Hey guys, welcome back. This is the official first episode, although this is episode three of the podcast. This is the first one where we have an actual name. The name of the podcast is The Flipside. That is the official name, and its official home is right here on Retro Ralph Live. This was my live channel that I had for a little while during the pandemic, and I used to stream on it constantly, but now it's all rebranded, and it is the home of The Flipside. We will do all sorts of cool stuff here. I'm very excited. Thank you for the awesome welcome reception on episodes one and two. You guys are awesome, but we're going to waste no time and we are going to get right into it. So let's start this off. This week was a super exciting week for me personally because I got my John Wick Ellie. Yes, I am one of those morons that ordered a John Wick Ellie. Holy crap, was that a lot of money, but the thing is absolutely beautiful. And I want to say shout out to Game Room Goodies. This was my first Ellie. They're my local distributor here. Aaron over there always treats me well Fred his dad he came and uh I asked him I was like man he's like do you want to do a full unboxing because it's you know it's an le is that what you're going to want to do because if so we'll just put it in the house in a box and you can do that and I was like you know what why don't you guys just put it on the legs and I'll take it from there so if you're interested to see a little bit of what I did there you can go to retro Ralph and there's a short on the YouTube channel oh excuse me I had to burp that's um that's rude uh on the YouTube channel that that showcases my unboxing and all that stuff I didn't really fully unbox it, but you know what I mean. But anyways, that was super fun. We'll talk a little bit about that in a little while. But before we get started, I do want to say thank you again for the support. And if you're enjoying content like this, consider subscribing to this channel, Retro Ralph Live, because this is where this podcast will be. And I will post it on my Facebook group, so it'll link right to it. So if you're used to watching it there, because there's been or listening to it there rather on episode one and two, this will be the home of it from now on. So anyways, before I get into the meat and potatoes of this particular episode, which is going to be all about why I love Stern so much, like why I just always seem to talk about Stern, that's going to be the main topic. But I am loving the John Wick so far. I think the game is super fun. I think it's fast. That orbit shot on it is really cool. But holy crap, the game is fast. And, you know, I kind of feel like maybe having Venom was like a good training ground for me, for John Wick, because Venom is really fast. It's just a very, very fast game. And I mean, it's silly to say that reaction time is like, you know, something that you need for this game. Reaction time is something you need for every game, right? Any game you play that's pinball, it's all about reaction and control, right? That's something I'm still learning, the control part of it. because I feel like once you can control the ball better, you really can kind of pave your own way in any particular game, right? You can get really, really good. My ball control is okay, but I think the idea of being able to react fast has helped me, and I think I got that from Venom, because the game does, it is very fast. And if you do miss a shot, it's usually coming back at you really quick, because you're usually bricking it off of something. So anyways, I'm really enjoying it. The one thing I'll just call out, I said the orbit was fun. you can kind of enter it in either side, the right or the left, and it'll go around. If you're on the right-hand side and you don't quite make it all the way up, it kind of has a back door into the red circle club. That's kind of cool because in there, there's a kicker and a slingshot, and it gets really chaotic in there. If you can get the ball in there with some speed, it can really go crazy. Also, there's a multiball mode called deconstructed. Is it deconstructed? I always get it wrong. I think it's deconstructed multiball, but when you do that, and on at least the premium and the limited edition, it locks the balls above that and it dumps them all into the red circle club. So when it does that, it goes nuts. It's really cool. It's just fun, really fun, fast. I do compare it a bit to Venom in the speed aspect. I know a lot of people aren't big fans of Venom and I don't really know why. I don't know. It's weird. Like me being three years into this, I don't know. I don't have like these preconceived notions of what a game should be, I guess. So when I see it, when I saw it, I was like, wow, it looks really cool. You know, it's got the zombie Yeti artwork, which I really, really love that guy's artwork. And I find the game really fun. But maybe people don't like it because of the way the shots are laid out. It's all kind of right there in front of you. There isn't really much other than that. But I don't know. I don't mind it. I think it's fun. And I love what they did with Insider Connected there, leveling up and also, you know, unlocking characters. It's pretty cool. So anyways, I hope that they implement that kind of thing in John Wick, because right now those Wick points really are just more for bragging rights. They don't really do anything towards the game. It would be cool if it unlocked something or did something, but hopefully in the future we'll see that more. But we're going to talk a little bit more about Insider Connected later on in this episode. I'm going to try to keep these still. If this is your first one, I try to keep them to 20 minutes. I might go a bit over on this one, but I try to be fast, get you in, get you out, get you some good information, and have some fun with it. So anyways, so the main topic is Stern, and I want to talk about why it is that I'm always talking about Stern, and it doesn't seem like I'm talking about other companies. so we'll talk about that but i will i will say i don't not have interest in other companies so we will talk a little bit about that too but anyway so i think one of the things that i love about stern and this is gonna get a little nerdy for a second is you know as you do research on stern and and you know i didn't know this when i entered the hobby i had to do the research but you look at the old architecture before spike it was called sam and the way sam was it was really more of a field, like serviceable architecture, in my opinion. Like you could go in, desolder things, solder things, like do board level component replacements and things like that. So it was very friendly, I think, to the person servicing it, but you needed a unique skill. Not everyone could do it. And I think when Stern made Spike, the motivation for Spike was, hey, let's make this more user friendly for the home user so that when they encounter issues, they can fix it really easily, which is great for those of you getting new into it. And I'll talk about that, why they've, what they've done to make it easy. And also, hey, let's make it easier on the barcade, arcade bar owner, you know, the owner operator by making these things just field replaceable units instead of something you actually do like board level diagnostics and board level replacement of parts. So that's where the shift happens. Sam used to be more about fixing the boards in place, like fixing the actual things in the machine where spike became more hey these are field replaceable if a node board breaks you just replace the node board you're not expected to uh do any kind of fixing of at the board level now you can if you're skilled enough but that's i think the majority of people and what stern's motivation was is like look let's make access to these parts available through marco and other other distributors and make it really simple on someone when there's an issue. Now, I like that because I'm a home user. So being a home user, I do go, I don't, I'm not an owner operator. So for me, if I have a problem with a game and I have had several, I had a problem with my Godzilla with the tower or the building no longer working. And that was, I can't remember which node board it was, but the node board was showing up as bad. I replace a node board, boom, it's fixed. I had a problem with my 007. It was node board eight. It was the node board that operates the bottom half of the machine. So it would boot up, it would have a problem with node board eight and it would come up and I only have the top of the game illuminated and the bottom was not You could see there was no LED indicators on the node board I replaced the node board Boom done And the thing is I got that game up fast Marco don't know how they do it, but Marco's in North Carolina, I believe. They had parts to me in Arizona in like two days. It was like two to three days. So I had my game up and running. That's great for a home person, but it's more critical if you're an owner operator because a down game is not making you any money, man. You know what I mean? So you need these games up and running. And so I think that's also something that's appealing to the owner-operator, because some of these other games by these other manufacturers, maybe access to parts isn't as good, and getting games back up and running is going to take you a lot longer. I walked into Interium in the Illinois area. Everyone, if you go to Pinball Expo, they take you over to Interium one of the nights. I can't remember which one it is. But it was funny. The Stern games were all up and all the games that were down were like American pinball games. It was like Houdini was down. Galactic Tank Force was down and another one. And it's like, well, how long have they been down? And, you know, that's that's a game that's not making money on the floor. So, you know, I question that, like if I were to go and buy an American pinball game, is the access to parts good? I know I'm picking on American pinball. Seems like everyone picks on them these days. But Yeah, I don't know. Is the access to parts the same? And I think so. For me, parts availability has been what's really drawn me to Stern. It's very easy for me to fix them at home. Yeah, sure. There's things like flipper rebuilds, which get a little bit more complicated. But even if you didn't want to tackle those, you can buy the whole assembly. Even though that's a waste, you don't have to. You can fix what's wrong with it. But you can replace an entire assembly if you want. Boom, you're up and running and you can get that stuff through Marco. So for me, it's really about the parts availability. And I think with Spike, the only thing I wish is I wish the node boards were cheaper. So when they went from SAM to Spike, and again, I'm talking as someone that's a home user and relatively new, you know, but I bet a lot of owner-operators were wishing that Spike was a bit cheaper so that when they go to replace these node boards, it's a little more cost-effective. But I think in general, most people just replace the boards, and they're kind of thought of as being disposable things nowadays, even though someone that's skilled could probably fix them. But anyways, that's kind of my, when someone says why do I focus on Stern so much, I think for me it's been reliability. The games are really reliable. I like a lot of the games, but it doesn't mean that there aren't games by other manufacturers I'm not interested in. You know, one that in particular I really like is Chicago Gaming Company's Pulp Fiction. The game is super fun. I really loved it at Expo. There's a local bar right here by my house, Player One Arcade. They have one. I get to play it there on location. So I don't know. I'll probably, you know, will I ever buy something non-stern? I'm sure the other company I'm pretty interested in right now, or not company, but the other IP I'm interested in is Back to the Future. And everyone's been talking about that for a while, that Dutch Pinball has that license. And everyone's kind of anticipating that we will see something from Dutch at Pinball Expo. And the thought is that it would be Back to the Future. So that sure would make Pinball Expo 40th anniversary pretty exciting to have Back to the Future there. And I don't feel like the first game did Back to the Future justice. I think it was Data East that made the first Back to the Future game, if I remember right. It just didn't do the game justice, man. It didn't have all the assets. You know, nowadays with the LCD versus a DMD, you have all these things you can do. Movie clips, you know, hopefully they have their original voice actors. And Back to the Future, man, it stands the test of time. Like, that movie is just like everyone loves it. Everyone loves it. My kids love it. I think most of our generation, if you're in your, like, 40s, 50s, maybe even late 30s, and you have kids, you've introduced your kids to Back to the Future. They know it. They love it. And I think it transcends generations. So to me, that to me is an IP that's like a banger. That should do amazingly well. My only reservation there is Dutch Pinballs. If you look at like Big Lebowski, it took a really long time to get Big Lebowski's into the hands of people. I want to say that when Big Lebowski was announced was four years ago, and now they're being delivered. They can't do that with Back to the Future, obviously, but there is some silver lining here. Dutch Pinball just upgraded their facility so hopefully they have the ability to pump out games a bit faster they're not going to be like stern stern can really pump them out but maybe dutch will be able to do it and honestly maybe that ramp up was knowing that they have lightning in a bottle potentially with back to the future all right so we'll move on from there but i think that's uh i think that kind of tells you a little bit of why stern right why am i so hot on stern and i really like a lot of their titles they tend to get the ips that i really enjoy so um i've played games from spooky i really like i i actually surprisingly you know don't kill don't shoot the messenger here i like i like galactic tank force it just always seems to be broken wherever i go but i do enjoy the game when it is working when i see it on location so i usually play it but i love the quirkiness of it it's the weirdest thing ever i like that it has the actors and i think it's kind of cool that tank though man it's brutal it's just very way too close and uh you know i oftentimes airball off of it but anyway it that's i'm just trying to say there are other games from others i like i'm not just a hundred percent stern, but I do, I do really love myself some stern. So I did want to talk for a minute about my motivation on covering pinball more. Cause I got a little bit of crap from this, from certain people like, Oh, you're abandoning arcade gaming. What the heck? That was your thing. And I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm just my, my, um, interests in hobbies change. They evolve. And I think that's normal, right? They evolve. They like, there are people that probably buy pinball machines and never touch them. They never mod them. They never do anything. Right. And then, they get more comfortable with it. Something breaks. They start realizing, hey, these aren't so hard to fix after all. And then they go, hey, maybe I will mod my machine. And now all of a sudden, they get into the modding aspect of the hobby. Things evolve, things change. I think if things are always static all the time, they get boring. And for me, I noticed when I bought my first pinball machine, I started playing it more and my arcade games really weren't getting the play. Am I abandoning it? No. But is more time being allocated to me playing pinball? Absolutely, because I like going out to these arcade bar locations near me, meeting people and playing games and socializing. And I think that's an important part of this hobby is the social aspect. So I would urge you, get out of your house, go play some pinball on location, socialize. And I know last episode I brought up my social quota. That's a real thing. I do have a social quota. I'm not quite an introvert, though, but I think I can be when I reach my quota. some days, trust me, some days I'm just not wanting to, I talk all day for my day job. So when it, when it comes to wanting to talk after work, sometimes I just don't. So sometimes I go into my game room, I play some pinball and then I hang out with my wife after. Sometimes she'll play with me. She'll see my wife. Kim will sometimes play. She played the other day. She had a kick-ass score on, on, uh, on Godzilla. I think that's her favorite of the games I have in my lineup, by the way. I think she really likes Godzilla and it's easy for me to teach her basics of that game. So I can get her, you know, I can get her to get the building to drop and, you know, lock three balls. And now all of a sudden she's got the multiball and, you know, the Blue Oyster Cult song is playing. She's getting pumped up. You know, I mean, it's hard not to be pumped playing that game. That game has so many cool moments in it that, man, that game is just so great. I love that game. But for you introverts out there, I think we'll shift gears to the introverts. If you're fully introverted and you do in the thought of going to an arcade bar just kills you. You're like, no, I don't want to socialize with people. It's terrible. Don't look at me. Right. Don't look at me. Don't talk to me. Don't breathe near me. If you're an introvert like that, the cool thing is Insider Connected, I think, is going to be your best friend because they're doing a lot to, I think, connect people through that app. They could do more, though. One thing I wish we saw out of Insider Connected, how cool would it be if you and I had the same game right Like let say we just both bought John Wick and I want to have like I want to be competitive with you Right now I can be friends with you on Insider Connected and see what your high scores are but wouldn it be cool if we could get people with the same games You group those people together to do a tournament a virtual tournament of just your friends on that game or maybe you can open it up to others too. I just think the possibilities for Insider Connected are endless, and I got to think that they're doing stuff like that, or at least thinking about it. I know when we were out there at the Stern Tour thing, and if you didn't see that video, It's on Retro Ralph, my YouTube channel. We all got a chance to go to Stern. Check out the new factory. So they did share some of their future ideas around Insider Connected. Nothing solidified, right? They didn't say this is the roadmap for Insider Connected. But I think they're thinking about some cool creative ways. And what other company? That's another thing. Why do I love Stern? What other company has an app like Insider Connected doing that kind of stuff? None of them do, which shocks me, by the way, because it's so freaking cool. I love the badges. I love the achievements. my buddy Nick, he's like me. If you go to a place and they don't have it and you scan it and it's like that noise, that noise we all know when the game is not connected to the internet, you're like, son of a bitch. It makes you not even want to play it because you're like, hey, this isn't going to log a record of my score. Like, I want this. I want to, you know, the streaks that are on the app, all these things. They're cool. I think they're cool. It's a modern, it's a cool, modern way to make pinball more interesting. And I love what Stern's doing with it. So I think the sky's the limit with that thing. What they're going to do with it, I don't know, but I hope they come up with some cool ideas that you can do some competitive virtual tournaments for all you introverts out there. All right. So I want to talk about some personal stuff just really quick. My wife and I, we were looking for something to watch. I'm going to be fast with this, but we wanted something to watch this weekend. And Friday night, it was yesterday. I was tired, just had a rough, rough week at work this week for lots of reasons. I'm a manager. I manage four managers. And then underneath those four managers is about 40 people. So that's a lot of people to be responsible for. I like to think that I have everyone's back and I want everyone to succeed. So it's tough, right? It's tough when people aren't doing what they need to be doing and things like that. So it's always a hard, it's a hard job, but I love it. And I love people. But we watched, we went to, I don't know why I said all that, but anyways, just anyways, we wanted to watch something. So I'm like, holy crap, did you see this thing called Trainwreck? And it was about Woodstock 99. Now I was probably, I'm trying to think of where I was in 99. I had almost moved. No, I had moved once to California and then I moved back. So I moved back. I was actually living with my parents for a very short period of time before I ended up moving again to California. So I was living with my parents. I had a job, pretty decent job, not great, but decent. And when I think about the music around 99, it was like Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn. And those were the acts, you know, some of the big acts at Woodstock 99. And man, it just made me realize like, wow, I don't know how I missed this. But when when you're watching it, you got to give it a watch. It's crazy. Like the promoters, like they weren't thinking about the sheer magnitude of people and then how a lot of these acts were in that time period. Like the music was a little angry. It had some angry undertones to it, like Korn, Limp Biz, Kid Rock. I mean, Kid Rock's changed a lot over the years, whether you like him or not that's whatever that's your choice but uh the music got a little angry and when you watch this i was like holy crap but the reason why i bring this up is because it made me think about when uh when they have this short period uh of the movie where they're showing limp biscuit uh they show westmoreland westmoreland's the bass player i think i think he's the bass player right yeah i'm pretty sure so west westmoreland if you know that band limp biscuit he he used to wear like masks and dress all kind of funky and stuff but uh but i told my wife i paused it. I was like, hey, I met Wes Borland before. And she's like, what do you mean? I was like, well, my buddy was in a band, my buddy Ryan. He was in a band called Trustfall in Boston. And then Trustfall changed their name. They were sort of signed sort of for a little while, but they changed their name to No December. I think it's still on Apple Music. There's some great songs. There's some great songs. But it was definitely that era of music, like new metal-ish kind of stuff or rap rock kind of stuff. They were more new metal, I'd say, than they were like the rap rock stuff. But anyway, so I don't even know what they officially call that. So long story short, my buddy gets an opportunity to fly out through his manager to fly out to L.A. And they want him to they were like, hey, we want you to audition for Westmoreland's new band. And I can't remember what the heck the name of the band was for some reason. I can't remember. I don't even know if it had a name, but the track that they wanted him to sing, sing on, I think the track was called Dada or something. And it was like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It had this like cool, it was like very methodical, like this crazy long intro. It reminded me of Tool. Like they were very, very Tool influenced in my opinion. But anyway, so, uh, he goes there, does this audition. We, we, we were, we were frigging broke then. So we stayed at this crappy, this crappy, crappy, like it was probably a hotel. It probably wasn't a motel. No, it was a motel. It wasn't a hotel. Cause it was one of those ones where like, there's no hallways, like all the rooms are accessible from the outside. So I think it would have been classified as a motel. So it wasn't great. But I remember sitting there, we're eating sushi with Wes Borland in LA with my buddy. I was so stoked for him because like, man, I hope he gets this gig because being a musician was his like dream. Right. And this was like, you know, when you're involved with someone that had had the success of Limp Bizkit. But what was interesting to me is when we were eating sushi with him. Right. We're at this kind of fancier sushi restaurant. I don't think at that time period I would have been into that kind of stuff, by the way. That would have been a very LA thing to do, in my opinion. Like I grew up in Rhode Island. We didn't eat sushi. Now that's like, you know, you get sushi anywhere. I could live in Minnesota and get sushi. You know what I mean? So so it's kind of normal now. But back then that wasn't normal for me. So anyway, so we're at this place. That's why I mentioned it like three times anyway. So we're there. And it was very clear to me that Wes Borland was like very like almost he didn't really like the persona he had as Limp Biscuit. Like in his mind, he's like, I'm I'm a legitimate musician and I feel like I was part of this like frat band, like frat rap rock band. He didn't say that, but I think he felt like, hey, like he wasn't proud necessarily of his image as Limp Bizkit. And I kind of got the vibe that the real thing that he wasn't into was like Fred Durst as a person. Like it seemed like he didn't like Fred Durst, like the way he presented himself. And you could kind of tell, right, because Wes was like this mysterious member of the band, right? He didn't really, he didn't really like show, but, but the, I mean, they've made recent albums. So maybe this was all just my perception at the time, but I was telling my wife, I was like, man, it seemed like he really didn't like what he did with Limp Bizkit, but yet that's what made him famous. You know what I mean? So had that not happened, he wouldn't be famous. So anyway, so long story short, we finished this sushi thing. We had a ton to drink, man. Oh my God. I, I don't drink like this now. I probably have one or two drinks socially every now and again. I do not drink a lot. So what's funny is after this thing with them, my buddy, my buddy Ryan's like, hey, let's let's like I don't know if we just you know when you eat sushi or like hungry, like two hours later, I think we were like we went out after them. They went back to doing something. So we our night was kind of like cut a bit short. So we go to this restaurant called like Don Antonio's and it was wicked dark, man like you'd walk in this was a mexican restaurant that was so freaking dark like your eyes i'm not kidding i'm not trying to be like dramatic it was so dark that that you had to your eyes had to adjust to see you like wanted to almost put your hand in front of you so anyways the nickname of the restaurant is called the cave and i'm pretty sure it was called don antonio's but when we got in there we like sat down had more drinks and uh i think we were at the bar maybe but uh but there was like some story that some famous people used to go there and blah blah blah blah and who knows. I feel like every restaurant has some story about someone or pictures on the wall, whatever. Anyways I going all over the place So we order some food to go Now keep in mind I am not good right now I drank way too much I couldn even eat I ordered this gigantic it was like this huge burrito And I remember we go back to the hotel room and I don't know why I, I went into the room, I think, and I started to, I was like, man, I'm gonna eat this burrito. And I just started not feeling good. So I brought the burrito with me into the bathroom and I sat there and I'm pretty sure I threw up. But the thing is, at the same time, my buddy Ryan knocks on the door And he's like, hey, dude, I'm going to go outside for a minute. And he was talking to his girlfriend. He used to always do this thing where he'd pace and talk to his girlfriend on the phone. And it was just weird. He always did it away from people. I don't know what he thought. We were such good friends. I was like, what are you saying to her that I can't hear? But I don't know. Who knows? So he goes outside. But the thing is, I was wasted. Like, not good. I was not good. This is like young 20-something Ralph, off his rocker, too much alcohol, margaritas, beer, probably sake, too much stuff. And sure enough, I fell asleep in the bathroom. And the thing is, I never heard him. He didn't bring his key card. And this was a motel. Like, it was late. So at a certain time, like, you can't even get into the office. So he slept in the rental car. And like, I don't know, maybe, I guess he had the keys because I think he drove. Because I definitely couldn't have drove from the restaurant to the hotel or motel, whatever. So anyways, long story short, I just remember that story. I was like, I was telling my wife all this. And I was like, yeah, he ended up sleeping in the freaking rental car. And she's like, oh, my gosh, you guys are such idiots. So anyways, that's my fun L.A. West Borland Limp Bizkit Woodstock 99 story. So anyway, let me go back real quick to the Ellie in my unboxing experience with the Ellie. And then we'll wrap this up because I am definitely going over time where this is probably going to be more of a 30 minute than than my than my proposed 20 minute. But I got so I got the John Wick Ellie. Super excited. Thank you again for Game Room Goodies for getting it for me. You know, by the way, this is I paid for this with my own money. This isn't part of the Stern program or anything like that. This is my game. And I was unboxing. The unboxing experience is really cool, by the way. Like, I had never done this, so this was really neat. Now I kind of know why people love that day they get a game delivered. But anyway, so I'm getting it all set up, and it was like kind of a buzzkill because I was so excited. And then the code needed to be updated after I got it registered in Insider Connected for my account and all that. And if I had one criticism of Stern, that 2.4 gigahertz dongle they use for their Wi-Fi is just bad. Like, unless you, like, literally put your pinball machine on top of your router, it's terrible. I don't know. I hope they upgrade that when Spike 3 comes out. Like, get better Wi-Fi. Make it 5 gigahertz. Do something. But I think the signal strength on the thing is terrible because it is not my Wi-Fi. I'm telling you guys, I freaking, I've had Wi-Fi issues forever. I went and bought, like, the best router. I'm the freak that goes in every room and I'm doing like speed tests. I'm like, hey, man, we're not dropping any packets over here. Like I am. So when my wife says something like, oh, the Wi-Fi is not working, I'm like, bullshit. And I'm like, boom, boom, boom, check it out. And I'm going around. I don't say bullshit to her, but I get really triggered when anybody says anything about our Wi-Fi because I've worked so hard. I got rid of the modem from Cox. I have my own cable modem. I made sure it's the best freaking one. I have a really great mesh system. There's no dead zones in this frigging house. I made sure of that. You can go anywhere in this house, any corner, any crevice, and you're getting the best Wi-Fi. So Stern, fix your damn Wi-Fi because the thing took like 30 minutes to download the code. Then you have to obviously wait for it to install, and it took forever. So I got the best Wi-Fi in the universe. So Stern, it's not my problem. It's yours. You've got to fix this. Please, on Spike 3, make the Wi-Fi better. I don't know. You guys tell me. Am I just crazy? Does your Wi-Fi work amazingly well? I don't know. So anyways, I'm going to wrap up with this. What's my motivation for doing this? Why am I, why do I, what do I want to get out of being a content creator in the pinball space? Honestly, all I want to do, this is it. This is my motivation. I want to share my passion because this is something I'm very, very excited about. And it's been a growing thing. It organically has happened over this three-year period. And it peaked. It like, it just, I don't know, over the last couple of like maybe 12 months, it's just built and built and built. and I'm playing more and I'm going out and experiencing new things. And I just love it. I just freaking love it. And I just want more people to play. I want to get more people to play. And I know there's a lot of amazing content creators. I met a lot of them at that Stern factory tour. They do great work. But I think that my audience is slightly different and I hope that I can get more people into pinball. And I hope that that's my goal is I want to get more people into this because to me, I feel like the future of arcades is really pinball. Yes, there are arcade games still being made. But I think there is a really cool crossroads that's happening right now. And we can make pinball absolutely explode and be more than a niche thing. I really do. And I think Stern and all these other companies need to play a bit of a role in that, making it more accessible. But here's the thing, guys, you don't need to buy one to play. Get pinball map on your phone anywhere. If you're traveling on work or if you're whatever, you're just in your local town, there's probably a place to play pinball around. There's probably a place that has local tournaments and you will meet people. You will get yourself out of your house. So you do not have to own one to enjoy this great hobby. A lot of people don't. They play on location. What blew my freaking mind is the culture, the pinball culture that Kale and Rachel at Electric Bat down in Tempe, Arizona have. They, and they have one in Flagstaff too, but the Tempe, Arizona location, holy crap, they have on Tuesday nights, that place is bumping. It's got so many people and that's a testament to their commitment to just being like, hey, pinball is our thing. That's what we want here. But they fostered a cool culture where everyone there like just nice to each other. And it's just really, really cool. I love it. And I think if you look in places in your own towns and cities, you'll probably find something similar that you didn't even know was there. And that's a place for you to play. So that's where I'm going to leave it. I really, really, really appreciate all of you guys. The support has been absolutely outstanding. I mean, absolutely freaking outstanding. And I can't thank you enough. So I hope my mission here, my mission here is to get you guys out of your freaking house, start playing games, talk to people, start to twist that extrovert into an introvert. No, twist that extrovert into an introvert. No, shit. Extrovert into an introvert. Hey, what is it? Extrovert. Just be an extrovert. I don't know. Try. Talk to people because these people are like you. They're like you. They're just like you. so you can talk to him about all this fun shit. Anyways, guys, thank you so much. Your support means the world to me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to this channel for more stuff like this. We're going to have guests. We're going to have fun. We're going to kick ass at Pinball Expo. I want all you guys to come out to Pinball Expo and just be hyped up because this community is cool, man. It's building. It's growing. It's positive for the most part. And I think you all should consider being a part of it because it's a ton of fun. thank you guys for listening we will see you on the next one i mean we will see you on the next one thanks everybody have a great rest of the weekend we went 33 minutes it's supposed to be 20. oh well it is what it is let's go all right get out there you have one more day left in this weekend get out there go play go meet some people go talk and have a good time we will see you on the next one.