mothra's lame, I'm sorry. Although, you know, all the talking women in pinball, Mothra was the pioneer, the first woman monster. Really? Wow. It's a female monster, but her powers are all she did was fly. And like, she had like this web stuff that came out and would go all over Godzilla and it was just, I was never a fan. Like you had the little twin women there that had this thing for like an hour to wake her up. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God we have a guest. We have a guest. Thank God. Wow. You don't want to talk about Godzilla anymore. The No, God, I know nothing about the Godzilla movies. This is all wrong. Welcome, Steve Bowden, returning to the podcast. Hello, hello, I'm from the future, or the past, or somewhere, I don't know. I don't know where I am. Does Steve know about Godzilla movies at all? Nah. Fail. Oh well. Only through osmosis, through like, you know, maybe, you know, misty episodes or something. There you go. Did they do the... Yup. I'll tell you, I watched the widescreen, the actual Japanese versions, and they are way better. Okay. With the subtitles, because I think a lot of them just had some of the worst dubbing. Most of my knowledge of Godzilla comes from the pinball game, sad to say. Oh, which is off like the fake Godzilla. Yeah. Yeah, the fake, fake Godzilla. The fake Godzilla. Oh, that was terrible. Terrible. So, welcome to the podcast. We're here to talk some tournament pinball. Oh no, are we? No one wants to talk about competitive pinball. Nobody. But we will. Okay. There were two major tournaments this weekend. And the streams ran really long. Because one of these tournaments was in Vegas. So they streamed till like 2 in the morning. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, and I watched the whole thing. That's pretty sad. That is. Thank you Bruce. No problem sir. So we had the Louisville Arcade Expo. Right, the reason why I saw none of the other tournaments. And then we had the one in Vegas which was multiple events. We had the Nationals, which was where all the state champions go at it. And we had the Women's World Championship. And then we had the Pin Masters.
@ ~110:00
Keith Elwin
person
Karyn Kaiserperson
Hannah Hatchperson
Andy Rosehoodperson
Chris Basslerperson
Louisville Arcade Expoevent
Vegas Nationalsevent
Women's World Championshipevent
Pin Mastersevent
Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castlegame
Pirates of the Caribbeangame
Star Warsgame
Spooky Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
This Week in Pinballorganization
Keith P. Johnsonperson

high · Ron Hallett detailed observation: 'ball closest to flipper in in-lane guide always is flaky, goes in and out on every fucking stern,' notes Avengers also had wedge failures in backboard, advocates return to bayonet style.

  • ?

    community_signal: Podcast hosting infrastructure (Podcastly) experiencing repeated failures: domain expiration on President's Day, SSL certificate expiration Feb 28, poor customer support requiring repeated ticket submissions.

    high · Ron Hallett detailed technical failures and workaround ('you just always have to open a new ticket because they will respond to that'), explicitly stated 'you guys fucking suck.'

  • $

    market_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball games positioned as premium home collector products at $9,500+, not for location operators except major markets like NYC.

    high · Steven Bowden: 'Jersey Jack games, they're built for a certain market, specifically the home market... Most operators are probably not going to be laying down 9K for a Pirates.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Keith Elwin has unrevealed new game in development with rule set hints embedded in recent Slam Tilt Podcast interview; hosts explicitly avoided asking about game but claim readable hints exist 'if you read between the lines.'

    medium · Hosts state 'we kind of did' discuss the game without directly asking, 'If you're paying attention' you can infer rule structure, hints apparently strong enough that Elwin didn't 'dip out.'

  • ?

    announcement: Star Wars pinball accessories announced: R2-D2 topper with moving head feature ($500), Stormtrooper shooter knob ($80), fitting all Star Wars models.

    high · Listed in This Week in Pinball news segment with specific pricing and feature details.

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle (Spooky Pinball) reveal expected within ~13 days of episode, incremental hints being released via Spooky Pinball Podcast.

    high · Ron Hallett: 'Texas, baby... you got, what, 13 days?' expressing fatigue with hints and anticipating full reveal.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts expressing frustration with podcast hosting infrastructure reliability and LED product quality, indicating broader dissatisfaction with vendor reliability in pinball ecosystem.

    high · Explicit venting: 'LEDs fucking suck,' 'you guys fucking suck' (to hosting service), detailed complaints about failure rates and design flaws.

  • ?

    content_signal: Keith Elwin finally secured for Slam Tilt Podcast interview after ~8-10 years of attempted contact; hosts celebrate as major accomplishment.

    high · Hosts reference 'badgering him all these years,' 'Decades,' first meeting in 2004, episode production completing this significant goal.

    • 3:44
    Which is basically a golf format. Right. Like high stakes. The tradition continues. Yes. It's the only space. How much, is it close to like a hundred dollars or something to get into that? Somewhat. Plus you're already in Vegas. So how much have you already spent to get over there? That's true. Woohoo! Not just that. So we have we have the Papa Crew are streaming the Louisville Arcade Expo and then we had Karl, Karl DeAngelo, and his set up was at Vegas. I hope one of these days Karl will get in front of the green screen and actually do like the weather. Just out of nowhere. Exactly, that'd be funnier than hell. He just comes up and says, your tournament weather for today in Vegas is... and then he just throws up like some photoshops of whirlwind or something or like if meteors fall from the sky back to you so our women's champion was uh karen k-a-r-y-n kaiser she beat uh hannah hatch in the women's world championship finals congratulations karen The Winner of the Nationals is our own friend of the show, Raymond Davidson. He wins again. It's like he won the IPA and now he wins everything. He is a man on a mission. Well, he's a man on a mission. And of course, second place is Karl DeAngelo, friend of the show. Hi, Karl. And third was Colin McAlpine, and we need to get him on. Have you been contacting him? I actually contacted him a couple of times and he never got back to me. Come on, Colin. Prove me wrong. We are the podcast of champions. Yes, we are the only ones that talk about professional pinball like this. And then we had the pinmasters, which in the finals, and I'm sure Jeff Teolis would love to say this, you had three Pinburgh winners and Josh Sharp. Wow. I was looking at that, it's like, damn, you know, I'm sure Jeff Teolis would say something about this. You would think. And the winner was Adam Becker. He did. Who said he hates pin golf. That's what he said, I hate pin golf. Yeah, that ruled. So that went on and they were, it was cool because they were streaming. They would have two rounds per day for the golf. They had rounds on, I think it was Friday. They'd have one at one o'clock and one at six o'clock and they play only nine holes, thank God. You can only imagine playing 18 holes in one day. That's what I was about to say, it's not 18, is it? No, no. And then Saturday they would play another nine at one o'clock and six o'clock. So that's your front nine and your back nine. And then the playoffs were on Sunday. Now Louisville, they did the deal where they did some of the finals around Saturday night. Right. Very important. Very, very, because people got flights to catch on Sunday. I mean that's part of that. At least you can get a round done so that, you know, on Sunday when you kind of have to leave when the show is over, or close to it, you know, you have that first round done. Which of course means the goal is don't play in the first round, get that first round by. If you can, that makes the top eight that much more important. So how did you do? Did you get that first round by? I did. I did get it. I almost didn't get it because what I did was I was playing classics and main. And so I was in the classics final. And as I was bombing out of the classics final, I was dropping in the main. So I was in seventh, seventh, eighth, eighth, you know. So right as I was bombing out of the classics and I knew I wasn't going to move on, I queued myself for a game I needed in the main. So by the time it was finished, I would move up in line to where I would be able to jump on a game reasonably quickly. And that game was World Poker Tour. So, you know, so I kind of knew what was going on there. So I was, you know, I split my time. That almost cost me, but, you know, I was able to get my buyback. So I finished in second position. Andy Rosehood qualified first. Mmm, nice. And so, yeah, so I would add my game on, uh, World Poker Tour vaulted me into first from eighth, and then Andy sniped me at the end and took the, uh, took the game choice. Which is definitely important because the games I would have chosen were, would be totally, were totally different from the games that he would have chosen in the finals, since one and two would probably be in the final. So, since he had choice, yeah, he definitely chose some games I probably would not have chosen. So, World Poker Tour, I was one week behind on that. Because Bowen did a pop-up tutorial of that, like the week after the tournament. When I was like, damn, there we go. Of course, I think I forgot most of what he said already, unfortunately. What's your name? No, no, you don't have to remember, do the stack, do the magic stack. I'm going to go back. Change gears, change gears, multiball, easy in the hole, flail around and 50 million. Flail around I can do that. Yep, cause you flail around at the top and you're just getting points for no reason. And then you go to the bottom and make a shot , you get points, you make the up kicker you get points for that, and then more points upstairs. And then you just flail around and you wake up and you have 60 million. Wow, it sounds so easy! I am so ready. You might not do it. Don't do it. Screw it up. Who won classics? Who did win classics? I forgot who won classics. Man, I thought the person who was there would know, but I guess I wasn't. You won the other tournament. I had bombed out. I ran the other tournaments. I didn't care. Oh, damn. Did not care. I didn't. Alright, somebody won classics. Billy Joe Bob Smith. Bob's been, well, Papa, right as that tournament was starting, they released an update to their app, the Pop app, which confused me. It's like, what am I using this for? There's not going to be Papa this year, unfortunately. So what is this for? And then it's like, oh, it's for the Louisville Arcade Expo. So you would think I could find it on their site, but I have not found it there either. Jesus. Why is this so hard to find results? Uh, okay. I guess it's so soon after. Yeah, it's so soon after. Okay, I got it, I got it. So... Oh, it wants me to log in. No, I don't want to log in, I just want results. Hey, let me go to the app. I got it. Classics tournament results, and the winner is... it doesn't say, it just has the, um, qualifying. Bum bum ba dumm! Yeah, classics tournament results, yeah, it just doesn't have... yeah, right. So congratulations to the classics winner, whoever you may be, because I can't find the results. Excellent. Fail. But Steve, you ended up in the final four. Did, yep. You had a father-son team against you. Really, yeah. Both the Roses and Chris Bassler were there in the final with me after I had struggled to come back from basically being out of the tournament twice earlier on. I don't know how I made it to the final. Because you were like a three-way playoff or something like that? Yeah, really. A three-way playoff at four. Because I'm sitting there and I'm like, there's no way. Yeah, let me check. Let me make sure. Yeah, this is round one. And I'm going to go to round two, which was the first round on Sunday. And yeah, it's like when I think four points, I think out. But no, it was a three-way tie at four. And then, and it's like 9-4-4-4. It doesn't even make sense. But it happened. And so I had the seed, so I had the choice. So it became, okay, what am I going to pick against these players? So, I mean, given the games that I, that, that were there, it wasn't kind of even easy process of elimination. I mean, there were games that, like, like, for example, Shaq Attack was there, you know, as we, as we saw. So I could, but I could play Shaq Attack very well. I'm not going to risk that, so I crossed that off the list. I had already played ACDC and Junkyard already, and I already played World of Poker Tour and crossed those off the list. Firepower was there, but I crossed that off the list because Michael Dawn, the third player The time breaker had 800,000 on it. Don't forget that. Then it was Mustang. Just forget that entirely. You know, because I didn't really want to deal with super fast targets breaking off the center and, you know, just, no. And so that left the Flintstones, a game I could do moderately well in. And so that's what I picked. And I used that to move on. Officially endorsed by Francesco. Yeah, you're right. You're exactly right. Look up Francesco's review of the Flintstones and you'll see his qualified opinion. Flintstones. The Flintstones. I thought that was an interesting playfield. The thing that always annoyed me was the music. I want to shoot myself in the head after listening to that music for more than five minutes. What do you mean? Like the main theme or the game? The game play theme. The one that sounds like a cartoon. Yeah, the gameplay theme, the one that sounds like you're in an episode. Yeah, of the cartoon, yeah. I want it to end. Pronto. There's one of the few games I would wear headphones. Noise cancelling headphones with no sound. Just like that. Get the strike! Get the strike! Square. Okay. The last game it was F-14 Tomcat. 14, yeah. Because I completely bombed out the first game, which, well actually I didn't. The first game was Surfers Safari, which I picked the previous round just so I could practice on it because I knew Andy was going to pick it. Now wait a minute, Surfers Safari, F14, were these like Papa games? I guess so. I don't know. I'm wondering, did they actually bring these down? Because these sound like the same ones. I think they just bring a couple, yes. Because like the shack attack I've seen before in their tournaments, the F14 Tomcat makes its way all over the place. And the Surfers Safari, yeah. Right, so I played Surface Safari and did pretty well in it, but finished in fourth with like over 20 million I think, because everybody else destroyed it too. And so, yeah, and then I went over to Shack Attack because that's what Andy was picking. We knew what Andy was picking because he was picking that the whole game, the whole way through, and actually won that one, and then took that into the final F-14. And Chris just had a great game on it. And he basically went through about a lap and a half of the jackpots and got about 3 million. And it was a huge mountain to claw back from. But I was able to get enough points to get second, so that was good. Plus, you didn't get a chance on your third ball, if I remember. It was like insta-drain. Yeah, the angle I did not see. And if I tried to move it, I probably would have tilted anyway. But it was a perfect off the sidewall, and I thought it was safe. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. We had a Shaq in town, it sucked. Shaq's fine. Ugh. I'm used to playing Shaq. Shaq's cool. Ugh. Especially since we... like finding the hidden features and seeing if you can get those huge godly bonuses and stuff. Yeah, that's a problem. I've lost for those hidden features, that's why. You gotta find him. No, I had him, and then he came back on me with the same hidden features, so I was like errrrrrrrr. That's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on a D&D. Hidden feature bonus or whatever. It's like a hidden feature but what? It's a screen. It's a weird like billboard that they're in an audience and he's holding like a billboard. It says hidden feature number two. You selected 5,000 twice on the mystery. Take 10 million! You know? It's like okay. And then there's 10 million, then 30 million, then 100 million, then 300 million, and then I've never seen the billion, which is all five hidden futures. You get one billion in bonus. And the reason is because the hardest one is to start like all five modes at once to get to level five, which is essentially have all the modes running, which is really hard. So, you know, we thought, we thought Andy was going to do it because Andy put up like 7.7 Billion on his previous game before the final? Sick. He was getting slamming and jamming multiple times, multiball multiple times. It was huge. You know, it was ridiculous. You know, good thing he spent it all there. So, uh, I guess. I just love those games with the sports figures when they have no team. Right, yes. Just like, Jack. Just like Frank Thomas. It's just, you know. Frank Thomas. Big hurt. The Bigger! Yeah, we gave you the team. At least Frank Thomas has the, has the light-satch colors on it, I think, doesn't he? Yeah, yes he does. Yep. What does Michael Jordan have, like, it just says Space Jam, doesn't it? Right, yeah, just a space jam. And that one, and on the other one it does say it's number 23 on Michael Jordan pins. Well, at least with the NBA, Stern NBA, you get all the teams. Right, yeah, okay. And even the Williams NBA, yeah. Do you get players on Stern's NBA? Or is that the... NBA, like Milwaukee Bucks and that kind of stuff also. Okay. Yep. But is NBA Fastbreak when they mention the players? Yes. Yep. For three! For two! For one point! For two! Love NBA Fastbreak. Every ball should end in a tilt. Just remember that. Right. Unless it's in pinball scoring, which I haven't played NBA Fastbreak in a while. I've never played NBA Fastbreak. I've never seen one in pinball scoring. What's the point? It's like weird. How much is a basket worth? A million? A million and a half? Four, three, four, three, three million. So that was the tournament fun for this weekend, which was cool for me because I got to watch this while I was working on the cheetah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Passing the time. That'll be the repair section. Right now it's time for This Week in Pinball! Which we made the big time. We made the big time. We did. We're like the first story- well, almost. Second. Second. Well we're right on then. Star Wars Topper Info, Keith Elwin interview! Ooooooh. See Bruce, it was worth badgering him all these years. Finally getting him on. Decades. Even before we had the podcast, he tried to get them on the podcast. It was incredible.
    19:46
    We've already determined we have time travel. About eight years we've known him, so, because we played in the first round, and he doesn't remember what we lived, you know, vicarious through all the time, you know, so, it's almost a decade. First time I saw him was in 2004. See? So there you go. It's been over a decade. So, uh, but first, this is all from this week in pinball. All the news that's fit to print for pinball. It's where all the podcasts go to rip off. Yeah. Did you know Star Wars accessories are gonna be on sale? Awww. Jesus. Should you get a Stormtrooper shooter knob? It fits all Star Wars models? The R2-D2 topper, now that sounds cool. Especially if his head moves. Okay. I hope it moves. It better move. Like if it moves in sort of that Doctor Who topper sort of way? Yeah. Where it just turns, maybe? 500 bills, bro. Jeez. Yike. Oh, is that how much it costs? Oh, there's the price. Oh my goodness. That's an expensive topper. The Shooter Knob is $80. I don't want this. Wait, an $80 Shooter Knob? Jeez. Somebody had a picture of it and it was pretty monstrous too. Damn. Then there was a Keith Elwin interview on this, this Flamtilt Podcast. Some tools got him. What was that? Where is that? Yeah, some tools got an interview with him, which we did not talk about his new game. Right. But we kind of did. We didn't get Flack for not asking the serious questions since we had him on. You probably did, but you nobody else. We demand you tell us your game!
    21:19
    Tell us your game now or we stop the podcast. Do it. So check it out. You can listen to our podcast, the CliffsNotes version of some of the more interesting answers are there on the This Week in Pinball site. Like I said, we didn't ask him about his new game, but we kind of did. If you read between the lines, if you are... If you're paying attention. And he didn't just dip out when you realized that, you know, the Slam Tilt Podcast was just not going to straight disrespect a man. So if you want to know what his new game's rule set will probably be like, you get a good idea. It's gonna be fun. Let's see, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. More hints from the Spooky Pinball Podcast. I'm done with hints. It's time for the reveal. Let's just see it. Texas, baby. Texas, come on. You got, what, 13 days? Right. I don't even want to look at anything. I just want to see it. I want to see it, get in line that one or two times, I'll actually get to play it and then move on to the other, whatever, 300 games or whatever will be there. All Sterns all the time. Older Sterns, baby. Jeff Teolas, you ever hear of that guy? He's a Canadian tool that we're going to see this weekend. A Canadian tool? Wow. Hey, but I do have a present for him. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi.
    23:17
    All right, we've got Alice Cooper to talk about himself and pinball. Good episode. Check it out. So that's out? No, no, it's out. It's out. It is out. All right. I didn't see it come up on my podcast catcher, but... Oh, it's... What is that? He... Well, I... Yeah, yeah. It says to be released this Friday. I don't know that he told me all about it. So even when this podcast is released, it still won't be out yet. He told me all about it, though. But Bruce already has probably listened to it, because he's Bruce's... No, I haven't listened to it. No, no. We just talked about it. After we listened to it. I mean, we just talked about it. Yeah. Bruce is a time traveler apparently. He's learned. Yes, he's a time traveler. Oh, okay. He's in the past. Oh, so what was I going to say? I was going to say something. No, there was something else I was going to say about that, but I... Oh, oh yeah. So check out that podcast. It'll The wonderful podcast garden, which, um, can I just say, here we go, a round rant here, you guys fucking suck. Seriously, I know you can do the argument like you get what you pay for, but, but you pay for it, don't you? I mean, yeah, here's the deal. If you're a podcaster in pinball, you really don't want to spend a lot of money. So you're not going to get a professional podcast hosting service. You're either going to host it yourself or you're going to get a podcast. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Larry K. Sheats Jr., Knapp Arcade, Well... Except they go down a lot, they kinda forget to renew their domain, which is embarrassing. That happened President's Day. They actually forgot to renew their domain and it expired. And then they renewed it, but since they let it expire, it took a day for it to come back up to re-propagate through the wonderful internet. And then, on the 28th I believe, they let their SSL certificate expire. Yay! Is that why it looked like all Facebook, Facebook, not Facebook, WordPress style errors I saw? Yeah, that's why it was all fucked up and our own Jason Harrison on his Google device can't download it because Google doesn't like it when things are expired. Google's very particular about things being secure. You know, if I did something like that where I work, because where I work, I'm the guy who renews the SSL certificates into domains. If I didn't do that for our main domain, I'd be fired. We're all gonna learn what happened at the stadium, when we are the final winners. Let's get in here. Have a great night! Do I get to do my rant? Do I get to do my rant? Do I get to do my rant? Oh, you have a rant on what? On Cast Garden? Oh, fuck yeah. No. Oh, and one more thing. Your support sucks, but I found the secret to it. The secret is you just always have to open a new ticket, because they will respond to that. But then if you update that ticket, they'll never re-respond, they'll never like follow up. So anytime you have a question, just keep opening new tickets. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I'm sorry, we're definitely not mature. We rated explicit. And that's why it doesn't show up in the search, which is true because this flipping podcast, they also rate themselves as explicit. Now you just search for flipping and they don't come up either. So at least I finally got an answer to a question I've had for like a year. Okay, I thought you were about to say you just searched for another explicit podcast and it showed right up. No, no, that would have really pissed me off. Okay, Bruce, what's your rant? Fucking LED bulbs suck. Oh, God. Okay. Mm-hmm. Eric was nice enough to let me have his Spider-Man if I cleaned it up and worked on it and made it all pretty. So he gave me all these LED bulbs to put in his machine. These guys are selling these and honestly, I put in like 60 bulbs. At least six or seven didn't work out of the bag. Now if I had a place where I was selling 10% of my product was bad, I'd be highly embarrassed. Then, non-ghosting they say to Ron, and guess what it's doing on my machine, which is a newer Stern. Ghosting. Ghosting? Okay. Or falling out of the, uh, falling, the bulb's just falling out. This lovely stuff. Guess what? Keep it incandescent. LED's fucking suck. Mark, it's part of the Keep It Incandescent campaign by Bruce Sutton-Gale. He has pulled all the LEDs out of Star Trek Limited Edition and replaced them with Incandescent. If it's factory, guess what? Oh, it's fine. Oh, okay. It's fine because guess what? Even though it's Fallout, so they all suck anyway. I support this message, my eyesight. Yes. Thank you. See? Well, I would say I don't have issues with the LEDs in the newer games. My issue is, please, stop using the fucking wedge-style sockets in the in-lane area. I agree. In every fucking stern. Watch any stream. Watch somebody flipping. You'll notice the ball that's closest to the flipper in the in-lane guide always is flaky, goes in and out on every fucking stern. Every time. Because they use wedge-style sockets. Go back to the bayonet style. Even Williams knew this. Williams experimented using, like World Cup soccer for example. Here's a, I don't know if it's a well known fact, he uses all wedge style sockets. They went wedge all around. They did it for, I don't know how many games after that they did it, but they didn't keep doing it. That means something. Just, sorry, it's rant time. Yeah, LEDs suck. It's like when Stern had the, they were using wedge style in the backboard lighting. And they were falling out. What did they do that on? Avengers. Remember that? They were falling out all over the place. I think they only did it for Avengers because it was such a disaster. I don't know. It must save them money. Web style must be cheaper than the bayonet style, I guess. It must be, but it's a typical fail. Do you know Pirates of the Caribbean is going to be coming out soon? The hype is real. Let's go. Did you know it has a rule set that I will never even begin to comprehend? That's fine. Who knows what the hell they got? But Pirates has a lot Pirates has a big highway for you to travel down so you can pick one big big Yeah 22 lanes worth 22 lanes you got 22 characters I did enjoy the Louisville stream with it was you and Keith Johnson talking about World Poker Tour Oh yeah, I love that because I, yeah. He actually brought up stuff you didn't know. Yeah, Keith in the booth at World Poker Tour, I don't have to do anything. Nope. And I was still lost, but that's just me. All I have to do is just set up stuff and talk it to him, you know, and then just do it in a way where I can pretend whether to know or not know and then just leave that part, you know, you ask the leading questions. Yeah. And then he just asks, he answers them. The thing about Pirates, I don't really mind the super complex ruleset in this case. To me, like, the Jersey Jack games, they're built for a certain market, specifically the home market. I don't care what anyone says. Most operators are probably not going to be laying down 9K for a Pirates. Unless you're in New York City or something because they buy everything. Right. But in most markets, I cannot see that. And this isn't even, what is this, 9, 9500? Mm-hmm. I think this is. A little more. Work it over. But I mean, this is, this is meant for your, your home, I keep wanting to say user. It's my IT background. Home user. Mm-hmm. It's for your home client who's going to have a game there and is going to want a game to keep them interested for long periods of time. So I really, I don't have an issue with it, but it's just more rules than my brain can comprehend. Which is why you just have to pick a lane. It's got five lanes for you. It's got five multiballs in each part of it and one for each section of the game. I've sat all 30 modes and have multiball running concurrently. Yeah, you could. Every shot is now worth 10 million. You could. I'm just kidding. That's fine, but I mean, that's when you've got your PhD in Pirates of the Caribbean. PhD. You have to start in high school. Pick your lane, learn that subject, you know, pick the person whose power is all you have to do is hit the button one time and get all the gold so that you get comfortable with, You know, using the button. Then once you can use the button, pick someone else. You know, so, you know, then you go to college level. College level is stacking multiballs. If we're using that analogy, then it's like EMs are like elementary school. No, I'm just talking about pirates. No, I'm just talking about the rule set of pirates. I'm talking about all games. We're doing like rule sets. Like EMs are elementary school. Well, System 11s would be middle school. Then we get to WPC, we're in high school. PPT TV
    33:51
    SPIKI You're going to medical school in that game. You're going for a new level. Exactly. You do have to intern before you go to Pirates. Yeah, you intern on Wizard of Oz first. There you go. That's where you intern. And then after that, your residency is The Hobbit. And then at that point, you go to Pirates. But wait a minute. What's dialed in? Dialed in is like some adjunct professor who comes in and is like, let's calm everything down for just a bit, just a minute. Okay. Okay. Because I understand that game, so it can't be Pacefield level. Right. 22 characters have been artfully woven into the fabric of the game by the team. 22 characters are on the playfield. They are featuring game modifiers. They are linked to all the shots. Nice. Did they mention, like, the benefits and the penalties? They show the benefits on there, but they don't show the penalties that some of the characters have, too, so... The one thing about it that interests me is the fact that you can't pick the same character. Oh, exactly. So, I just want to see an experiment where someone actually says, I want to go first. Right. Finally, going first doesn't have all the disadvantage. You know, it's just something where going first doesn't, doesn't, doesn't, there's so many disadvantages for going first. And what, and so many advantages for going last. What are the, what are the, what are the, what are the advantages for going first? I mean, other than, okay, let's list them. Any game that has a progressive jackpot that goes from game to game, that's an advantage for going first to snipe the jackpot off. The Powerball, if you know where the Powerball is in the Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, the lockout, put the balls in the locks and force people to hit the center target as player one. That's true. That's one. There's some that I didn't even realize were like issues like like when I played road show and locked balls and then the next person got multiball when I was up again like I gotta lock all these again? This sucks! Damn! Just like whitewater. Whitewater. And whitewater gets weird. Whitewater gets weird because sometimes it'll be like ball three locked and then it won't start and it'll say like ball three locked then it'll go ball two locked and you've got like three balls. Yeah. Like wait what? One thing about whitewater though, you can short plunge it, get right on the right flipper and just shoot the line. Mm-hmm. Roshow, I really don't have that luxury. Well, I kind of do, don't I? Can I... It depends. If I really short plunge it, I can get it in lane. Yeah, you have to really short plunge it and you have to really be accurate because that shot is not... It's longer, it's farther away, and it's a little tighter. Then we have Papa21 being pushed to 2019 with a question mark? I would say it's not a question mark. Not yet. They wouldn't. Yeah, I mean, Doug Polka pretty much said it's not happening this year. They're preparing for Pinburgh. You know, once you do Pinburgh, you move all the games, and then once that's over, then you're not gonna do anything in like winter or late fall. So yeah, Doug Polka was on the, uh, I hate to say this again, pinball profile with Jeff Teolis.
    37:32
    Where he basically said that, so that's, that's kind of, uh, kind of sad. I mean, is that part of the reason why, you know, Pinburgh sold out in negative three seconds? Because there was no pop-up as a sort of buffer that, you know, I've been to a pinball trip this year. I don't need to go to Pinburgh. No, I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. Can't get in. Can't get in? No, what happened? Well, luckily all three of us made it in. Wow. So, what was that scenario? So, who was hitting the F5? I didn't have to hit F5. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. You see what Martin of the Head to Head Podcast did? I heard, yeah. He bought the wrong thing. Well, he didn't buy it. It was in his cart. Like, oh shit, oh, no problem. I'll just, I'll just get out and put it, oh, they're sold out. Shit! No, you won't. Yeah. I wonder how he did that, because I don't know about you guys, but when I did it, Pinberg was literally the first item. First thing. It was the first item, yeah. It's the Pinberg ticket and then it's the replay effects ticket. Those are the first two things. And I bought both at the same time. Yeah. It's just click, click, click, done. I only bought the one because I don't know if I'm going to go, so... But I had to get... Hey! Workman Blackout Dates! You know all about that! Oh man, you know, when we were looking for the winners of those tournaments before, we could have just got them from This Week in Pinball because they're right on the damn page! Are they? Yes they are! Congratulations to IFPA National winner, Raven Davidson! Woohoo! And congratulations to the Women's World Champion, Karen Kaiser! Woohoo! And Adam Becker, who won the pinmasters, even though he hates pinball. I'm guessing he just played in it because he was there for the Nationals. So why not?
    39:42
    Let's see what we have. Thunderbirds. I see a Thunderbirds with chink wrap on it. Next. Wow! They got a full playfield shot. It looks interesting.
    39:55
    Next. Wow, okay. The Simple program updates with plug-in module. What does that mean? It sounds like instead of a USB to you, you're going to do something else with like a, probably like a cable. You're going to plug in this cable from your computer to that and you'll be able to update it. So you will be able to update it. That's what it sounds like now. I think he took so much slack and abuse that he will be updating. The But, you know, why not do USB like everyone else does? Cheaper. Yeah. Well, it's, I forgot how long it took to update a Stern. No, it sucks. I updated my ACDC, it took like an hour. It does. Holy shit. Especially if you verify it. Yeah, I always do the verify because I'm paranoid. And I just, you just set it running and leave the room for like an hour. Yep. I updated my, um, dialed in, which is like the opposite. Mm-hmm. But they changed something, which... Here's my little OCD moment. I can't comprehend these rulesets, but little OCD things like this I'll notice immediately. Did anyone notice, in Dialed In, if you have a ball locked in the, what is it called? The train station? The train station. Station 3, yeah. When your game would end, it would do the match display, and then it would release the ball. Which I thought was kind of like, that struck me as like, well that's kind of like, I wonder if I just start, hit start while the match animation is going on, whether it will just start a game with it in there. Which it does. It did.
    41:34
    Now I'm thinking, why don't they release the ball before they do the match? So then I put the new code on there, guess what it does? It releases the ball. It releases the ball before, as it's doing the match actually, it releases the ball so you can't hit start.
    41:48
    Just a little, little thing, my OCD said, ah, now I'm happy. That's how I think it should work. Well, it looks like something, well, the programmers saw it then. Yeah. Oh, they noticed it. So, Ryan C., did you notice that? Did ya? Did ya, Mike? Did ya notice that? Oh, I got a, I got a, hey, Mr. Ryan C. of the Head to Head Podcast. This is for you. You desecrated Sea Witch. Oh, I know. God. You said that you played bad and you couldn't hit the loop. Wait, what happened? What, wait. What he's saying is he has an improperly adjusted sea witch. So perhaps maybe when I see him in Texas I can show him the way to properly adjust his games. Because I don't know about you, on my father's sea witch, I have no problem hitting that loop. Which was mine. Yes. As a matter of fact, we have a contest. We've gotten two consecutive loops now. We're trying to get a third one. See who the first person is who can get three loops in a row. So I really don't see the issue. That thing, if there was a definition of flow in a game that just plays silky smooth, it's SeaWish. So if his doesn't, I blame the owner. Fail. That's all. That's a fail. Learn how to adjust your games properly. You know, as OCD as Ryan is, he would have got it playing better. I'm just saying. All right, so that was the news. Want to do repairs? Oh, actually, before we do repairs, in our face-off last week, we had a cat, well, which wasn't last, well, it was episode 79 when we went back in time, etc. But in our last episode with Keith, we had our face-off. If listeners remember, I lost, but Keith made a caveat that if I could prove that there were any time warps that were released from the factory with regular flippers and not banana flippers, that I would win.
    43:38
    And guess what? Dead silence. No comments from Bruce? We're waiting. And Bruce made a further caveat because he's Bruce, like, it has to be either Barry Osler himself or Duncan Brown who says it for me to believe it. That was another caveat he made. So, our friend of the show, Scott, thank you Scott, Mr. Scott pointed us in the direction of a top cast, which was one of the earliest podcasts, with Barry Osler. And in that interview, he stated that 2,000 time warps were released with regular flippers. So that means I win. But more of them were shipped with it so I was screwed. That means nothing. That means nothing. We meet both your, we meet Keith Elwin's caveat and your ridiculous caveat that it had to come from one of two people. I didn't hear it so it still doesn't believe me. You didn't hear it? Just download it and queue it up. I heard it. It happened. Nope. Nope. To be the man you have to beat the man and I just beat you. Wow. Woo! Yes! Until I hear the quote, I don't believe it at all. Until I hear the quote? Yep. Okay, whatever. I won. I won, right, Steve? If you have the evidence, I believe that's it. Okay, I have the evidence. But we don't have the evidence until we hear it. Oh, stop! Stop! We have to get the evidence. You hear, Keith? You hear? You gotta say it. It's like Steve said. Gotta have the evidence, then. Just download it, listen to it. I win. I didn't hear it yet. Did you hear it, Steve? I didn't hear it yet. So that's your defense now. So that's your defense now, if I didn't hear it. So, so if I just play it for you, Bruce will just cover his ears. I still haven't heard it. I'm not hearing you. I'm not listening. That's so lame. You need to be more mature. If anything, this podcast has is maturity.
    45:39
    I'm almost laughing on that one. We are definitely the most mature podcasts out there. I'm telling you. Oh, fuck no. Award winning maturity. Also, back by popular demand, at the end of the show you will hear the Oh My Song has returned. Woo hoo. Bye. My dad, who doesn't like it, said we should add it back. See? That's all I needed to hear. Once I heard that, it's like, okay, it's back. Good. Thank you, dad. So, let's see. What do we got here? Repairs. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Doc Ock is loose. So I went to tighten it. It's stripped. So it was actually moving so it was being blocked by the metal around the opto. Yeah. And I'm going to... So I got to replace that opto probably tomorrow. Yay. What else did we have? Timmy's Old World Poker Tour, the upper left flipper The Plunger completely was foobarred with the coil stop and the plunger. It was completely hammered. Replace that, working great for this weekend. For Stomp. Stomp, Stomp, Stomp. What else did we do? Quicksilver started rebooting. Really weird. I reseated all the connectors and it's got a new driver board and a new bottom power Knipl 6692, Miller Co., Limited Co., And I have to replace the gun harness on Dirty Harry. Once in a while when you hit the button to pull the trigger to fire, once in a while the gun will, when it's moving, the gun will not see the optos. So it doesn't think of a ball in it until it moves a certain point, the wires then move in the harness and then it sees it and goes, okay, I can fire now because I have a ball in the opto and fires it. Totally in the wrong time that you Wanted to, of course. Luckily, they make them reproduction now. And for sale at Bay Area Amusements. The more you know. Sounds like we're ready for Stomp then. We are getting ready, but there's gonna be two more games and possibly three more games for Stomp. But we'll wait till we get to the Stomp section. Okay. Teaser. All right. Any more repairs? Oh, and I finally got my future spa. Put it all together, and it's got this red film on it that is scary. What do you mean red film? On what? Red film? What? Like film on all the white plastics. It's all red. Like rust. But Zach said he had it on his future spa that he did for Ryan out here, and it cleans right off. So I have not gotten into it yet. I haven't even powered it up yet. That's the first thing. Maybe it's the future spa from hell. It's all red. Back in black in hell version. It's the hell version. I need three reps instead of two. I'm in hell. You hit all the inline drops and all of a sudden it reaches a mini playfield somewhere underneath the game. There you go. Gorgar shows up. Four people emailed me today saying there's a cheetah for sale. Yeah, there's a cheetah for sale. It's got like an NOS clear-coated playfield on it, Bruce. Yeah, you don't want to know how much he wants for it. It's a lot of money. Let's just say we're talking new in box premium pricing. Yeah. Let's just talk about similar price to another particular game that might annihilate you. Totally. Okay, all right. Yeah, it's really ridiculous. I was like, oh my God. Wow. It's beautiful. Oh, it's gorgeous. It's beautiful, looks great, probably plays like a dream. Just a bit out of my budget. Yep. But thank you for all for emailing me. So we need to still find Bruce. His cheetah. Oh, first you on. First you on, I need a cheetah and I need a Gamitron. You and the Gamitron. I need some, I need some future spa plastics. So if you got future spa plastics, email the show at slamtillpodcast at gmail.com www.gammatron.com We're the only people in the world who have been in a movie with the same clip. So you traveled through time on two episodes that also traveled through time. Inception. Traveled through time inception. I'm Christopher, uh, Nolan? Is that his name? Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's go with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You forgot the Stargazer, Ron Bruce. Oh, yes, I forgot about that. Uh, Ron sent me a... Well... Come on, you gotta tell them the whole story like you were saying if it didn't work it was bad. Well, no, I didn't say it was bad. I said it didn't work. That's true. You said it didn't work. Yes. So I get a, uh, the Weebly new boards. And it comes with one chip. That's a 2764? Yes. So Ron sent me 2732s. Uh, the problem I have with the Weebly board, the only thing I found out is when you actually pop out the 2764, it says underneath it 2732, 2764 place on it. The only way we kind of figured it out is the 27, the socket, is 4 to 64, so we're like, well, the 32's shorter, so let's go bias it to the right. And it worked. And then you have to desolder one jumper on the 32 and solder in a jumper for 64. Or the opposite, very vice versa, sorry. We desoldered the 64 and made it a 32. So it took the 32s. And then it worked. So now on my Stargazer, you cannot flip and roll over and get free Zodiacs. Make it harder for you. Make it harder. Yeah, yeah. Because last time it was, it was, I was, uh, the flippers weren't shallow enough to prevent that, so... Yeah, so now it's better right there. You just do it over and over. Yeah, I got over a million in one game just doing that. Yep. Yep, kills the game. But yeah, so I emailed Ron like, what the hell? And he's like, no, this should work. And then I was like, and I showed him pictures, and he's like, hmm. So that's all my, that's all my repairs. All right. So you got the Zodiacs off there. Are you resetting the multiplier also? And that isробisupa.com!
    54:54
    and you hold it yeah so so if you also have the zodiac spotted you can basically get a hundred thousand points yeah you get the bonus all the way up then you actually hit the targets and you you I think Bruce you actually had a full bonus countdown at some point during the last tournament there so so what the new ROMs give you the ability to do is two things number one you can turn off spotting of the zodiacs so when you go over the zodiacs you can turn off the zodiacs so when you go over the zodiacs you can turn off the zodiacs so when you go over the The roll over, it'll still make the sound effect and all that, but it won't keep spotting your zodiac. So those are the points. Yep. And you can also turn off the bonus multiplier carry over. And it's kind of like what it does is it'll carry over until it gets over a certain amount, like 3x, 4x, and then it'll reset. Okay. So that's like Quicksilver, not Quicksilver, does that? Sea Witch. Sea Witch, yeah, Sea Witch does that. Yeah, Sea Witch does that. So what would you prefer? Like it holds it over, no matter how big it is, or it resets like sea winch? I would prefer it would reset because... But the problem is you can get so far ahead with spinner stuff. That was Zach's point. Well then you like the spinner and hit it also. So hit it, you do it too. Yeah, I don't understand... Because the multiplier carry is the only thing that imbalances Quicksilver and stops it from being the perfect game. So when the multiplier carry is taken out of Quicksilver it becomes completely balanced. Well, you can actually change it on all those games. Well, the Quicksilver at Bruce's, it does not carry over. No carry. There you go. Steve is spoken. I like no carry because, you know, it's easier. It's also easier to make rulings on that. You don't have to worry about state then. There's no state to bring over. Yeah.
    56:41
    And what I did on my Stargazer, because you can't really trap on mine, at least not easily, I reinstated the zodiac spotting. I'm a fan of the Zodiac, but I still have the multiplier pulled over off. Because I was literally never, ever completing the Zodiac. Ever. Like, you have to actively shoot those areas where the pop-up numbers are. That's what the pop-up numbers are there for, to help you get the Zodiac symbols. Right. But, I mean, you never do that, just like, I'm going to shoot up there so I can get the Zodiac symbols. It just, you're lucky if you ever complete a Zodiac. So I think the more important thing is just to make sure your flippers aren't too shallow The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Because it looked all screwed up and then the wiring and put everything right that it would probably just work.
    57:53
    Well, it didn't. Once I got the playfield back in the game, the right flipper still didn't work. So, I just did some reading of schematics. What a concept. And I remembered something that Bruce brought up when I first got the game. Well, actually, Bruce, why don't you tell them what it was? It was something weird that you noticed.
    58:13
    I can't remember what I said. Jesus. Okay. Okay. Bruce said on the driver board the flipper relay, the covers for the flipper relay, the case that the relay is in, it was just missing. So the relay was just kind of out in the open exposed and he's like, wow, that's kind of weird. Well, as it turns out the right flipper didn't work because the way this works is that the relay is like in line. So when it's off, you can't flip the flippers. When you start a game, it turns on, the traces that went through the relay to the flipper were just burnt. Done. So, I just ran some jumpers, and my right flipper is working just peeps. Yay! So, thanks to those two tournaments that occurred over the weekend, especially the one in Vegas that went to 2 in the morning on Saturday, Wow! I just kept working on the game because I got to a certain point where, damn it, I'm finishing this fucking thing. The biggest issue was the in-lane guides. The ends of them were completely broken off. So if you remember from one of the previous podcasts, I said I had some metal lane guides from a Viper. So I was going to take parts from a shitty game and use them to make a great game live again. And it worked perfectly. I fit them in there. A little adjusting, but they work just peachy. All greens are great. None are shitty. So, well, I've warmed up on Viper a little bit, but still. I had no problem sacrificing these lane guides. And they're metal, so they should not break off again. So I got them in there, and I'll tell you, man, I fired this up. The only things that I had to play with, the two right in lane switches were a little flaky. I had to get them working and that was it. It pretty much out of the box played like a dream instantly. I am so happy. Oh my. And then I have to re-jumper the board. 4x27.32s, right now it has 4x27.16s in it. For those who are wondering, what the fuck are they talking about? What does that mean? They're ROMs. 2716 just means 16k. That's right, 16k per chip. So, it has four 2716s in it, I got to jump for two 2732s, and then burn a copy of Scott's modified cheetah ROM, which you must do. You must do, you have to do that, that's not a choice. Cinematographyagnus.com
    61:24
    I'm going to go ahead and get Rahm in there. Yeah, you remember that, remember that little video of a final where they were just rocking? Yes, it was boring as hell. They were just rocking and playing all day. And then in classics, Raymond Davidson just kept playing it until he got that, and then he hit it like six or seven times and blew every one score away. It just ruins the game. And let's see, did I do anything else? Did anything else break? I don't think so. That was it. So we're done with repairs. Well now it's time. Oh no. Oh god, you don't sound excited. It called we gonna bring up IPDB because these games are even even for us they old I know most of mine mine are pretty good actually Well Bruce knows all of his because he been in pinball since the 70s I haven so I gonna have to look these up Wow. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, I've definitely been cheating by looking at some of this list here. I've been looking at any of them, but I'm looking at the list and, yeah, the battlefield is pretty interesting. The battlefield is interesting, so... My goodness. The year is 1976. EMs are still around. EMs are still the thing. And I have Bally. Bruce has Williams. And this is face-off. For those who don't know how this works, we each get three games, and we pick against each other, and we have our judge, in this case, Jerry Bowden, the judge, jury, and executioner who will be picking the winner of each game. The idea here is we sell the hell out of our games. Whether we like them or not, it doesn't matter. So who goes first this time since you say you won and I say I won. I guess I have to go first then because you get to pick the best things. So I have Bally, I have 1976, and man I have a lot of games to choose from here. This list is impressive. Hey, man. Wow. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Wow. So, man, I could totally go for this. A bastard of riches here. I know, but I'm thinking... You might screw it up. Well, something in me wants to go for the EM blackjack, but something in me tells me that we'll get 1977 eventually and I'll want the solid state blackjack. Of course, that's the best. Because, yeah, because the 76 blackjack doesn't have the... The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. So you can bounce them out. You can get all kinds of crazy action going on here. You can save the ball or be screwed by them. But that's where skillful nudging comes in. Has a cool saucer, collect bonus hole in the center. We all love that. It's got three more pop-upers in the top. That's right, five pop-upers. And most importantly, it has a spinner on the left side that you can crush. It has lanes on the top and five drop targets on the right. I mean, it's got all the cool features that you would want to see in any game. It plays great, it's got the cool EM sounds, it's got a cool back glass, which I believe is, yeah, Dave Christensen, classic back glass, everything you'd want in Dave Christensen. Art, great playfield, great art, great playing game. Keith Elwin likes it. I'll give you Old Chicago. Okay, so now we're going to... the good thing about my picks for Williams, I don't have many, but I have three of some of the best four-player Williams games that are out there. And this is one of them. Aztec. You get the goodness of a spinner that's lightable with the three lanes up top. The middle one will open, will start that spinner up. And of course, it's a great spinner game. On the right hand side, when you start spilling Aztec across the playfield, on the upper right, you have a little hole, drop hole, and it will give you points for how many letters you have on that Aztec, and it will kick back out. And if you're lucky enough, and it depends on how it's set up, it might kick back in there. I like it when it doesn't kick back in there, because then it makes it more of a challenge. But it's good Williams fun. The flippers, nice and strong, spinner, three pop bumpers, spell Aztec, double bonus, don't forget you get your double bonus time too in there, great scoring, fun game, artwork, pretty good actually, it's based off a National Geographic picture, and it was a good money maker with over 10,000 Aztecs made. Pretty impressive. And I give you Aztec. I yield the floor. Okay, for my rebuttal, extremely offensive to Native Americans artwork.
    66:41
    That's all I got. Wow, that's all he's got because it's a great game. No comment. Old Chicago has a couple of good things about it, but just, I think Aztec is definitely a better game. And it is a tournament better game and a fun game. I yield the floor. It is now up to you Keith. I'm sorry, Steve. That's alright, I can be confused with Keith. That's a good person to be confused with. I'll take that. Let me begin my deliberations here. I'm familiar with both games so I didn't really have to look at them over when you called them out there. I don't want to be so quick with my decision because you got old Chicago, you got that collect hole, which is nice because sometimes you get it in there and it'll bounce out in a way where you can drop catch it, put it right in there again. You know, that's nice. A nice back and forth action. But those grades underneath the bumpers piss me off. But I want that negatively affect the game itself. That's the difficulty of the game, which can be good. But moving over to Aztec, yeah, Aztec, I have more fun playing that game, just personally. The Aztec letter collect, the upper right, can get a little crazy if it's too weak to kick out of there and kicks out and goes back in. That's kind of cheating. But, you know, if you're in a tournament, sometimes you're trying to hit it as it kicks The Your future, um, arguments? Okay. I have never brought up the offensiveness at all. No, he means shitty art doesn't matter. I hate art at all. Yeah. But isn't it a world under glass? Oh God, stop it. I create my own world under glass. Exactly. The good games make me create a world under glass of my own. Got it. Alright. Use that for your future deliberations. Okay, my turn. I'm going for Babe Ruth. I'm pointing to center field in 1932. I'm ready. Let's see it, because you know it's... I don't know if it's there. I mean, I'm not trying to give you a clue, but one of you has the ace of spades. Grand Prix. That is the ace of spades. Steve Kordick's one of his best games. You have two great spinners with two... what do you call them? Not out-holes. You would actually call them... What would you call them? Kick out holes. You actually have three kick out holes, but one on each side to collect a bonus. When you get the A, B, C, or D, if you get two of those targets, A, B, or C, or D, you get to make your double bonus first, and then you get extra stars after that. You have the in lanes of death, which are excellent, because if you try to catch the ball and let it roll, it will go out the in lanes of death. The only flaw in this game, but it actually is a challenging flaw. The Williams Four Player Greatness Spinners Galore You know the Chines galore with those spinners when it counts down it's just, it's just money. It really is. It is one of the best Williams Four Player games. Highly desired, highly competitive in competitive pinball. I give you Grand Prix. I yield the floor. Do you ever get the feeling you've been checkmated? Oh, not at all! I say nothing, I am the judge. You know, like, I really needed to win that first one, because I believe Grand Prix just happens to be a particular judge's favorite EM. So I'm thinking almost anything I pick is going to be a fail. So I'm just going to go for it. Captain Fantastic! Classic Bally with over 16,000 units made. It's got one of the most famous backglasses of all time. It's such a great backglass. It was in our backglass competition we had like a long time ago. Wonderful playing game with that upper right flipper. It's got drop targets. It is a classic in every sense of the word. It has the double flippers, the scissor flippers, to show your skill, to make sure you don't flipper bitch yourself. They said the drop targets on the side, the flipper so you can hit the drop targets. An all-time classic. Just the Dave Christian, well, usually they don't care about the artwork. It could have shitty artwork, but it doesn't matter. It's all about the gameplay here. Incredible gameplay. Incredible rules. It has nothing to do with the art. The art doesn't matter. It's all about the gameplay. The gameplay is fantastic. 16,000 people can't be wrong. I give you Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. How many people realize that's the full title? That's actually the full title, folks. Great game, I will say. Your...Bally is a great game. But it is no Grand Prix. I yield the floor. The art on Grand Prix is subpar, but again, we know that doesn't matter. The bitch you in lanes, whatever you want to call them, are extremely annoying, and I don't like them. That's all I got. Well, well, well. I was like, how can I drag this out in a sort of a fake YouTuber manner? Uh, yes, uh, you know, I, I, I really wanted the arguments to sway me away from, from, uh, the inevitable. But, uh, yeah, uh, Grand Prix was the ace of spades. And, uh, and, and Captain Fantastic was the correct counter to the ace of spades. So, you know, especially I do like on Captain Fantastic the upper right flipper that you're not supposed to use, or you're supposed to use in a certain way. You know, you can tell people who are experienced with Captain Fantastic with how they choose to not use that flipper. So, just by looking at someone practice the game, you can tell if you're gonna play them, whether you're gonna have a good competition against them. No, just for the record, you're supposed to hold the flipper up. Just in case that's unclear. Don't use it. If you use it, you deserve to die.
    73:52
    More positive for Captain Fantastic, you know, practice your trap passing. Get that done if you want to.
    73:59
    But it has those five targets that I want to avoid. Then you go to Grand Prix, which is my favorite electromechanical game, so I'm going to purposely try to find things that are negative against it. And it would be those suicide out lanes which you mentioned which I guess normally I would try to see them as negatives but they're not. They are the exception that proves the rule in that the suicide out lanes help you to try to not to catch the ball so much you have to drop catch. And it has those spinners on each side and who doesn't love a good spinner when you can have two of them. It just rocks through those bonuses. You know, it's got the double bonus, it's Grand Prix, it's the ace of spades, and it wins. It was an ace of spades versus like an ace of hearts, but it's Grand Prix. The ace of spades, the ace of hearts! And I failed once again. Poor strategy on my part. Yeah. As soon as you started with that one, I was like, aww. I should have started with the friggin' Captain Fantastic to force the Grand Prix, which I would have lost, but then I would have had the next two to come back. Right. Man, you think being that we came up with this game, I'd be better at it. But no. I suck at strategy, man. No wonder I can't figure out these rules. I don't even like Captain Fantastic. I prefer Wizard over Captain Fantastic any day because Wizard has the spinner and it's got the cool little flag things. I like Wizard a lot more. I actually don't mind Captain Fantastic. I like it. You have an upper, like Steve said, you have an upper flipper on the right that you don't want to use. That's stupid. I hate games that give you a flipper and then you don't want to use it. But you don't find out you don't want to use it until it's too late and you learn. Any games where you're just like holding the flipper off just to, you know, so you get it under control. I hate that.
    75:59
    Steve Ritchie actually said one of his inspirations when he did Flash was this game, Captain Fantastic, in the fact that you had an upper right flipper that he considered to be in the wrong place.
    76:13
    So. Okay. There you go. Damn it. So I guess this is just for pride. This is just for pride. Okay. The
    76:51
    Great playfield and a great rule set, which is the same on the EM, which is basically you have the player's hand and the dealer's hand. And you want to be ahead of the dealer when you go into the saucer hole on the upper right, because that increases your bonus multiplier. If you're not, you don't increase the bonus multiplier. If you complete the lanes up top, it lights the spinner. Just a great simple little rule set. Nice simple playfield. It's one of the most fun games to play. I must say I never heard of it before. When Bruce got it I'm like, what the hell is this game? What is this? And then I played it in his basement and I kept playing it over and over and over. Since then it's become one of my favorite classics games, definitely. And the far superior, even though you don't care about this, still, in comparison purposes, the far superior art that's on the EM as to the solid state, I give you Blackjack.
    77:54
    Okay, we're going for... it's actually a combo game, really, this one. They made it in a... this game was so good, they made it in a two-player and a four-player version. Space Mission slash Space Odyssey. Odyssey being the two player, Mission being the four player, but they're both the same playfield underneath. You get the Steve Kordick classic of two flippers, two pop bumpers, two kick out holes, two ball kickers, two stand up targets, a swinging target, and a spinning spinner. A spinning spinner. Who would have thought it would do that? I know, that's what it says in the thing. So you're reading from the... Fail. Of course I do. Objection. I always read from it. But it actually has some pretty complicated rules in this game with the moving target. Where if you hit the target, it will light what is in front of the target, and if you hit it again, it will change it. So that's actually a cool thing. Can't go wrong with the Williams spinner back in the 70s. They did rock. Good game. Artwork, good. It is a cool artwork package. I give you Space Missions the last space Odyssey. I yield the floor. I never found it that fun to shoot, honestly. It's got the spinner, but you go to trap the ball and you just purposely trap it to get it in those like shooter things to hit that, the moving target. Most of the games moving target I never found that enjoyable, I'm thinking Black Pyramid whenever I see that thing go back and forth I just... It just doesnt play that well in my opinion...I think it's an overrated game. Definitely, Grand Prix was definitely a better game for Kordek that year. In my opinion. That's my rebuttal. Okay, for me, Blackjack, I don't think it actually has the superior artwork. I actually feel the 77 version is better. That backglass is cards, perfect, looks great. I don't want to see drunken, hanging women all over some guys, you know, that's not good at all. Zach does own an EM, so it is a cool thing with that. But the only bad about the EM version besides the sounds not playing is, if you hit multiple targets, of course, if it bounces around, It will actually delay the scoring a little bit. We noticed on Zach's we were playing around a little bit. But it is a great game, so I can't nash it too much. I really can't. I yield the floor.
    80:27
    Alright, well, let me make a clarification about art just so we can not have any misinterpretations. I don't care about the art. It's fine for... it's not who cares about the art. That's would be saying that I don't care about the art and neither should you and that's not what I'm saying. Okay? That's just news that I don't really care as much. Um, so, as far as, you know, regarding blackjack, you know, I like, I like the rule set on blackjack a lot. You know, beat the dealer is very simple to explain to someone, very simple for a new player to pick up. You know, love, love the left spinner, you know, nice strategy. When you're trying to see how far you're away from beating the dealer, so do I shoot the spinner, do I hit the correct target to advance each hand? And then we have Space Mission, not a bad game in its own right, but those, I guess, what do you call those, in-lane kickers? Yeah, in-lane kickers. Oh yeah, those inlay back and forth volleyball style kickers, when you get them back and forth, they can feel good until they get annoying. I mean, a nice try to rebut Blackjack, but no, Blackjack does win that for me. I would agree with that. I like Blackjack. Definitely over Space Mission. I won the Pride game. Yeah, you did win the Pride game, and not just because I didn't want to sweep. That's, yeah, Blackjack is... The Black Jack is definitely better. The Black Jack is definitely better and a more fun game to play. Space Mission, I never really got into it. Like you said, I think it gets boring with it. Because every time you go to trap a ball or you get the ball, you just keep putting it in the kicker and have it get fired. Right. It turns out it'll fire right off the target and go right into the other one. And then go right on target and right into the other one. And so you just go leave and come back and it'll still be fired. So, I'm just not a huge fan. I know it's one of Steve Kornick's bigger games, but Grand Prix is vastly superior to Space Mission and Space Odyssey, so... So how do we feel about, I mean, we have to do a post-game here, because... Post-game? I fail strategically. Yeah, I know, that's why we need to ask you, this is a post-game interview. Okay, Jeff Teowis. Because, you know, both of you know me and you knew I would be on and you knew one of you had the aces fade, so, and you knew what that was. So, how did that not affect, how did that affect or not affect your strategy, Ron, to do what you should have done to counter the aces phase with your first game? Because that's what I thought you might do. My issue is, I'll be perfectly honest, I didn't look at his games. Mm-hmm. That was the first mistake. Because obviously, if I see Grand Prix sitting there, and we all know that Mr. Bowden on multiple occasions has said that is his favorite EM of all time, it's like, okay, whatever I'm picking against that is losing. So I should just go, but it'll blow his load on that one. Because the other games are not, it's like I have more, well Aztec is good. Aztec was there. That would have been tough. I mean, yeah, I have more games. I would have actually thrown it. If you pulled out first, I would have actually said blue chip and screwed you up totally. And then still wouldn't put it in the last two. It's one of those like, Les, there's definitely more here. I mean, you had Grand Prix and Aztec. I love Aztec. Howard, Howard owns Aztec. I play the shit out of that every time I'm at his house. I love that spinner. I agree. It's like Ron had a bunch of like first round draft picks and then Bruce had like the middle four lineup of the Yankees or something. That's kind of what that is. I had Ryan Leaf, you had Tom Brady, basically is what it goes down to. That's a weird analogy. So we need to pick a new date, we need to pick a new year. Keith! It's our team. Keith! Fuck! Wow, is that going to be our gimmick now? You're just going to keep calling me Keith? I'm going to call him Keith. Hey, Keith, how you doing? I'm Keith. Steve, pick the year from 77 now to 95. Alright, so 1977 to 1995, are we ready for the pain? Ready for the pain. 1982, did you do that already? We have not. I don't think so. 1982? That's going to be a dead period though. Are we going to have enough games? Let's see. Let's go to the top. In 1982, we got...
    85:10
    Okay, of course you have Bally. That's a given. So, for Bally, we have Baby Pac-Man, BMX, 8 Ball Deluxe,
    85:23
    Big Easy, Spectrum, and Vector. Okay, cool. We got Begatly, we got Caveman, It's not even a game. We got critical. Okay, we have nothing. We have, okay, Devil's Dare, Haunted House, Punk, Rocky, Spirit. Wow, we got some, this is a good little year. We got Cosmic Gunfight, Defender, Varkon, which is a big game, and Warlock. Is that the Williams list? What if we played this before? I don't think so. I have not heard these games. I have not heard, no. And actually, ooh, could we? And Stern. You have Stern also. Iron Maiden, Laser Lord, you really can't. Laser Lord, no. You have Iron Maiden and Orbiter One is all you have. Q. Q? No. They made six of them. The game is, oh, no. Mike Boste, The Scoring Machine by Gameplan.
    86:53
    Uh, yeah. Interesting. Oh, and it has, unlike a lot of the other games, it actually has, well, I'll rephrase that. Unlike the later games with sports athletes on it, this actually has the team. It's got the Islanders logo right in the center. Yes, it does. So, I think we're going to pick Williams, Gottlieb, and Bally. So, Steve, please put all three into the list function. For the list function. The ball is free and it is tell us after you do the boop boop boop boop boop boop. Tell us the first game and Ron gets to pick it. Okay, are you ready? You can either pick or pass. Pick or pass, like the showcase showdown. Right. Which everyone passes because the second one is always going to be better, damn it. Alright, the first selection is Williams. Oooh. I'm passing. Pass. I'm passing. So what's the second one? The second selection is...
    87:48
    Gottlieb. Alright. So Gottlieb vs. Williams. Alright. I'll take my- I got- I got Punk, which isn't that bad. I got Haunted House. I got Spirit. Well... Never been a Spirit fan on it. Honestly, I don't know if Zach has it. Oh, really? Yeah. I got Defender. Defender fucking rocks. And Cosmic Gunfight rocks. So I can take those two and- Then you have like Varkon, that doesn't even count, you have Warlock which is just a... Varkon does count, it's 90 of them. Okay, yeah, but it's a video game. It's a stand-up pinball. I know it is, I know exactly what it is, but it's a pinball. There's a ball in there. You have Warlock which is blackout, you have different rules. Yep, which is actually better in some ways. No, it's not, it doesn't have speech. I know. Some of our speech, Williams, suck, we cannot do full sentences. At least nobody got Bally, because you had good and bad in Bally also. Yeah, he had BMX, but you also had Baby Pac-Man. You also had 8-Ball Deluxe. And you also had Spectrum. Spectrum, you know. Spectrum sucks. Sorry, Steph will be pissed at me, but... And so will Zach. I don't care if he's pissed at me, but it sucks. Terrible game. Terrible game. I guess if you like masterminds, it's probably cool. But literally that was like, Bally, we have leftover parts. Let's just make a game. We don't even care if it sells. And you would get Spectrum. So that's our challenge for next week. Next week? So that means we have a guest lineup already? Already lined up. Oh my. The kid is hot. Well, don't give it away. That's me. I'm the kid. Oh, you're the kid. Okay. So it's mail time. Time for the mail ball bag, which, man, it is loaded. It is bursting. It is actually bursting at the seams. It is bursting at the seams. Wow. And we have this, well, I'll say it when we get to it. For now, we have a bunch of emails from Robert Byers, who is catching up on our podcast. He did actually catch up. He caught up. He has one here that says, a whole month with the podcast. Wahaha, not for me. Into episode 72. I don't know what that means. Because we took the month off. He didn't have to wait the month. Oh, okay. He just went right into the next one. Episode 73, I vote for Quicksilver to go into the bar. Which? It did. Does Ron need a roomie for the New York City Championships? I heard he booked a Skyline at a discount rate. Yes, I did. Oh my. We'll have to see. Oh, NBA Stern. Please tell me he likes it. No! Fuck that game! Come on! Yes. What do you think of Stern NBA? Wow, okay. Never mind, never mind. With or without the spinning disc in the middle? That's true. They turned it off at Papa. Because if it's turned off, then it's actually playable or tolerable. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, hey, hey, Bruce, dude, BCC people, don't give out personal emails to everyone on a mass mailing. Fail. Two points, not just one for Ron. See there you go. P.S. it also avoids the reply. All nightmares of people without email etiquette saying I'm in or I'm out. I love it. Keep it up. You're good work, Bruce. Jesus, you suck. I do. Let's see. He's a big Zach fan. And by that I mean not a Zach fan. What? Well, don't forget. Did he actually leave? Well, he did listen to the first half. Yeah, he listened to both of them. He's not a fan. He had trouble making it through the end. Wow. We didn't get even much criticism last time of Zach than we did the first time. Actually, we got more compliments about Zach. Are you kidding? We lost listeners over Zach on the second appearance. And it was funnier than fucking hell. Then we have from Scott, where he reminds you that 2000 Time Warps were stripped with straight flippers. Right from Barry Osler's This Old Pinball Podcast. Until I hear it doesn't believe him. Oh, whatever, whatever. Just accept the pain. You won the next one. Let's see, we have, I'm saving one for last by the way, I skipped one. We have a Would You Buy This eBay item, which I haven't looked at. Okay, let's see. It is eBay item number 282-618-486764. Let's take a peek. See, looks like it's a Gottlieb Grim. Wow, Gottlieb 8 already. I don't like the game. Yeah, but that's not, it's only $725. Yeah, okay. No. No? Even for $725, you would not buy that? Nope. Even with these three awesome pictures taken with the glass on? And sideways? And sideways, you know, because we love that? Oh it got the four flippers See how you doing there Alright yeah you right You right sorry Thank you We would not buy that But I do have another Would You Buy That or Would You Not since you want to go into that real fast Alright. One more. 202-241-056-645 Okay. Yeah. Street Fighter. Okay, forgiving the fact that it's Street Fighter 2, one of the worst games ever. It literally has one picture. Woo! It looks like just... This is glorious. It looks like someone was dirt biking in the area of the game and got mud all over the top glass. It looks like shit. It is shit. It has... what's the thing on the side? Is there a sticker on the... what is this? Is the word is located? It's in East Bahrain. East of River Bahrain. Where the hell is that? It's in the Middle East. Yep. As is, does not power on, no keys, $620. No doubt. No. How about just no? No. No. 100% positive feedback. Yeah. Yeah. For what items? Yeah. Let's see. What is he selling? A Neo Geo console? Casino, Space Battle, JAMA, Arcade. So he's into arcades. Oh, okay. Do you see what the pinball is in front of that? Can somebody tell me what the pinball machine is in front of that? Wait a minute. The one that's shrink-wrapped that you can see maybe 1% of it? Yep. And somehow you know what it is? Can you tell what it is? Uh, let me look at it. You guys see? Addams Family? Little piece of a ball there with a thing? No? Or theater? No, not theater. You're so close Steve, it's biting you in the ass. Twilight Zone? You got it. Yeah it is. It is Twilight Zone. Wow. See that's right. They protected that, they protected that. Yeah they protected that one. But they didn't care about the Street Fighter. Nothing's touching the Twilight Zone. Jesus. Well at least, at least the seller recognizes value since the Street Fighter 2 was unprotected whereas Twilight Zone, you know. We are major geeks. Major geeks. I mean, there's literally like 1% of the game that you can see and a shrink raft and we can identify it. Now, can I make something really funny? This is a Middle Eastern country. Yeah. Because this was it. Now, if you look at the back glass on the Street Fighter II, what's that sticker covering?
    95:45
    Right. Oh, there's the woman on it. Yes, with the legs. With the legs. They have a sticker covering up her legs. And this is Gottlieb. This is Gottlieb 90s. Scott Leib, who went out of their way to have non-offensive art on their games because they wanted to be the family-friendly company. And even with that kind of art, it was still too offensive. Yep. I thought everyone would get kicked out of this one. Yeah, I didn't even notice that, but yes, you're right. It's covering up. You look at Street Fighter Backglass, there's a little leg shown, and that was too much. It's got a sticker over it covering up. Because don't forget the premier name in pinball. Yes, the premiere name in shit. That's a terrible fucking game. Terrible game. It's another one of those with the terrible flippers where you can trap everything under the sun. It's horrible. Alright. Alright, we're still emptying out the mailbag. Those were all from Hubbert Buyers. Yes. The Would You Buy This? was from Jim. Thank you, Jim. Then we have another Jim. Different Jim here. Jim Mueller, okay, Mueller, Mueller, Mueller, says, hey fellas, another great episode made even better by Keith's company. I've got a frontier wanting a Quicksilver. All right. Nice. One vote for bringing back the Oh My George Takei's part back into the outro. One of many. All right, you will all get your wish. We'll be back. All right, I saved the best for last. This is from Jim, Jim, Jim again, the first Jim. Jim B., Jim Burrell, I hope I'm saying it right. And this is the longest non-pinball princess email we have ever received. And he is making an argument for Space Invaders. I feel obligated to read this because man, if someone makes this kind of argument, you really should read the whole thing here. I'm telling you. I'm ready for this. Oh my, because I have a lot of firepower. We have busted on this game. We've called it the worst of the Valley widebodies by a large margin. He is here to defend Space Invaders. Okay, here we go. I am writing to defend Space Invaders, one of my favorite games. I acknowledge people's criticism of widebody games and one-shot games, but Space Invaders is misunderstood. Space Invaders was featured as the B game on the Papa TV Live Twilight Zone video and described as a horrible game from 1979. Silver Ball Mania, the Y-body. Wrong! Wrong! All that counts! This game is from April 1980, though my recollection is March. The project was started in 1979. They didn't know the game well. I was was borne out by the gameplay in the video. The best scores are from proportionally playing all the features, not just shooting the center loop. There is a setting that diminishes the fun as shown in the video and likely most tournaments. Here are the 13 reasons why Space Invaders is better than Future Spa, Hot Doggin' and even Paragon. No. To say nothing of being far superior to Silver Ball Mania. Alright, here we go, you ready? See, I'm trying to sell this too. I'm betting on this guy right here. Space Invaders has a collect bonus shot that is worth a potential 495,000 points. This is the highest Playfield Award I know of on a game with six digit scoring. Yeah, I'd say so. This can be collected over and over again, only requiring two shots. Drop target, then the gate behind it. No other shots required to light this award. And yet, so few can repeat, collect this when it is at its full potential. Okay, so let's go one step at a time. That's the first reason. Okay. Two. Two bonus systems. The traditional ladder like Paragon, Star Trek, Blackjack, and older games, And the red... oh, I think he's saying instead of one, like those other games. And the five red invaders, like the spell outs and future spawn hotdogging, but not as tedious because of only five targets to complete. Tired of shoot the loop repeatedly to spot letters? Well, Space Invaders has no spot shots. You have to get every target. That's reason two. Well, you can change that, though. You can change that in other games, too. So I'm not buying that. Reason three. Super bonus. Like Bally Paragon, Bally, you know, Playboy, Paragon, and Harlem Globetrotters, reaching 20,000 means every ball thereafter starts with 20,000 bonus. And yet, reaching 19,000 bonus means the next ball starts with, wait for it, 1,000. So it becomes critical to hit those shots in advanced bonus, like the captive ball when lit, the center target, and the top center lane. More fun for competition than Future Spa, Hot Doggin', and Silver Ball Mania, for which the last letter doesn't mean all that much. And you can get it easily by hitting a spot letter target. This next one, number four, comes with a video. We can't really show on the podcast, obviously, but the captive ball named The Clone Chamber, starting at 1.57 of his video. Evan Bookbinder sometimes shooting it makes a cool time warp effect whereby the ball stands still for a full second it takes for the captive ball to roll into its target and back, then smack the ball into motion. Reason 5. Four flippers. Not the Paragon, Harlem Globetrotters, lose it between the flippers you big dummy arrangement, but an arrangement that rewards daring use yet punishes foolish choice. Still with me here? Still there, still here. Okay, reason six. The center hoop. Is this loop or hoop? No, it says hoop. The center hoop and the flashing pair of special lights. An important shot. But I dare any opponent to win by shooting this all day long. To do so is to put all their eggs in one basket. This is ricochet to an out lane. Making five or more shots in a ball means every two shots scores 45,000 plus a free game. The Winner is Evan in the Pop-A-TV segment. So he's referring to the Pop-A-TV segment a lot. Let's see. In his previous games, Evan had done this and three captive ball shots and reached super bonus. Blue balls two and three and yet ended only 40,000 behind Fred. So watching this Pop-A-TV video is very important to understanding this. Seven, the Blue Invaders, especially the top three. They are the top three. They are the top three in the world. The top three. I'm not sure if they are the top three. The Blue Invaders, especially the top three, they're all important, and you have to get them all, nothing spots them. The dead bumpers between the lanes means that a calibrated plunger shot for each of them is not difficult, making the three top Blue Invader lanes light the center to score the captive ball for the remainder of the game. For a score of up to 50,000, it advanced three bonuses, and the center bumper may bump the ball up and down for lane two or three more times, so a player can come from behind to win. Reason 8, the 5 Red Invaders. It is less intimidating to complete them to like 20 to 40 to 60 thousand bonus than it is to complete Future Spa for 18 to 36 thousand, Silver Ball Mania for 15 to 30 thousand, or Ski and Hot Dog for 30 thousand, or Super Cali... okay, I'm not going to try to say that. Super Califrasolistic Histicalidosis, I think I said that, for 34k. Reason 9. Space Invaders has a multi-layer situational strategy. Don't believe me? I'll prove it at Texas Pinball Festival. Ooh, sounds like a challenge there. I think you have your challenge ready, Ron. Alright. Reason 10. The sound is the best integration of theme of its time. Nothing comes close until high speed in 1986. The background sound and the invader targets and lanes are exactly like the game. The hoop has a cool sound that varies randomly. The mystery ship target, which acts just like the high scoring mystery ship in the video game, lighting randomly for a few seconds for 50,000. Sounds like it too. And the bonus collect sound, only surpassed by Paragon, rewards good play. The background sound even speeds up for every five red invaders completed, going really Fast but 60,000 is special and lit. Silver Ball Mania, Future Spawn, Hot Doggin', three different themes, three similar sound packages. Reason 11. The art package. The infinity lighting is cool. And the black on the back glass makes the scores magically float. When I was 12 years old and the game was brand new, I looked at this in awe, trying to figure out how it was done. Of course, owning a pinball machine is like being a stagehand in a magic show. When you see behind the scenes, nothing is impressive anymore. But Xenon and other games don't do this as well because they had too much art and it showed the outlaying of the displays. 1980 Orlando, Florida Space Invaders was the first pinball machine priced at 50 cents for 5 balls. The reason I hate it. Number 12, no lousy 10 point scores. Minimum of 50 points and all other scores have 2 or more zeros. Have you ever triple or quadruple matched? You might on Space Invaders. Even though some of the sounds are borrowed from Silver Ball Main and Future Spa, they fit better into Space Invaders. Like many great ballet games, Space Invaders will kick you to the floor and leave you thinking it was your own fault and try just one more time. Space Invaders is a feature game in Keith Elwin's Pinball 101 DVD. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Scott Danesi. Liberal Recall. This is the most fun to play. We're playing the conservative reset. The reward difficulty ratio is too low compared to the other features on the game. Hi to Ryan Steen and Steve Bowden. Great timing! And Jim from Dallas. Let's see. Movie series for show episodes. Movies directed by Hitchcock in the U.S. Recommendation episode 100 to a clip show, like All in the Family in Seinfeld did. And finally, for my ride to and from the Quarter Lounge in Bedford where I operate pinball... Oh, he's an operator. Bless you, sir.
    107:04
    The Splant Hill Podcast is my go-to audio. Thanks, guys. Thank you. You Jim, P.S. Okay, he's got your strategy for space invaders. So here you go. When you get this in a tournament, this is what you do. Shoot the top left blue invader. Getting it will make one of the other two easier. Missing it will likely get the middle one to light the spinner. Get the captive ball to advance it to 50,000 and build up bonus to 20,000 superbonus. Get the red invaders, especially the center target. After either 5 red invaders are complete or 20,000 bonus is made, shoot the center loop to build up 5 times. On ball 2, get any remaining blue invaders, completing all 5 lights center target to advance 3 bonus and return lanes to award an extra ball. On tournament settings, the score is 25,000 and remains lit for the remainder of the game. Shats, the lit lane is shown in Pinball 101. On ball three, shoot the center loop to get 5x bonus and then carefully make the right drop target and collect bonus shots. The targets on the left help keep the ball in play, especially the lowest target. If it is hit, then shoot the others to reset them. But to be fair, what I don't like about Space Invaders, the gate's at the top. It's no fun shooting a ball and waiting for it to drop down a spinner. Fail. Even worse, the ball sometimes sneaks under the left gate. Fail, fail. Lots of wasted space in the lower part of the game. Even more wasted under the apron. Stern games like big game use this better. But I like how much speed the ball gathers coming down the outer return lanes. And finally, making the 5- Blue Invader twice can waste an extra ball. The rules should have been like Playboy. We're completing them. A second time, lights are Rewards is special. Get that? You're done. Oh, you're done. That's a lot about Space Invaders, man. Okay, Steve, do you have any rebuttals? I'm still gonna shoot the whole issue like I'm supposed to. I mean, I appreciate the arguments. I do too. I appreciate them very much, but I still don't like the way the game shoots. I got the, you know, I definitely understood and recognized all of the, you know, I'm aware of All of the strategies mentioned. But, all these, most of the strategies mentioned require a lot of side to side action, which the horseshoe doesn't. If I have that dialed in, then I'm not risking an out lane, and I'm not risking a center drain either, because it's going to land near those upper flippers, which I can use to stop the ball, and leisurely drop it down to one of the lower flippers, where I can shoot the horseshoe again, and just keep doing it. The capture ball on the left goes down the left out lane. That's just its job. Its job is to send it down the left out lane, so... So here's what we'll do, Jim. Two out of three at Space Invaders, I will shoot the horseshoe and nothing else, and you can play it the correct way. The way he said it was better. Yep, the way to say it was better because, frankly, there was too much stuff in this email and I'm already confused. I will probably just shoot the horseshoe because this seems too complicated. And we'll see who wins. The gauntlet has been thrown down. If I were to make bets, I would think that he would win because anyone who would write that has practiced the strategy enough. That's true, and it's his Space Invaders. Yep. Oh, so that empties a very full mail ball bag. So let me just... God. Let's just put these in the archived email section. So let's finish it up here with... Stop! Yeah! Because that's one place you will find all three of us this weekend. Yes. So what's stop again, Bruce? Slam, tilt, oh my podcast west, which is because I am west of Ron. It's a match play tournament, four hours of match play for $20 at the door. Doors open at 12. We start at 1. Come on by and there's 21 pinball machines right now at the bar and there's going to And they will be... The Getaway. Nice. And Bram Stroker's Dracula. Bram Stroker's? Bram Stroker? Bram Stroker. Is this a porn version of it? It's like Stroker's Ace. Featuring Academy Award winner Gary Oldman. Oooh. I had to put that out there. Because he just... He just... Because he just won. Yes, he did. So, wait a minute. So, we got Star Trek, LE, and then you're going to bring in the Getaway. So, you're saying you want Steve to win the tournament? Is that what you're saying? World Poker Tour is already there, too. So, you're just saying, please, Steve, please, please win this tournament. No, that's all right. I'll be hanging out. So, you know, I've got my March result from Louisville. I've got my March Whoppin' result. Conference October 8th 2019
    112:40
    That's a special way to save the ball. You can do it that way. You're good. Plus we may have a Canadian ringer coming down. Yeah, we've recruited Phil Birnbaum. You're gonna feel the burn. You're gonna feel the burn, Bob. So right now we have 20 signed up, so a good start. We'll have plenty of room there. Plenty of fun for all. Come on out and check it out. Come to Stomp West. George C.K. will be there. We will be streaming it also. We will be streaming it. The stream will be on our Twitch page at twitch.tv slash slam tilt podcast. So be sure to check that out. We'll be streaming, I don't know exactly what time we'll be starting, but just tune in Saturday, this Saturday, March 10th. We'll be on at some point. We'll definitely be getting at least the semifinals and the finals. And did you see what the 72nd machine that they released for color DMD is? No, Bruce. What is it? Black Rose. Oh. Great. So is Zach going to be buying that immediately? Polly says. Why Jack Barton? Yes. Well, he was like a letter or something. He usually gives you like a letter. Kill Polly. That's my favorite feature. Steve Schiller, Phil Polley. Hey, so Bruce, you know, you actually had that game at one time and it has a button. It does. That was like maybe the first button game right there. Yes, but you didn't have to play pinball while hitting the button. Okay, so if the button is there for video mode only, then it's fine. Yes. So if Star Wars had like track and field mode just came up and you were racing. Okay. If you were running against, running away from Darth Vader, that'd be good. Well, no, then you'd be a pussy. Why would you be running away from Darth Vader? What the hell? Luke running from Darth Vader? Okay, how about Yoda running away from the Emperor? That would just be funny. Because that's the truth. He did run away from him. Episode 3. Oh, God. Those don't exist. They do exist. No, they don't. We fucked about them. No. Those movies do not exist. They don't exist. There's three Star Wars movies. That's it. So you don't even count Rogue One? No. Rogue One rocks. No. There's the Star Wars trilogy. That's it. No, I have to disagree with you on that one. Oh, I did watch the Rogue One, like, Vader kicks ass part. That was cool. He does. That was cool as hell, I'll say. Yes, Vader kicking ass. But that's because it's Vader. I'm sorry, I'm of the move on. Please move on. Please sir, step aside. Please sir, we have some more. We need more money, more Star Wars, more characters. We could do a Han Solo prequel. No, that looks terrible. Really? I thought it was terrible. I don't like the look of it. Oh, you don't like the look of it. Well, the thing is going to be, here's the problem. Are they going to make Han Solo bad or good? He's really, he's a tweener. Oh, no. Steve wouldn't understand my wrestling terminology. He's a tweener. He's like Steve Austin, man. He's just going to like stun people and shit. But the thing is, if you go by your original trilogy, Ron, he's the bad guy. Well, yeah, he's a smuggler. No, he's the one that shot, uh, what's his name? Yes, he shot Greedo first, and he's a smuggler. He was smuggling stuff for Jabba the Hutt, come on. But he would drop it at the first sign of any Imperial cruiser. Hey, even I get boarded sometimes. You think I had a choice? Yep. I'm sorry, I'm just going into the... The mode. You know when you know the subtitle lines are bad? Yes. You know, I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. Yes, I bet you have. Sorry about the mess. But you know, which is the real, I feel that's the real version. The first version. I'm Scott First, everyone knows that, come on. Why are we talking about Star Wars? I don't understand. Oh, but by the way, Tim Balls, he played really good. He did? He played in Vegas. He was on some of the stream. Yes, with his beige pants. I made fun of him about that. And Keith Elwin was giving him heat and he was ignoring it in the chat. So I thought it was funny. It was. He did good in nationals. He kicked ass like his first two rounds. Then he ran into the buzzsaw. That is Raymond. Yes. And then he did really good on Friday in the golf. And then he did really bad on Saturday, but it evened out and he made the playoffs. Congrats to TARF Balls. To TARF Balls. So, I think we're, I think we've had enough content for the day, don't you? I do. We did it! So Steve, anything else you want to plug, anything? Of course you do. Of course, whatever. Yeah, Fun With Bonus, FunWithBonus.com, FunWithBonus on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. That's my handle online. Handle? Screen name. Whatever that is. That's what I got and I'm sticking with it. Oh my. So I start with bonus online and you'll probably run into me. Just remember, Steve Bowden is Skull's favorite player. Right. Always be trashin'. Play better. Second place, the first loser. And Keith, you're still in trouble when we get back to work. You made fun of me. That was not cool. Tim Koldbetter. Hey Tim, Koldbetter. Kold faster. I want the button to do more stuff. I want a second action button. I want a second action button within the first action button. I want the buttons on the sides. I want to bring back like the shadow side buttons except they're buttons that change stuff. Think you ever see anything like that again, like diverters that are controllable? No. I mean, what, there's a good question, what was the last feature like that that was directly controllable by like a button?
    118:51
    You mean like Revenge from Mars, though? Or like when you go back and forth with... Like Diversed... Oh, like physical stuff. Like a gator on Gator where you like hit the thing and it comes out and grabs stuff, like an actual physical thing. Not like you hit a button and it just fires a cannon. I mean like... Okay, so you're not counting like Devil's Day or manual kickbacks and stuff? Uh, sure. Why not? Well, the latest one would be either, I'd say Championship Pub. You mean The Champion Pub? Yeah, The Champion Pub. No one ever says that right, so don't feel bad. With the, you know, with the jump rope and with the boxing you are converting it. That's true. That's true. But if you don't want to go with that one, if you think that's a gimmick, Shadow. I guess I should have been more specific. Anything that manipulates stuff that's not a cannon. John Popadiuk, Rob Lundgren, David Van Es, Dayton and Jaguar, Zupan F. Y. M. K. And, that's what I want. Come on, Stern. Bring back that mechanical action. Bring back the player-controlled kickback. What they could do is, you know, they probably wouldn't do that because of the extra button, but now that they have an action button on every game, just make that the button. Think how cool that would be. You've got to stay focused and you're going to make the game go on. You have to stay focused. You've got to stay focused and you're going to make the game go on. You've got to stay focused. Think about that. That's what I want. I want to see that. You've got to stay focused. But now that they have an action button on every game, just make that the button.
    120:09
    Think how cool that would be. You've got to save the ball in the left out lane by reaching over and hitting the action button. Hitting the action button in the middle. To time the kickback, too. I like that. Bring it back. Make it so. No, Darth Balls. Darth Balls, make it so. Push it. Manual kickback now. Devil's there. Yep. So this has been episode 81, Mothra vs. Godzilla. We are the Slamtail Podcast. We can be found, just Google us really, just Google Slamtail Podcast. It pretty much gives you everything. We're on Facebook. They'll give you our Twitch page. They'll give you our YouTube page. Our email, which I'm going to remember to save this time, is slamtailpodcast at gmail.com. That's slamtailpodcast at gmail.com. Don't forget Stomp this weekend. Don't forget Stomp West this weekend, this Saturday at the Silver Ball Saloon. www.thesilverballsaloon.com Joe Newhart, for all your, let's see if I can get this right, for all your JJP, Spooky, Chicago Gaming, and American Pinball games, needs, did I get them all? Yes you did. Yes! And then we have Flipper Fidelity, Mike Pupo, for all your pinball sound needs, speaker systems, also a Stern distributor. And we have all our fellow podcast brethren. We have Brody, I think it's Brody we even talk pinball. I always say it wrong. This flipping podcast, Pinball Profile with Jeff Chiolis. Hi Jeff. Hi Jeff. Pinball Players Podcast with Jeff. Hi Jeff. Hi Jeff. This Week in Pinball Sight with Jeff. Hi Jeff. Hi Jeff. The Head to Head Podcast. Martin and Ryan C. Day, mate. It's Coast to Coast Pinball, though he said he's dead to you, because he never podcasts anymore. And he doesn't talk about us, you know. He can't talk about us if he's not even on. Then there's the Eclectic Gamers Podcast and the Canadian Pinball Podcast. I think I got them all. I think you did too. So thank you, Steve, once again. Thank you. God, you're awesome, Buck. All right. Thank you, Bruce. Woo hoo. Goodbye, everyone. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Bruce. Goodbye! Goodbye, Ron Hallett. Wow, I, I, okay. Let's try this again. This has been the Slam Tilt Podcast. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Ron Hallett Jr. That's lame.
    123:28
    This is the Willy Wonka Show with Steve Gingrich, and the Willy Wonka Show with David Van Es, and Frank Kiesel, and Mike Kiefer, and Oh my! Oh my!