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Episode 11: Steve Ritchie and Video Game Themes with Jeff Rivera

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 26m·analyzed·Jun 7, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Steve Ritchie seminar recap & Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown coverage with design philosophy insights.

Summary

Josh Roop and Scott Larson of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast host Jeff Teolis to discuss their experiences at Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, including an impromptu shopping trip with legendary designer Steve Ritchie. The episode features detailed recaps of Ritchie's seminars on pinball design philosophy, licensing challenges, and favorite games from other designers, as well as hands-on impressions of new games like Oktoberfest and American Pinball's market positioning.

Key Claims

  • Steve Ritchie said Stern has 17 million parts at 26 cents per part, totaling 4.2 million dollars in parts inventory

    high confidence · Scott describing Ritchie's seminar: 'they have 17 million parts at Stern at 26 cents a part. So I did a quick calculation. They have 4.2 million in inventory.'

  • Steve Ritchie stated the left playfield design on Black Knight was stolen through industrial espionage and is based on Flash Gordon

    high confidence · Scott: 'The interesting tidbit he dropped is that on Black Knight, the left playfield design was stolen and basically some industrial espionage. And that left-hand side is Flash Gordon.'

  • American Pinball sold approximately 700 units of Houdini

    high confidence · Scott describing Barry Oursler's seminar: 'they said Houdini, he said they sold kind of around 700.'

  • American Pinball estimates the total pinball market at approximately 10,000 machines annually based on their 10-15% market share goal

    medium confidence · Scott: 'he said their goal is to get 10 to 15 percent of the market and then later he said, "So if we're selling about a thousand to fifteen hundred, then that would be a success for us." So at least according to Barry Oursler, if, uh, if you know 10 percent is a thousand, then that means they think roughly 10,000 pinball machines are being sold in the market.'

  • Steve Ritchie said Stern will not do another sports game because they have never succeeded commercially

    high confidence · Scott: 'they won't do another sports game because they never succeeded and honestly, what sports theme has been successful besides – can you even count World Cup Soccer '94 as a successful sports theme?'

  • Steve Ritchie's design philosophy starts with the Licensed Edition (LE) version and then scales back for Pro models

    high confidence · Jeff: 'he said he likes having the theme first... he said he does start with the LE, so he starts with the top of the line version of it and then figures out ways of scaling it back for the Pro model.'

  • Steve Ritchie attends approximately six pinball shows per year and is 69 years old

Notable Quotes

  • “I make pinball machines to sell pinball machines.”

    Steve Ritchie @ ~27:30 — Core design philosophy statement showing focus on commercial viability over artistic expression

  • “I don't know how to make movies. They don't know how to make pinball machines.”

    Steve Ritchie @ ~35:00 — Observation about licensing challenges and the clash between film and pinball design expertise

  • “Yes, but you can't show that.”

    Steve Ritchie @ ~13:30 — Response to question about getting tired of conventions; reveals professional discipline despite fatigue

  • “He's comfortable being Steve Ritchie. He's genuinely happy doing what he's doing.”

    Jeff Teolis @ ~11:00 — Characterization of Ritchie's current life satisfaction and passion for the industry

  • “I remember you guys. You're the ones that got me the liquor.”

    Steve Ritchie @ ~7:00 — Light-hearted callback showing Ritchie's personable nature and humor

  • “it does so many things that it starts to kind of lose its identity somehow because everything starts to just feel like minor variations”

    Jeff Teolis @ ~55:00 — Critical assessment of Oktoberfest's design problem: feature bloat without coherence

Entities

Steve RitchiepersonJosh RooppersonScott LarsonpersonJeff TeolispersonBarry OurslerpersonRocky Mountain Pinball Showdownevent

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball actively hiring across multiple roles, indicating expansion phase and resource investment in growth

    high · Scott: 'American Pinball is hiring. So anybody out there who really wants to get into pinball and has any sort of unique talents, he said, contact them, send them your resume because they're bulking up.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Steve Ritchie demonstrates sustained passion for pinball at age 69, attending six shows annually out of personal interest rather than Stern compensation; hosts consider this exemplary commitment to industry

    high · Scott: 'he's 69. He's still designing pinball machines. Um, he goes to about six shows a year and, uh, he goes because he likes going and he likes seeing the people. And, um, and he said like, you know, Stern's not paying him money to go to these shows.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown tournament format allows all qualifiers to participate; high qualifiers receive advancement byes while low qualifiers must win through bracket; described as inclusive design allowing upset potential

    high · Scott: 'everybody who played qualified... they set up a ladder system. So if you qualified really high, you got a few buys... if you qualified low, you had to fight your way back up'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Oktoberfest criticized for excessive feature count creating identity confusion, extremely long ball times (53+ minutes for four-player game), and playfield ergonomics issues (steep left ramp, wire form underutilized)

    high · Jeff: 'it does so many things that it starts to kind of lose its identity... it's a super, super long ball time type of game.' Scott: 'the left ramp going up to the roller coaster is super steep, and that is really hard to hit.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.260

0:00
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. We are on episode 11, and with me, my co-captain as always. I'm Scott Larson, and with us for the second time is our special guest from the Pinball Podcast, Jeff Rivera. How are you doing, Jeff? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing?
0:26
Good. Fantastic. I was going to call you the OPP You know that Naughty by Nature song Yeah but that means something different Yeah no no This is a family podcast I now realize that But he's the original pinball podcaster man Okay yeah that's not really what that song means I know I googled it Don't google it People out there please do not google it Yeah The OG would have worked I was going to say OG but I thought OPP would be cooler. We're going to co-op that acronym. Yeah, no, don't.
1:08
You can't drive your kids in the car and have people say, Dad, what's OPP? Oh, we're off to a great start. Yes.
1:20
You know what? What have you two been up to? Because obviously I can't drive this vehicle at this moment.
1:27
Well, Jeff, why don't you take it away? What did we do? We went to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, didn't we? We did. I tagged along. Jeff already had everything booked, and so I tagged along and I said, hey, what flight are you taking? And by the way, can I sleep in your hotel room? And thankfully, I had two beds. It did. We pushed them together, and we had a great time. We snuggled. That was Big Spoon. Or Little, I can't remember. I don't know.

high confidence · Scott: 'he goes to about six shows a year... he's 69. He's still designing pinball machines.'

  • Oktoberfest game lasted 53 minutes in a four-player game at Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown

    high confidence · Scott: 'We had a game on it that lasted 53 minutes. I timed it.'

    • American Pinball
    company
    Black Knightgame
    Oktoberfestgame
    Houdinigame
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Wizard of Ozgame
    Brandon and Snowperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Pat Lawlorperson
    ?

    design_philosophy: Steve Ritchie's stated design principle is commercial: 'I make pinball machines to sell pinball machines,' indicating market viability prioritized over artistic expression

    high · Scott quoting Ritchie: 'I make pinball machines to sell pinball machines. So he's dialed into – that's his job is to make sure that Stern is able to sell his designs.'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern maintains 17 million component parts at $0.26 per part, totaling approximately $4.2 million in parts inventory, indicating significant working capital tied up in supply chain management

    high · Scott: 'they have 17 million parts at Stern at 26 cents a part. So I did a quick calculation. They have 4.2 million in inventory. Wow. Just in little parts.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Steve Ritchie characterizes fundamental challenge in film IP licensing: film studios design for lunchbox-scale products; pinball requires hundreds of approval requests; mutual learning curve steep but manageable

    high · Steve: 'I don't know how to make movies. They don't know how to make pinball machines.' Jeff referenced Eric's Pirates experience: 'They're used to designing like a lunchbox... hundreds of permissions.'

  • $

    market_signal: American Pinball estimates total pinball market at ~10,000 units annually based on their 10-15% market share target, with success defined as 1,000-1,500 annual sales

    medium · Scott calculating from Barry Oursler's statements: 'if 10 percent is a thousand, then that means they think roughly 10,000 pinball machines are being sold in the market'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Barry Oursler leading American Pinball design efforts on multiple titles (Houdini, Oktoberfest, Wizard of Oz) with design philosophy emphasizing theme-first approach and scope management

    high · Scott describing Oursler's seminar on design philosophy and Houdini/Oktoberfest development

  • ?

    product_strategy: Steve Ritchie explicitly designs games starting with LE (top tier) and scales down to Pro, indicating deliberate feature/component distribution across three-tier pricing model

    high · Jeff: 'he said he does start with the LE, so he starts with the top of the line version of it and then figures out ways of scaling it back for the Pro model.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern has abandoned sports gaming category after repeated commercial failures, viewing category as non-viable despite historical precedent (World Cup Soccer '94)

    high · Scott: 'they won't do another sports game because they never succeeded and honestly, what sports theme has been successful'

    • 1:57
    Put Jabba back in the hut. No, great. We had a fantastic time at the show. Sure, we'll talk about that a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah, let's do. You guys were snapping pictures and sending them all weekend long. I mean, it looked like quite the party you guys were having going on. It was a riotous party, yes. You know, it was actually my first event. And so I will say there was more to do than I thought, and I was also more tired at the end. And I think I got lost about 20 times and had to keep texting people and saying, are you guys still around?
    2:43
    And usually I was. Yeah. You should have just got one of those leashes like you put on your kids so that way you don't have to worry about them wandering off. No, seriously, I would just kind of wander off because you'd play a game, and then I'm less of a really good – I have a little bit of ADD on if someone is playing a pinball game for about 15 minutes. I kind of lose interest, and I say, hey, there's one down there.
    3:17
    But it was a lot of fun. I loved going. Why don't we start with a recap? So what did we do the first night?
    3:27
    The first night, I think we played pinball. But mostly it was in the tournament area. Yeah. Yeah, we played. Oh, yeah, because the main tournament qualifying ended on the first night. You had to play all those games the first day. Or are you talking about the first night we arrived? Because the first night we arrived, it was the day before the show. Yeah, actually, the first night we arrived, I think, was the – that was great. because we got there and because we were special guests of the show, we actually got in early and were able to go and see some of the games set up. And we even were able to play Black Knight and we played the Pro and the LE was set up. We got some games in on Wonka.
    4:13
    Oktoberfest, they were setting up, but we didn't get any games on that that night. but it was really impressive to see everybody setting up their custom games and bringing them in there was some really good talent there yeah it was it was it was awesome um getting there a day really like you said um i usually get in the day of the show so that worked out the way that worked out i think i'll be going in the night before every time so it was really nice to ease into pinball and not have to be my first like flip on a game in Denver being on the tournament. So, uh, but yeah, but day one was all about tournament stuff and we did quite well, I'd have to say. Yeah. They, uh, I would say the Utah contingency did pretty well. So I, I entered, um, well, I, I did three tournaments. I did the, the main tournament. Um, since I am barely ranked. I qualified for the novice tournament and then everybody can do the classics tournament. I really had a blast playing those classics games.
    5:23
    Yeah, they were set up so well. Great selection of games. Super clean. Every single one played perfectly until Barracora caught fire. But that didn't have anything to do with what was set up. It was just bad luck. But yeah, it was great. had a lot of fun wait wait wait Barracora caught on fire it did it was were you playing it Scott? no it was Dan was playing it was about an hour before qualifying ended all of a sudden very very strong smoke smell and a little bit of smoke under the glass we opened up the coin door and it burped out a little cloud, and one of the coils had locked on and burnt up, and we had to cut the power to stop that. So I was playing on the machine next to it, just basically trying not to cough through that game. But I did have an interesting game on Barracora, though, because I played it, and I queued up on it, and I played the game, and they went to record the score, and they tried and they said, huh, that's kind of weird. This isn't recording. Then they went and they looked and he said, you have no more entries, which it still probably wasn't a big deal because I was like solidly in the lower third of classics. But that was like a game I did really well on. So I was like, oh, well, so here's a pro tip for you. Next time you go into the tournament area, make sure you actually have entries left before you queue in on the game. Yeah, it helps. It helps. They need to have a Mulligan rule, right?
    7:11
    Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I really did well on that. Can I just pay? Yeah. But I will give a shout out to Brandon and Snow for running such a great tournament. And one, they're both very approachable. And two, you can tell that they really like people and pinball. They were very personable and just welcoming to everybody who was coming up. And so being as that it was my first tournament experience, I couldn't describe it any easier than how they had it set up.
    7:46
    Yeah, they did a great job. They really did. And they always do. And it just ran so smoothly. Problems were addressed very quickly. There weren't a lot of problems to begin with, but when there were, they were on it really quickly. and I actually thought the tournament format was a lot of fun.
    8:05
    For Classics and the main were both different, but the way they did main is that everybody who played qualified. It's just whether you qualified for A division or B division, and then from there they set up a ladder system. So if you qualified really high, you got a few buys going into finals.
    8:24
    If you qualified low, you had to fight your way back up, but it was really cool. give everybody a shot because all you had to do was catch a hot streak and you could have a chance at winning the thing. It was a lot of fun. They did a great job.
    8:38
    I don't know quite where I finished but I made A finals and I won a few rounds. I was in B so I played right at the start and I won my first match but then I immediately lost the next two matches. but I had a great time so I'll definitely do it again yep and then classics went well I think I finished 9th didn't one of our guys from Utah end up taking classics um no but Dan finished 3rd I believe I think that Matt didn't Matt win some too I'll hurry and look it up while you guys chit chat no it's fine People are already tuning out in droves on our – Yeah, that's enough tournament talk, but Matt got a trophy at Novice. So anyway, everybody who went from our league, though, got some money. Okay, so let's actually get – let's actually talk about the most interesting story that we had on the first day. So this is the day after the – so this is the real day of the show. So Jeff and I get up, and we look at our tickets and say, oh, there's breakfast. And for some reason on weekends, it's good until like 8 o'clock in the morning.
    10:03
    So – Yeah, breakfast served from 6 to 8. So we said, yeah, okay. So we decided that's not what we're going to do.
    10:11
    So we actually went out, got breakfast, and I have a Spider-Man downstairs. And so before I packed up to go, I took the Translate out. And anybody, just here's a pro tip for you. The first time you take a Translate out of a back glass or the glass holder, it has some like Gorilla Tape on there. And it is like prying a lollipop from a baby. It's just not going to happen. So I spent like about an hour trying to get it without ripping out that trans light. But I wanted to make sure that, hey, for Steve Ritchie to sign it, I need a Sharpie. So I didn't find one. So right after breakfast, we went and we grabbed a Sharpie and then went back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and then we immediately walk out of our room. And what happened, Jeff? Wow. Well, we ran into the King of Flow himself, Steve Ritchie, and we had ourselves a morning with him, and it was interesting.
    11:21
    So, yeah, we just were talking to him in the hall as we were walking down, and we got down towards the entrance of the show, and he said that he felt like an idiot, I think were his words, because he had forgotten deodorant. So he said he was going to catch an Uber, and we offered to give him a ride to the grocery store so he could buy some. and he also needed liquor and he also needed some sharpies. Can I pause you for one second? The most ironic thing because Steve Bowden has been pushing this for like the last three months that if you can afford to go to a pinball convention, you can afford deodorant. In all this time, it's just been Steve Ritchie.
    11:58
    It's a subtle hint. It's a subtle hint to Steve to wear the deodorant. Okay. Please proceed though. So, yeah, we ended up taking Steve on a little shopping trip to get deodorant, liquor, and Sharpies. And he was kind of our buddy throughout the show after that. But it was funny. He was telling stories as we were driving around, and we were shouting as we needed to to talk with him. But it was actually a lot of fun. He was hilarious. And it was just kind of a funny way to start the show. It was the first minute of the floor opening, and we were right about to step on.
    12:39
    Instead, we did a 180 and walked back out to the parking lot to drive Steve around. But it was great. We had fun. Then he was really cool about just goofing around with us afterwards whenever he'd see us. He's like, I remember you guys. You're the ones that got me the liquor.
    12:59
    I think the best part about it is he was like, I'm going to have that stuff left over, So I want to make, you know, he's, he's on an expense account. So he gets some just because I'm sure he's going to be having like people up to his room and I'll, you know, just, or going to different rooms because people would bring pinball machines to their rooms. And so he was obviously like, I'm going to make sure you, uh, you get some of that liquor. Now I just laugh. I'm like, that's great. I'm not sure who's going to drink.
    13:26
    Obviously he's not listened to an episode lately. No, no, no. but no it was it was really great and uh then went in and um yeah and i guess that i'll kind of jump to the uh jump to monday on that um i went to steve ritchie's seminar and afterwards there was someone who had a customized black knight and um he was heading in to do the uh or someone wanted to show him something, and so he came over, and we pointed out the customized black knight that had basically a custom wire form, and it shot up and then went across and dropped down into the left in lane, and so you didn't get a free feed up to the top.
    14:19
    So it's a beautiful game, though. Yeah, it's completely and totally restored, and then just lightly modified. Yeah.
    14:29
    I think the modification confused him. He's like, why would you do that? So there was a picture with you and Steve Scott where you guys kind of had arms over shoulders and he was pointing at the camera. What was that all about? You know what? So that was when he signed my Spider-Man Translite. So I made sure I took it over and he signed it and I was the last one in line. And so we just talked a little bit and Jeff was there. And so, um, I, he, we took a picture and then he made a joke and was pointing at the camera and I was laughing and that's what you, uh, uh, what you got. Okay. So, okay. Yeah. And then, uh, yeah. And, and then that day on Monday, uh, Jeff was out gallivanting around and right after I showed him that thing, he said, I'm hungry. Are you hungry? Let's go get lunch. very spur of the moment yeah so uh steve steve ritchie took me out to lunch and really the take-home message from that is he's comfortable being steve ritchie he's he's he's genuinely happy doing what he's doing um i think that it's revitalized him in the in the second half of his career and he's 69. He's still designing pinball machines. Um, he, uh, I got some tidbits from him. He goes to about six shows a year and, uh, he goes because he likes, he likes going and he likes seeing the people. And, um, and he said like, you know, Stern's not paying him money to go to these shows. It's just him going out. Cause he wants to, you know, he still likes that interaction with people in pinball. And I just think he's, he seems genuinely happy doing what he's doing, which is really great to know that he's been doing this all this year and he still has that passion. I don't know how many people have the same passion after, you know, after working in industry for so long, but he still has it. Yeah, he does. Uh, it's a whole different Steve Ritchie than I remember seeing a few years ago. So it's great. Yeah. It was just fun seeing him like that yeah i think it's uh and and i did ask him i said do you ever get tired of these shows and he said yes but you can't show that so i'm really if you think about going to six shows a year for for a 69 year old guy and that's really impressive that shows some stamina and he's you know he still wants to get out there so i really like that the king of show Exactly. The king of the show. Okay. So I went to both Steve Ritchie seminars and I took a lot of notes, but I don't want to bore you with a complete recap of it. But there were some things that I really want that I thought was very interesting.
    17:27
    One, he says – he said his job, and this is basically a quote, I make pinball machines to sell pinball machines. So he's dialed into – that's his job is to make sure that Stern is able to sell his designs.
    17:45
    He says the 80s retro is really big right now. He said – and I'm not sure how the pricing would be on this, but it was interesting. He said they sell games by the container.
    17:57
    And so I don't know how that breakdown was, but I thought that was interesting. But obviously it's kind of a bulk order situation for most things. I mean, obviously not all things.
    18:08
    He said that they have 17 million parts at Stern at 26 cents a part. So I did a quick calculation. They have 4.2 million in inventory. Wow. Just in little parts. The interesting tidbit he dropped that on Black Knight, the left playfield design was stolen and basically some industrial espionage. And that left-hand side is Flash. Flash Gordon. It's Flash Gordon. Huh. So, yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
    19:01
    We asked him about his favorite Bally Williams game, and he said that Star Trek The Next Generation was.
    19:10
    He said Jonathan Frank wasn't that into it, but Brent Spiner was, and so that's why Data is very heavily featured in the game. let's see what what else can i say i'm trying to go through this uh quickly so i'm not completely boring um well the one thing that you're telling us about you're talking about uh steve richie's favorite designs from other designers yeah yeah so that's let's see if i can find um dennis northern so he said he liked whitewater um i don't know who designed matahari but he likes it uh uh very also he liked comet uh mark richie he liked indiana jones pinball adventure for John Borg. He liked Metallica.
    19:56
    On Brian Eddy, he liked Attack from Mars better than Medieval Madness, but he said they're both quite good.
    20:06
    On my notes, it says Ray Chancellor. I put date, and I don't know if that's like 1789 or there's a... He said something, and I couldn't hear what it was. So it's a pinball machine that's a date. um greg knitch is uh captain fantastic uh george he liked uh lord of the rings um j-pop he said none and then of course everybody laughed uh however he he said he he said i'm kidding he likes theater magic um which pat lawler machine do you think he liked the best uh i guess i guess jeff was there so i'm gonna be the one that's guessing no no jeff wasn't jeff wasn't at this one because this was the second seminar oh i'm gonna go with whirlwind bonsai run yeah you know what that would be interesting but he said roadshow he liked roadshow wow so yeah that that was a little out of left field and uh jeff for jessica i asked uh steve kirk and he said he has three good ones he said nine ball stars and i can't read my writing um infinite disaster i don't know enough about steve kirk so maybe there's another one there but anyway whatever hey i was writing really fast um the the one thing he it was interesting when he was talking about working with licensing And this was interesting And think it this is certainly a fair assessment in dealing with any license and not just like you know not just Disney but it just kind of any license Right. And he just said, I don't know how to make movies. They don't know how to make pinball machines, which which is kind of which is a fair assessment. Right. Because I think that they don't. And if you remember back to our interview with Eric, you know, designer of JJP's Pirates of the Caribbean, he said he was asked, you know, he's going to Disney and there's so many people he's working with. And he's like, they're used to designing like a lunchbox. And so you send off like one design and they're not used to sending, you know, getting approval for all these things. Like I was asking for hundreds of permission for what he did. And he said at the very end, they said, yeah, okay, I get it. I get why you're asking for all this stuff. But it's just so outside of what they normally do. I can imagine that it was a breath of fresh air for him to design Black Knight, which is – it's licensed but not really. It's not a heavy license that they have to deal with actors and likenesses and all that.
    22:58
    So yeah. Anyway, Jeff – sorry. I took a long time talking about that. Do you have anything else to add or talk about that? Uh, about the actual Steve Ritchie, like, uh, seminars? Well, anything to add on, like, Steve Ritchie or just, uh, anything he said. No, I think it kind of covered most of the points that I thought that were the most interesting parts. Uh, trying to think if there was anything else that stuck out, but I think, I think he got most of them. We, we asked about his design philosophy and he said he, he does, he likes having the theme first. so he doesn't have like a he doesn't start on a design and then like retrofit the theme on there he said he does start with the LE so he starts with the top of the line version of it and then figures out ways of scaling it back for the pro model so I think that's good on themes he said they won't do another sports game because they never succeeded and honestly what sports theme has besides can you even count World Cup Soccer 94 as a successful sports theme yeah and he did mention the one thing that was challenging I did just barely read it he talked about the challenges of and we talked about this before about making a game out of a game. And so if you have things like Monopoly or Wheel of Fortune or something that is a game anyway, and then you're trying to layer a pinball machine using those things, it's clumsy and doesn't really work. Well, it sounds like you guys had a blast. It sounded like it was quite the hoot of a time. Yeah, it was awesome. It was great. Made me quite jealous. But Scott did make it up to me. I don't know how he found the time but in the middle of Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown he texts me hey this guy is selling his Jurassic Park because he knows that I've been looking for one for like 5 years now and he's like give him a call so I call the guy and I'm like is it still available he's like I posted it like 10 minutes ago so I'm like I'll pay you a down payment right now you pull it off the website so no one else sees it and I will pick it up as soon as I can make arrangements. And so we made some arrangements, and I got it home, and I'm pretty happy with myself. I was a little upset when it first got home because – Because of Jurassic Park. Well, no, not that it was Jurassic Park, but I bought it without even testing it, essentially.
    25:55
    And I brought it home, and then once I got it home, the T-Rex, I guess, on all Jurassic Parks, has a hard time left to right movement. Yeah. A lot of people just say, just turn off the left to right and just do the eating motion, which that works great. But I was frustrated when I first turned it on and the T-Rex is sticking to one side. And then I asked him if the shaker motor worked and he said yes. And I got it home and it wasn't working. And come to find out that it was just turned off in the settings. So I turned it back on. And I was frustrated because I thought one of the buttons were missing for the diagram. I'm used to Bally Williams. I've never owned a Data East. And so just to have two buttons, I was like, what the heck is this? Yeah, it's a little clumsy. Yeah. And so I'm like, I'm missing a button, dude. How am I supposed to go through all this stuff? And he's like, not my problem anymore. And then read up on Pennside that you have just the two buttons and you use the start button as one of the also diagnosis buttons. So after I got it all figured out and realized that seriously the only thing that was broken on it is a switch that goes to the control room. And the cabinet's in fantastic shape. There's like one good gouge on it. But the rest of it's just shiny black. And I'm pretty pleased as punch. So you guys got to hang out with Steve Ritchie, and I got to get a Jurassic Park. So I'm pretty pleased. It's a good trade. It's almost the same.
    27:21
    Almost the same. Well, this is the title my wife's been looking for. So once the kids start demanding so much attention, the new twins, I think she'll start playing it. So fingers crossed. Hey, always getting a game that your wife likes or your significant other likes is certainly a good move.
    27:38
    I agree. So that was my – that's what happened in my last two weeks. So I'm not very eventful. not as cool as you guys hanging out with Steve Ritchie and going to breakfast and being his chauffeur actually you know what definitely not Jeff do you want to talk about the chicken and waffles yeah they were fantastic breakfast place we went to Early Bird I think is the name of it yes Early Bird kind of just ended up there because we didn't want to go to Denny's yeah and it was not yeah not a chain place that was um like national that we knew of at least so we went there and i think we both had we're gonna order something different but the waitress said that the chicken and waffles were the most popular things so we both said yeah sure whatever give us that and they were quite amazing and they left me full for the next three days basically so Yeah, it's a giant waffle covered with chicken, like a deep fried chicken thing and like loaded with gravy.
    28:49
    And hot sauce. Yeah. And maple syrup. And we ate the whole thing. Each of us ate our own like giant waffle plate.
    28:57
    Yeah. That doesn't sound super delicious. I'm not going to lie. I'm not a huge gravy maple waffle or maple syrup. It wasn't like a heavy, like super heavy gross gravy though. It was good? It was good. It seemed like kind of like a biscuits and gravy with fried chicken.
    29:16
    Yeah. But I would say it was really good. You can't eat them every day, but it was certainly a good one.
    29:25
    Yeah. Nice. So, Jeff, were there any other seminars that you went to that you thought were interesting? I did not get to make it to many of them because I was in tournament finals on one day. And, yeah, I just was not quite able to. So I would have liked to have gotten to more of them. Okay. Hey, did you go to the American Pinball one with me? I did not. Okay. So I'm going to give you a quick recap on – sorry. This is Scott Larson's nerd report on pinball stuff.
    30:07
    So I went to Barry Osler's, and it was really interesting because, okay, one thing he said is that American pinball is hiring. So anybody out there who really wants to get into pinball and has any sort of unique talents, He said, contact them, send them your resume because they're bulking up. So I thought that was interesting and good. Always having healthy groups in the hobby is always excellent.
    30:41
    A couple things, they said Houdini, he said they sold kind of around 700. he said their goal is to get 10 to 15 percent of the market and then later he said so if we're selling about a thousand to fifteen hundred then that would be a success for us so at least according to Barry Osler if uh if you know ten percent is a thousand then that means they think ten thousand pinball machines are roughly being sold here yeah I don't know if that's a lot or Not a lot. I can't decide yet. I think that with – it seems like with modern society that everyone's kind of partitioned off. I mean we've talked about this before that there doesn't seem to be any super bands anymore because there's no barrier to entry. And so people – they're not relegated to thinking of five or six really big bands. I went to work the other day, and I asked what music he wanted, and he said, how about Big Head Todd and the Monsters?
    31:57
    And I said, okay. So I looked. I'd never heard of them. I looked them up, and it was available. And so I think that people have the ability to find these niche sports and these niche groups and these niche ways of staying entertained. And so in many ways, that has revitalized pinball into, hey, it's a niche hobby, but there's a critical mass that keeps it going.
    32:28
    And so I think that 10,000 is actually a healthy amount. It's not 100,000, but it's still a healthy amount. Well, what kind of numbers was 1992 doing between all pinball manufacturers? Do we roughly know? Well, there was more, but it kind of steadily declined. Like, 92 to 99, you just saw all the different manufacturers just close up shop except for Stern. Okay. Yeah. yeah so his take on so he said when he designed Wizard of Oz there were no limits and so it was like whatever you want to put in the game they could so he's like we went from like you know ramps to one upper play field to two upper play fields too so he said that was it's obviously a lot of fun to design a game that you can just cram full of everything he They did Oktoberfest. I really wanted to ask him, like, what about Oktoberfest was his dream thing? Because this has always been his passion project. And so I kind of wondered. Now, we got to go and play Oktoberfest.
    33:48
    Jeff, what did you think of Oktoberfest? So I've played Oktoberfest before. My big thing with it is it does a lot of neat, fun stuff, but it does so many things that it starts to kind of lose its identity somehow because everything starts to just feel like minor variations.
    34:10
    The other problem with it is it's a super, super long ball time type of game. And it needs to be much harder. Modes need to be kind of snappier and quicker if they're going to have that many modes in it. so the code could be addressed but the play field is just long either long back of the play field shots that are easy to regain control of or they're near the flippers but they don't tend to cause a lot of danger when you make or miss so the game just goes and goes and goes it's fun to flip and shoot on it would drive me nuts having it at home. I'd get pretty tired of it pretty quickly. We had a game on it that lasted 53 minutes. I timed it.
    35:01
    Was that Dan's game? That was the game where we played four players and we ended up just letting a couple of balls go at the end. So that was 53 minutes with letting some balls go. I felt really bad for the people waiting behind us. But, I don't know. It's not a bad game. It's just lacking some refinements that could make it a good game i i'll say yeah i will say we um we didn't camp on the game there was there was like two people behind us and so it's not if there were a bigger line that i think we would just play one ball and moved on um but we didn't feel that um obligated to move on since the people were right there and they they seem to be interested in what we were doing. So I guess two of my takeaways. It is interesting, the longer you play on the game, they have these magnets that get activated, which I'm assuming is simulating you getting farther into the Oktoberfest celebrations. And so the ball is a little more squirrely when you're playing it. um now if you're you know if you're kind of a control most good players are very controlled and you're trying to grab the ball and to do these controlled shots and if the if the game is fighting you a little more as you're getting in which is theme appropriate um there has to be can have that risk reward as the as the difficulty ramps up the points would have to go up exponentially because otherwise I think it would just get kind of annoying um I agree with Jeff I'm not I've said it before I'm not really the best player um I'm competent but I'm not an amazing one but I could shoot for a long time on it my problem with it was and I know that it's at it's at a convention, and so you're getting some power draw. The left ramp going up to the roller coaster is super steep, and that is really hard to hit. Even with a clean shot, that's really hard to hit. So I can see that being very frustrating. Also, the wire form, the roller coaster wire form, really is one of the coolest looking things in the game. I know you're just watching the ball go on this big, long wire form. But visually, that's kind of one of the cool things in pinball is watching the ball do something. And so although you could play long, most of your play time is really on the surface. And it seemed like it took a lot of effort to try to get it above the play field.
    37:53
    Yeah, that's true. so I wish that that wire form were used a little bit more just because it's fun it looks really great and it's you know I understand when they keep talking when they were talking about Lord of the Rings when it was built and Gary Stern you know it doesn't really make sense to have the Balrog do something every time but Gary is the one who's saying hey we're spending I can't remember how much it was like $50 for this mech which apparently is a lot in a build of materials and he's like i want it to be out there every time and it's the same thing with like iron monger in iron man and you pretty much see that every game and it's kind of a big feature in what's going on i don't know iron man would be that interesting if you only saw iron monger like one in 10 times yeah so um who knows maybe that's something that they can work on but uh i thought it was a fun game i think it'll do good on location um it certainly doesn't fit the theme of my game room uh right but i thought it was a it was a solid game i guess i'll put it that way um i i wouldn't say an a plus but i thought it was a solid game yeah yeah it's i mean not every game is a home run it's just it's not that but again it's not a bad game yeah but you got to play um you put in a lot more time on wonka though so talk about wonka okay yeah so willy wonka's the thing i was most um excited to see partially because i have a deposit down on one um so i just kind of wanted to to, I don't know, confirm my choice to be in on that game because I still have time to, you know, obviously pull out if it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Luckily, I was quite happy with it. It just is a smooth shooter. There's shots everywhere.
    40:00
    I mean, there are a ton of shots on that game. And Lawler always does that. Like Twilight Zone, every single angle seems to be coming from or leading to another shot, and the game does that.
    40:15
    I mean, the artwork is... The criticisms to it are fair. It doesn't seem so bad while you're playing it, but it sure sounds and looks happy when you're playing it.
    40:29
    But yeah, I was super happy with everything I saw with it to this point. I guess the production version is going to be a little bit different.
    40:39
    They've made some geometry changes to the final version, so apparently the changes that they made make it even a little bit more challenging, which was good because I had pretty long ball times on it. But at a show, things are never quite as steep or as mean as I set them up at home. But I was glad to hear that it was going to be a little bit tougher, a little bit more challenging in the final one in the upper playfield area. So I don't know. I was just really happy with it. I feel like they got a real winner there and it was kind of fun hearing other people's reactions to it, too. It seemed like it was pretty universally praised at the show. So one question I have for you, Jeff, I was listening to the Head to Head Pinball podcast with Martin and the new co-host Joe Lemire, and they were talking about Willy Wonka. And they said it's kind of hard to see that upper right portion where the shots are at there underneath the screen. Did you feel that way as well or was it kind of set up differently where you could see it? so what i actually felt was that the shots you don't see them very well but i felt that they went very easily uh just by the ball coming if you it felt like if you flipped it just went and i guess the change is actually to make those shots a little bit less automatic so um it was actually Butch Peel, uh, said that, uh, in the production version, it doesn't, it feels a little bit more challenging. Um, I don't know how big of a difference it's going to be, but he just said that the people who have been play testing it are a little bit more happy with it. Um, but I know what they're talking about when they say that they don't quite see those shots, um, as clearly. And yeah, I, I can see that for sure. Yeah. It seemed that, uh, I, I had a lot of fun on it too. It, it feels, um, if you are a Pat Lawler fan and you like the, the trap up and surgical shots selection, um, you'll like the game. I mean, it's, uh, Pat knows how to make a game feel fun. And I think the, the Wonka theme works really well with, with his style. It is very, very Twilight Zony. I'll say that. Um, if Twilight Zone doesn't turn you on definitely play this one before you put some money down but if Twilight Zone is your jam I think you'd enjoy it does it feel anything like Rollercoaster Tycoon no not Not at all Awesome It a very fun shooter And visually there a lot going on I agree with Jeff in that the light show integration with the art, it certainly looks more spectacular with their light show. The one thing Jersey Jack has consistently done is been visually tantalizing. so it takes it to a different level with the game on versus it off cool there were also a lot of little fun touches that i just don't know if they come across in streams or not but uh the pop bumper singing the oompa loompa song for some reason that was just kind of cool it's good integration yeah they certainly uh there's a lot of attention to details on the Jersey Jack, uh, you know, products. Um, I, and by the way, so I also went to, uh, uh, Butch Peel, uh, his seminar and he's, uh, he's one of the engineers at Jersey Jack and I, I, it's, it's amazing. He's a very down to earth guy, uh, very much an engineer and he's trying to, uh, help with the interaction of understanding and building these what's the best way to describe me building these instruction manuals but also working on having an online interaction one so you're saying hey I want to go in and take apart this play field and so you can click on it and it will explode it for you online and they'll say okay this is how it looks assembled and this This is how it comes apart. And really from a novice hobbyist, that would be hugely beneficial for me, and I know that's a crazy amount of work.
    45:06
    Butch is so great to talk to, and he's very approachable. He's one of the guys who, when I was having, well, still haven't fixed it, but on my Wizard of Oz, that door, he's the one chimed in. It's like, oh, by the way, it's this page on the manual. Go look there.
    45:24
    So cool. Yeah, absolutely. Just a quick recap to though, Jeff, what did you think about the LE black night? I enjoyed it. I, it shocked me how little there was to shoot for on the upper play field, but it felt much more in line with the series than the pro did. Yeah. I also have really warmed up to that game overall. I know it's hard. I know it's tough to grind out points on, but I think it's a good location game. I don't know that I'd be excited to own one but I think it's one of those that's just fun to step to and the day after the show I got back and I went to play our location one and threw some initials up and racked up a bunch of credits on it. It was fun. Nice. Yeah, I agree. I think the LE with the upper play field, it feels like a modernized version of Black Knight 2000 and so if you are a Black Knight 2000 fan or Black Knight slash Black Knight 2000 it is the logical progression to that if you want like a stripped down and modified and I would argue faster version the pro version is for you I also think that it works really well in playing with friends because the ball times are going to be short so you're not going to be waiting around a while because it is a brutal game yeah it was cool to to be able to bring back that whole aspect of black knight where you have a ball rolling you're punching the lock bar to make it hop just a little bit so you can catch it on the flipper tip and try and get an orbit around the uh upper plate to line up another shot yeah and having that missing from the pro that's the biggest thing that's missing from the whole black knight feel so that's back well the pro is is much more aggressive because the ball is constantly flying at you it's there there is no there is no slowdown and with the with the upper play field it's a little slower and i'd say the catapult lock is really cool um yeah but yeah and it's uh the pro version is drag racer it's just going full speed all the time yep yep for sure cool and by the way i actually got more time on uh jersey jack pirates um i'm more and more impressed with that game every time i see it and i play more and more and find out there's all these little things that eric put in there that still just blow my mind i'm trying to appreciate it more, but it feels like that is such a giant undertaking that I still only understand about 20% of what's going on in that game because it's so impressive.
    48:18
    It's like a big-time digital pinball game where it feels like it's doing stuff that you'd only seen in a digital pinball game, but it's actually doing them. It's crazy. Yeah, it's like a Zen pinball machine comes to life.
    48:32
    I agree. It's amazing. Well, it's time to buy one and get down in your basement, sounds like. Well, I have two pirate games, so that'll be my third one. Sounds like a plan, man.
    48:47
    So, well, cool. I guess if that wraps it up, I guess we'll move on to a little bit of news then, which is like nothing.
    48:58
    The only thing that's come out, we've talked about this like the last couple weeks. It just seems like more and more is coming out slowly from Deep Root. Really, the takeaway from it is Robert Mueller's cocky, and we're supposedly seeing prototypes of Raza in November at the Houston Expo. You guys want to put in on this?
    49:21
    I just hope he's right. I mean, it's been the longest weird, bad, stupid story in pinball. So hopefully this is it coming to an actual resolution. If they're there, great. If they're not, it just sucks for the people being strung along. Yep. I really do want to just see something happen.
    49:47
    You know what? Here's my attitude. He's certainly coming off with a lot of bravado. I also think he hasn't taken any money and he's also been doing at least something for the J-pop people, which is something he never had to do.
    50:08
    So it feels to me that he's putting his money where his mouth is and I like the bravado. I like him saying bring it on. I also – if he is able to produce what he's saying, then I'm all excited. I agree. And I think that the vibe seems very much in that Bally Williams 1990s feel, which I really think we could use more of.
    50:40
    Cool. Yeah. Well, the only other news that I could really think of that we haven't talked about, the day – like two days after we recorded, Nate Shivers came out with Coast to Coast and did his final episode of Indefinite Hiatus.
    50:58
    It's just crazy. Ending of an era, I guess. But I wanted to point out some stuff though, Jeff, that like he talked about how you guys were the inspiration for him starting that up. So really, everyone should be thanking the Pinball Podcast for all the years of coast to coast.
    51:15
    I don't know that he wouldn't have done it on his own otherwise, but I do remember when he first started coming out with those episodes. And he had just first started and Don and I picked up on him and we started kind of mentioning it on the show. And we were first impressed at the rate he could put them out. And then we were really impressed by the quality of what he could put out. And then everyone else started to recognize that as well. And it was a fantastic run they had with it. He's not done with his pinball media production stuff. We know he's just kind of changing what he's going to do. But it was a really good run for the show, and it was actually nice to hear him come back and at least give it a proper send-off. Yeah, I agree. It's basically closing one chapter and opening a different one. It's leaving one band and starting another. So, yeah, I think it's fine. He's certainly entertaining. He certainly knows how to be a PR guy and whatever he is involved in will be successful. So I think people just need to, you know, a lot of people have complained of how he ended the episode. I'm like, dude, just it's it's an entertainment thing. Just it's a teaser. Come on. Yeah. It's what I've been doing for 22 films. Just it's a teaser saying he's not done. He's doing something else. Just wait for it. And yeah, I'm sorry. If people have a problem with it, then they can take the money back, whatever they paid him. Oh, wait, nothing. So they can – I'm sorry. This is for free. So if you're complaining about a free product, then just turn it off. Yeah.
    52:51
    Well, cool. That pretty much covers our news. I know some other stuff happened, but we're not going to talk about it. So if you're really worried about it, go on the interwebs. If you really want to dig that hole, go into Pinside. Yeah, if you want to watch a flame war, just go to Pinside. I don't really care about the crazy drama. I guess my attitude is let's be nice to everybody in the sport regardless of who you are, what your affiliation is, political, religious, sexual, whatever.
    53:21
    Why don't we just focus on playing the game and not deal with the other stuff? Or why don't we just respect the other stuff? I'll just leave it at that. Yeah.
    53:30
    So, cool. I wanted to hurry and do a time warp since we have Jeff on. I did not warn you that this was coming because I wanted you to – I don't know. I wanted you to have your mind clear of the questions I was going to ask. So we're going to go back eight and a half years. You ready for this, Jeff? The date is October 6, 2011.
    53:57
    Okay. This is the first day that the first episode of the Pinball Podcast came out. I remember. Okay. So I've got show notes here because – or I took notes. This isn't necessarily what was in your show notes. But I wanted to go over the news and rumors of October 2011 to see how much of this came true. You ready for this? Oh, okay. Let's see what we got. This is going to be crazy. Do you remember the Stern rumored next title coming out? In 2011? 2011.
    54:33
    Oh, boy. You and Don had talked about there was leaked photos, so you guys were pretty for sure of it. And it looked like it was going to be a quick and fun, fast game.
    54:49
    I can't think of it off the top of my head. I bet if I really, really thought about it, I could come up with it.
    54:57
    It was Transformers. Wow. Yeah, unfortunately it did come out. Well, that's what made me chuckle as I was listening to this. You're like, man, Gomez is really good at fast, good designs. And I'm like, eight and a half years later, like no one's talking about this game. And usually when they do, it's not that great.
    55:17
    Right, right. The news at that time was Tron update had come out, the last update. You hadn't owned one at the time yet. I know that you own one now, but you talked about how you played one a lot at the local bowling alley, I think is what you said.
    55:33
    So something like that, maybe. Oh, yeah, it was a movie theater. Thank you. Yeah. And then there was more rumored titles. There was three pretty solid ones coming out from Stern. Do you remember what those were? let's see. Um, boy, you, you caught me at a bad time.
    55:57
    Would it have been ACDC? Yes. Which, which, okay. You said that there was horns on the Stern logo. So you didn't know if it was ACDC or this other game, which was then another rumor.
    56:13
    Oh, uh, horns, horns. Remember, we're just three years after one of the biggest movie events that had come out.
    56:26
    I think I'm really dumb right now. Are you texting in the background? That's not me. Are you texting them? No.
    56:39
    No, I have no lifelines. Let's see. I'm having a hard time remembering back to 2011. That's actually the hard part here. So 2011. I know ACDC. I got that. I got mine in 2012.
    56:54
    What movie would have come? Iron Man? Close. It was Avengers. Okay. Yeah. Unfortunately, that came out as well.
    57:07
    But the horns was misconstrued as it could have been Loki from Avengers. And so that plus John Borg at the time had a picture of Avengers on his desk. So that was the other fuel to the rumor.
    57:19
    So, and then there was the, the other rumor was, uh, project Alice. So I'm assuming this is what ACDC ended up being, but it's because Steve Richie and lemon sheets had come out and said they were working on project Alice and they were both excited about it. So, yeah. Yeah. And then you had two throwaway title names that you think that Stern was putting out there to throw off the scent, which I think is hilarious because one of them was Munsters.
    57:48
    Yep. I remember that. And then the other one was Muppets. So seriously, out of all the guys, all the titles that have been rumored, most of them have been made.
    57:59
    Yeah. Oh, and sorry. There was one more rumor, which was Elvira 3. And the rumor was JJ. That was JJP's next game, and they'd only come out with Wizard of Oz at the time. Yeah, I remember that.
    58:13
    That still has not made its way out. I can't see JJP doing Elvira. But I think that it's ready to be put out there at any time. I think they're just waiting for a Lolan production or some delay, and they can just kind of plug it in. I think it's one of those evergreen titles that you can actually, the theme is not dated, and so you can still kind of put that in. I think that's what's going on.
    58:43
    Yeah. Well, and who knows between Dennis Norman moving around and, because it was originally tied to him, wasn't it? Yeah, but he finished it before he left.
    58:54
    Right. Yeah. So, but anywho, that was your time warp. Wow. Sorry. There was a lot more too. That's crazy. It was eight years ago. Well, and what's funny is the first episode, you guys kind of did like a title of the episode. Like, not a title, a theme. Not the theme. Right, right. And the pinball machine that you guys had picked out for that one was Judge Dredd.
    59:20
    Yeah, yeah. I remember that. Well, that's the game that brought us together. Yes. So, after listening to that, I wanted to buy a Judge Dredd. I still can't wait. I like Judge Dredd. I am happy.
    59:33
    So. Yeah. It's a crazy game. I think you have to have, it can't be your only game, but it can be, you know, part of a, a smattering of a games you have.
    59:47
    So. Yeah. If I remember right, like that was before like even, um, pinball arcade was even out. There was like, nothing was out yet. It was a weird time. It was the dead zone. That was before the penis started because, yeah, we had about 12 years of death. And then just 2012, it kind of started picking up again.
    60:13
    Yeah. I mean, the crazy thing is that's when Raza started. It was like right around the first couple of episodes that we recorded is when Ben Heck and J-Pop teamed up to do that. Yeah. I think Alice in Wonderland was out then too, or at least the Foamcore stuff was. It's finally going to happen, I guess. Yeah, I don't know.
    60:36
    Who knows? I never thought Wizard of Oz would have been a good theme, and apparently it is. Yeah. Crazy how much has changed in eight and a half years, right?
    60:48
    Yeah. We've all changed. Here's the funny thing, though. Now that they've kind of gone through, and we've talked about the themes that should be, or at least the bands. And I was thinking that they could actually make a pink pinball machine. I think that she would actually sell.
    61:13
    You've been listening to much Franchi lately, man. No, seriously. Did he say that? yeah he's he's i don't know he uses pink as a reference for oh really no i i've been kind of busy and haven't really listened out but i was just thinking of what like modern artists would actually make a good pinball machine i'm like i i think that would actually work so but anyway just that that's just a side note well speaking of themes uh we wanted to hurry and talk about this um i was talking to you guys about it and it sounded like you wanted to talk about video game themes in pinball and um because i know i know you jeff used to work for nintendo correct not for nintendo but very closely with them okay so um between that and i know that we're all kind of into video games i mean for heaven's sake Scott's got a two and a half foot Mario set in his basement so until I steal it so my question to you two so my question to you two is uh why do you think video game theme didn't work out because we've had like a joust well we have baby pac-man two different super mario brothers a street fighter um that's that's what's coming off the top of my head is there is there any other ones i'm missing in there um yeah well there's like a defender i'm sure the space invaders yeah there's yes uh-huh i i think the point is they're hard to remember because they're just not that great yeah usually um but i i mean i i i think there's reasons for it and i think the reason for it is because they fall into one of two traps they either try and make it try and recreate the video game experience through pinball which does not work so they definitely try to do that through street fighter 2 like you're gonna do your fights and you're gonna you know bash the car like you do in the game and none of it really works yeah you'd rather just play the game and pull off the special moves and all that stuff. Or it's the other way where they've just taken kind of like a generic layout and they throw the video game theming on top of it. And it doesn't feel like anything except for just a thrown on theme. And it's just tough because you go into it with such a strong mindset. Now, I know that's true with movies. I know that's true with like comic book themes and stuff. But video games, they're tied to a style of play so tightly that there are certain video games, especially the old popular ones, that you play them out of muscle memory almost.
    64:10
    If you were to sit down and play like Frogger or Pitfall now, like the old Atari games, you'd probably play them the same way you did when you were four or five years old.
    64:22
    So translating that to a different medium is just weird. and it's really hard to do. I don't know. There's a lot. Do you think also, you know, another title that just came to my mind that I know is a total turd is Spy Hunter.
    64:38
    Yeah. That one's terrible. Weird one. That is a really weird, weird game. But I think the only is about a third. Yeah. I think the other problem too is, well two reasons I think that originally video games weren as big We gotten to a place now that they huge Some video game franchises are bigger than movie franchises
    65:03
    But back then, it was hard to market a pinball machine based off of a video game when video games had only been around for five years. Okay, see, you're actually wrong on this. You're wrong because, and you're dead wrong, because when the reason why they made um you know a joust pinball machine and a defender pinball machine is because that was when um when the early arcades were huge and that was before the 1983 crash when um that almost wiped out the uh the video game industry or at least took it down to the to the you know brass tacks down there but uh there was nothing there was almost nothing left and so that was them trying to stay relevant when, when arcades were taking over.
    65:56
    So that's, but I agree with Jeff. It's just, it was a poor integration. It was almost like an add on. It was a, it was a me too. It was a cereal box that has a, a theme that's tacked on it and says now Cheerios with green colors, because now it's Zelda pebbles or something like that.
    66:17
    It's, it was just branded that way. I think that really the reason why most of these things failed is because they had poor theme integration, and they also just had poor designs, poor designers. They weren't good designers.
    66:35
    I think that the three things that come to mind that I think would make excellent, that would translate really well, is I think a Super Mario Bros. game, a really good one with a good designer would actually sell crazy.
    66:53
    I think a Zelda game would actually sell crazy. I don't, other things that could be done, Metroid, maybe. I think Metroid is a little more of a niche thing, but if you look at the two pillars that Nintendo has built their gaming system on, it's basically been a Mario game and a Zelda game, And that's driven the Nintendo series since 1985.
    67:21
    And so if they were able to find a good designer and a good rule set that's able to work with the theme, I think it would be a huge hit. But you're not going to play the pinball machine like you play Super Mario Brothers. It's not the same, but I think the theme would still ring true. well and that that brings me to my other question too is do you think that if they did do you think that there's enough uh quote unquote new guard into the hobby because my understanding is is the old guard was kind of against video games because they felt like and i don't know uh if this is true or not but they felt like video games had kind of snuffed out pinball and so a lot of them had a like the true and tried pinball players that were years and years ago that didn't want these themes because it was kind of a reminder of what killed off pinball at that point so do you think that we could do video game titles now and then sell i think you can i always think you could I just, yeah, they were just never given the same treatment as, you know, the other themes or the other licenses. And it probably, I don't know. I don't know if it was because the designers didn't want to touch the game themes because of that. But, you know, a lot of the people that worked on some of those games that were extremely popular were big time people in pinball. you had guys like Eugene Jarvis who were important in pinball were making games like Defender and that's important so I don't know if maybe just the teams weren't right who knows exactly what it was but I do think you could make it work you just have to try not to recreate the game feel through pinball because I don't think that will ever work I agree. Video games, a good video game is based on extremely tight and precise gameplay, and pinball's wild. So there's got to be some sort of different angle to come at the experience, but I do think it would work. They just got to... I think it would have to be the right license, though. I don't think any of these shooter games, like a Halo game or something like that, I just don't think that wouldn't work for me. I think you need more of a journey game or something with a storyline, and I think that's where Mario and Zelda would work. Because it's almost like a movie license that you can craft a story around, a journey around. If it's a shooter game, I don't know how much theme integration you can really get.
    70:18
    Oh, come on. You don't want the Fortnite pinball machine, that terrible one that someone took a funhouse and didn't even put like – didn't it like redo the play field? They just stuck stickers over the top of it? Oh, that was painful.
    70:32
    But no, I get where you're coming from on the shooters and whatnot. I think, and honestly, the reason I bring this up is because looking at Black Knight Sword of Rage, I feel like it's got a very video game feel to it with the fact that you're trying to defeat boss after boss to get to the Black Knight.
    70:52
    I think you could, same with kind of like Walking Dead where you collect items and stuff like that. I think that the video game elements are there. I really think a Metroid game would do fantastic. The whole point of you're collecting Samus' items so you can power up to defeat the final boss.
    71:10
    Right. I think there's so much untapped potential. And really, how many more of these themes can we make that are... I don't know. I still think Monsters is a swing and a miss. That's just me personally. I don't know. But Jack Danger's been pushing Pokemon. I don't know if Pokemon would be a good theme or not. I don't. But that's what they've been talking about for the last three weeks. When you're selling games, you're selling to people who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and possible 60s. Okay. You're really selling to people who they have careers. They have some disposable income. And that's when people start restoring cars or getting into an expensive hobby. I guarantee Pokemon doesn't really ring true, at least for my generation I'm turning 45 this year and I've never played a Pokemon game I don't foresee me ever buying that unless it's a, hey, I'm buying it because my kid likes it I think it has something that you identify with
    72:22
    Yeah But I could be in the minority. I mean, for some reason, Pokemon shows up every five years and goes really big and then goes into hibernation and then comes back. So maybe I'm the outlier here.
    72:36
    I don't know. I just – I know I would love to see a Legend of Zelda pinball machine. I think – Yeah, for sure. Well, the soundtrack would be – well, the thing is both Legend of Zelda and Mario Brothers, they have intact sound packages that you could really repurpose very easily.
    72:56
    And if you hit that button and it goes da-da-da-da-da-da, and then launches the ball or whatever, I think that that really does, like, hey, this is kind of fun. Who knows?
    73:09
    Of course, outside of, I just talked about Nintendo. That's basically, those are still from like 1985. I know Zelda's kind of evolved since then, But Mario has kind of felt very similar. Is there any other video game franchise that you would think, yeah, that would work? The thing is, I think Mario and Zelda are the big no-brainers because they are cross-generational, and they're also popular with the younger generation. So it's kind of hard to find anything that would be better than those. Other stuff that might work, I mean, I want to refeed my Hollywood heat into a Metroid. I just keep getting set back on that. So I've always felt that that would be a good one. outside of like the Nintendo side of things. I mean, if you had a Fortnite pinball machine, kids would run up and play it. I just don't really see it translating that well, well shooter or survival type games. I just don't, I don't see it. I like the arena battle style.
    74:10
    It's tough. Like, like racing games, maybe, but I don't think they'll ever do another racing game. The only racing game that I could possibly see them do is like The Getaway 3 or something. Like that's the only one. A full throttle, a fun game, but The Fiend just sold nothing.
    74:33
    Yeah. Hey, by the way. I don't know. Ratchet and Clank would be a good. What? Ratchet and Clank. Would be good. God of War maybe would be good. I think a good one would be Resident Evil and it's just because it's produced movies along with the video games there's a lot of extra outside of it and we seem to in the pinball hobby gravitate towards mature themes right I mean Walking Dead did very well and it didn't have anything the assets to it except for the title stuff yeah so I think it could lend very well to a pinball machine incorporating like trying not to die and stuff like that maybe if you're bitten by a zombie you have a timed you know you gotta get an herb before you time out and you end up being forced to drain or something I don't know that could be a really dumb concept but just stuff off the top of my head yeah I could see it so video games are tough man they're just really tough to translate Well, I think it's also just a different style. Like when I grew up, I mean, I grew up really, I remember Pong. So that was like, I've seen everything going from really basic to really crazy advanced. And at least the early games, it was kind of, it was a repetition and a skill to repeatedly do the same thing. Modern games are completely different. especially like the world of warcraft types or the just kind of that environmental games it's just different than hey jump over the barrel five times so I just think it feels different but pinball is a lot closer to the earlier ones where it's just one small skill that you're repeatedly doing they should do since since stern's got steve richie they just need to do mortal combat and then it'd be kind of like the deadpool style so you're still fighting on the screen be like street fighter 2 well no but then you can choose from characters like you would on uh pirates of the caribbean and they all have their own little perks to them yeah i think i think deadpool worked really well um i know that jeff's less of a fan i've actually grown more and more to like Deadpool and wouldn't mind having one in my collection.
    77:14
    But yeah, I just don't see a fighting one really working as well. But hey, they pulled it off on Deadpool. So I don't know if that was just my thought for the week or it's been my on my mind for a while now because I've I grew up on video games originally and then I transferred over to pinball. And so I've always wondered why there hasn't been more, especially with a lot of these franchises that have been established for 25 30 years um i mean heck what didn't zelda just have its 35th anniversary okay i mean it's up there uh for sure may that may was mario mario was 1984 so i'm just kind of like the problem with these bigger franchises they tend to be more jealous and involved in how it's presented, which is why Disney and Lucas, they're notoriously challenging to work with because they're very focused on their brand presentation. And so I think that Nintendo would be just as challenging.
    78:19
    That's a good possibility. Man, that's why they've never went after it. Well, they tried twice and that was really bad. I think though that Nintendo is getting more and more licensed friendly we're seeing that with mobile games we're seeing that with third party developers making like Mario and Rabbids or Cadence of Hyrule that's an indie developed game that's being lent Legend of Zelda assets I think we're getting to that point where I think the iron's hot right now if people want to start building that kind of stuff they need to do it now before it starts going away.
    78:59
    So just my thought process. I want to hear from you guys, though. I want to hear. We'll throw a poll up this time. We'll do, do you think video games make for a good theme for pinball machines? Yes or no. And we want to hear in your comments what your favorite one would be. Easy enough?
    79:17
    I think they can do it. They should do a golden axe or an altered beast. Yes. Okay, maybe not. No, they needed to – did you ever hear about that terrible – it was a one-shot game in Japan. It was called – it was made for the Wii, and it was called Wii PP, and it came with a harness with a Wii remote. So you could pee into toilets, and then cats would pop out of the toilets, and you'd pee on their heads.
    79:43
    I don't know what the Japanese were thinking, but that was some hot stuff over there, man. Sounds great. I would never buy that for my kids.
    79:54
    so you never know there's random things for everything are we ending on peeing on cat's heads is that really how the episode's ending no no it's still standing on a high note that's pretty high well i think you'd have to be high to design that game oh my goodness it's getting late i think we need show notes next time that that really took a left turn sorry for the inappropriate not family friend funness there oh no it's just bizarreness that that's i i've never heard of that game and i think my brain just exploded i'm not mad i'm just scared you're just i thought you were disappointed not disappointed i'm just scared so well cool hey is there anything that you want to relay to the public while we've got you on jeff I don't know if there's, you know.
    80:53
    Yeah, let me give my podcast co-host a shout out. Go check out softplungepinball.com. She's selling pinball merchandise now. So check it out. I will definitely check that out. I heard there's some good stuff on there.
    81:06
    Go get yourself a Golden Girls t-shirt. It's pretty awesome. They might have sold out. It's possible. Did you know that the first person I played, I talked to her about Jessica's website, and I mentioned the Golden Girls shirt, and I pulled it up, and she said, I need one. Yeah. It's fantastic.
    81:30
    I'm pulling it up as we speak. I heard that there was an awesome web designer on this, too. Yeah. I don't know.
    81:40
    Just so-so, right? We collaborated well. Anyway. Yeah, these are pretty cool. Oh, dang it, Jeff. I thought you were going to buy these booty shorts that say soft plunge on them. I think those actually did sell out. They did sell out. They said sold out. Dang it. It's because you bought them all, isn't it? No, I didn't get a chance. They sold out.
    82:02
    I thought he bought them for his new workout regimen. No, there will be more. Cool. No, awesome, guys. That's great. I guess we should probably wrap this up because if we don't, we'll just keep on rambling, right? We'll just keep going crazy, yeah.
    82:17
    Is there any shout-outs? Oh, we got you on, Jeff. Let's hurry and – we've officially – I know we texted you this, but we officially dubbed you or knighted you. I don't know what it's called. You're a loser kid just like one of us now. Yeah, inducted. You're inducted. And we're trying to work on getting some swag so we can get you something official. Awesome. It's either a high note or a low note in your life.
    82:44
    Wait, what? It's a note. It's not a brown note. No. I still find it a high note. I'm happy with it.
    82:56
    Everyone's a loser compared to Raymond Davidson, right? He's number one in the world right now. We're all playing for second or worse.
    83:05
    Scene never changes if you're not a lead dog. we're in the same league as Keith Elwin how does that make you feel?
    83:11
    yeah I'm really close to that well cool we appreciate you coming on Jeff and giving us an update of all the Rocky Mountain Pinball stuff I know it's a special show for you so it was cool that Scott got to go enjoy that with you yeah it was awesome alright after the show I decided I'm on the hunt for a high speed or an earth shaker so cool if anyone knows of a good high speed or an earth shaker let me know I might have a baby pac-man I don't know if you'd want that I don't know if I can maintain those apparently I'm going to get two of them along with an eight ball deluxe but we'll see what happens okay well let me know so how can we find you Jeff besides hanging out on our podcast eventually we're going to release new episode of the Pinball Podcast.
    84:09
    Jessica was at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade show this last weekend, so we will get together and record this week.
    84:17
    I'm fairly certain of that. The Pinball Podcast will be back soon. Other than that, just, yeah, see you around. See you around.
    84:29
    Sounds good. Either check him out at Pinball Podcast or wherever Jeffs are found. I'm there. So cool. And how can they, how can they find us? Josh,
    84:40
    you should plug yourself too. How can we find us? Uh, they can find us on Facebook at the loser kid pinball podcast, or you can reach us at Gmail at loser kid pinball podcast, or wherever you find your podcasts. We're probably there. I'm pretty proud of ourselves for the fact that we're on Alexa. If you tell Alexa, Hey, Alexa, play loser kid pinball podcast. She'll start it. Yay.
    85:04
    Oh crap. And it's starting in the background. Sorry, hold on. Actually, not to extend the show, but it was really funny. Stop.
    85:14
    My kids were trying to be stupid with the Google Home the other day, and they tried to have it play a poop song. And he said, okay, Google, play the poop song. Oh, yeah.
    85:26
    Yeah. And there was all sorts of noise interference going on. It said, okay, playing the pinball podcast episode, I think it was like 19 or 9 or something. We have one that's called Poop Bumper.
    85:39
    And yeah, everyone had a good laugh about that one. All of a sudden said, you're listening to the Pinball Podcast with Don and Jeff. That's awesome. That is fantastic. Yeah, my kids were talking to Alexa and it ended up being like, it's like the toilet bowl guys or something. It was like poop and pee on the toilet seat. So they played that for like a week straight.
    86:02
    Comedy gold. yeah it's gold Jerry well on that high note I think we should sign off if you're still listening then I feel sorry for you so alrighty guys later alright sounds good I need to grab some stuff because I'm flying out tomorrow so alright good luck thanks see you guys bye
    86:33
    you