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Episode 33 – The Premium Bowen Experience

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 51m·analyzed·Mar 5, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.021

TL;DR

Bowen Kerins on pinball design philosophy, game preferences, and growing the hobby.

Summary

Bowen Kerins, a prominent pinball content creator and ambassador, discusses his playing philosophy, game preferences, and views on growing the hobby. He emphasizes the importance of accessible rule design, shot flow, and player enjoyment over theme licensing. He also highlights Total Nuclear Annihilation success and the challenge of introducing pinball to younger demographics through venues beyond traditional arcades.

Key Claims

  • Total Nuclear Annihilation has sold through more units than any other Spooky Pinball machine and is approaching sales comparable to early Stern games like CSI and 24.

    high confidence · Host states TNA is down 340 units with 40 sold in the past three weeks, and expects it to surpass 500 units.

  • Bowen wrote rule sheets for multiple classic games including Doctor Who, Theater of Magic, Twilight Zone, and AC/DC as a charity fundraiser.

    high confidence · Bowen describes writing these guides before YouTube became significant, with the AC/DC sheet taking 40 hours and being ~40 pages long.

  • Arcades are dead as a venue for introducing new players to pinball; barcades in major U.S. cities (New York, Seattle, Portland, Austin) are now the primary location-based discovery mechanism.

    high confidence · Bowen discusses the shift from 1980s-90s arcades and bars to modern barcades as the primary venue for casual pinball play.

  • Bowen owns two home machines: World Cup Soccer '94 and Simpsons Pinball Party (2003), both acquired new, and previously owned Twilight Zone which he sold before the market appreciated significantly.

    high confidence · Direct statement by Bowen about his collection and a regrettable sale decision.

  • Total Nuclear Annihilation newest firmware (1.1) includes changes to scoop mechanics and ball save timing after reactor explosions.

    medium confidence · Bowen describes briefly playing v1.1 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in San Francisco; mentions scoop rejection mechanics and 5-second ball save on reactor explosions.

Notable Quotes

  • “Everything you want to do is right there in front of you... it's like, there's 11 letters. It's not hard. It's obvious what you're supposed to do, but it almost never happens.”

    Bowen Kerins — Describes his preference for early 1980s pinball games with simple, accessible rule designs like Quicksilver.

  • “I'm not going to let the pit continue to happen. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to enjoy playing pinball because that's why we started playing pinball in the first place.”

    Bowen Kerins — Explains his philosophy on tournament play and why he maintains an animated, fun demeanor during competition.

  • “The most complicated rules is pretty clearly Simpsons or Lord of the Rings, but that doesn't mean they're the best rules... The The Addams Family gives the player the ability to play the game the way they want and get rewarded for it.”

    Bowen Kerins — Articulates his design philosophy: complexity ≠ quality; great games allow player agency and don't force a single optimal strategy.

  • “My favorite detail is that when you blow up a reactor you get five seconds of ball save time along with it... Those are why we play pinball. We want joy.”

    Bowen Kerins — Highlights how small design details in TNA create emotional satisfaction and player joy, reflecting Scott Denise's design philosophy.

  • “Most of the time somebody doesn't like pinball is because they never played one... We still have so many cities altogether that have virtually no pinball on location.”

    Bowen Kerins — Identifies the core challenge for industry growth: lack of accessible venues for casual discovery in most U.S. cities.

  • “You could secure a hot license and by the year's development time it takes to make this game... all of a sudden it's gone. And it's not popular anymore.”

    Bowen Kerins — Explains why licensed games targeting young demographics are difficult to execute; IP trends move faster than game development cycles.

  • “I'm being pulled towards the shorter playing games now... A good Flash Gordon game... feel super satisfying because everything you want to do is right there in front of you.”

Entities

Bowen KerinspersonMartinpersonRyan C.personScott DenisepersonJack DangerpersonZoepersonPat Lawlorperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Total Nuclear Annihilation experiencing rapid sales growth: 300 units sold ~3 weeks prior to conversation, 340 units sold by time of conversation (40 units in 3 weeks). Projected to exceed 500 units.

    high · Host: 'They're down 340 units I think this week... and it was 300 about three weeks ago, so that's 40 Pinball machines within three weeks... I think they'll blow through 500.'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Player preference shift toward accessible, high-intensity games with clear objectives and simple rule sets (TNA, Flash Gordon, early 1980s games) over complex rule designs (Simpsons, Lord of the Rings).

    high · Bowen: 'I'm being pulled towards the shorter playing games now' and detailed commentary on TNA's escalating intensity despite simple rules.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Best-designed games provide player agency and multiple viable strategies rather than forcing single optimal path. Addams Family cited as exemplar; games that require specific shots to progress (Theater of Magic, some modes) are viewed negatively.

    high · Bowen on Addams Family: 'gives the player the ability to play the game the way they want and get rewarded for it... You compare that to some other games where the game will say, no, no, No, all that matters right now is a center ramp.'

  • $

    market_signal: Shift from 1980s-90s arcade ecosystem to modern barcades in major U.S. cities (NYC, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Texas) as primary location-based pinball discovery and play venue. Traditional arcades described as dead or converted to redemption/gambling machines.

    high · Bowen: 'Now that arcades are dead, we really don't have that. We have the barcades that have cropped up in the cities... it's primarily in bars and other places that can have as many as 10 or 20 pinball machines.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.074

0:00
Music You're listening to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. Find us on Facebook, email us at headtoheadpeople at gmail.com or go to our website at headtoheadpeople.com Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode number 33 and my name is Martin and with me as always, it's Ryan C. And we've got another special guest with us today. He's taught me how to play pinball. He might have taught you how to play pinball as well. Yeah, for sure. As Scott Denisey says, is that you, Bowen Kierens? It is. Hi. It's been such an honor to have this ability to get online and help people. I really am just starting to get a sense of how big that is.
1:06
But to be able to, you know, having been introduced to so many players in the last few years who have learned from the videos or whatever, it's just remarkable how things have changed. Well, talk to us a bit about yourself, Bowen. You play a lot on location and you're always playing at the Puffer facility. Do you actually have any games at your house? Do you play games at home? I do have two pinball machines in my house. I have World Cup Soccer, 94, and Simpsons Pinball Party from, I think, 2003. And I've had both those games since they came out new. They are terrific. I don't see myself ever getting rid of them for any reason, although, There has been some talk of exchanging Simpsons for some annihilation-ish game.
1:56
And are you happy with just having the two machines, or do you want more? I don't have very much space, so I think really I'd only even have room for three machines, and two is probably better when you have a nine-year-old kicking around. They take up all the space and then some. I had a Twilight Zone for a long time, and I sold it, and then watched the market go up and up and up the year after. Well, boy, you sold just the wrong dime. Good job.
2:24

Bowen Kerins — Documents his recent shift in taste toward early 1980s EM and early solid-state machines after initially hating them 10 years prior.

Jim Belsito
person
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
World Cup Soccergame
Simpsons Pinball Partygame
The Addams Familygame
Twilight Zonegame
Theatre of Magicgame
Lord of the Ringsgame
Flash Gordongame
Funhousegame
Dialed In!game
AC/DCgame
The Walking Deadgame
Spooky Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
Head to Head Pinball Podcastorganization
Puffer facilityvenue
Jordan Treadwayperson
  • $

    market_signal: Large geographic coverage gaps in pinball availability; many major U.S. cities have little to no pinball on location despite growing interest.

    high · Bowen: 'We still have so many cities altogether that have virtually no pinball on location.'

  • ?

    code_update: Total Nuclear Annihilation firmware v1.1 introduces scoop rejection mechanic (ball bounces out on imperfect shots) and maintains 5-second ball save window after reactor explosions.

    medium · Bowen: 'newest firmware 1.1... when the reactor is ready and you have to kind of shoot the scoop... with a perfect shot, it'll reject' and 'when you blow up a reactor you get five seconds of ball save time.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Licensed games targeting young/trending demographics face inherent timing mismatch: IP trends move faster than 1-year game development cycles, causing games to launch after IP popularity has declined.

    high · Bowen: 'You could secure a hot license and by the year's development time it takes to make this game... all of a sudden it's gone. And it's not popular anymore.'

  • ?

    content_signal: Bowen Kierans continues to be active pinball ambassador through location visits, tutorial content, and social media presence despite Tilt Through Podcast being inactive (paused, awaiting co-hosts Jack Danger and Zoe availability).

    high · Bowen visited Seattle and Portland locations for pinball play, mentioning TNA facility in Portland; podcast on hiatus but collaboration planned for Chicago meetup.

  • ?

    design_innovation: TNA demonstrates deliberate design focus on player joy through positive feedback mechanics (e.g., ball save on reactor explosion preventing drain frustration during animation).

    high · Bowen: 'when you blow up a reactor you drain while the animation is going on. You feel like crap... But instead, you get that little extra moment of joy. Those are why we play pinball. We want joy.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Bowen has discussed possibility of trading Simpsons Pinball Party for a Total Nuclear Annihilation-style game, indicating high perceived value and desirability of TNA.

    medium · Bowen mentions 'There has been some talk of exchanging Simpsons for some annihilation-ish game.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball hobby growth evident in increasing number of active manufacturers, rising game production per company, and improving location availability in major cities year-over-year.

    high · Bowen: 'you've got more people making games, more companies, more games being made per company. It's clearly on an upswing... it's way, way better now than it was five years ago.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Bowen's personal taste evolved from disliking early 1980s and EM-era pinball 10 years ago to strongly preferring them now, indicating broader community reassessment of classic era design principles.

    high · Bowen: 'When I was playing pinball maybe 10 years ago, I used to hate those games. And I've come around on them pretty hard.'

    • Yeah, Pimball economics. You never know when the stocks are going up or down on a machine. So, I mean, Simpsons Pimball Party and World Cup Soccer, they're extremely different Pimball machines, aren't they? One of them is kind of like get as many points as you can and get out kind of Pimball machine, and Simpsons is one that you have to build up that perfect stack to get all the way through. So do you find yourself falling in love with one more than the other? Do you like the shorter playing games versus the longer ones? I'm being pulled towards the shorter playing games now. And I think that that comes from really getting to enjoy the late 70s and early 80s games as a genre. When I was playing pinball maybe 10 years ago, I used to hate those games. And I've come around on them pretty hard to the point where a good Flash Gordon game or any of those games from that era feel super satisfying because everything you want to do is right there in front of you. Quicksilver is a very good example from Stern. It's like, there's 11 letters. It's not hard. It's obvious what you're supposed to do, but it almost never happens. It just makes you want to continue trying and it's always right there within your grasp. I feel like, even though I love Stern Pinball Party so much, the goals in that game are not within the grasp of all but a few players.
    3:56
    I almost feel like that game is built for me. I'm like, oh yeah, let's go, let's get Scratchy's Revenge. When a normal player would just go, wait, what is that thing called? How do you get it? Where is it? Well, you wrote the rule sheet, right? Is that you?
    4:16
    Yeah, I used to, before the internet, no wait, the internet did exist then, before the internet got interesting with YouTube, you used to have to write these text guides for games. So Stern Pinball Party was one of the last ones I've ever done.
    4:32
    I used to do lots of them when I was in college, Doctor Who, Theater of Magic, Twilight Zone, many more. And they just take so long. The last one I did was ACDC about maybe four years ago now, and that was done as a charity fundraiser, kind of as a joke.
    4:51
    Someone on Pinside was like, all right, well, you can do an ACDC. What will it take you to write an ACDC rule sheet? And I said, how about we raise like $600 in donations for a pinball outreach project?
    5:05
    Now you have to update it. There it was. I'm like, oh, man. And I know, I mean, I must have sank 40 hours worth of work into that rule sheet. It's almost 40 pages long. So you just talked recently about how you like, you know, the old, more simpler rule sets. And I've seen online that you've spoken very favorably about total nuclear annihilation. Is that why you like that machine? Because the objectives are there in front of you? Yeah, actually I think the thing I like best about Total Nuclear Annihilation is that it has this escalation.
    5:47
    Like as the game goes on and you're doing pretty well, you start to get nervous for no reason other than the way the game is progressing. And the way it sounds. And the way it sounds and all of the reflexes and the fact that you've had to react to things for a really long time. But succeeding in annihilation and going all the way through probably takes about a half hour.
    6:12
    But in the meantime, like all of that half hour is intensity, catching and trapping and saving center drains, all sorts of stuff. You never have any downtime.
    6:26
    And I think that all those things roll onto themselves. The fact that the rules are simple enough that anyone new to pinball even can step up and have a fair understanding of what to do is a big plus for that game or for any game if that matters. I have World Cup soccer and the appeal of World Cup soccer is that someone who's never played pinball before can walk over to that game and have a great time.
    6:52
    And you can't say that about Simpsons Pinball Party because they're going to bat the ball around and not much is going to happen for a beginner. All of the goals are far away. All the rules are far away. So that is a really difficult push-pull for anyone working on pinball design or rules design is to build something that is accessible at all levels of difficulty. And it's one of the things I think the best programmers and the best playfield designers do really well that we don't even notice. And some of the games that we regard as the best games, it's because of that. It's because they have this mass appeal to all different layers of challenge.
    7:30
    Well, talking about the best games and the best software and hardware, what would you choose as your kind of, if you can, your top three games? If you want top three games overall, maybe one from each generation of Pinball, do you have them in mind?
    7:47
    Oh, well, let's see. Out of the EMs, my favorite probably is Jungle Queen at this point, just because it has such great geometry and shot flow, and it has monkeys. And any time you can shoot monkeys and kill the monkeys, it's kind of fun.
    8:05
    Out of early solid state, Paragon, it's hard to argue against Paragon. I really enjoy playing Flash Gordon because of how nasty it is. Yeah, it is. And there are a few other games like Alien Poker that have a style to them that is really interesting.
    8:23
    Geometrically, the early 80s games have such variety to them that I wish we had more of that today. I can understand why we don't with the types of flippers we have, with the themes we have, with the understanding of shot flow being a really important aspect of a successful design. But the 80s designs are all over the map. What I like about those ones as well, and I'll use probably Flash Gordon as a really good example in my mind, it's also about the condition of the machine. So, you know, if it's set up that those inline drop targets on the right are incredibly brutal, then you'll have to change your play style and try and get points elsewhere. But if they're quite simple, then you'll probably go there. But there's other sort of things that you can do on that machine based on the condition. That's right. And that means that different Flash Gordon's can behave differently. And I like that. When you go up to the late 80s and early 90s, I continue to really love playing Funhaus no matter what. I played Funhaus recently at a place in Tucson. Not Tucson. I would say Tucson. I mean Tacoma. and it just grabs me. Every time I see a fun house I want to play more of it. I like the games I have. I like Simpsons. I like World Cup. More recently I really like ACDC and Metallica. And in general the rules designs that Lyman has put together on different games have been quite appealing. Because they have that measure of goals for a beginner, goals for intermediate, goals for advanced players. and that they're really well struck.
    9:59
    Just very recently Dialed In and Annihilation have been the games I've played most out of this past year or two crop of games. Do you think that has anything to do with them being original themes? And I guess you fall in love with Pimball when it was mainly original themes versus licensed ones? Or do you think it's just a coincidence and it's more about the sound and the layout and the shot flow and all that kind of stuff? I'm not sure. I think it's more about Scott Flow. I don't find the theme. I usually find the theme to be a plus when there is one, unless it's Kiss, really.
    10:41
    But in general, an unlicensed theme is not necessarily going to appeal more to me than a licensed theme. So dialed in, it's really about the shot flow and the combos and that same game flow of things are going well and they're progressing and, oh, the stakes are a little higher now because the SIM cards are there and now everything's doubled or tripled.
    11:06
    So the best games sort of have this rolling effect to them where you're doing the same things and yet they feel different and yet they feel more important somehow. So that's really a trick of the mind that the people designing those games are pulling on you because it's not any different. It's the same shot. So why does it feel different? And the game that can bring you those experiences is they've really done a great job of putting something together. If you can feel like, oh, oh, it's different. It's more important now. So then what would be most important to you? And it might be hard, but if you're thinking, you know, theme, sound, art, rules or layout, what would you say is the most important thing to you? Um, probably rules, uh, just because I'm into that and, uh, I really care about the, the way that things work together. And as a, as a competition player, uh, I'm always seeking the best strategy. And if a game has a very clear, easy answer to that, then, um, it's not very interesting to me. So Theater of Magic comes to mind. Theater of Magic has great design. There's all sorts of good stuff to do. But the gameplay strategy from a competition perspective is broken. You just have to shoot the left loop a lot and you win. Unless it's one of Jim Belsito's games where he sort of makes it much more difficult. Good. What Jim does, like Jim, for example, my favorite Jim mod is on Party Zone, which is where he takes the left ramp. and instead of having it feed back to the flipper he has it feed into the bumpers. Yeah, that's right. Where normally you would just shoot the ramp all day and ramp out and make the ramps work more and more as the game goes on. Instead every ramp is like cross your fingers time. So then what would you say, and we'll probably go through it very quickly if we can, but the game that you think has the absolute best rules ever? Um, gosh. It's really hard to say that because the most complicated rules is pretty clearly Simpsons or Lord of the Rings, but that doesn't mean they're the best rules.
    13:21
    I think in some, perhaps to me that the first answer that comes to mind is Adam's Family, because what Adam's Family does is it gives the player the ability to play the game the way they want to and get rewarded for it. You can just shoot ramps on Adam Sandler and good things happen. You can play for multiball and good things happen. You can play for Moe's and good things happen.
    13:42
    You don't have to be stuck doing what the game tells you to do. You can do what you want and the game kind of will generally reward you better for some things than others, but it won't get in your way. And say, no, no, no, you really have to do this now instead. And you compare that to some other games where the game will say, no, no, No, all that matters right now is a center ramp. I really want you to shoot the center ramp, to the exclusion of all else. And a player who says, I really like this other loop shot, can I just shoot that? No, no, it's not worth anything. That kind of balance is something that only really the best programmers seem able to pull off. And it's very impressive when it's pulled off. Yeah, well, and you sort of mentioned that up again. For me, one of those is I always bring up The Walking Dead and it's sort of one of those things where everybody really talks about the code on that because when it first came out, it sort of punished everybody and then Lyman just weaved this magic. And for me, it's not just about the fact that the game is guiding you to do something. That one in particular rewards the situation. So you've got to constantly be adjusting what you want to do based on where you are. Right, right. And a game that is changing that balance as it goes is neat too because then you're going to be forced to play the whole field.
    15:08
    And to try and coordinate things and stack them starts to matter too. And Walking Dead has just evolved into a great game because of that. And it's interesting because the playfield design was pretty good. And when that game first came out, it didn't have a very good reception. So it's entirely that rules design that has carried that from its initial impression to where it is now.
    15:32
    When you play Pinball, I mean, some players kind of, they're in the zone, but they've got their poker face on and they're completely still.
    15:43
    Not all the time, but most of the time that I'm watching you play Pinball on a stream or a puppet tutorial, you're kind of dancing around and you're quite animated. Is that something that you put on because that's how you like to play pinball or is it that's just the natural reaction of your body because you get excited playing pinball?
    16:02
    It's both. I think that some of that comes out of my very first tournament. I was playing this rinky-dink tournament in South Bay near San Francisco.
    16:15
    I don't even remember what we were playing for. It was pathetic. It was like maybe $20 or something. Ha ha ha ha.
    16:24
    And we were on this Fishtails and my hands are shaking. I'm like super nervous about playing this game of Fishtails now that it's a competition and somehow big stuff is on the line. And I'm like, what is wrong with me? I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm not having any fun here. I'm not enjoying this. I'm shaking and I hate this. And I resolved then, like, I'm not going to let the pit continue to happen. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to enjoy playing pinball because that's why we started playing pinball in the first place.
    17:00
    And that's carried me. That's really carried me through all of these tournaments. So sometimes you see players get into a final and they're clearly nervous. They're clearly thinking about the prize money or they're thinking about the trophy or the audience or whatever. And meanwhile I'm like just dancing or making a joke. When it's my turn to go I usually walk up to the machine and immediately plunge. I don't like think about where I'm going. Okay.
    17:30
    And so outside of tournaments do you sort of still play Pinball for fun or is it really about the competition and getting a high score or competing against other people? Haven't you seen his TNA videos Marty? Come on.
    17:46
    So, Annihilation is kind of fun that way, but the last two months I've had a number of opportunities to play pinball casually with people around the country, and it's been really rewarding.
    18:00
    I've had a great time. I haven't been to any tournaments. I played pinball in Seattle, and then while I was in Seattle, I find out that they've got Annihilation down in Portland, Oregon, which is three hours drive. And so on the last day of my trip to Seattle, having been up to Triple Knock and Flip Flip and Icebox and all these great locations in Seattle, I decided, yeah, sure, I'll drive. Drive three hours to play a machine.
    18:29
    And it was completely worth it. And also it was worth it to hang around with the people from both of those towns, just all of the pinball enthusiasts. And players who have their own excitement and their own stories about what games they like and why and their own style of flipping. And I find myself watching a lot of players, even new players, and learning more about how I should play from the way they play. Including on Annihilation of being a little more loose with not having to trap up every time I want to take a shot. But seeing some of the on-the-fly players that do a great job.
    19:14
    Yeah, well, I'm not sure if it was on the... Have you played the newest firmware yet on Total Weekend Innovation?
    19:22
    The newest what? The newest firmware, the 1.1 firmware. I did get a chance to play that very briefly at Alamo Draft House in San Francisco last weekend. Because, you know, when the reactor is ready and you have to kind of shoot the scoop... I'm not sure about the machine that you've been playing on, but my scoop, like with a perfect shot, it'll reject. I guess that means it's not a perfect shot, but you know what I mean, it kind of bounces out. And if you try and shoot the orbit, it just goes all the way around. But if you get the ball to go down the in lane for a split second, maybe like one second or two seconds, and you'll let him shoot the opposite. Yeah, so it's not to go into the top. Yeah. I was not sure if that was available in the previous film or not, So that's rewarding you for playing on the fly because if you trap up then that shot is gone within both times the ball settles down. And those are the touches I mean that when someone is programming really well and Scott has paid attention to so many details on that game. My favorite detail is that when you blow up a reactor you get five seconds of ball save time along with it. So you blow up a reactor and you drain while the animation is going on. You feel like crap. I did that thing. Oh.
    20:43
    But instead, you get, I did that thing. Oh. You get that little extra moment of joy. Those are why we play pinball. We want joy. And if you look at games that make players happy versus games that feel like people are going through the motions while they play and things are happening and it's not very exciting. Well, I think that's probably the advantage that he had when he was designing this because he wasn't designing it for it to be sold. So really, the design was just to be the most fun that he could have in a pinball. And that really shows because we're having as much fun as he is. Yeah, and it's the reason, I mean, I don't know, it didn't seem like they had any plans to make or sell this game until, I guess, about a year ago now from last year's Texas Pinball Fest. Maybe, it's not clear. It's just really cool, and it's so cool that this game exists, and I hope that we get many more like it.
    21:48
    I mean, they've already sold through more of that game than any other spooky pinball machine. They're starting to sell through more than some of the, like when Stern was at their kind of bottom and making games like CSI and 24, they're starting to sell through as many of those. Yeah, they're down 340 units I think this week, which, you know, and it was 300 about three weeks ago, so that's 40 Pinball machines within three weeks is pretty good considering, and I think they'll blow through 500. I think they'll have no problems getting there because it is one of those games that people still haven't played yet and then when they play it they're like wow this thing is quite the pinball money. Well as I say so you know obviously you're one of the major personalities in pinball and I would sort of say you are major but I'm going to go even one step further. So you are an ambassador for pinball, right? And I put that title on you and I just don't think you would disagree because you do so much to not only promote pinball overall but to help people get into pinball. Do you think there is still room for the hobby to grow and how do we do it? Oh, that's a good question. First of all, everything I do is for my own personal benefit. It's all self-aggrammatization. It's working. Well done.
    23:17
    The thing that I think we have in the hobby right now is we still have so many cities altogether that have virtually no pinball on location.
    23:29
    And what I generally have found in my life is that people like pinball. And most of the time somebody doesn't like pinball is because they never played one. So where do we get them to see those games and play those games? And in the 80s and 90s, the answer was arcades and sometimes bars. But now that arcades are dead, we really don't have that. We have the barcades that have cropped up in the cities, at least in the U.S., where pinballs are very popular. It's primarily in bars and other places that can have as many as 10 or 20 pinball machines even in one location. And they'll bring in players on nights of the week where you normally wouldn't expect people to be in a bar,
    24:17
    and it becomes a pinball place that happens to have alcohol also being sick. I wonder, though, if there are ever going to be other types of locations that aren't bars that can start to popularize pinball to the larger crowd of people who aren't interested in hanging out in a bar. And I don't know what that looks like or if that would ever happen. I guess I don't think that bringing back arcades is the right answer. Though there is something to be said about the physical experience of pinball and maybe it would be a type of place like that that has all sorts of physical experiences. But we've got trampoline parks for kids now. Why aren't there pinball scenes of these trampoline parks? Or in movie theaters. There are plenty of places. And for all those places there are so many people who could be into pinball. And it's easier now than ever to get hooked on pinball once you get into it.
    25:20
    I've talked to people who are like, I've been playing pinball for three months. I know this rule and I don't know. I'm like, holy crap, you are deep into this in three months. I'm just starting to learn how to tap pass. Like, you've got to be kidding me.
    25:35
    Well, because it's interesting because, you know, I know people have often said, you know, we've got to get younger people into pinball. And certainly in the, I would say the Australian scene and there's probably a parallel to the couple of big tournaments I've been to over in America but it's not even your teenagers. It's also, there's also a bit of a void for people really in their sort of 20s so that's the challenge to get them in because I know people are sort of saying you know target it to the younger people in arcades. Well, I don't know if it's the same over there, but in Australia our arcades have pretty much become redemption machines or like what I like to say is gambling for children. So you put a pinball machine in there, it gathers cobwebs because unless it's got a ticket coming out of it, kids aren't interested. But then there's also the teenagers and the 20-year-olds that we've got to try and get into it as well. Yeah, I don't have good answers there. At least for the 20-something crowd, these barcades seem to be working pretty well in New York, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Texas.
    26:42
    I don't know, though. And then there are places where there's almost no pinball, big cities, where it doesn't make sense. They don't have much of any of it.
    26:51
    Even so, it's way, way better now than it was five years ago in all these places. And it makes me hopeful that in another five years it will be even better. Who knows? I just know that you've got more people making games, more companies, more games being made per company. It's clearly on an upswing, and if anything I've done helps contribute to that, I'm proud of it. I don't think I'm contributing to that, but I am contributing to helping people get hooked a little easier, I think. Yeah, well, I think you are, and it can't just be the burden of Bowen Karens to do it.
    27:30
    What? Willie, it can't rest on your shoulders. I personally believe you have done a lot. And I know a lot of people that I speak to have gotten better as a result. And, you know, you've met Jordan Treadway when we were at Papa last year. And he said to you and he also said when we spoke to him that he watched your tutorial videos to get better and to get into it But is it really up to location Is it up to the manufacturers themselves to be designing pinballs that will draw a younger crowd in I think that location probably is more than anything what's going to drive this. That you can put a Justin Bieber game on location in a bar and then no one will play it. Because no one over 21 likes Justin Bieber as far as I can say. But no one over 40 likes Aerosmith.
    28:29
    That's very true. And I think that that does cap the success rate of some of these games that are coming out.
    28:38
    Stern is coming from a place also with a very strong home buyers market. And by making Aerosmith and Kiss and these other band games, They know that they have a number of people who are just going to snap it up because they like that band. And anything they can build that will appeal to a new market, they're going to build that game, and they're going to drive the superfans of that property to pick that game up, I think. How do you do that for teens and 20-somethings? It's really hard. Partially because the cycle of what is popular is moving so fast now that you could secure a hot license and by the year's development time it takes to make this game and put it out there, all of a sudden it's gone. And it's not popular anymore. That's why when CERN puts out Guardians, they wait until the second movie comes out. They want to make sure that the property is a hit before they put out the Avengers game or the Guardians game or any movie game. It never comes out with the first movie. It always comes out with the second movie. Or in some cases with the eighth movie with Star Wars.
    29:56
    Just one more thing just on your promotion of pinball. So you also used to do a podcast. Are we going to see more of Tilt Through? So the Tilt Through Podcast, this is the time to lean on Jack Danger and yell at him because every month or so, I still have an open chat window with Jack and Zoe, and every so often we go into that room and we yell at him and say, come on, it's time to podcast, come on.
    30:29
    And he has a lot going on. I would like to create the two out of three podcasts. Sure. And just say that whenever two of the three of us are ready to go to talk, we just go and we make an episode.
    30:43
    But I'll also say that Tilt Through never has a plan. Like we don't do the kind of research or question writing or topic organization that you do or that any of the legitimate podcasts do. So I think it's totally reasonable for us not to be considered a pinball podcast in any real sense because we stink.
    31:11
    My counter to that is, first of all, you don't. And what Ryan and I have said when we started doing this podcast, we wanted it to be fun. First and foremost, it's just got to be fun. We've got to have a laugh. And I think that Tilt Through is the other one that meets my level of humor. and black out loud moments. So bring it back.
    31:35
    There you go. There's the motivation. Jack, bring it back. All of that is spontaneous. Usually what happens is something weird will happen in Pinball and we'll be like, we've got to talk about this. Come on, let's go. And then off we go. That's exactly right. We like that. What I've always said to Jack and Zoe is like, at some point we should just record for five straight hours.
    31:59
    And then all of a sudden five new episodes of the podcast will just appear all at once. One continuous stream.
    32:10
    It's awful. But I'll be in Chicago next month with Jack. I'm not sure. He wants me to promote something, of course, but I don't know what it is.
    32:22
    And maybe we can rope Zoe in and do it then. I appreciate it. It's been fun. It's been fun to do that. Both of them have such interesting perspectives. Zoe is one of the best players in the world and Jack is not. So it works out. But people don't remember that Jack actually made the final 40 at Pinnberg in A Division two years ago. So he made the finals in A in the hardest pinball tournament ever.
    32:59
    He's all right, that guy. So, Bowen, are you ready to play a new age legend, Cracks Ryan Awesome Puzzle? It's a Pinball trivia quiz and we know that you out of everyone out there is probably going to find these questions very easy. So what I've done is I've concocted the extreme hard version. Okay, and it's 10 questions. All right. And Martin is going to be, Martin's going to start off at six. Oh, yes. Give me a handicap. Thank you. Six. Yeah, you're not going to get any of them right, Martin. You might get one right. You're giving him six for free? Yep, six for free. This is how confident I am that you're going to... Just to make it interesting, because otherwise you're going to win. Steve Babin keeps Marty's arse. Jeff Teolis, who knows nothing about pinball, keeps Marty's arse. Charlie Emery, everyone. Okay, so what we need...
    33:55
    All right. Marty's... This is a pinball podcast, right? They're all pinball questions. So Marty's buzzer sound is go for the wall, so he's going to buzz in with that when he knows the answer. Go for the wall! Okay. You have to choose a pinball call out or sound that you would like to scream out when you know the answer. Oh, well there's only one answer here. Yes? Bow!
    34:24
    What's that one? Sound a dragon makes. Inner Flip Dragon. Okay. I love that game. I got to play that last year at Papa. It was my favorite game. That's the greatest game of all time. Yep. It is so cool. It's another one where you're just like, okay, here's what to do. Let's do it. Is this the sound that you're making at the end of all the 60-second tutorials? Is that what that is?
    34:51
    Is it? Probably worth talking about that momentarily. But, yeah, we started doing these audio tutorials. It was kind of a hidden project the last four weeks. Where we chase people down and ask them to do a game. And we've done about 25 of them now, I think. The goal was to cover every machine that was going to be at the IFPA Nationals and the Women's World Championship that just happened. As it turned out, we didn't quite get everything because they changed some games at the last minute, but we got almost everything. And it was really cool to have all these different voices. And we're going to continue this project so there'll be opportunity for each of you to do one. There'll be opportunity for any player to do one. As long as they have like an obscure game where they're like, you know what? I really know the rules to op, pop, pop. Like, okay, great. So I'll pop, pop, pop for 60 seconds. And then we mix it together with a backing track that makes it more interesting than just having you shout at us for 60 seconds. So you're not writing them for the people. The people are writing them themselves. No, everyone is writing their own. We'll listen to them, and then if they're saying stuff that's just completely false, we'll make them do it again. But I haven't had that happen.
    36:12
    And then when they're recording, they hear me kind of yelling at them about how many seconds there are left. Though that's not part of the final track either. So as they're recording, there'll be someone saying, 40 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds. I think my favorite one is the Aerosmith one because the amount of information that she conveys in those 50 seconds, And that's actually like a five-minute speech that she manages to pull it off in 60 seconds. Yeah, Daniel did a really good job. Danny did a really good job with that. It was terrific. And if you haven't heard the one from Steve Bowden on X-Men. Oh, that's a super one. That one's even denser.
    36:57
    My favorite is Tracy Lindbergh, who did Paragon. And she actually says, like, I'm going to talk about these two things. And then she talks about those two things. So it's clear someone listening to it can actually listen to it once and get the right information they need. And I think that that's the level we're going for. I don't want somebody to know all the rules in 60 seconds. You just can't do it. But you can say, yeah, you're about to get up there and do this and this and this and this. This whole concept came out of a tournament where I was helping run in Portland, Oregon with Bells and Chimes. and they said, well, we should be able to phone a friend here and bring over Bowen to help on a game. Yeah. And I'm like, that's too much. You really don't want me to be over there. All right, what if we only let you do it for 60 seconds? And it was perfect. It was right on. Like, all right, teach me about Embryon in 60 seconds and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
    37:59
    And we had a timer and every time the timer expired, we just all started going, And so it is that any of the 60 second tutorials, the timer runs out and you get BAM.
    38:15
    That's not quite the same as BAM. I was confused. It has the spirit of it. All right. That project is really cool and we're going to continue doing that. I need to spend some time and figure out what games to do next and then let loose and just tell people, all right, here are the games we need. You sign up for one and then we'll have you record it. Cool. Well, yeah, we'll link it in the show notes. But let's get to our new A-Vision Cracks Ryan Olsen puzzle, which stands for Anal Crap. It's the coolest pinball quiz out there. Okay, you ready? So you just buzz in, I'll say your name, and then you just give me the answer. Okay, on Dold In, there is one mode which is only available to play after Chaos and Quantum City. What is it?
    39:06
    Well, I have no idea. Yes, Owen. Is it Total Waves? Yeah. I know you're not going to get any of my... I've still got six points, so I'm still ahead. That's right. You're still ahead. Score up to eight, Martin, six, fallen one. Okay. I got this. What is the score payoff for completing the wizard mode in Indiana Jones?
    39:35
    Which one? The good one. Oh, the stern one. Wow. Owen? It's a billion points, although you get 10 million. You get 10 million and hit anything else. It really is 1,270,000,000. Yeah, I'll take either answer. He's going to know. Okay. By the way, these are all questions that are based off puppet tutorials that I quickly opened up when I was doing the answer to the show.
    40:06
    I'm not... That's why I get the six points, Bowen, just so you know. Finish the call-out. And you finished the call-out when you were playing this game, Bowen.
    40:19
    Martian! Wait! Martian Superior! Bam! Jumans, pathetic. Ha! There you go. Score update, Martin Sumerich, Jax, Bowen Street. You're going down, Karen.
    40:39
    So far, you got your six. All right. In Adam's family, how many mansion inserts are there? Wow. Yes, Don. There are 13. Yeah. I was going to say 11.
    40:58
    Even though it only takes 12 mansion rooms to get to, because the 6 and the 3 are tied together. Cool. I didn't know that.
    41:07
    Alright. ACDC. This one's not in your video, because it's with a new code. Choons and stuff. Okay, you've read the chain blog. I know you have. Give me the order of shots you need to light tunes and stuff.
    41:25
    I don't know. Yes, Don. All right, I believe it's center shot, which is the bell, then the right loop, then the left loop, which is the spinner. Yeah. That'll light tunes and stuff, and then you have to shoot the right loop again to collect it.
    41:40
    There we go. I went by. I just think he's catching up on the two million years. All right, Martin, I'll chuck one in there to do with four days. You stop now and you just say that was it.
    41:53
    Thank you. Well done. Thanks for playing Ryan C, K. Alright, in roller games, the figure of eight loop with all the red inserts in there. Ignore those red inserts. Tell me what the three multiplier inserts are.
    42:15
    Bowen, you go ahead in. Oh, it's a 1x, a 2x, and a 4x because you can make up the 7x. Here we go. Freaking binary, man.
    42:25
    Binary. Oh, give him the point. Give him the point. Make it 7 to 6. 7 to 6 it is. Okay, 7 to 6. Cool. I might get the free points for nothing. Just to make them just. Well, I got 6 points for nothing. You might as well give me another one. This one, Marty, I guarantee you. You made a, what is it called? It's not the, it's not the, dang it, I used to know what this is called. An Aussie. You got the six and you got the one, and I can't remember what the one is called.
    42:59
    What? When you score an Aussie and you don't score a six, you score a one. Oh, a goal and a point. Yes. Yeah. In Aussie rules football, we're talking about. Yeah.
    43:10
    Okay. I wanted to be an Aussie referee when I was, when I was 10. But that's the job I want when I'm older. Well, they used to call them white maggots because they changed their uniform to yellow and yellow maggot just didn't sound as good. People stopped screaming it out. They just scream at other attendees at the football.
    43:34
    Demolition Man, a machine that Marty knows nothing about. How do you get the Huxley bonus? Wow. All right. You get this by shatzing through the left end lane up into the eyeball saucer that's above that. So it's like it bounces off the right flipper, rolls all the way up the left, and then into that hole back above the left end lane. Do you want to get any extra points, but do you know how much it awards you're getting the Huxley bonus? I shouldn't tell you that I know that it's 10 million, but I will. Okay.
    44:11
    Oh, scores are equal. Oh, yeah. Barden 7, Bowen 7. Okay. Actually, Marty, you might get this, Marty. In Iron Man, Jericho is one of the wizard modes. Name another. Oh, boy.
    44:32
    Come on, Marty. He's got to get credit for this. There's do or die, and there's do or die multi-ball. That's the two. Cool. So do you want to make it 8-8-2? Yeah, let's do that. He does. Okay, okay.
    44:45
    In Medieval Madness, and I wrote this like two days ago or so, and this just kind of appears on the public feed about an hour before we started recording. In Medieval Madness, what do you need to do to get into Barnyard Multiball? Wow. Yes, go on. All right, you need to shoot the catapult, and then when it gives you the option to select something to throw, you have to throw everything once. So you have to do five completions of catapults, and then you have to shoot the catapult again one more time to start the multiball, because it'll start flashing at you at that point. And for a non-bonus point, what song does it sing in Banyad multiball? There's a song? Yeah, it's Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Being like really weird, like chopped up. Obviously they couldn't do it because of legal issues, so it's in kind of like chopped up weird sound effects. It sounds just really weird. I didn't know that was Old MacDonald Had a Farm. I'll have to listen to that again. I'm pretty sure it does. I hope I'm right. Now I'm questioning myself. That counts. That's a point for me.
    45:54
    Yeah, yeah. Pick nine, nine. Okay, nine, nine. All right. Nine, nine. Just make it. Okay, the last question. I think it's a proxy bonus, but no. Okay. Okay, so this is the last question.
    46:08
    With 3x scoring running on Indy 500, what is the score payoff when all modes are complete and you shoot up the middle?
    46:18
    Wow. Yes, go on. It's going to be $600 million because it's $200 million for the victory lap tripled.
    46:27
    But it depends on whether you've also finished other stuff at the same time. It could actually be worth more than that. It was from your video, so I'll... Oh, a very, very close match with Martin ending on 9 and Bowen on 10. Bowen, you are the winner. So close. Look, I can be proud of myself that I only got beaten by Bowen by just one point, so I think I did well. You did well, mate.
    46:54
    Oh, gosh. Oh, funny. That was the first half of the Bowen-Kerrans interview. And a great interview so far. He's such a nice guy and we appreciate his time. So next week we will have the second riveting conclusion.
    47:17
    I don't know what we're concluding, but we started something. We need to finish it. Find out how many times Bowen has finished the Simpsons Timball Party. The results will shock you.
    47:32
    You won't believe what happened next, dot dot dot kikia. Quick bait for our next podcast. So, can I also just say, jeez you're fucked. The fucking anal crap you give me just could not have made it harder for me. Here is 10 questions about everything that Bowen Karens knows. You might as well have said, hey, what is your birth date? You were pretty off. I mean, you knew some of them, so you should have just buzzed in early and then thought about the answer. Anyway, I want to get Bowen up against Steve Bowden and have an anal crap off.
    48:13
    It would be like a grand championship. Crap off. Maybe when we get enough people we'll have like a bracket elimination and I'll see Bowen at first and Bowen at second or interchangeable so they have a chance of meeting each other in the finals. I think those two guys are the ones that kind of know the most about rules and yeah, let's do it. We can start our own tournament and charge people a dollar in entry.
    48:43
    How controversial are you? Do we have any news this week, Marty, or are we just talking shit? Well, both. Ryan, if I'm really honest, we have got some news and we're talking shit about the news. Okay. It's really honest. I'm Aiden. We've been talking about it for the last couple of weeks. I'm still listening to it. I'm really enjoying it. I enjoy it so much more than Metallica, and I bought a Metallica pin, so it's scary to see that. Yeah, see? Well, I hope you like it enough to appreciate what it means for that band to have a pin. Like, it's pretty exciting, well, for me.
    49:22
    And look, right now I'm just saying it better bloody come out soon because I put my Hobbit up for sale.
    49:30
    Yeah, it's about the space, obviously. I can tell you, it's not about the money. And so the lowball offers that I've been given and I've got to say thank you to each and every one of you fuckers for sending me requests for an amount of money that you'd spend on an AM.
    49:56
    You would rather just chuck it off the top of the roof like Todd Tucky, right? I really would and you warned me. I said what amount I wanted to put up for and you said, yeah, but get prepared for the low ballers and I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I'm going to. It's going to happen either way. It was going to happen either way. Yeah. I mean, Iron Maiden, there's a lot of rumours and the rumours are now that it's not going to be at Texas Pinball Festival. I think a couple of people have told me that. I'm not sure if it's all originating from the same person. But, I mean, this needs to go two ways. This is either true and it'll be an absolutely massive fail and we'll spend half an hour. Did you realize, Marty, that when Stern didn't do anything at Expo, we talked about it for half an hour? And I only know this. I got a message from someone who's trying to catch up to the episodes and he messaged me in anger because he was listening to it right then. And he's like, why the F are you still talking about it for half an hour? Like, just move on to the next thing. Like, you're worse than Stern themselves. So I'm sorry, Michael. When you finally get to this episode, Michael, this is my apology to you. So, yeah, they're either going to not do anything, which would be just an absolute massive fail, two in a row, or I reckon it's they're pretending to be like, oh, no, it's not ready. And they're going to be like, surprise, we did it. Well, when you say it's them, nothing has actually come from them saying that it's been delayed. In fact, nothing's come from them saying it even exists, technically.
    51:29
    So, you know, who knows? We'll know in, I guess, two weeks or a week and a half. I don't know. I'm going to be upset as well if I go all the way to America and I'm excited about seeing this PIN and playing it. Are you one of the first in the world to play it? No, it's not here.
    51:48
    But you will get to play other things for the first time, won't you? For sure, but I mean this is Stern, these are the big guys, this is Iron Maiden, you know? I mean, I'm saying it like I really want an Iron Maiden pin and I've never heard one of their songs a week ago. But you know, you know how much I want this pin. And I was having a chat with somebody on the weekend and I know this goes against everything that certain people in the podcast community would say. But I couldn't give a shit what the playfield looks like. All the rules. I want it because it's Iron Maiden. You are the problem, Matty. You are the problem. Yeah, and you know what? I don't care that I'm the problem. You know what? I don't care that I'm the problem. It could be a mediocre pin and the theme would do it for me. It really would.
    52:36
    Cool. But, you know, as they say, if Keith Elwin is involved, I mean, no one's even admitted that really, have they, that he's doing this pin. I couldn't imagine that for his first release, he would release a stinker. I just don't think it could happen. Did you listen to the Keith Elwin interview on this Flam Tilt podcast? I certainly did. That was hilarious. The bit about the Roustack, I just couldn't stop laughing. Well, use his gift rat. His gift rat for some magnets. I mean, I was pleased that it was validation because if you remember the story I told when I was at him, I literally just walked in and said, hi, I'm Martin, head to head, here's this. Didn't even explain what it was. And he went, sure, cool, and then walked away. I'm like, did he throw it straight in the bin? Did he know what it was? Did he actually really know that I just handed him cash of his throat? So it was good to see and his brother has now got that as a gift so well done. Cool.
    53:46
    What else is new this week? There's a black rose coloured D&D and people with a $2,000 Pimball machine are going to be buying a $500 upgrade. I know, but it is, you know what, Colored DMD are, I guess I could say they're relatively clever in that they are picking games that do have a lot of animation that probably would benefit from a Colored DMD. I don't think they're even picking them anymore. I mean, they have enough coders and I think they just leave it up to the coders and say, who has this pin and if you want to do it, you can do it. It's funny because so many good titles are done now. People are just kind of waiting for Ghostbusters and whatever, I guess KISS. Now the Game of Thrones are done. I thought you said people were waiting on good titles.
    54:40
    The main time. Everyone's screaming for Ghostbusters. I see that one a lot. It was the last DMD game so it kind of deserves that colour finish, right? Well, is it the last DMD game? Are we talking about Sunderbats?
    54:58
    The last one from Stern. Okay, moving along. In Las Vegas, which I'll be there in a week, this week, there was the Women's World Championship. Did you watch any of it, Marty? I watched, believe it or not, most of it. Okay. Most of it that was streamed and certainly the last day. Okay, I'm just going to put it out there, right? Let's just deal with the elephant in the room. Women and pinball, it's sort of seen as, you know, and there's always these arguments about the fact that, oh, do we need a women's pinball league and all that kind of stuff. What I got to tell you watching the women play it was freaking nail It was so good to watch and they are fantastic players And even that kind of sounds like I being a bit patronising and I not meaning to be I've actually watched a lot of women players and I've been fucking beaten by a lot of women players. They've got higher ranks than you, all of them. Yeah. Well, there you go. All of them. But, you know, they're just as aggressive. They're skilled as well. And I think you probably saw the same things that I do. They have just as much bad luck as all of us.
    56:16
    Well, the thing I've noticed the most is that they were having fun, which is something that seems to be missing with a lot of people because they're so intense and they're so involved in the moment.
    56:28
    It's obviously still intense for them as well, but they're just laughing about it and seems to be having a better time than normal. So it came down to Hannah Hatch and Karen Kaiser. And yeah, it was basically 3-3 and it was down to the last game. And I can't remember what the game was. Did you watch that game, buddy? Oh, man. I honestly can't. Queen something. There's like a, yeah, some AM, they're all the same. So can I ask you this, right? So we both know who won. But before we get to that, like, I probably told you I was a mad tennis fan. So whenever it was a singles game, there'd always be someone that I would pick, whether I knew them or not. There was someone I'd be rooting for them and I wanted them to win. Who were you going for? I was going for Hannah Hatt. Same! Okay, I'm sorry Karen Kajer. We love you Karen. I was going for her because she was so animated with the way she was playing Pinball and I love watching people that move around like crazy when they're playing Pinball. It just makes it more enjoyable for me. And look, I would have gone just for Karen as well. There was absolutely no reason or logic behind it. I just had to pick one of them because you just sort of see them. Yeah, you got to. And yeah, she was done really well on an EM and, oh gosh, five ball EM. And basically the ball went down the outlane for Karen and she was about to lose and it hit a switch on the way down and it changed the outlane from being 100 to 500. And that's what won Herbert Pichler. It was that close. My heart, like no front of this race, I didn't gamble on it. I don't know these people. I've never met them. Nothing. And my heart was like pumping. I'm like, oh my gosh, why do I care about her?
    58:12
    It was the same. And it was, yeah, because they were so evenly matched. It could have gone either way. Yeah. If we ever have a female guest on, can we get Hannah Hatch on just because she has a cool name, Hannah Hatch? Yep. Look at the alliteration here. Hannah Hatch, Karen Kaiser, double K, double H. Yeah, do it. Either of them I'd have on the show. Done. And they also had the Nationals and it came down to our good mate Carl D'Angelo versus Raymond Davison. And so out of those two, who were you going for? I was going for Carl. I know. Of course we're going for Carl. We love Carl. He's on the show. If Raymond came on the show, he would be in the game. Raymond, speak to our people. They'll speak to you. Yeah, and one of the matches was on Iron Man, and oh my gosh, Iron Man, as normally, is pretty brutal.
    59:04
    What happens, Kyle is in the Iron Monger multi-ball, whatever it's called. He shoots at Iron Monger enough times, Iron Monger goes down. The stupid jackpot, which Marty is worth three million points, it possibly would have won in the match. He had three balls, he shoots up the middle, it rattles a shot and it comes down. That's not a mistake of the pinball, that's just that shot being long and tight.
    59:28
    Then he shoots for it again, hits it so good that the ball jumps over the switch into the path. He looks around at, I think it was Zach Sharp, and just kind of laughs, and then he proceeds to lose all three balls and loses the match. So that's pinball for you. It really is just the epitome of, that's pinball, and you just have to shrug it off and get your trophy for second. Yeah. And yes, the winner was Raymond Davis, and he ended up winning the last match on Black Rose.
    59:59
    Also, I think today was the Pinn Masters, which is basically like a serious version of Pinn Golf, and there's lots of plays in that. I think Jim Dylcita was winning almost the entire time, and then Adam Becker pipped him in the finals. So that's your weekly tournament talk.
    60:15
    Well, is it? Okay, we'll get to that a bit later, but shall we play Surround the Top 100? Yeah, we should. So let's recap on what happened last week when we had some guy on our show. We don't want to give him too much credit. Yeah. Well, Sea Witch ended up... Actually, wait. Who won? Well, let's recap. So, it was against Big Lebowski, Alien and Sea Witch. And if you remember last week's episode, Ryan's debate about Big Lebowski was based on a house of lies. It was just, it was bullshit. It has a cleared LCD. It has, it is being made by a reputable manufacturer. It is. Like, okay. Name them. Name Zytek. X-Y-Tek? What? What do I name? No, you got it right, but a reputable pinball manufacturer? Are they not? Okay. Well, Marty, okay, just think of this. I reckon in the leather industry, right, there's just a group of people and they're saying, ah, this fucking company's making pinball machines and you're singing like a leather folding machine. A letter folding machine is probably really fucking complex. Do you think that every year they win the yearly award for best letter folding machine manufacturer of the year? Yeah, it's the Twippies.
    61:49
    This week in letter... This week in letter folding... Get on it, Jeff, there's a million dollars here.
    62:07
    It's a big industry. Oh, fuck. They make letter folding machines. Anyway. Oh. Anyway, then Jeff Teola said some words about Alien. No one remembers anything he said. And then I came through and actually had a very well measured argument that had nothing to do with a flyer. Except for maybe the opening sentence. The opening, like, yeah, I know that. Who can, was it the cause of the Sea Witch?
    62:42
    At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who won, but Sea Witch is the better game of all three because you can play it. He didn't even try to cheat. He voted for himself and Smeowl has voted for me as well. Well, we don't know if Shmeth Shmigolis is Jeff Teolos. They just have a very similar name. And if you have one sort of mustache and one doesn't, they're completely different people. Very different. So, anyway, see which is the... We didn't play this week. I can't believe we didn't play with Bowen, but, you know, I guess two is okay.
    63:14
    All right. Let's... shall we do it? Yeah, let's do it. You get the numbers. I'll tell you which machine it goes to. Okay, Google, can you please generate a number from 0 to 100? Alright.
    63:35
    15. Ooh, dead stiff. I fucking hate this game. No, I don't. It's 15, it's high, okay? Yep. Obviously for a reason. Alright. Alright, um, Marty, your turn. Google, can you please generate a number from 0 to 100 for me again?
    63:57
    Alright. 53. Oh, 53, Marty, what's that? Oh, yeah, Batman 66. Oh, my God. I love this game, can I play two, please? Oh. I guess, but you're not really like a pinball personality or anything, so what are you going to say? Well, because I collate so much information, I can assume the personality of anyone you want.
    64:31
    Okay, well I guess you can be one of our past guests. I guess you can assume the personality of one of our past guests. How about Jeff Teolis? I can talk about Jerry Springer for half an hour if you want. Or I can talk about Josh Sharpe liking the number two all the time. That is totally hilarious, don't you agree?
    64:54
    I'm not sure about that, I mean we just had him on. Can you go back a bit further? How about with the award winning Canada? He has a vast knowledge of a lot of pinball since he has owned four and I definitely won't rig the generated number. Um, alright, Google can you please generate a number from 0 to 100 for me?
    65:16
    Alright. Slide, yay, I have already looked it up. It's Lord of the Rings, bitches. A world under glass. Alright, so we've got five Lord of the Rings, 15, Scarecester, and you've got 53, Marty, so you're last. So, Google as Kaneda first, then me, then you.
    65:48
    Are you ready, Marty? Alright, Google, fire away. George Lomaz has only ever designed one good game, and it's Lord of the Rings. A true World Under Glass. That beautiful shot of the middle where the magnet wraps the ball. It has a deep rule set and when you get into there and back again the music is so good. It makes me so emotional. Star Wars couldn't do that. Great Jackpot calls out. Yay World Under Glass. Just ignore the upper playfield. It's the only flaw. Tournament players hate it because it is deep but no one wants the opinion of a tournament player. World Under Glass. Remember to take breaks in between balls to ensure you don't play an unhealthy amount of pinball. Alright, your time is up, Google. Okay.
    66:33
    Fuck. Alright. I have to go up against a lot of the rings, but, you know. My turn. Scared, Steve. I need a picture.
    66:48
    Alright, let me get the timer out as well, even though I wasn't timing Google, but she knows the rules, so she wouldn't get it wrong.
    66:56
    You ready? Yep. Set, go. So, scared stiff, beautiful design, boobies everywhere. I mean, if this machine was bought out now, you would think that half of the stuff on the playfield was a mod. The ride the Bony Beast, which is actually meant to be your penis, that's what the Bony Beast is. You've got the bones down the in-lanes, you've got the little jumping guys. It has amazing flow, it has that shot that shoots up and it somehow propels the ball onto the ramp at lightning speed. It's never done before, never been done again. Done. That was crap.
    67:33
    Well, I think it adequately portrayed Skaid Kits. Are you ready, Marty, for Batman 66? Yep, I am. Okay, ready, set, go. Okay, so how can you make a fantastic pinball machine even better? Well, you turn Batman The Dark Knight into Batman 66. You take all the things that were really good about the original, you throw out the crap, which was everything. It was pretty much 50% of the machine or the left-hand side. And then you add the genius, the genius of Lyman Sheets, who we know just spits out code every week. It's always a new game with Lyman code coming out. And it is just going into a masterpiece. 30 seconds, not 50.
    68:28
    Oh gosh, these are all very baggable games. Alright, whose turn is it now? Is it Google's turn? It's Google. Google as Kaneda. Okay, I wonder if she's going to keep on going about talking about Lord of the Rings or if she's going to do the rebuttal. Let's have a look.
    68:46
    That man 66 was a cash grab to begin with. It's over 1.5 years old and the machine is still not at 1.0 code. The only reason I bought it was because there are only 30 of them out there, oh wait, I mean 80. We make up the rules as we go along. Scare stiff is for old bastards that like looking at pasty. Old titties in Batman 66 is for old bastards that will probably die before the code is complete. Lord of the Rings may be in an earth pool, I'm off to Middle Earth. Sip a jackpot off our hot bitches. Shove that up your Clackamarty and Ryan. Oh my gosh.
    69:27
    Brutal. That's sexy. Oh my gosh. I don't know how I can talk to that, but alright, my turn. Yep. Okay.
    69:39
    My time starts now. Lord of the Rings is clunky. If that was made today, it would be panned. It's only celebrated because all the pins that were coming out then sucked big time. Batman 66, clunky as well. I'm sorry, George Gomez. No amount of code is going to save that giant turntable in the middle that has absolutely no fun shots involved with it at all. Left ramp, right ramp, you can do that on any machine, including every single C, Richard 10.
    70:09
    Big old pasty titties wins every time. I have the floor money. Stop it. I sound like I'm going to the toilet. Apparently.
    70:28
    Okay, so where do I start? Okay, you ready? Ready, set. I'm going to make this quick. Lord of the Rings, too long, boring, can't do anything. Um, uh, Scared Stiff, you know Scared Stiff is one of my least favourite games. Probably the most overrated game that's ever existed. Batman 66, butter smooth shots. There you go.
    70:52
    I thought we were lying today, mate. You've got five sections. Tell us about the turntable. Tell us one good thing about the turntable. Um, the TV.
    71:03
    This one that's still wrong. Billy Ann's vision. Alright, we're done. Fucking hell. Oh, so funny. So, let me just read something to you. I think it's about time that we segwayed into an oldie but a goodie. Yes. You ready? Yes. Okay. Fun pin to play. Takes me back to the golden days of USA. Up all night movie fest on TV. Three out of ten. 3 out of 10? That's scared stiff. This game is very too easy and fast, boring play. 5 out of 10. Scared stiff. Yep, very dull. I should have just read these reviews as my counter-argument.
    71:54
    Very overrated game, fun for a few plays, then just a chore to play any further. Lime and Cheats has it, so I don't know. It's weird.
    72:05
    Suggestive theme. Design above the average. Game in the average. But insufficient sound decidedly. Beautiful to see him, but very less to have a good time him.
    72:20
    Does he think that Alvaro has a dick or something? Admittedly, this person comes from Italy. But anyway. That's fine. So I thought I'd just take us into a bit of Kingslide just so we could hear what these rating people have said. I stopped doing Kingslide because Ron and Bruce stole that when you were on the show and they just kind of went with it. So I thought, you know, give them that bit. Yeah. And we sponsored their show, they sponsor our show. They did. They didn't even give us any recognition.
    72:48
    We could steal their entire show. Yeah, true. So if you just indulge me just for a second. Yes. Let's talk about our good friend Lord of the Rings. You're not meant to mention it this week with your review, Smarty. Well, I mean, I think that, you know, we've certainly jumped the shark on this one. Okay. But I just, again, it's just an interesting thing. And I don't want to talk about, you know, Google's machine being really, it's actually quite a good game. And the fact that I have said previously that I would want to have it as a home machine. Too serious for my liking, 2.45 out of 10.
    73:30
    What? Okay, yeah. Too serious? Some people like Puntinball machines, like Scaz Diff? Yep. Good. Noting more, 2.5 out of 10.
    73:41
    Played it over 50 times in the hotel casino on holiday. It's quite okay, but it lacks certain things. The positive, one, theme, two, many game modes and hard to reach end game, oh you don't fucking kid, three, good music, good scratchy music. The negative, the sound is annoying, 100 souls, 250 souls, it's terrible. 500 more. The artwork is so bad, the cabinet looks like printed on a Commodore 64 with three colours. Oh my god, I fucking hate my Lord of the Rings cabinet. I'm so glad that all my pins are together. It's not going to look good, but Lord of the Rings has the worst art for the theme that it is. It's just like no effort. Anyway. But do you think that it looks like it's been printed on a Commodore? Yeah, it's got the dots. You can see the dots. With three colours? Yeah, you can see the dots. He said, you see the pixels. Awful. Same for the Playfield. Cheap Photoshop photos and very bad print quality again. You cannot compare this to a Williams or Bally Playfield from the 90s. The plastic and toys look cheap. The ball gets stuck quite often somewhere in the playfield. Airballs. Overall, I cannot understand the high rating here. Sorry. 3.951 out of 10.
    75:03
    Cool. It's rated fifth, though. You can get those shit ratings or other good ones that it gets. Mate, let's go to this week in Pinball. I did a lot of shit this week. Did you? Yeah.
    75:18
    First thing I did was I went to see a speech therapist and they said, no, you're fucky, but you can't fix what you've got yourself into.
    75:28
    And then I saw a psychologist to deal with the battering that Jeff Teoh gave me and I need many more sessions to go. Just a little note, I mean, we had so much fun last episode with Jeff and we got so much feedback, pretty much no emails. But just an amazing amount of feedback saying that it's the funniest that Jeff has ever been and I'm glad it was on our show and I said he's been the funniest. So thank you Jeff for giving us your best. Well I did say to you I met, I'm going to mention Indisc again, but yeah when I met Jeff I just went hang on, this guy's really funny and... Are you saying that he's not funny on Pimball profiles? That's exactly what I'm saying.
    76:08
    It's not like I have to say to you what are you insinuating, that is exactly what I'm saying. He is really serious. Yeah.
    76:17
    What else did I do this week? I went to play, remember the last month when I went to that tournament and I came last? I do remember it very well. I had a good laugh about that. Yeah, and I didn't get too down on that, but I was kind of like, I guess tournaments really aren't for me.
    76:32
    So I had a month off, not because there's that many tournaments in Melbourne at the moment, but it was on a day and I thought, jeez, I'll just go. You know, it's a nice day. I've done all my work and I need to break some of the kids and the family. I just kind of went on the spur of the moment. And I did a little bit better this time.
    76:49
    I won't bore you with game one, game two. I'm not going to tell you exactly what happened, but I do want to concentrate on a couple of games really quickly. Wizard of Oz. It's so weird playing Wizard of Oz in a tournament setting because what the hell do you shoot for when you start the game? Because nothing is immediately there. You really have to grind through to get something, and especially with the rollovers, it's almost like you have to flail around and then kind of get shit happening just by missing shots. I don't know. I've got to watch Wizard of Oz in a tournament. But because these were on-site Pinball machines and there's no tournament play, I just went for Yellow Rick Rhodes until I got an extra ball on pretty much the first ball, and that saved me. So I played two games on that. Can I please, Marty, in 30 seconds explain what to do in multiball in Wizard of Oz? Because no one knows, and it pisses me off. I know I shouldn't tell people because I can beat them.
    77:46
    Go up the ramp and then into the wizard. That's it. You shoot the rollovers, and every time you shoot a rollover, it lights the ramp. You shoot the ramp, and when you do all three, it then lights the saucer. You shoot that saucer, I think, three times per character, then one more for the super jackpot. But if you've got double scoring going on during that, you're getting like 40,000 a pop, it's a lot. Don't flail around.
    78:11
    Okay, the other game I want. But okay, can I just say, that really is the problem with the game. Yeah, sure. It's not intuitive. Well, it does say on the screen, but I guess, you know.
    78:24
    What? It says on the screen when you've got multiball happening. Like, you've really got to cradle up and then look, and most people, particularly in these tournaments... Does he say shoot the ramp? Doesn't the guy say shoot the ramp? Yeah, I don't know. You know, shoot the bloody whatever the... Shoot the throne room? Yeah, shoot the throne room, that's right. But nobody really knows that that's what they're doing until it actually says it. Yeah. Anyway, it's a weird game to play in tournaments. The other game I want to tell you about is Game of Thrones. and oh my gosh I've never played against this guy before it was Mark G you probably know his last name I'm sorry to say his name but he went first and he there's a lot of people that don't know how to play Game of Thrones okay I know how to play enough to get a decent score this guy rocks up I was kind of undefeated that stage it was kind of getting to the end of the tournament and he shows my tail I'm like okay so he knows a little bit about Game of Thrones just know nothing. This guy qualifies a mode, shoots up the middle, locks a ball, he skips the mode and I'm like, oh my god, this guy's going to destroy me. If he's passing on modes, he knows Game of Thrones. Then he lights another house, gets a lock, shoots up the middle, so he's got two modes ready and then he skips them. I'm like, oh my god, he's going to wait until he gets multiball and do it. He qualifies two more modes, he shoots up the middle, he's got four modes available. I'm going to live with an amount of opportunities and when he chooses it, it's going to start multiple. Black, what a multiple. So what does he do? He passes. I'm like, what? What's the strategy here? He must be getting his multipliers up to do like Martel, like Colin McAlpine says, and you can get like 600 million after it. and I proceeded to watch him play this amazing game and not know how to do anything at all because he lit the super jackpot and didn't know where the super jackpot was. And he didn't say, he didn't scream out, someone tell me what to shoot for. He managed to get like over half a billion in Game of Thrones and I ended up beating him. And afterwards I was like, did you know what you're meant to do? He's like, I don't know this game at all.
    80:36
    He knew what to do, he would have absolutely destroyed me. But it was just that game knowledge and just choosing the wrong options. And yeah, he had Super Jackpot lit with four balls. He added a ball. He had four balls in play. But he just didn't hit the ram, I think, once by accident. But he didn't see the Super Jackpot. Anyway, I thought that was a funny story because it was pure luck that I beat him on that one. Now, can I just ask, was that the premium or the pro? The premium. Yeah. So, just as a side note, I got to play a limited edition for the first time in a long time after playing the pro for so long. They really do play very differently.
    81:16
    You can't see half the play field, so... Well, just not even that. Like, they do feel different, and some of the rules are slightly different. What I do like about the Pro is to... The multiball that starts in the Dragon, and on the Premium and LE... Wall multiball. Yeah, so on the Pro, to qualify that to bring the countdown down, On the Pre-Min and L.E., you've got to hit that Dragon on the bottom playfield. Which, I mean, people say it's a hard, it always seems to land nicely. It's not like a crazy shot that people are always in risk, I don't know. But it's still pretty random, and it's so much easier to do it on the pro, is what I'm saying. Yeah. Anyway, Simpsons was there as well and the garage was half broken, half working, and all the lock settings are on hard, which is just weird for an on-site Pinball machine. I mean, I think it's the next or second half of the Bourne interview where we talk about TSVT being kind of not friendly to noobs, but to put it out on site and then to make the locks hard and everything in hard settings is just funny to me. But anyway, I lost one game on Simpsons and I won one game. And that kind of put me in the top three. And to get into the top three, I took out Daniel Luce for the first time on Star Wars, the one that has a war play field, steps left and steps right. Is that the guy, are you getting your revenge against him for kicking you for the first time? Exactly. Six months ago he kicked me and I got him back by playing an absolute horrible game on Star Wars and he played less horrible. No one has played a good game on that spell. It's impossible. Anyway, top three was Luke Got a Buy and I played against Mick from the Pinball Party Pass and he rocked up late so he hadn't lost the game up until that stage because he got a strike. It's a two-strike tournament. I managed to beat him on Wizard of Oz because he had a couple of horrible house balls and lost the ball after like one second on every ball save disappearing. So that put me in the final with Luke and we both said he going to generate a random pin and there was five pins there and we said anything but Star Wars and of course it generates Star Wars and he said look if we both agree to it we can just choose our own pin if you want if we both agree to it And I said no let play on Star Wars because you know if I choose a pin and Simpsons or something or Wizard of Oz I know I going to regret it when I lose So we chose Star Wars and, ah, geez, I had this game building up to pretty much the last ball. And the last ball I managed to get the, you know, Destroy the Death Star and Battle Above Endor lit. And everything was going well for me. I forgot that you had to hold the button down to add a ball. and I managed to get I think close to half a billion which wasn't that great but on this machine it was good and I could have got a lot more but I just I walked away from the pin while a ball was still there which is just the absolute dumbest thing you can do.
    84:19
    Loose game went like this, press button, launch ball straight to out lane, auto launch, hit the target bank straight down the out lane, that was ball like one and two. So, ball three lasted a little bit longer, managed to lose the ball right at the end of the ball save, auto-launch, get the target bang straight into the outlane. So, thank you Star Wars. I won my first tournament this week. Well done. Oh, you did too. That's right. Hooray for me. So, I think I've played 15 tournaments since we started the podcast. I've come second four times. Yep. And this is the first win. Well, congratulations to you. Thank you. I'm not sure what it was. I'm not sure if it was just luck. I'm not sure if it was all the crop dust thing that I was doing thanks to Jeff Gellis' thing. I'm not sure if I'm playing better because I'm only playing Total Mook and Annihilation. So next time I play, I will continue to crop dust and continue to play TNA to increase my flipper skills. Well, honestly, congratulations. Well done. Thank you. What else did I do this week? I know you've got something that you've done, but I got inspired by when you're on Slam Silt Podcast. Ron said he does the steps where he climbs up buildings. He's an idiot. Last week I tried to do, do you know the thousand steps? I do. Have you done it before? No. Okay. Do you know me?
    85:45
    We should do it together. No, never. My kid came here from school and she was like, ah, there's a kid at school that did a hundred of the thousand steps. Can I go? I want to try and do more. I'm like, yeah, cool. So we went with all the kids and it was just like the dumbest idea ever because the steps don't start at the car park. It's a 1.5 like K hike uphill to the steps and then it's a thousand steps. So we got there and Chanel was like, let's go home. We can't do this. We have to carry the kids pretty much uphill. and I'm like, no, let's do it. And we did it. We did 100 steps and we're just like, no, this is going to die. And so we went back. And we went back this week and we did it. So absolutely nothing to do with Pimball, but I just want to let everyone know that I did 1,000 steps this week. Uphill. Wow. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron, for, you know, inspiring Ryan to tell us that fucking boring story.
    86:37
    You can edit it out if you want. You have power. I want people to know. It's somehow late. It's got to do with Ron. I'm trying to cross-promote Slam Soul Podcast. It's the least we can do. Okay, last thing is that the Roost X finally came in, so I did a bulk order. I was just like, I'm not paying this fucking ridiculous price. So I actually contacted someone and I was like, give me a good price for Roost X. It's ridiculous that I'm buying hollowed out testicles and I'm going to bring them overseas. So I got them in and I showed my little kid V and this is the conversation that we had, Marty.
    87:21
    Hey V, what did Daddy get in the mail today? A kangaroo purse. What did he make it out of? Um, kangaroo's nuts. What is a nut? It's kangaroo's penis and vagina.
    87:38
    What? And how do you think they make it? So they put like a needle into it, so they chop a little part off. They put a needle into it and they stitch it until it's to thread, but they chop off the pink part. What pink part are you talking about? This part that it will come down and then they stitch it until it makes like a purse shape and then they just stick decorations on and stitch a kangaroo on it. Okay.
    88:18
    So yeah, that's how they make kangaroo snacks. They chop off the penis and vagina. At the moment I realise that my kid has no idea what a testicle is. Which is fine, she cannot know, I don't need to tell her. No. Oh, the innocence.
    88:35
    So, there's also something else that I got, I'm not going to mention what, and it made my kid cry. And there's a little bit on here, you can edit it out if you want, but she, yeah, let me just play this bit. Is she going to play? And the other thing that I bought, did it make you upset? We're not going to mention what it is, but the other one.
    88:55
    Did it make you cry? Yeah. Okay. Wait, can I see the camera? No. Why? It made you cry. I don't know, let's try it again. Alright, let's bring it out now. Why can I see so much? I can see.
    89:16
    What is it? No, no, no, no. No! Sorry. So, ooh, mystery. What is it? What is it to make my kids scream that much? What? Is it? Well, it's for someone special at Texas Pimball Festival. Well, you know, someone's going to be very proud of whatever it is that makes my kid cry fast. Freak like a banshee. Yeah, that's it. Cool. Awesome. Cool. There's some tin-tams as well because you've been teasing everyone online about tin-tams. Well, and I'm just putting this out to everybody. If you want Ryan to bring you to Tim Chams, please write in to head2headpinball at gmail.com or you can go to our Facebook page and we will have a picture of the selections available. Ryan would like to bring as many packers of Tim Chams as possible. I'm going to be broke as now. The Tim Chams are expensive but the Roussaks certainly are.
    90:16
    Shall we, what did you do this week? Well, you know what, I did pinball stuff. I watched a lot of streaming. I watched the championships that we talked about before, but let me tell you something interesting that you just missed out on by a few seconds, but I'm sure someone told you. So we streamed on Sunday night at good friend of the show, Jeff and Vicky, their place. And I may have mentioned this before. So Jeff's been restoring a Guns N' Roses machine for years. And to look at, this machine is, it looks new in box. It's just beautiful. And he's also put like a wooden, he made his own custom wooden handle on the gun and looks absolutely beautiful. The problem is we've tried to stream this before twice and both times before something's happened. And it's usually been the plunger hasn't been strong enough. So when it gets two balls in it, it's not strong enough. And so we've had to shut it down. So twice before we've streamed, and this is probably over, I'm going to say probably an 18 month to two year period where he spent so much time pulling it apart. The DMV stopped working, he had to replace that. So anyway, he said, come over. He said, I've now got my Guns N' Roses, absolute amazing condition. He's got the Pinsound board, so he's now just uploaded all like original songs and call outs. and he said, come over and play, it's going to be amazing. So we did. Got everything set up and probably, I would say probably halfway through the second ball, I noticed there was something wrong with the right flipper. Like, I'd hit the button and the flipper wouldn't go or it would just sort of randomly fire off, kind of like someone was controlling the flipper. And so I looked over and I said, man, there's something wrong with the flipper. And he said, oh yeah, I did see that. So he said, let me take a look. And those people that have already seen our Facebook post will already know what happened next. So this is on Twitch, on the Melbourne Silver Bowl League page. He took the glass off and then went to place the glass on the carpet. It hadn't touched the wall, hadn't touched the carpet, and then just instantly shattered everywhere.
    92:37
    Shattered. I mean, it looks like in the video that he's like plonking it on the floor and everyone's like, oh, you don't do that. How can it shudder when it's just in his hands? Is he the Hulk? He is a very strong guy. But it was literally in his hands. And a lot of people did say that on forums on the Facebook page. Well, you know, that's why you've got to put towels below there. And it's like, no, no, no, guys, you've got to understand. And it hadn't actually touched a single thing, not the floor, not the wall. It was just his hands and it shattered in his hands. But the funniest thing was he was just so calm. He just goes, oh, well, there's the glass. There's the glass. Because he didn't care. He was more interested in working out why this bloody flipper that he had just rebuilt, why it wasn't working. And then spent the rest of the night, all he could think about was his damn flipper. Are you sure he didn't hit like there was a box next to the floor with something sticking out?
    93:38
    No? Nothing? I'm telling you now, there was nothing that it touched. It just shattered in his hands.
    93:45
    Anyway, dangerous, dangerous business. Made for an interesting stream and then we just took about 5-10 minutes to then move all my equipment over and we played Aerosmith LA again, which I do love. Seems to be a pretty long playing game when you guys are playing it. Oh, it can be. I wouldn't say overly. There's no super dangerous shots, right? Unless you're going for the targets that are pretty close to the scoop. Oh, in typical fashion with a lot of these games, if you get it only halfway up the right ramp, it's a certain death as it comes back down. No, it's just interesting. And I don't know if anybody else, and I've probably said this about other machines before, but it just, for me, Aerosmith feels like it's got different strength flippers. And what I mean by it is, it's very strong at the base of the flipper and the middle of the flipper, but the tip of the flipper is actually a little bit weak. So, when you're trying to do a slap save, normally you think, yep, I've absolutely got this, this slap save's going to work. It just doesn't get enough power and so it sort of drains when you think it was going to be an easy slap saver way. So if anybody knows that Aerosmith has got a different system or different voltage, I don't know what it is, but it just has very different... I mean they all have different coils and stuff but yeah, I don't know. It's just a little bit different, that's all I'm saying.
    95:12
    Shall we head to the mailbag? Let's head to the mailbag. What have we got? So we've got an email here from Paul RJ and he says, Hey guys, with the Argonauts Pinball Club closing down, what effect do you think it has on the local scene? Will this affect tournaments today in the future? Does this leave Pinball Paradise as the only venue with new machines? Is it worth owners having new machines on locations? Many thanks. Love the show, Paul RJ. Marty? Yeah, look, it does. It does affect the scene in Melbourne because really now, what are they? There's two tournaments running, two, maybe three.
    95:52
    Bayside, Pixel, and the other one. And Peacock Inn. So for anybody that is in Melbourne, please do go to pinballscore.com. All the comps are there. But there is Bayside and there's Pixel Alley and one at the Peacock Inn.
    96:07
    I guess the challenge really is that in Melbourne, there really is, there's probably two locations that have got, you know, Maybe, let's say, more than five or six machines. Well, Pixel Alley's got five. You've got Karting Madness, which is an indoor go-kart place that's got probably about seven or eight, maybe nine machines. And then you've got Pimball Paradise, which we've talked about many times, which has got a mix of old and new machines.
    96:33
    But there's not a tournament running there at the moment. That's where I used to have my Melbourne Super Bowl League. It's hard to run tournaments without the machines being on free play, I guess. As you kind of discovered. So, I mean, the location has to be willing to work with the tournament director because they're bringing patrons in and they're going to spend money on food and alcohol and things like that. So, if they're not on three-player, then it kind of, you can do it anywhere.
    97:02
    So, I think Argonauts will survive, you know, either there or possibly somewhere else. I mean, it's a pinball club, it's not a venue. The venue is the pub. And, yeah, there is a bit of a lack of Pinball tournaments in Melbourne at the moment. Like, places like Queensland are absolutely kicking everyone's arse with what's available there. They get to go to a couple per week, I think. So I might be doing something after Texas to kind of fill the temporary void. Nothing huge, more of an elite match play, you know, serious business only kind of tournament with maybe 16 to 20 people. and see how long it takes and build it from there. But I haven't submitted anything to the IPA yet because I don't want my wife to kill me. Yeah, but look, next week when we do the second half of the Bowen Karrings interview, it's one of the topics that I ask him about, you know, what advice would you give to somebody setting up a tournament? So it's probably good timing for us and for those people that are, you know, We're thinking about starting up a league or a tournament or a comp. And I will say that, you know, it can be hard work or it can be easy. It depends on how complicated you want to make the format. It depends on how all in you want to go with marketing and promotion and prizes, which I did. But I enjoyed it because it brought a lot of new people into the pinball community.
    98:33
    So it'll just be food for thought. So next week, it's good timing that Paul Ajay that you wrote in because we did talk to Bowen about that as being kind of an ambassador for the tournament scene.
    98:47
    Cool. So the next email was from Anonymous and he doesn't want his name mentioned but he said due to a larger expected interest in TNA, Katie from Sikker Pinball is looking at another shipment to Australia. So if anyone is keen on TNA, which is an absolutely amazing machine, I'm going to talk about TNA like every single episode, probably for the next how many podcasts because it is an all-consuming Pinball machine. It has been said before, people love solar state machines because it's easy to understand and it sucks you in. I need the bridge of sound and a storyline to suck me in. And this is what TNA is. If someone could update every solid-state machine from the 80s and the 70s or whenever people love them with one of those BOP 2.0 kits and make it a really interesting machine with something based, I'd buy them all. I'd just get rid of all my D&Ds and say, this is so much fun.
    99:48
    But yeah, if you want a total nuclear annihilation email, Spooky, if you're from Australia. So, this is from Rubby. He says, hey guys, any preference in which finger you use to flip? Index, middle or both? He says, I find middle finger responds quicker than my index, but maybe that's just me and my neurotic self. Also, the full push, quick push release of the flipper button, any observations on how you use this? I experiment with this in machines and get some mixed results. What about you? Which finger do you use? This is the weird thing. When I first walked up to a pinball machine, the second time I was interested in pinball, I had no idea when I was a kid, I didn't even think about it. It was intuitive and instinctive and I just started playing. It was about a year in and I realized I was using my middle finger. I didn't know why. I was like, shouldn't your pointer fingers be the one that you use? They're the strongest finger, the one you use the most. I started watching other people and pretty much everyone uses their middle finger.
    100:50
    So, I didn't really think about it. And I was actually watching some of the other play and they were using their index finger. And solidly, their index finger, it was almost like the three other fingers were folded back and there was one finger that was pointing out.
    101:05
    I actually would say, if someone asked me, I would say I don't actually really know. I feel I've just sort of got my two fingers together. It's almost like my hand is covering it because I don't want to miss the flipper. So I've sort of got, it's actually my index finger and my middle finger both on the flipper at the same time. Okay.
    101:28
    Yeah, and the other part of the question about, you know, how do you kind of press the button, I mean, I'm not going to give advice on how to play Pinball on the range, like 1,000 something in the world, 1,800. I definitely haven't been checking my IFA profile after the win. Yeah, I think to be good you really have to have that feather touch because the good players on a three-flipper game, they're stage flipping.
    101:55
    I dare you to try and stage flip on Stern Pinball Party and try and hit the couch shot. You can't. It has to be half-pressed, half-pressed. It has to be connected to the Pinball machine. If anyone does Kung Fu, you know, you learn about the Fulcrum Point, you know, where you're holding a sword and your wrist becomes a Fulcrum Point. When you're playing a Pimball Machine, that is the Fulcrum Point. That is the connection to the instrument that you're playing. So it has to be exact and it has to be perfect. Well, I absolutely agree and I was actually just going to say that is that just over time, the more you play machines and even individual machines as well, you get flipper feel. So it's almost like you get feedback from the machine which sounds a bit weird but if you think about it you know the rod is going back into the button so you know when the ball hits it you're actually feeling something as well. That's particularly advantageous when you are you know doing more advanced things like live catching and drop catching. You've really got to feel the speed of the flipper as it's flipping to know when to flip at the same time the ball hitting it you know look up all the dead flip. tutorials on live catching and dead catching, live catching and drop catching if you want to know what I mean.
    103:12
    But yeah, you've really just got to be connected to the button and then obviously to the flippers through the button. And it just happens over time that you just feel it a lot more and it becomes instinct after a while. And the parallel I've used before is, you know, sports cars. I've got a sports car. I love cars. and the better sports cars, you can actually feel where the tyres are based on feedback that's coming through from the steering wheel and that's the parallel I draw with Pinball as well. You can start feeling the machine through the clipper buttons. But do you have a Dodge Demon money? No, no I don't. I have something faster. Okay, next email is from Nicholas Noven and he is obviously a soft programmer and he is here to school us. He says, hey guys, bit of feedback regarding the comments about versions in the software on machines. One thing I can tell you as a software developer is that .88 is to do with Batman, has no relationship to the completeness and certainly isn't exactly 12 releases away from 1.0. So, fact is, as software devs, we guesstimate roughly where we are at, e.g. 70% done and call it 0.7. And every release will just bump it up an X amount, we believe, was completed. It's a decent change. We might skip to 0.8 for the hell of it, etc., etc., etc. I'm not going to read the entire email, but, yeah, basically, I mean, we were just kind of cracking a joke about how the last, I think, The three Batman updates have gone up 0.01. So if they continue in that fashion, we're going to have the exact same news 12 more times. But it is a... Well, let's see how we go, Nicholas. You may prove us wrong or right. They may actually release another 12 like that.
    105:04
    Let's see how we go. The last email was from Jay Mendoza of Facebook fame, and he went to his second tournament. The first tournament being the one at my house. Do you want to quickly summarise your long-ass email, Marty?
    105:22
    Oh, I do. Hi, Marty. Hi, Ryan. I did it. I finally got down to the Bayside Pinball Club. We told you it was good. Last night, I had a go. Decided to pick this one as living down on the Mornington Peninsula. It's probably the closest one for me to attend. That and having met Lucas before made it an easy decision, knowing someone there. The line-up I initially checked up on the website you gave me so I could try and prepare myself as best I could with rules and have some sort of chance of not coming last. There was Totan, Aerosmith, which he says is brutal, Ghostbusters, ACDC, Iron Man and my favourite, Simpsons Pinball Party. See, that's getting around these days. There's two locations that have got Simpsons Pinball Party. You used to never be able to see them anywhere.
    106:03
    He said, had his fingers crossed for Simpsons being in the line-up as he's playing at home and felt confident that he could put up a good score. Read up on Iron Man and Totan and tried to have some sort of game plan going into the night.
    106:17
    And then found out that ACDC, Iron Man, Ghostbusters and Aerosmith were what he was going to be playing on. So, bad luck.
    106:26
    So he said, great social event as you made mention. Thank you for giving me the push to go and try it out.
    106:32
    Just miss out on the top 8. So that's great, you know, for your second comp. But feel if I'd had a better game on Ghostbusters, it may have scraped in. And that's, you know what, you're going to have those moments for a while where you'll have the one that got away. You'll go to a tournament and you'll just know whichever game it was that it was probably your own doing and you knew you could have had a better game. That's the bad beast story, the bad beast story. Everyone has a bad beast story. It's like Stephen Bannon said, everyone has a bad beast story except the winner. Just one person doesn't have one. That's exactly right. And so that was like when I was at the Australian Championship Series. I knew that there was something that I did that was stupid. And had I done that particular thing, I may have had a better shot at winning.
    107:19
    I was talking to, Ryan, I was talking to you during the week about this when, you know, an in-disc when I was on Metallica on my second ball. Because I'd forgotten that they'd made Crank It Up really easy, I thought, oh, I got out of multiple And I thought, okay, I've got to get back into multiball. So I started going for multiball. Do you know why you're going for multiball money? Because I forgot that... Because you were listening to Total Necanonation. Those were the total Necanonation. It was. No, it was actually because I forgot. So when I got to my third ball after the guy before me just got to crank it up, I remembered I only had two shots to get crank it up lit. So I could have done that on ball two and might have won B division. So it's those kind of moments where you look back and you think, Fuck, if only I hadn't been so stupid. But that's Pimball. You get caught up in the moment and sometimes you can remember everything. Most of the time you can't. Yeah, like me on Star Wars this week, I totally forgot the rules of how to add a ball and what was going to happen and more supplies. And I literally, like Luke was laughing at me and I was laughing as well because I didn't really care. But it was just hilarious and I just forgot how to move my hands around. Let me tell you my most embarrassing brain fade moment. You ready? Yeah. Okay, he's in a comp and I was playing, what was I playing? I was playing Game of Thrones. And I managed to get Blackwater Multiball, right? And I was playing it and I was just, it was, I don't know, there was all this noise and I managed to trap up the balls. And I looked down and I saw the button was flashing and I went, oh, the button's flashing, that means I press it. But that was my adderball. I hadn't even drained needing an adderball and I just added the ball into play just stupidly because I saw a button flashing and pressed it.
    109:10
    That's not that embarrassing. It is stupid. It's not that embarrassing. Well, it's stupid when you're playing against the number two at the time player in Australia and they looked at me like I was an idiot. Okay.
    109:21
    It was a dumb move. Anyway, it's stupid stuff like that. So, you know what, Jared, you're going to have those kind of stuff all the way. And he did say that he spoke to Jordan, warned him that he's going to take his number one position. Well, you're going to have a lot of those crappy moments all the way to number one. And Jordan has had them too, let me tell you. Well, he didn't have that night because he won. Not that night, yeah. Not most nights, but he does have them. Yeah.
    109:45
    Are we done? That's it. I think we are. We are done. So join us next week for the second half of the Bowling interview for more interesting tidbits. And next time the episode airs, I will be in Vegas living La Vida Loca.
    110:01
    You're going to see Ricky Martin. Okay, if I'm not allowed to talk about like the thousand steps, I'm not allowed to talk about what I'm going to do in Vegas, okay?
    110:11
    Well, you're going to talk to me from Vegas, aren't you? Sure, I will be talking to you from Vegas because I don't cop out on holidays and I will commit to this podcast to prove we, We care about this. It's an equal partnership. You did it, so I will do it too. Awesome. So anyway, and next week we'll then get to talk about how excited you are for the Texas Pinball Festival. Well, the week after that I would have just been to the Texas Pinball Festival, so I'll have all the hot guss and news and cool stories. Looking forward to it. I'll even tell you the stories I'm not meant to tell about people taking dumps on someone's desk.
    110:54
    That's a joke for one person. I know. That's one listener that will get that. Okay. Alright. I can't believe I... Ah, jeez. There's like 2,000 listeners and one person's going to fucking get that. Alright. Alright, I want you to sing me out with some Ricky Martin. No. I'm not feeling it tonight.
    111:12
    Next week from Vegas, I want some Ricky Martin. Alright? That's a head-to-head promise. Un, dos, tres. There you go. Awesome. Alright, speak to everyone next week. Oh, funny.