That's a really good answer. Yeah. I mean, it's better than the other one. Usually if I don't feel like getting into it, I just go, I don't know. Alligators are cool. Right. Like, and it's like, yeah, that's all you really need. But it's like, yeah, when you're building a business, it needs, you know, I knew we needed branding to stand out, to differentiate ourselves. And I always liked businesses with mascots. I really liked mascots, particularly animal mascots. And fun fact, also for people that are listening, it's like, Witch Head was almost, a hippo was almost our mascot. Really? Yeah, it was almost a hippo. Ended up being a alligator because hippos don't give a shit about humans. No, they don't care. They don't care. They kill them. I love this. There's a great meme about hippos where they're just like, somebody's like, you know, hippos are complete vegetarians. so it's like when they kill a human it's not even to eat it's just because they hate you and like yeah i just i just respect that so much yeah i don't know we're off on a tangent i'll get us back here hey man it's a good conversation i guess so yeah it's a question i get asked all the time so i guess i figured might as well bring it up here i want to get to pricing of games and like what it's like in canada so we had an earlier episode where we talked about in the late 70s the u.s mint created a susan b anthony coin which is like a dollar coin and i know up in canada you guys have one dollar and two dollar coins right loonies and toonies is that got it so do you use that on all your games like is that yeah okay so common up there to just pay with one dollar coins or two dollar coins yeah very yep dude that's awesome because we still we don't have that we've tried multiple times or the u.s i say me like i'm like i'm on the board or whatever i was like i just can't get them to take off man i don't know what i just i will keep trying but yeah we're stuck in this rut where it's like we have quarters right so it's like but with the price of games now it's like if you're playing a two-player game like here in the u.s and you have to put in eight quarters to get one game for two players it feels dumb it just feels like that scene where millhouse is trying to play water world yes yes yeah so what's the price per play for pinball in canada what you price them at and just anecdotally what you see around your region on the east coast of Canada so I not going to speak for all of my country but i will say that so basically the arcade everything in propeller arcade runs on loonies and now even like you even the beat-em-ups i know that sounds crazy but what i do is because all of my problems were stemming not all of them but a lot of them were stemming from quarter mechs and i don't know what it was it's canadian quarter mechs but if an american quarter had gotten there it's like stop the presses shit's hitting the fan i got tired of that it's the same here dude when we get canadian quarters it fucks the whole thing up dude yeah sucks like how the hell have we not figured that i like i get it it's currency but anyway i just was like you know what what's pretty you know a loony mech i don't have to worry about any american loonies coming through compared to quarter mechs they're just i in my experience just never jam like never i'm really somebody has some goo or some shit or something that's awesome loony it's not getting stuck in there so i just adjust games to do that so like if you were playing a beat them up it's like boom loony gives you like three credits okay yeah if you're playing like terminator like a shooter terminator um i just have that adjusted so that your time is maxed you're guaranteed a pretty decent amount of time for that loony rather than people fucking with quarters and stuff, which it's from a staffing perspective, from their, from customers perspective, didn't work out. You'd be surprised how many people will put money into something. And if it doesn't work, they'll walk away. Oh yeah. And I've always been against that. You know, we always make it clear to people, you know, if you have any trouble, man, just talk to staff. Um, these things are meant to take money and they're old as hell. And sometimes it doesn't always work, but we're here. We get that. Some people just are experiencing full technology for the first time. And some people aren't sure how it works and they just walk away from it. Everything's adjusted for mileage in terms of that. It's like, you know, I'm not going to be that operator. Sometimes if you find an old game and you look how an operator had set up and you're like, man, that person should have been shot. It's awful. And so I just made that switch. So regarding pinball machines, everything runs on loonies our dollar not the greatest compared to you know the american dollar so all uh new games that i get through like you know sterns they're two dollars a play i hated the idea of doing two dollars per play on something but you know a lot of people in the league were excited for me to bring these games in and knew that i you know they have to make their money bad they have to make some of their money back they have to make sense financially to do that we're all like just dude it's got to be two dollars a play we still keep getting these games and it's got to be two dollars a play and when i was in vancouver i went to a couple spots that had um you know eight or nine sterns lined up in this bar and lo and behold you know that operator had everything set to two dollars a play and i didn't feel so bad about it and the people that do play them understand that but i also have them set so that you know the ball save time isn't ruthlessly low like you know um sure you know i got rubbers on the outlaying posts right right um yeah you know i it's not friendly they're not yeah they are yeah and and they need to be because i don't as much as we do have like a pinball league i don't have to check in on them because i know that you know they don't have their baby teeth anymore they know what's going on they are the people that i don't have to walk through this and my biggest priority are the people that have never played this absolutely i want to turn those people i want to show those people what you know i felt when i first found it and it's not even about a financial aspect at that point anymore it's i want them to see that these games are fun i want them to have enough time to experience it and take it in but i guess like you know you are an operator and when it comes to older machines especially they take upkeep oh yeah they need to make sense they need to pay for themselves so anytime somebody walks in and they look at Dolly Parton and they say, you know, this is a dollar. And it's like, yeah, but you're going to be playing a fully working Dolly Parton that survived the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s. And when I pulled it out of some maniac's shed, it was raving, rambling. I put the time into that and now it's perfectly fine. And if it ever has a problem, it's going to be fixed within a matter of days and I'll be back playing 100%. I've gotten a lot of good response on that you get a lot of people say compliment how awesome the machines are i want to tell the listeners because we have a largely u.s audience although we do have a lot of listeners in canada and actually around the world australia all over europe so which is really cool about doing the podcast but i want to say for uh majority u.s listenership when we're talking about loonies and toonies one and two dollars canadian i looked up the current exchange rate $1 Canadian or one loonie is 73 cents US. So we'll just call it 75 cents. And $2 is 145 or let's say 150, right? So 75 cents per dollar. And so if you're hearing Ian talk about this, think about that'd be the equivalent in the States of $1 is 75 cents. But also you're having to buy games manufactured in the US with your Canadian dollars. so it's also more expensive relatively for you to buy a new machine than it is for somebody in the U.S. Sure. So if they're listening and they're like, oh, that sounds high, I go, no, it's not high. It's part of the economy and the way it runs and just having different valuations on your national currency and the exchange rate. Sure. I'll put it out there. So with the new Stearns, believe it or not, this is some people that come in that have never seen a pinball machine can't tell the difference between lost world and godzilla that's just yeah despite the fact that one has a giant screen on it some people are like i've had people come in and be like man i used to play this one in the bowling alley all the time i'm like yeah my godzilla premium that's crazy like you know it's just people reminiscing into the nostalgia and having a moment for sure but it's like so to some people they don't see the difference you know right why is this two dollars wise is one dollar and that's fine you know they get into pinball one day it'll click and they'll be like oh okay i get it now i recently bought a jaws premium as well and i always kind of just end up with the premium i know from an operator's perspective maybe it's not the smartest but it's also i love seeing some of the regulars get very stoked on it because i don't buy new games as often as a lot of other places so when i do i always love going with you know the one with a couple more bells and whistles on it because they i think they appreciate it a lot an extra little bit of to make the experience fun for me regarding cost on it you know pinball machines not as cheap as you would think for the yeah person that doesn't know this there's a lot more things that i could do within a godzilla premium amount of money yeah i would bet that hopefully anyone that's listening to a niche pinball podcast understands that but if they don't i mean use google i'm sure they've already done the math like i think this is what happens with people in pinball they're like this is so cool and then they hear about like people like oh man you know even stern flashes at his ads like hey you could you could buy a machine for your house and everyone's like huh you know and then they look it up and they're like sticker shock sets in they're like wow these are this expensive you're like yeah that's they're a commercial product at the end of the day so sure people are now collecting them at home which is cool but they're expensive they're not cheap so they're not and i i question i question it maybe this is going to get a little controversial on Stern, but I question whether or not, you know, their main audience is the operator or if it's the homeowner now. Oh, it's 100% the homeowner. I don't question that at all. I mean, you see it. I think what the great part about Stern is, even though you don't buy them, I will say this. Stern is the only company that still has a pro and the pro, if you look at the inflation calculator, the pro has sort of matched what games cost from the nineties till today. so it really hasn't like they've kept the pro at basically the same price as you know 90s games now you could say maybe those 90s games might have more mechs or whatever in them but also on quite conversely you could say well yeah but they're putting on the stern games they're putting all that effort into software deeper rules the screen has animations they're putting effort into those games in a similar way but i will say like on average i mean i think the argument is like well insider connectors for operators and for people to go out and play on location which okay maybe they have the leaderboards i guess but sure i don't it doesn't affect our business you know i don't know george gomez might hear this and be upset but it just doesn't for our location it doesn't matter we have them on all our games we upgraded all the spike 2 games that didn't ship with insider connected to have insider connected or we make the most effort my business partner when he's on route he will log into their wi-fi at every location to make sure that his games are on and connected but what i see as an operator is that you know unfortunately the insider connected is very a little bit flaky right now so you know it'll jump on and off a network so the player that even the players that really like it and getting their badges and stuff it's like they're used to showing up and being oh well it's not working and the thing is is like they're still going to play that godzilla machine whether or not yeah right you know what i mean like it's like connected isn't the selling point yeah they're still gonna play the game because the game's awesome so yeah You know, Stern's doing a good thing by making good machines, and I find them to be pretty reliable. So we operate a bunch of them. I mean, we sort of get every new Stern. And sometimes we get a premium, but, you know, oftentimes it's a pro. Sure. Yeah. I want to talk about your lineup in general, though, because you run a very eclectic kind of maybe even eccentric lineup of machines that you'll rotate through the arcade. I looked at pinball maps, so I don't know how current this is, but it says you have right now Centaur, Baby Pack, Dirty Harry, Dolly Parton, Godzilla Premium, Jaws Premium, Judge Dredd, Lost World, Stern Playboy, Data East Simpsons, Star Wars Pro, Stranger Things Pro, Surfer, Terminator 2, Wheel of Fortune, Doggy Soccer, and Data East Royal Rumble. can you discuss just some of the games that you choose to operate and why that's not an attack by the way i think some of these games are awesome trust me trust me i've been able to differentiate an attack by now whatever i like you know what i operate games that i love and games that have hit me in a certain way and again going back to that person that's outside of the league that that's outside of the fact that they even know that there's people that like this game or like that game for this reason or for that reason they just see something and it draws them in and to me i call it the mousetrap effect i've never said that to any other human being out loud but it's right but like this it makes sense to me there's board games right there's you know there's scrabble there's tons of but then there's other board games that are goofy and require very little but they have all these kooky contraptions like mousetrap sure if that makes any sense and at first you're so enamored by it does it always work no but when it does it's cool as shit and everybody remembers it that's why i'm a big fan of premiere games because they are those that era of games where they always have these kooky devices and toys and stuff like that and i feel like those are very important for new players that come in because they see things and they immediately want to do them. They don't know that there's a deep rule sheet to anything. They just know that they have to keep the ball alive. And that's that. And I've seen people come in that have never played pinball machine before and play certain games. And I love to like kind of just watch their reaction to it. And then if I see them play it a second time, then I know that game just did what it was supposed to do when it was made in 1980, 1990, whatever. And it's cool to see it doing that. And that makes that person want to come back and check out all the other games and see how they're different. And then, you know, slowly start to understand that there's more to these games. It's like a gateway game. Absolutely. A lot of the ones that I have, like I have a Bone Busters currently in my garage that was in the arcade for a while. And man, the amount of nose upturning I got at that Bone Busters, holy hell. But the amount of people that would play it and be like, this game is awesome. One of my really good friends loves arcades and pinball machines, but he is not on a league level, not on an anything level. He would never play tournament pinball or anything So I always like to examine his reactions on certain things right and like when i showed him a picture of somebody uploaded a video of like you know a warehouse find that's becoming rare these days of like an old operator's warehouse with like 27 inches of dust and all these games and i was showing him the video and he was like holy shit that street fighter pinball he's like that's one of my favorite pinball machines ever nice i got it Like, I know it because, you know, you ask somebody in a pin side stuff. So I'm just going to throw a pin side in there. And like, it's one of those games. It's like, oh, man, it's such a dog shit game. That's a terrible game. Sure. And it's like, I get it, but I'm not worried about you because you already know where to go sniff out what you want. Yeah. You know, and where you can find this stuff. It's that person that just gets excited about this like they're at a carnival. And I'm like, that's it. That's that first experience that I want to see to everyone that comes in the door. So I try to keep those games in there. If I just had nothing but like, you know, all Stern games and stuff, those can be so goddamn intimidating to somebody who's playing for the first time. Like, you know, Godzilla is hard as hell. That theme is what really drives it. I'm a huge Godzilla fan and I love it, but I also happen to be pretty decent at pinball and I understand I have a business around it. sure people that go in and play godzilla people like me i came so fun i have no fucking idea what's happening yeah like i just you know i shot one thing and all of a sudden blue oyster colt was playing and i was like wow this is it and it's like wow cool that's the tip of the iceberg of what you're supposed to do sure in that game i just find a lot of the games that i try to put in there are a variety of those i absolutely want to have those games that somebody one day decided to write a review and remind the world that they hated. I will tell the listener that you will message me after we do a Die on the Hill show, because we will talk about games and you'll be like, oh man, that game's awesome. And we'll be like, that game was trash, right? Like we'll dismiss the game and be like, that game was awesome, which is a little spoiler alert for the next episode. We do have Ian on the hook. He will be defending a game that you should listen to. Oh, yeah. I'm going to take a lot of, yeah, going to wear a Kevlar vest for this one. I love that you go out of your way. I mean, I love, the reason that whole segment even happens is because I'm the same way. I got a lot of grace for bad, quote unquote, bad games. And I try to find the fun in them because a lot of times, especially like what you're saying with the Gottlieb Premier Games, is like they took a lot of swings. for all their flaws they took a lot of swings and they made things that were at least interesting so you know in today's modern pinball everyone talks about like oh we don't want the same thing over and over again we don't want the same thing but also they kind of do i mean they don't want you to change the flippers the size the alignment the in lanes the slingshots the outlay right like they don't want don't put the ramps in a weird spot like don't put a pump bumper on the lower play field don't like they don't want you to do anything that would change it significantly but then they want something different which is sure you know impossible to do right but yeah i guess we just want to end this uh operator talk with you of about common a couple common operator questions real quick and just see how you do it because i think everyone else does a little bit differently but first of all it's like what games do best for you as far as earnings and are any of the games on the floor like a surprise like would they surprise anybody to hear that this game does well yeah here's my advice to anybody if you're thinking about getting into operating pinball some other operators might disagree i don't know why they would but it all depends on who your audience is if you have no pinball machines and you decide one day you've been playing a ton and you're like i want to be an operator i want to make my arcade first thing you should go do is find yourself a dolly parton yeah i like i'm a dolly parton fan it's my favorite era of pinball by like you know one of my favorite companies but it's also it does so well it does so well the upkeep on it uh especially now there's so many people producing things as very it's as possible i mean you can get new play fields for it you can get new back glasses for it you can get everything you need for the that entire era mind you but just i put it on the floor and it continues to just do so well better better than sterns dude that's awesome it's like a lot of those games do that they are the amount of people that walk into those doors aren't pinball players yes it's a big space our capacity is almost 200 people pinball people come down at a very set time and they play the living hell out of those games you know what they're so good those are the people that are going to earn their free games and they should because they you know what they earn them completely but it's the average person that walks in that wants to try one of everything and goes down and they're like i think i just broke the game it made a loud knock yeah and i'm like no you know you know these are the people that can't find the start button which happens all the time yeah it's awesome if you're listening to this don't leave a review saying the games don't work if you can't find the start button oh no trust me i assure you there is it's there but yeah i guess like a lot of those bizarro premiere games man like bone busters does so so well there's more upkeep to it but it pays its its little rent i guess you could say in the lineup of everything i always think that those games are going to do well because i look at them and i get stoked i get so excited to play them and that's all i need to know if i'm feeling that way then somebody else is going to feel that way and i'm not thinking of it from a rule sheet perspective or anything because I know the rules are pretty much written on the surface for games like that. So I know that person is going to have fun, and usually those are the ones that do the best. So I'd like to feel I have it dialed in to what I think is going to get a good reaction. Good advice for the average people. We talk about it a lot on this show, and it comes up about how well the average Stern does for us on Route and as well as at Wedget. But I will say that, to your point, it's like there are pinball players that like all eras of games, which is why we focus on having all eras of games at Wedget always. Because there are other people that like the solid state games, like the Dolly Partons. There are people that love the Bells and Chimes, so playing an EM. As well as the 90s games, they just feel like there's more cool mechs and toys in the 90s games, which there are. as well as the players that like the deep rule sets of the sterns and uh collecting badges and all that kind of stuff so and i also think that what's lost on some people when they're starting an arcade or something is if you're a pinball person you're a passionate pinball person you are creating a spot where people are following your lead so like there is a bit of a cult of personality that happens with an engaged owner and operator of a location within a scene and by that i mean it's like i get people like alan what what game do you like what games on the floor and i just so you got to go play argosy this game's gonna beat your ass it's super fun right or you got to go play sing-along or like what's your favorite game i was like big game i love this game like you got to go play it right and then i'll put it in howdy partner and then all of a sudden like these people see this game and they see it as valuable and they see the fun in it because they've been exposed to it and because they know that i like it and it's not that they should like things just because i like them or whatever but that's it's natural like you know i think we talked to rachel and kale the electric bath they're the same way they're super engaged and so like people like what they like like they get a lot of like they'll talk about it on their show in their social media they'll be like oh man people are so into the badges and collecting badges and i was like i don't push that so like we don't see that you know and i don't even think that they're really aware of it but i was like you guys are people love you so they they follow some of what you do and i think what what you're operating is you're basically saying like hey i have a dolly part and i think this game's rad so people will play it give it a chance you're like hey i think there's something in bone busters i'm going to put out there so people are like hey i'm willing to follow i'm willing to see at the very least and so it's helpful to have an operator that people can see and play games with and interact with because a lot of these games it's not that a game will earn or doesn't earn because one that's dependent on location it's dependent on scene it's dependent on lots of things but also you as an operator can make any game that you truly believe in you could make that game earn i i believe that i believe that like on a route it's a different sell the pitch yes on a route it's a different story because you're just putting games out and it's just sort of like casting a fishing net and you come back every couple weeks and you know dredge up whatever you caught or whatever but like when you own an arcade you have the ability to be like this game's fucking cool like and you get to sell to people like what did you take out you took out stranger things and you put in frontier and you're like yeah hey listen frontier fucking rips like oh yeah dude yeah you teach them oh this game is fun right and you're like all right so here's my best score see if you can beat it put them on task and all of a sudden they're like oh this game can be fun right like maybe if i just put those two games somewhere else and just left them away with no interaction of course i think the stranger thing is going to earn way more money but like you can change that narrative within your own arcade and i think people are interested in that like the players in your local community are interested in that man i yeah it's it's going back to what you said though big game as well like before the arcade existed i was dragging machines around in the back of my truck and dropping them off at bars for literally just a weekend at a time in hopes to just sell this idea to somebody that people want this so we could just stop you know again pissing in a sink and go play this you know in public and like you know meet people and i knew people would do that big game was one of the games that i had at the time and it got the best the best response like people would message me being like what is this game this game is amazing so many pictures of people taking pictures of it like and spreading it around social media and stuff um that game's a special game to me that's the game that changed like i was into pinball but i played that game and then i would chase it around town uh because my business partner before i really knew him he had one and it's the same one we still have at wedge and it's the reason it it will leave the floor sometimes but man it's hard to get it to leave the floor because i fucking love it so much it is it's the game that it was like the key that unlocked old solid state games to me and that's why we did the harry williams episode that's a harry williams design game for any listeners i haven't listened to that episode yet go back and listen to it uh but yeah fucking big game is so good i think that's a great so fast so fast dude multiple spinners i love the pop bumper cluster in the center and just trying to knock down all your decimates yeah the pop bumpers just like decimating banks of drop targets before you can even get a flip in like it's man it's yeah it's got everything in the recipe to hook somebody in. Yeah, it's so much fun. I think that's such a great gateway game to older solid state games. It is, yeah. I just wanted to end this here. I've been talking for a little while. I wanted to thank Ian for coming on the show and talking shop, man, talking about pinball operating, talking about the pinball scene and its kind of growth in Halifax. If anyone here is listening and you get a chance, you should absolutely go visit Propeller Arcade. Follow them on social media just keep up with them because they do a kick-ass job man i love the events you guys do your merch is sick and i can't wait to visit in person for everyone else want to say like i always say which is you'll find some pinball to play on location that's really what the message of this podcast always is we're an operator we own a pinball bar in portland ian's an operator has an arcade in a rad brewery up in halifax but it's like there are people that are passionate about pinball putting these games out there for you to enjoy and working really hard to maintain them so you have a way to play them go support your local operator play some pinball and until next time good luck don't suck