Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, host of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast, running solo today. and I'm interviewing another operator up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for our Operator Spotlight Series. His name is Ian Matheson, operator at Propeller Arcade. How are you doing, Ian? I'm doing great, man. How are you doing? Doing wonderful. We're doing this early in the morning because of the four-hour time change, which is why Alex, the co-host, can't be here, but he's a dual citizen. Would have loved to have been here. I want to start off asking you about your setup at Propeller. So Propeller is a brewery, one of the first microbreweries in the area. Are you a partner in the brewery itself, or how did you meet the owners, and when did the arcade part of it come to be? Yeah, well, Propeller is one of the oldest still-surviving microbreweries or craft breweries in the Maritimes, and it's always been there. It was a place where whenever the liquor stores closed in Halifax and you were in high school, you could always count on Propeller. I don't know how much they're going to be stoked that I said that, but it's true, damn it. So it was a big part of our youth. Everybody was drinking IPA before it was like a huge, huge thing. Do work for the company itself. It's a joint relationship with the arcade, where the arcade is very much my idea. It's my child, I guess, if you want to say that. And it's grown so much from the company originally. But I was an employee there. I was slinging growlers over the counter. I knew that basement existed. So I definitely snuck in there under the radar with all intentions to make the pitch to sell this whole concept. So how did you get into running? I believe you started with arcade games, right? And then you branched out into pinball. Like, how did that all come to be? It was always pinball for sure. But getting into it, one of the first things I learned about pinball was that it was way more expensive than, you know, an arcade machine. Sure. It takes up more space and breaks more often. And there's a whole other bag of knowledge that goes into it than an arcade machine, I found. And when I got into arcade machines, I loved it. There was ones I wanted, and I would get them. I would put them in my house, wherever I was living at the time, with friends or something like that. And just the amount of people that would flock to it when they came in, I was like, man, okay, I'm not crazy. There's something there. But for me, the replay value was so low. I remember dragging a Terminator 2 and destroying my door frames in so many places I lived. Dragging this thing across the floor. Just dragging the damage deposit down with it every time I brought it in somewhere. I'd never play it. It was just this wicked conversation piece, but it was a big part of my childhood. And then I got my first pinball machine, and it was a whole game changer. What was your first pinball machine? Lost World, 1978. Oh, okay, nice. valley ted zale game okay nice yeah and uh i bought it from a local tech pinball nominally legend i guess you could say oh in town very well known on inside in a good way or a bad way i don't know depends who you're talking to i yeah i went in i saw it and had a choice between two games and it was that or uh stern magic okay yeah yeah and he was trying to sell me on they were same price which at that point i said they were expensive then which who knew what would happen right and he was like you know this one has drop targets and then i was like man but the art on this one they were so good they were both had like play field wear but i ended up going with lost world something about it fate put me on lost world and i got that still have it still in the bar still does a wicked job. I don't know. After that, it was just, it was going to be pinball. It was always pinball. Due to that interaction, I kind of stumbled upon this really small league of people that would just hang out and play pinball, and I got sucked into it right away. Are you solely operating games at Propeller in the arcade, or do you have other games that are on a route? I do. I find it very difficult just because I don't have the amount of time that I'd like to put into them and make sure that they're people are getting 100% what they should be getting when they drop a coin in or whatever. And the arcade takes up so much of my time that I started to discover, I just didn't have time to do it. And sometimes I forget about them at places. So I only have the match only really about two places, which is a place called Stillwell, which is a beer bar downtown. And they were the first people to really have pinball. So I always kind of felt putting something back there would be great and then uh about 20 minutes out of town at another place i just have like a frogger machine and room for another pinball but i kind of pumped the brakes on that you like cut your route down yeah yeah for sure yeah it's it's a full-time thing man if you want it done right it's a full-time thing totally for sure yeah you know it doesn't have to be a full-time thing but i've you know i've played games that aren't a full-time thing for people and you're getting half the experience so i don't know if i was talking to you about this or if it was somebody else over social media but we were i was talking to another operator and we're just like the good thing and the bad thing about pinball is that it breaks all the time it needs constant maintenance and like the bad thing is obvious right is that it needs constant maintenance but the good thing about it is it's really easy to differentiate yourself from other people that don't put in the effort because pinball players know the difference right like absolutely heads know when this game is clean everything's working flippers are rebuilt every shot registers they know that and so you can see it in bad operators everywhere and it's like okay the competition does it to themselves really oh yeah definitely we speak through social media quite a bit about operating in the pinball scene in Nova Scotia, but could you explain it to the listeners that don't live there? Like, is it a big scene? Do people play pinball there? Is it growing since you started? I don't want to say it's as big as a lot of the other scenes I've seen that, you know, explode over social media. You guys have like what looks like a wonderful scene that I can see from, especially with like Howdy Partner and everything. And it looks great. Our scene has definitely grown from when I got into it. And when I got into it, it was like you had to go into one guy's basement, and he had this wicked lineup of wicked era of ballet machines like Centaur. Oh, nice. Everything. The best. The best. I love that. It would just be like stacks of records not in their sleeves, somebody just constantly putting on Van Halen, and to a bunch of like older dudes drinking budweiser and then like you had to like if you needed to like take a piss you had to like piss in the sink which was the craziest which was so crazy and i'll like i'm like i'm glad that that existed because i can look back and see the change and know that it happened but from a league's perspective that's not very welcoming to like you know, you can't really, you can only go so far off of that. I cherish those moments, but I'm glad we're past it. Sure. Yeah. No, it's helpful to have a public location where people can interact and come to it naturally. Like getting some invite to somebody's basement and then having to pee in a sink is like, I mean, you're pretty much only talking to pinball junkies at that point, like converted deep in the sickness and like, it's crazy. Like I just, I forget how I found out about it, but the same person, it was the same person who sold me Lost World. Right. And he was like a tech. And I've seen the craziest shit I've ever seen in this hobby by going to those socials. Right. It would be an ad on Kijiji. Kijiji is like our Craigslist. Okay. And it would be like, you know, pinball meetup, just the most basic thing. And you'd go there and there'd be like maybe two people smoking outside and you'd go into this basement and there'd be like stacks of playfields, like bins of parts, harnesses, everything. And then a bunch of dudes cranking Van Halen, just, you know, slap saving these games because like, you know, and these are the games they grew up with. totally and then like i remember like going there and there's like fire departments showing up because john who owns the house and was a tech literally was just lighting a pinball machine on fire in the backyard because he was like oh i can't get it to work and we were like jesus christ dude there's like blue flames green flames shooting the fire departments showing up and they're like you can't do this man and he's like oh and then they they would like drive off and then we'd turn around and be like dumping gas on it again like it was awesome it's the greatest thing i could have hoped for from replying to a gg ad yeah so i mean after that there was somebody who ran uh a friend of mine matt who ran the halifax pinball where now it was like i it wasn't just socials it was you know ifpa registered points he you know helped a lot of people branch out uh and kind of that point there was an old operator the only operator at that point that was really involved with anything he got pinballs into this place called stillwell that i mentioned before lo and behold everybody had a bathroom now um there's no fires it was really great people were very thankful for it totally but uh it started to kind of grow off that and and stuff the league now is very much still a lot of those same people they're so committed there is some new people that i've seen come over the years i don't myself i don't participate in the tournaments or the league nights it's just not really for me I like being around them and stuff but um is it because you don't like competitive play or is it because you just don't have time or both I've always told myself that I'd make time for this so that I still love it as a hobby because before this was business this was keeping me sane like it was you know I loved it so I do have the time for it i just not i'm over the competitive aspect of it i'm more of that guy who wants to put on that van halen record and just like chat and drink beers and hang out and play socialize yeah totally i hear you if i see somebody just like laying waste on centaur and like just rolling millions and millions of points i'm the kind of guy that gets fucking stoked that i'm seeing that yeah And I'm watching somebody do something that I deemed impossible when I first got into this, you know, when I was pissing in a sink. I led these first socials. So it's like I love to get stoked on that. And I feel like that is such a contagious reaction with pinball. That's what made me be like, you know, this needs to be in like a huge public setting. Like this, it's meant to do it. It's coming back. It's a perfect time for it. And I feel like that's not really tournament games because, again, everybody's competing to win. Right. You're not necessarily excited to see somebody blowing up Centaur when you know you have to now beat their score. Sure. And I'm a little competitive inside, and I don't really like the feeling of it. When I know something's on the line, and in reality, to me, points mean nothing. personally I don't I'm not I didn't get into pinball for the points I didn't know there was points I got into it because I pressed start one day on a pinball machine and I was like holy shit here it is you know so and I'm not I don't want to like make that sound like the league is a negative thing I'm not at all the people in the league are are awesome a lot of them are my close friends and I look forward to hosting it every week and talking with Matt and figuring out ways to make it really cool and stuff but just point standing that's not that wasn't an attraction for me i guess of course i'm basically the same way i don't play in real tournaments they i find them tedious to be honest but that's not like to say that there's anything wrong with them i think that there plenty of people that they find so much fun and value in the tournaments in the competitive setting that like you know it like they having a great time it like for me personally it like i don have a lot of free time so and i love pinball and just like what you were saying it's like pinball was a hobby to me before it was a business just like you like that's what draws everyone into it and before i had wedgehead and before i had to work on games and all that kind of stuff it's like i cherish my time of being able to go into a place and just put some money in a machine and just play. I didn't need anyone around, but I would also drag my normie friends who weren't into pinball and just pay their way. I'd be like, oh, don't worry about this. This is theater of magic. I'm going to teach you how to play this game. And like, I would just pay their way and cheerlead them when they got a multiball, right? Cheerlead them when they got a jackpot or something like, and just sort of like, oh, when I'm there for their first replay or something. You know what I mean? Like, and that's the stuff that I like. And that's the stuff I still like, and which is why Howdy Partner is the way it is. Because it's like I wanted to create something that like just more resembles like my personality and what I like in pinball. Sure. But we're getting close on the web app of it. And I can't wait to have you join in, man. I think you'll enjoy that a lot. I know I will. That was one of my favorite episodes that I looked forward to was the Howdy Partner. Yeah. And we'll do another one when we get it all together. I'm hoping that I can't make any promises, but I really, really, really want to make it out to Propeller. And if we can get this web app up, I think it'd be a good excuse for me to come out there and kind of throw one with you guys. The first one, it would give me an excuse to go out there and like experience Propeller Arcade. But I want to get this back on track and, you know, talk about yourself and Propeller. I mean, that's what we're here to do. But I want to say, like, you guys host or seem to host some, like, really rad events, including, like, you screen classic kind of action and Hong Kong action movies and horror movies. It seems like both inside and outside. And you also host local wrestling shows. Tell the audience a little bit more about all these events that you throw at Propeller and how much are you involved in these events? Those events, like, the screenings are 100% me. I run them. I coordinate them, pick them. I do have a friend, a local friend, Trevor, who is an operator himself outside the city. And he is, he's like a jack of all trades. And one of those trades being projection and stuff. And he has a company that specializes in doing screenings. And he has like, you know, cinema grade projectors. And he's there. He loves the arcade. You know, he has a game or two that we put in a rotation there. and he helps out with the screenings as well. But design and everything is all me. Wrestling was an idea that I wanted to do. I'm a big wrestling fan. There are some of my friends. And the space is just like, it's a big empty room. So I reached out to a local wrestling group, Pro Wrestling Unleashed, and they were so stoked about it that I knew it could work. And we did it, and lo and behold, it did work. Just a little bit of quick history to help some of it make sense. the building itself used to be this movie theater in the late 80s called Wormwood's Dog and Monkey Cinema in Halifax and it was like a good name dude that's awesome it was crazy there's a lot of wicked old photos of it that I have I've reached out to a lot of the people and staff that used to work there that are still with us tons of cool crazy stories about movies being shown there and everything like where the bar is now is where the old like the 35 projector was and everything and big enough to accommodate a theater so that's how big the room is so you can 100 fit a wrestling ring in there and the movie screenings is by far the biggest task of the place but it is the best payout because it's it takes about a day and a half to like gut the place like take the machines out, drag out all the tables, do everything, and then bring in 140 seats. Wait a second. And do a... Wait a second. Ian. Hmm? You pull out every machine to do a screening? On the brewery, on the old brewery floor, yes. How many machines is that? It's usually about 10 machines, plus a basketball, plus a skee-ball. Whoa! And then probably about, like, you know, eight picnic tables and, like, 10 tables. yeah it's it sucks wow so cool i mean that's ultimate love of the game type shit right there oh my god yeah it's i love i didn't know that that place was wormwoods when it it just happened to be it and i found it i like found myself getting so excited about the history of the place that i was like okay i gotta hit the brakes because there's no way this is real and then some of the old wormwood staff came in when it was an arcade and they're like you know i used to project films right where you're standing and i was like shut the hell up we gotta talk right now and it just kept spiraling yeah it was great the the owner of propeller has a history in film as well so there was a lot of yeah a lot of connection going on there damn that's cool man but when all said and done 140 seats we could do more but it'd be sick if people could you know get out if it was of fire so we just leave it at 140 140 seats i mean that just makes me even more impressed the level of effort that you guys put into your events and they seem so cool and so professional i mean even just like the movie tickets that you guys sell are like real physical like tickets with like art on them it's just sick like for anyone that's listening to this episode follow propeller arcade on Instagram so you can see all this shit that they post but just a sick looking arcade with sick events and I'm just very excited to talk to you uh because I love coming on I'm very stoked that uh you asked me to come on as a guest it's one of my favorite podcasts but yeah no it's it's great regarding the tickets um those are done by a friend uh who also works for Beller Angel she's been doing them since day one and they're a big thing I've always believed in like physical tickets because if somebody buys a physical ticket, that person is committed. I take a lot of heat for not doing online ticket sales because it's 2024. I get that. I don't care. Just like we have people line up for these tickets and they always sell out and all those people are committed to do it. When someone buys something physical, there's a level of commitment that's put on there and that person is very excited about it. The screenings are amazing. I'm still sitting. I'm cooking up an alligator screening for whenever you manage to make it up here. Yeah. We just got to see my wife and I and a couple of regulars. We have a great historic movie palace up the street from Wedgehead. So they're like three blocks north. It's called the Hollywood Theater. They have the capacity to do 70 millimeter screenings, one of the last cinemas in the country to do that. And it's right up the street from us. and they show lots of rad movies, and they just did an alligator screening a couple months ago, so we all went to go see it, and that's my first time being able to see it in a theater, and it was incredible. The wedding scene in Alligator, if anyone hasn't seen it yet, is perfection. Oh, yeah, it is. It's everything you'd hope a giant alligator storming a wedding would be. Yeah, and eating the rich, literally, which I love. yeah it's like three minutes of total chaos there's people doing front flips through wedding cakes like there's just people getting whipped to death holy shit when i saw that as a kid i was so terrified yeah like they feed it there's a scene where they feed a kid to the alligator anybody that killed a kid in the movie is a crazy awesome filmmaker because that's passing a level that nobody yeah nobody wants to right yeah that's what i love about john carpenter's one of his early movies he has that he has that scene where the ice cream man shows up pulls the gun and shoots that little girl yeah you're just like oh my god dude kind of psycho move in a movie that's how you remind the audience that they're being held hostage yeah totally remind them who's in control there so you may have bought the fucking ticket but i'm the one controlling the ride right now those movies are what make movies just ride the edge i love alligator obviously like we're i get asked this all the time people are like what's up with alligators man like what's the deal with alligators so i guess i might as well address it on this podcast i'm stoked let's hear it it's really just i have a fascination with alligators clearly and people are like but why alligators and i was like i just love that they're fucking dinosaurs they've been around forever and in the american south you'll see alligators on golf courses you'll see them at gas stations they'll be swimming in the pool of some rich guy their house and there's nothing that they can fucking do about it i mean they have to call a whole team of people to get a giant eight foot alligator out of somewhere they move slowly out of water they just they're the ultimate like don't give a fuck animals like they're very chill relatively docile and but they're the ultimate like fuck around and find out creature like they have armored skin they got the strongest bite force of any creature on earth and like i love that they just fucking climb fences into golf courses and just like terrorize rich people like i love that shit so like i just respect sort of like the fact that they're ultimate survivors and that they're everywhere and even though people go out and try to kill a bunch of alligators every year there's always more of them they're always surviving like and i just love that shit so i felt like witch head needed a spirit animal and that's what i felt like was most appropriate was like you nailed it we need something that's like hardy it was a survivor and also flies under the radar like they're so common in the american south as to be just completely sort of ignored but and just sort of always under the surface like which it's never going to be the biggest place it's never going to be the most famous spot it's never going to be any of those things but we're going to survive we're going to make do and we're going to whatever comes at us we're going to survive it and so that's sort of the big impetus of like wedgehead and alligators because people are like are you even from the south i was like no i'm not from the south at all it's just i love the animal I love their strengths. I love how adaptable they are. Man, what a good answer. 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 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 inlanes 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 playfields 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 I'll have the news, baby I don't want to buy your disease Yeah, you may have all you want, baby But I got something you need Oh, yeah Yeah, you're talking about love My love is right to the core