BlahCade Pinball Podcast this is the blockade pimple podcast i'm your host chris freebiss joining me as always halfway across the world is jared morgan hi i already started off bad by hitting the wrong button there jared how's it going chris fingers on keyboards are difficult they are it's hard work yeah it is so in this side of the world we had Father's Day oh yeah right I was gifted with a doppelganger of myself no wait wait wait here hold on let's really sell let me put the glasses on like I normally wear and then there it's like the likeness is uncanny really it's pretty cool so that's like you can actually pop yourself basically pop yourself and even more than that look at the name on the box far out okay right that must be cheap to do like they're uh one of one of one that's so rad it's really rad um so my wife had found this thing where it's like yeah pop yourself or whatever it is and uh she tried it with her and the kid and it was just like yeah whatever and then she put me in she was like oh my god it's like how is this so accurate right so yeah that was a yeah imagine it'd be key facial features i mean because they're all going to be round bubble head style shapes it's just the distinguishing facial features that would make it more poppable than others yeah so mine would be very nondescript as well because i don't have any key facial features either really so yeah that's cool it looks so good it looks so good yeah that was a that was a good laugh um you can tell i'm no longer having the coughing fit thankfully that's nice yeah well how long has it been since we recorded last it feels like uh almost a month yeah i think so that's probably why if you still had the cough that i'd be i'd be recommended you go to the doctor get checked out so the the fun thing was i was still coughing for probably three days after um but the coughing that i was doing it wound up i don't know if it's it gave me a my sciatic nerve is fired oh and so i guess that's from if you uh like herniated disc then it caused you pushes pressure on that and uh so for a little while it was really like just painful to move with my left leg um but then as i was doing all my rounds in the park and everything all the walking that really helped work it out um oh that's good now it's a lot of go two ways you'll either work it out or you'll be like literally on the floor i'm able to move at all yeah uh the only issue i have is if i sit on a hard chair within minutes i can't it comes back oh it's just like painful um and i have to like basically somehow take the pressure off of where it is so it's like crossing my legs but then my leg goes numb and yeah so uh fortunately on my job i'm mostly standing so so that's good yeah um yeah nerve stuff is weird i well you know getting old sucks let's not do this it does it does and i mean everything that i read about the sciatic nerve is it'll go away eventually unless it doesn't in which case you got other issues but it's not going to be a bye see you in a week no it's gonna linger for a while yeah so you gotta have strategies to try and yeah level it out a bit yeah i guess um let's see what else uh since last time we talked jared i believe furiosa came out did you witness furiosa no I did not witness Furiosa in the movies you're part of the problem yes I know I am I'm the problem it's me why aren't you people why didn't you go see this it's brilliant in the movie cinema because I don't I don't have the habit of going to movie cinemas anymore like and honestly that's that's the problem isn't it what I am thinking of doing is going to go and see strangely enough inside out two in the cinema okay explain this to me i don't get this why is that a go see it in the cinema and furious is not i because you're more heavily invested you're more heavily invested in mad max than i am uh-huh right now and you call yourself australian too i know just because it was just because it had its original roots in here doesn't mean I'm rabid about it like you are. But I did go and see Inside Out in the cinemas when it first came out. Sure. And it's something about Pixar animated features. And in particular, I remember the scene in Inside Out where you got to see the entire map out of Riley's brain. And it was just like, wow, this is on a grand scale. and you know that was back then when disney pixar movies were relatively decent resolution but now they're projecting these things in what 4k in most cinemas yeah um it's gonna look incredible on the screen in a large format and there's gonna be heaps of that happening in this movie so it's like hmm i almost feel like going to gold class you know which is the australian version of like recliner seats and food service delivered to you and just doing this because it's going to be a really good movie to see on the big screen for that reason because it's just so detailed. There's so much going on in it. It's so weird right now. I mean, I don't think anybody can predict what is going to get people out to a movie theater and what isn't because there's been a couple of things even before Furiosa where it was like, oh, this will people go to and people didn't go to it and it's like what and then all of a sudden pixar or inside out 2 comes out and it's just like breaking records and i'm like okay i mean and i mean thankfully deadpool and wolverine is tracking for the same kind of thing um which you know makes a load of sense but there's other movies that are coming out that you're like i don't think that's going to do anything and then like in other years it would be a you know yep slam dunk that's going to do really great so it's really well because you know people go you know i can't afford it with cost of living at the moment like you know you know how much it costs to go to a standard price cinema screening here in australia now it costs 26 okay so that will be most of the reason i'm sure you can get them i've seen some discounted tickets down to about if you know where to look yeah down to about 13 14 bucks but you know if you're gonna drag your kids along to the cinema as well you know that's multiples of let's say 13 bucks you know um is what the kids price is it's 26 bucks yeah then you've got you know your ticket on top of that which is like you know another um 13 bucks so now you're nudging you know um 43 something um and then you've got you know the obligatory snacks and stuff yeah i don't do the obligatory it's 50 it's 50 it's 50 bucks just like that yeah yeah the and the snacks are such a rip-off i i just like no pull smuggle on our own we i'm not paying those prices that's just yeah i don't buy them there but you still gotta buy them somehow like even if you buy them from the supermarket there's still a cost involved yeah so and you take you know we do definitely absolutely take our own little ziplock bag of ollies in the cinema with us and do it smart there's no way we're paying stupid prices at cinema but you know that's half the problem as well isn't because that's what they actually remain profitable yeah we've talked about at length before but you know what it is though the reason why inside out and despicable me and all those ones are doing well it's school holidays like you take your kids along to them that's why they do well yeah um when jaron says that uh you I love me some Mad Max. Hanging directly over my monitor. Oh, wow. You've got a calendar. Yeah. Well, no, I glued the poster that I got from the movie theater when I went and saw it to the calendar because the calendar is out of date. It's a Star Wars calendar. But that just lives on my wall. All right. That's what stares me down whenever I'm at the computer. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Didn't I get you at one point some Mad Max games from Netherworld? Yes. I do have pins. They are up on that little board back there. Nice. Because those are all my Disney pins that we get as cast members. I put those up there, too. That is pretty cool. Look, they're immortalized. Yes, they are immortalized. And Immortan Joe's up there. So we talked about the obligatory things that we normally sometimes don't do on Bly Kay, which is the movies and the snacks yes um we got the pinball but before we do the pinball um i have been deep diving into these 3d i guess you could call them 3d wooden jigsaws but they're kind of also models as well there's a company called rokr or robot life and they they do like kinetic ball sculptures and all these things that basically you you get like these sheets of pieces and you just plug them together yes i've seen those and they do make a pinball machine which i think yeah i've got that yeah and i've built that as well like in last christmas so but that's got me hooked on these things but the ball coasters i'm i am always have been a sucker for the the kinetic ball coasters and i i yeah truly believe that that's part of my love of pinball um just seeing a ball in motion doing random weird things and I remember being really impressed as a kid going to a museum and they had just a very large very detailed machine just and you know these balls were going every which way and I could just stare at it for a long time oh same yeah hard agree there like I had the similar thing we had one in the airport and I was just sitting there for an hour watching the same do its thing it was amazing especially when you get the slow build-up of like certain balls that they're just they slowly stack and they need like five of them before they actually tilt the lever but it's gonna take about five minutes for that to happen oh it's so good yeah so i i made up this like one of the they call it a um a spaceport or something like that and it's it's really cool it's got a lot of different pathways the balls go and it has that that stacking thing where the balls go into this little rack and then it needs another ball to trip the levers and they all fall out really really cool but the robot life have released a an extra module like in that same series um and if you make that one up and get this little link kit you can actually link both of them together and motorize them so they both they both go together and they work in concert with each other so you've got like a super sculpture yeah have a guess what i did I went and bought that second one, and I bought the link motor kit. So I am going to be building that. I don't know when. Maybe I'm going to try and hold off until Christmas holidays, but I may just very well do it now. How long does it take to construct one of those? It's non-trivial. Like, you could do it in a day, but it's like the entire day to build one. Right. But there is, I mean, you're basically cutting the pieces off of a sheet, right? I mean, I know they're perforated, but... Yeah, you just pop the little pieces off, and occasionally they give you everything you need pretty much in there. So you've even got a little piece of sandpaper. I was going to say, are you having to sand the pieces to just get the burrs off? Sometimes, but they usually come out really clean. They've got, obviously, a really, really fine CNC machine that they use to cut these boards out, and they're really thin. So they're going to be... I don't know what they translate to in inches, but they might be two millimeters thick boards yeah um and the the pieces are so well engineered everything is push fit in all of them so you don't need glue or anything we're just pushing all together there's a laser cutter instead of a cnc yeah a laser cnc yeah yeah for sure because you can see like there's like little scorch marks on the um the wood where it's cut through yeah but it is like i really if you if you can get them over there and you can get them at a reduced price because we've got this um sort of homeware store here called spotlight and they actually are stockists of it and they'll sometimes do 30 40 off and you can get these kits for like you know a full price 30 40 off and that brings them down to like below like for the marble run that's like less than 50 bucks oh see okay yeah i know that when i took a look and i might be looking at a different company what was the company that you're dealing with it's if they you see them as rokr or rocker or robot life okay um they're the ones that are original i think um because i think when i saw them it was like the cheap one was 90 bucks uh oh wow okay that seems and then there were i but again i might be looking at it i doubt i'm looking at different company i'm sure it's the same company that did the pinball machine though right yes okay then no that's i'm looking at the right one um i think the pinball machine in us dollars is probably about 90 bucks okay um and and it's it's every bit's worth 90 bucks because you actually have little solenoid actually actuators in there they pop the pop bumpers and everything so there's a lot of electronics going on in that but yeah i can't wait to get this thing built but in the meantime to sort of satisfy that they've got these this other sort of offshoot of it called uh rocker life and these are like these little bookshelf inserts that lighter um so say you've got like a bookshelf and you've got a pile of books you could slot one of these sort of modules into your bookshelf and it's like a little scene like a little life on the glass if you like um of like a scene could be like a japanese sakura garden or something like that and this one i got that i'm building now is a like a sunshine theme it's like a little uh think of it like a little alleyway with like a little bookshop and a cafe and it's got a mirror at the back so it like reflects back the stuff in the mirror it's really it's really cool um and fun to build they're like adult jigsaw puzzles they they're great it satisfies my need to build something or restore something on pinball machines because i'm done with that now i don't have any more machines to touch so lucky you yeah because this is a the topic of the show right today that we're going to get into yeah so you may have uh seen my previous video that i posted that now because no i'm not done with a ball deluxe but i mean a blocks is done in terms of the hearts that well the making it function properly stuff yeah it's working it's playable yes it's absolutely playable it works great um you know after spending two months trying to figure out what was going on with the lights and the scoring and everything yeah it just turned out it was the boards yeah replaceable it's fix the problem i keep killing it so um and all the lights are much more brighter now and there's no flaws going on and you know all that's great it's still i i still might eventually replace the soundboard um just because it's it's scratchy and the volume once once you get once you get that um new board feeling in your game you don't want any old boards in your game anymore well because really really the ballet squawking talk you have two things you can adjust you can adjust the music and you can adjust i think voice and that's it and the problem is is that the and then of course you got the pop that's in the door that you can dial in the sound and that those things are notoriously just like not great um yeah and like if i get the voice as loud as i want it to be then everything else is too loud um and so there's it's like trying to dial it in well i know that the board that uh that's listed on at at all tech uh and they're not the ones that make it because they were like somebody else already did a good job we don't need to redo this one yeah we resell it so you can just order it all from us yeah yeah um it has three individual individual pots so it's sound effects on the table voice on the table and music on the table so you can dial them all in and pretty good all of it is uh they they re-recorded everything i mean it's it's all recorded on a chip so it's not actually a function of the board doing it oh so it's not actually being generated by the board it's calling files from a from a card which means they would have been able to clean them up exactly and and made them sound you know much much and that's why they were able to separate them all so that's really smart no honestly that would be i would be going yep how much is that i'm going to save up for that as well because it's you know it's new board number one you don't have worry about 40 year old silicon on it um and you already know the volume pots are scratchy and dodgy anyhow so just get rid of the thing and then you'll have a really reliable machine but it's not going to screw up yeah um so anyway i uh now that those were done and i put by uh a ball deluxe right next to target alpha um so they're you know properly in there and then i rolled out firepower into the spot of fixing and did some cleanup on the garage and cleaned up my drawers and in the process pulled out all the parts and laid everything out and it was just a big oh crap um yep i i just really was just like i don't know what i was thinking well i know what I was thinking. I was brand new. Cool, cool. I'm just going to, I'm going to go and just fix this up in a couple of weeks. It'll be fine. No worries. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody goes, Oh, take pictures. Yeah. I took pictures, but I didn't take the pictures. You know what I mean? You took some photographs indicative of like, yes, that's firepower. That's all the pictures that you took. No, I mean, I actually did do segment by segment on the wiring harness because I knew, but what I didn't take pictures of was where every single screw goes and what type of screw goes with what and i just went oh this section yeah let's take all these and throw them in a baggie and mark it as that section not mechanism based yeah oh look these are the five screws from this pop bumper assembly that i've depopulated good you know yeah don't worry like the only thing i could say is that i i did i have a similar experience with timeline in that it was a while between doing strip down and then actually putting everything back on again I did have the advantage though of reorganizing like I had a little sort of a container with little separate compartments so I kind of had all the same screw in the same thing and I've done enough got leads to know what screws they use in certain assemblies you know Short screws for things like stand-up targets, long screws for mechanisms is the general rule. Yeah. And you'll probably find that transfers onto firepower as well. So all you really need, there's only going to be two screws types under the play field. So sort your screws out in two piles and you'll be fine. And it is, it's dirty. It's just grimy on the touch. um i you know a lot of the metal like all the lamps and everything they're pitted um and and it's so it becomes one of those things of well i want the grime off but do i care about everything being shiny no don't worry about that right don't worry about that just throw because looking at the cabinet it it's in rough shape um the back glass is not good it's pretty short yeah i mean not when you can see actual wires behind you know some areas where it's and you can see where the flaking is um it like all my back glasses yeah it just it just like trash you know what this is this is not my project um so it is just going to be a matter of let get it up and running kind of thing but i can't believe i lost the key to the backbox jared oh look these it happens um as my wife said you probably put it somewhere really safe I'm like you're right I probably did yeah before you thought oh back boxes where all the stuff is I don't want anyone getting into there anyone in your garage no no no it's more like well I don't want that just falling out it hangs in the backbox so let's put it somewhere else the odd thing is normally they're common keyed anyhow this is where it gets interesting so my coin door is single-sided key. Yeah, right. Right? Wouldn't fit in the backbox. Like, how very weird. Out of curiosity, then I pulled out the key for 8-Ball Deluxe. It's the exact same number, Jared, as Firepower. It works in the coin door. Yeah, that's really common. Like, all the keys for most manufacturers, when you get them fresh out of the box, yeah they're all just the same barrels um in fact when i go and order keys from um for pbr uh they're all the same number so i have the same key that will work in every single one of my machines i mean including the back yeah it's very convenient yeah very convenient not good if you're an operator though no you change it immediately to your own barrel lock right now yeah so then i was like well i'm curious since that worked i pulled the key from gottlieb from target alpha which is a double-sided key and that actually fit into the backbox it just didn't open it but it did fit into the backbox okay so yeah you know what you need to get you need to get some lock picking mate to come out there and pick the lock for you um and then uh you can go and open up the backbox take the thing out and discover that somehow the key to that was in the backbox all along you know it's probably it's probably somewhere buried in the back of the cabinet have you actually cleaned the cabinet up fully why yes i have and that's that's where i discovered other horrors um like the fact that my power cord you know through the wall outlet is just mated with a an extension cord you know a thumb screwed tight to the two wires and electrical taped and that's what's feeding power to the cabinet nope i'm like i think i need to change that that's uh maybe best yeah um i i wound up putting gloves on my hands as i was going through because it was just like grind solid idea yeah oh yeah so anyway that's uh i think i gave you this tip that um if you're doing any work on a dirty machine baby wipes yeah there's wet wipes yeah they are very handy to have on hand if you are not using gloves but your choice to use gloves was a good one i think yeah my favorite too was the uh balls that were with firepower are literal sandpaper oh yeah and they would be wrecked and i mean there's a there's a good reason why the table is the way it is. Because it's not like they got that way. I put them in a baggie. Oh, right. So, yeah. They were already stuffed. Because that play field was rough. It was rough. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I'm literally just going, okay, if I was purchasing a pinball table today, I would have said no to this. well if it was in its like as is state with everything in a bag i would have gone hell no because no but even even knowing what to look for now uh oh right so if this was like oh yeah this this machine is 800 bucks um you know in probably at the time you paid it now to be like a one and a half gram machine yeah but you know it's like 800 bucks you know it's got stuff wrong the boards probably don't really work that much. Well, I mean, I would have identified immediately that the soundboard is the wrong soundboard. I would have rubbed my hand on the play field and gone, nope. I would have seen the back glass and gone, nope. You know, there's just... You would have passed it over, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Because now I know what kind of headache I can take on and what kind I can't. What sort of effort is involved in taking that from what it is to what it needs to be to be remotely playable is a large distance. Yes. Right? Yes. So, but that got me thinking, just in terms of, because now I've got, you know, like I said, you've got four machines running. I've got the two pinball machines running and the digital cab going. So it becomes a question of, well, we're going to spend your money, folks. You've got money in your pocket. What do you want to go with if you only had the option of being able to get one machine would you be better off getting a real machine or would you be better off getting a digital machine what are the pros and cons of each of these items um and uh you know maybe we can walk you through some of that jared obviously doesn't have a digital machine but with four machines he's got variety um and you also have a network around you that does machine trading yeah that's right yes i i have had a couple guest machines in my garage which has been amazing like i've had a fishtails in there and a corvette um it's it's like new machine day except you don't have to pay for it right i've got a paragon at the moment you know yeah it's it's great so uh i already wrote out a list and i decided i'm gonna I'm going to put Jared on the spot and see if he can come up with some pros and cons and see how many new ideas he comes up with and how many are the same that I already have. So let's go ahead, Jared, and let's just start off with a pinball machine, an actual working machine. What would you say are the pros of owning or, well, yeah, we're going to call it owning. Not just borrowing, but owning. One in your garage is yours. Yeah. that you can do what you like with. Exactly. All right, the first thing that's great about having a real physical pinball machine in your garage is that within 10 seconds, you're playing. Yes. The boot time of a real pinball machine, certainly like an 80s machine, probably not so much a Stern, which takes a little longer to fire up, let's say 30 seconds. But for an 80s machine like Chris and I have, it is ready to go in about 10 seconds. And if you don't have a lot of time, that's really great to sit up. You don't just sit down and turn on your computer and turn on your digital table and then go, oh, updates and all this and all that. You know, it's just like I'm turning it on and I'm playing and then I'm going to turn it off again. And it doesn't even matter. Like I could turn it back on five minutes later and I'll still be in the same state. Yeah, I agree. the number of times that I have looked at my watch and gone, oh, I've got 15 minutes before I need to go to work. Let's just go out to the garage real quick and have a game or two. Yep. Yeah. Yep. It's just the – like, honestly, it's the main reason why you have them in your garage. Yeah. Okay. So there's one. I almost – I thought I had a variation of that on my list, but I – it's close but not the same thing. So, okay. So there's one for you. Okay, what's your thing? Give me – well, no, I was going to say – well, okay, I'll match what – where my similarity was and that is with a pinball machine anybody can play it anybody at any knowledge level can walk up to this thing and so long as you go this is what a flipper does this is what your plunger does go they can do it and i say that because uh my wife does child care here we have one of them is two years old he just turned three but i threw him in front of target alpha when i got it and within 30 seconds he understood and was just flipping like mad so he absolutely got it like he understood the role to play flip these flip make that go and when the ball you know he didn't understand holding or anything like that but when the ball comes near yeah you just flip and watch it bounce around um within about a week that's pinball within about a week i started saying hey try this just hold the flippers and catch the ball did that unfortunately then he always just held the flippers and didn't understand you know the physics but over time i'm like that's the kind of stuff that comes and learning a combination in between but yeah the point is is and there's other you know kids that i'm like here hop up have a go So whether they connect with pinball or not is a whole different story. But the basics of playing, anybody can join in. And then it's just a learning curve from there. I can definitely say that point about anyone can understand how to play is correct. Because Zachary had a couple of his mates come over who had never seen pinball. These are teenagers who had never seen pinball before. and you know i i had all my four machines on and zachary said oh look this is really cool go and have a go and they worked their way through each one of them and zachary told them how to play and you know they're you know the teenagers they know the fundamentals about oh yeah cool oh yeah i get this and then off they went you know it was no training required no prior knowledge required they just they weren't great at it but they still were able to play you know and experience pinball for the first time yeah you know all right what's uh what's another pro another pro is and this is the my main motivator for doing what i do with pinball is that other people get to experience it um my four machines you won't find anywhere else in australia i would suggest probably in a private collection maybe somewhere in some deep dark place of australia but i'm pretty confident that um have to be proven wrong here if anyone is actually listening from australia and knows the who owns what i'm pretty confident that my four machines are the only specimens in australia at the moment so um i have a variation of that also where i just said it's a unique feature to a room um yours are very much even more unique to those that under you know no pinball but by and large walking into somebody's house and seeing a pinball machine oh a pinball machine Right. You don't see that every day. Particularly when you have people over for dinner at night and you preemptively turn on your machine in a dark room and it's just glowing in the corner. Intasive. It's impossible not to go up to it and want to interact with it. Yes. It is a piece of art as well. And that's the next point I want to make as well. Okay. um the the the object that is a pinball machine is in and of itself a piece of art um and uh the the experience you get with a real machine being able to walk up and like have a really close look at all the dodgy playfield art of the 80s with all the scantily clad women and suggestively um phallic characters on the play field you know it's just like it is of an era it is an art style it is it's a living piece of art well and you know much like much like art too it's an investment that holds its value more often than not it tends to go up in value yes i mean if you don't have a common machine or if your machine is good you can you can flip and trade and flip and trade backwards and forwards and not really lose much money at all they're not like cars no they they do actually hold their value within the pinball community yeah relatively well like for example i i got rid of that star race machine um to one of the collectors and then four years later paid exactly the same money to get it back again oh wow like so that's like i i've sold it for five grand and i paid five grand to get it back so it's literally no change in value so i mean that's great that's like you cannot get a better example of holding value than that uh let's go with uh two more things you can think of and then i'll fill in the rest um i there's always something you need to do with the machine and this could this could be a a positive or a negative right But the machines, depending on what type you have and what era you have, you can start out with a bit of a junker machine and get it playable. And then you can start just making minor cosmetic changes here and there. For example, during the pandemic, I wanted to order some stencils from, of all places, a cake decorating shop for my Pink Panther machine. I wanted to put Pink Panther's face on the side of the machine and completely reimagine what the artwork would be like on the side of this Pink Panther machine because it was very much generic Gottlieb systematized stencils on the side very boring not even remotely in theme so I went and I tried to get stencils imported but because of pandemic the US companies were not shipping to Australia circle around three years later I thought oh yeah stencils It's coming up to BPAC this year in July. I thought, oh, I might see if I can do the cabinet art now. And, yeah, sure enough, the stencils are on their way. And this year at BPAC, the machine will actually have Pink Panther faces all over the side of the cabinet in pink. Because that is the only color that you would need to use for Pink Panther. So moddable, customizable. You can do whatever you like. It's your machine. You can do what you like to it. So that's the other thing too. It's fully customizable. You can strip it back, repaint it, strip it back again, repaint it again. I really do feel that pinball ownership is very much like classic car ownership. You're going to have those that are – they only want it to look original, and they're going to be appalled at anybody that does anything funky to it, And then you've got the hot rod community that's just like, why would you want a stock body? No, rip into that thing and make it something. Yeah. And, you know, like you do have to consider resale when you're making fundamental changes. But the thing is that if the changes are tasteful and they're well considered, you're not like, you know, turn the cabinet into perspex or whatever and just making a clear cap, which is cool. but it won't appeal to everyone um you know you can pretty much it doesn't really affect your resale value because people want the game they want to experience the game as long as your mechanics and your circuitry is working well they don't really care what the cabinet looks like at all i've had offers on all my machines like pink panther and force 2 with varying degrees of cabinet aren't really bad back glasses no one cares they just want they just want the game they want the game um okay last one that you think is a uh a pro for owning a pinball machine the last one um well this is probably more of a preservation thing but these machines aren't getting older any younger right and i almost feel that if you own a machine and even if it's like a project pin let's let's use a project pin for example if you find one that's not working it's it's either destined for parts or it's going to be put on the back of a truck and got rid of by someone who doesn't understand the value of it so really preserving these things um and keeping them going is a really important part of like digital well not digital preservation but like physical preservation um so you know you're doing your part if you own a pinball machine to keep the hobby alive as well um i think this falls into what i have as it's a a piece of nostalgia yeah um that's what you're preserving it's not only a piece of nostalgia though it's actually it spans it actually blows apart generations because sure now that that nostalgia that was yours is now nostalgia that you're passing on to your kids and they're at least understanding what pinball machines are yeah so that later on in life perhaps they might get into it themselves like for example my sister um has recently started um playing pinball competitively with me on every Tuesday night because she's at a point now where she's able to get back into the hobby she's always wanted to. And so, you know, she's back into pinball again. So it's just planting the seed sometimes with people. And sometimes they need to be able to physically touch and interact with a thing, be able to understand it and actually really appreciate what it is. And I think a physical, original pinball machine in your garage or your room is going to do that for them. Yeah. You know? Some of the other points that I had then as possibilities here, look, pinball machines, there's a replayability factor. Oh, just one more game. One more game. Yeah, that's something I totally missed. No two balls. I had just one more game for an hour. Right? That's what I've had recently. I don't know if you do this, Jared, but I often will set it up as two-player to play against myself. But it's funny because sometimes I'll be like, I'll be like, man, player one is really sucking. And it's just me. All the time. Or I'll be like, and then I'll be like, come on, man. Last ball, don't be the underdog. Defeat player two. It's the weirdest mindset because it's like, it's just you. You're playing chess with yourself here. Exactly. um yeah no two balls are the same you can yeah well that's the thing because no two balls are the same you can actually have a game with yourself and have a completely different result 100 because it is it's a random number generator pinball machine like it is all physics based completely and nothing is ever going to be the same um and then something that uh i've done on occasion but not often uh you can remove the glass folks and practice specific shots or specific conditions by you know just tapping everything that you needed to be like okay this is the thing that i need to practice on let me get to that wizard mode without actually getting to the wizard mode you know kind of mentality um and set things up to get good at a certain aspect with that glass off well exactly right yeah and certainly on the early machines you know you can have the glass off and practice you know post-passing or or you could do any number of pinball you know training exercises but you know doing that on a machine um like a digital machine is a little harder yes uh so here's the question jared should we go into the cons of a real machine or should we go into the positives of a digital machine well let's do a quick like roll through of the cons okay here we go cons of owning a physical pinball machine pinball machines break all the time so they need they need you in great ways yeah people machines need maintenance i mean that honestly to me is a is a pro i actually really like like keeping my machine well waxed and and cleaned and and like you know all the joints lubricated and um all that sort of stuff but for some people and i know this to be true they they just want to turn the thing on play it and they they will never open the glass up yeah uh and have a look underneath it and maintain it so you know um if you if you don't know the basics or haven't been introduced to the basics it is going to be very daunting for you to actually have a machine in your house yeah um without some basic level of understanding of mechanical concepts yep um the the other thing is getting parts um so parts in for the most part the basic things like things to make your flippers work and stuff like that switches contacts you can get them but in the case uh certainly for me that usually from overseas yeah you in a whole different basket there and that that does add challenge and expense to the hobby Like it is in that respect is very much like in the fact that you know you've got to spend lots and lots of money on it to get the thing working. Yeah, I really, for me with that, it's just like, I just want a pinball store that I can walk into and buy the parts. I hate that I have to order it and wait for the shipping and then go, oh, that wasn't quite the color I was thinking of, you know, or whatever. I just want to browse this stuff, not online, but see it physically in person and go that route. So this is a really cool thing that we have here in Brisbane. There's a guy who actually does import a selection of Gottlieb parts and imports a whole bunch of Belly Williams parts. So he has, he actually can walk into his shop and pay a premium for it. Yeah. But you can go, yes, I just need to get a flipper replacement kit, and chances are he'll have one in stock immediately then and there. You won't have to wait at all. And it is honestly such an amazing service that he's offering for people who are caught short and, like, my coil is burned out. I need a coil, and this thing's going on location. Oh, you know, Pinball House is the company who does it. So I think that kind of makes it – I had this written down as a con. A new machine, very expensive. An old machine, it's a money pit. Yes, quite true. And honestly, this is true of all the new machines that are coming out of Stern and all the other boutique manufacturers. New does not necessarily mean maintenance-free. No. you're going to get a period of time when you don't have to do anything on a machine but it's going to come a time when something's going to screw up and normally on the new machines it is way more expensive than an old machine as well because you've got things like sophisticated node boards and all these really high electrics in there that you know if one of these boards screws up see you later 200 bucks like yeah the the advantage though is that those parts are much more readily available they are available as opposed to you know you're looking for a clear ramp for whitewater good luck good luck with that you know so okay uh let's see so we have maintenance we have the cost what else we got um moving them yes they are difficult to move and very heavy very heavy um and if you if you're doing if you're a renter don't buy a pinball machine because they are they will limit your um your ability to find a place that's because basically if you've got a pinball machine you're looking for a rental that's pinball machine suitable just like you would if you had a pet or some other piano or something like that right you're it's no longer a house it's a shelf where a pinball machine is stored which okay so this goes into something else i have written down here and i get i think it'll work for for one they are very space intrusive they've got a huge footprint which was the fundamental problem with them yes and it's a footprint that sticks out far like they're narrow but it sticks out far and yeah it just it ruins the flow of walkways and this is oh it's you've got to have a dedicated room for it or a corner really it's got to be a corner or a wall and you've got to make a conscious decision that i'm only going to have a pinball machine there right it's like this is the pinball machine wall and i then have to put related furniture around it to kind of make use of the space yes and then related in terms of what your uh thing about if you're a renter and you had one of these machines they're noisy they're really loud and there's no turning down the volume on them because those mechanics have one volume and one volume only i wonder what it would be i've never done this experiment with the glass on yeah what uh what is the decibels of a pinball solenoid it's certainly quite different it's i reckon it'd be like 50 decibels a like to when you have the glass on uh and and everything's sealed up like i'd still percussive and loud like things are whacking up against things in there so but even if you imagine if you were on the if you had it on the second floor you know and somebody was living below you the vibration alone from the machine and those solenoids is going to vibrate through the floor oh it absolutely is and like an aside that there's a community out there that does like um like drums there's a drum game that i've mentioned on the show and you know some of these people obviously are living in apartments and they have had to have special sort of cushioning stages made up for their drum kit so that they can actually play their drums in an apartment complex without disturbing neighbors like even with an electronic drum kit there's still a percussive element to it like with the bass pedals and stuff so think about that and then multiply it by about 15 with a pinball machine yeah and you've got yourself a bit of a cacophony of sound um the the last thing that i have on the list and i think you will go, oh yeah. Game fatigue or boredom. You have one title if you only have the one machine. You're going to get bored of it. There's no doubt about it. You absolutely are going to get bored of it. And one of two things will happen. The machines will stay off for longer or you'll have to work out if you want to sell it and then lose that game or buy another one. So fresh content with real pinball machines is a definite thing that you need to think. So the only advice there would be if you're going to buy one game, buy one game with a huge depth to it. Yeah. If you don't want to have to get rid of it quickly. And you don't have mates who have other ones you can swap with. That being said, I think me and Jared have also realized this. The best way to fight game boredom is you have another game right next to it. Oh, yes. That plays, that hopefully plays quite differently, or has a whole different skill set of things to do on it, so that it feels fresh, bouncing between the two. Or more. And this is the problem, this is either, I don't know, a problem, like a pro or a con, but pinball machines tend to multiply. Yes. Once you get one, then, well, you know, I could have, I need another one, really, because I'm getting bored of this one. Maybe if I had another one, it would be good. But then you go, well, two looks odd. I should really have odd numbers. Yes. Because odd numbers are better. Uh-huh. And then you go, well, hang on. Now I've got three. I need to get five. Well, you have three and you go, but there's still room for two more. I mean, the wall is already dedicated at this point. There's not going to be a chair there. You might as well just fill up the rest of the wall. I may as well just put another game there, really. Yeah. You know. I've had this debate recently. I've gone, because I've got five machines in the garage at the moment. And at one point, I did actually have six on one wall. It was tight, but it worked. So I've actually now realized that I've got a six pinball garage. And that's a dangerous thing to know. Well, and this is when I was in the league. Once you have six, you can now start hosting. Yeah, you've got a collection. You have a large enough collection that you can host and have people over with four people rotating on each machine. Yeah. That's a party right there. That is a party right there. That is a party. All right, so those are pros and cons of the actual machine. I am going to give you what my pros are for a digital machine, Jared, and I think you'll agree with me. Even though you don't have one, you'll understand what I mean. The number one being no maintenance. Zero maintenance. Zero maintenance. It's not on you. It's on the software developer. True, but you've got to maintain your hardware still, like video cards. I'm not doing cons yet, Jared. Yeah, right. Technically, if you want to play a pinball machine, you can play it. Yes. And there's no problem with it. Which leads into my next one, which is there are thousands of titles, and you can have them all in one machine. Yes. And with those thousands of titles, you can have it from various manufacturers. And I'm talking even with just doing it from Zen and Zacharia, and even if you had done it with Pinball Arcade. Those are the paid ones, let alone if you dip into the VPX territory and doing recreations there. But on top of the recreations of actual pinball machines, there's also all the only in digital machines that are available. If you're like, how come there's never been a Harry Potter machine? There is. There is a Harry Potter machine. Right? Somebody has made one. Pretty much somebody has made one out of everything. Yeah. If you can think it, it's like Rule 24 on the internet. If it exists, someone's done it. Yes. With digital, you can very much control the volume. I can make my machine silent if I wanted to. Yeah, and you can also use headphones, which is amazing. I can't use headphones on mine. Right. Okay, yes, right. There is an option if you want to set it up that you can. You've got to buy extra hardware for it. Okay, yeah. Yeah. yeah um you can do it the digital pinball machines they come in various sizes so you can actually fit to the room that you have they've got everything from uh you know the the the table like eight size yeah they've got the mini pin that at game sells my the the at games 4k is a three-quarter scale and then you can go to the full-on wide body size full tilt cabinet um massive thing massive thing yeah so i mean yeah space you can have an experience with a digital cab for virtually any size space that you you actually have and i mean you don't think with digital cab as well it's like it doesn't while we while we're talking about digital cabs you don't even necessarily need to have the cabinet you can set up screens in a way that suits you to give you a cabinet experience and have a control box you can as well i'm though kind of limiting i want to limit it more towards cab versus cab experience right oh yeah yeah yeah you know just because actual physical thing to walk up to and interact because i had you know i have my pin sim and i can rotate my monitor and flatten it out and i'm sorry it's just not the same as walking up to the cab and yes it's a one minute boot time but it's still relatively quick it's quicker than loading up steam um and i'm and i'm playing you know so and and standing in front of a machine that's weighs that amount and with your physical flipper buttons and you can actually nudge and everything and it's it feels real it feels real and that's just it it is real enough while playing um i keep on hearing people say it's 85 to 90 percent there as a real machine um that sounds i reckon that that sounds about right yeah granted that final 10 percent that's a it's a huge gap um yeah the 10% is the big 10%. It's a big 10%. But while you're standing there playing, I'm sorry, you literally do forget that you're not playing a real machine. Yep. I can imagine that. And I've not – I've played a couple of – I have actually experienced a digital pinball machine before. One of the friends of the show a while back had one here in Brisbane, and I went and actually stood in front of it, played it. it was at the time it was a bit underbaked because it was, I think it was about five years ago even before the pandemic but you know, technology has advanced so much now that your ability to have a pinball-like experience, even with a commercial product like AtGames Legends 4K that's got everything in it that does what a pinball machine does it has the exciters in it you feel the action on the play field even though there's no ball rolling around there is smoke and mirrors illusions happening in digital pinball now that make you go this is that 85-90% might have been 70% in the past but we're at the point now where it's like this is so close to being the real deal that I can forgive it as a thing right? it's getting better and better That's the thing. It's getting better and better. So if you invest in digital pinball now in a way that you can upgrade and do stuff to it, you're kind of in a good position, I think, really, now. So I know that Stern has their – I forget what that app is that they – you can scan. Stern Insider. Stern Insider, right, which is technically leaderboards of a sort. Yeah, it is. Leaderboards and achievements, basically. Yeah. But with playing digital pinball, the leaderboards are much more assured because everybody's playing the exact same software. The conditions are the same. So there's something about beating everybody on a worldwide leaderboard, as I did with World Cup Soccer on ad games, that is, you're like, yeah, that felt good. that you know yeah um so i like that online leaderboard aspect for that um and then there's the economics to a point of these the virtual cabinets they're still expensive but the entry price is way less um than a physical machine that is working 100 so let's let's talk like let's do an example of that right yeah so at the moment you're in the u.s yeah you want to buy a you want to get into digital pinball yeah you know if if you wanted to like get a good um experience with digital pinball not have to worry so much about doing any configuration or futzing about too much like i am leaning obviously into the at games yeah because it'd be probably the the the best entry level or mid-level um pinball product yes there for consumers what's what's the damage like what are you paying us dollars if you like a full monti full monti two grand two grand yeah like and you know if you could find a pinball machine for two grand in comparison over there in u.s dollar prices you would be looking at a system like an 80s maybe maybe early 90s machine i don't think even early 90s i think you'd be absolutely looking you would be looking at just um numeric displays only not alpha numeric no so you know your options are limited if you're looking dollar for dollar and on top of that the titles that are going to be available to you are not going to be the ones that you're hoping for um absolutely not you know it's going to be things like road kings um you know it's you know it's not going to be it's definitely not going to be games like you know the top 20 games like medieval madness and attack from i I doubt it's even going to be the top 70. Yeah, it's not. You're just going to – because I've looked. I keep on looking at prices and seeing what things are. And any time I see one that's sub-$2,000, I'm like, do I know that one? Maybe. I think I've touched it once. Have I heard of that before? I don't know. And then you're looking at the condition that it's in going, whew, okay. uh hmm still needs work okay you know so and there's this classic thing it's like you know all the new people that come into a a pinball buy and sell uh facebook page or whatever group you're using to do it will go oh i'm really looking for a playboy um how much for a playboy or kiss yeah and people are just going how's five grand sound minimum for a bit of a trash one yeah and you never hear from them again. Nope. Like, because that's the price of these ones. It's stupid. It's stupid money for these games that everyone thinks they really want but really are actually kind of hot trash compared with the other games out there in the real space. So you don't have that problem with Digital Pinball. You can have both of those tables if you really want to. Yeah. Plus about 500 more. Yeah, right? You know. so it's and the other thing too with digital pinball and this is definitely the case there the amount of community just support out there that these people are just doing because they're passionate about digital pinball and they're they're heavily invested in it themselves is is amazing like the the community around digital pinball is massive yeah and you if you know where to go and you get into a community that's supportive and really wants you to be successful as a new person to this hobby, you're going to have a really good time. In fact, you might even make new friends online if it's the right sort of community forum for this sort of thing. So the, you know, the sense of community is just as strong on the digital space as it is in the real pinball like tournament scene or going to a pub or interacting with things you know last uh pro is uh should i want to i can play video games on my cabinet also i've got it is i can play i can play vertical games so yeah you like shmups shmups yeah you can want to play pac-man the way it should be good there you go yeah you know guess what yeah pinball machine main monitor is quite a good cabinet. Let's move on to the cons, though. Main con, latency issues. That's the battle, no matter if you're playing what's in the included box on at games, or if you're doing VPX, or you're doing Steam versions, latency. That is the number one issue and it's what everybody's trying to battle everybody's trying to find the best solution um and it's just it's always going to be there and i hate to say it zen has latency built in even with the you know even if i'm just playing with a controller on my pc there is a little bit of latency and then you there is put it into the cab and now it becomes even more noticeable. Fortunately, I've been able to make the mental jump. It doesn't even bother me anymore. But I just had my buddy come over the other day. He had never touched it. One flip, and he's like, whoa. And I was like, oh, you noticed that? And he's like, yeah. I was like, okay. I don't even notice anymore. And that's the thing. Whereas pinball in real life is instantaneous. and obviously there is no latency because it's a physical machine. You're right in that you can get used to the latency and it doesn't really become too much of a problem after a while, but the problem is after a while. Right. When you're first getting into machines and you're expecting this amazing experience like you have in the arcade, you're gonna feel disappointed yeah like initially and you really need to go in eyes open with that when you going into digital pinball and to resolve the problem honestly it can take thousands of dollars to resolve the problem if you really want to get it down to like millisecond latency and even sometimes that not possible with some commercial products like you were saying with with zen pinball the frameworks they're using the everything else you know it's up to the vendor the software manufacturer to manage that element of it so you really are at the mercy of the vendor supplying the software as to what you're going to get there um another one i have here is that the pc setup can be very frustrating um i'm literally going through it right now trying to get my plunger to act as the plunger uh yeah not and when i when i say act as the plunger meaning if i pull it halfway it pulls halfway but i want to also not be a huge delay when I do it. And this is where my headache has been because it's the controls in the app game. Are you sending the controls as a keyboard or are you sending it as a controller? The only way for the plunger to work as it should is to send it as a controller. But then it becomes, is Steam interpreting that controller the right way? Or is it fighting with Windows? Who's also trying to interpret it? I wound up downloading the Epic Game Store onto there just to compare because Epic Game Store uses Windows for the controller setup. All right. As opposed to Steam doing their own interpretation. It didn't help. As a matter of fact, Epic Games didn't even recognize the ad games as a controller at all. Right. Good. The only way it would work is if I worked as a keyboard. Which you can have that game say, hey yeah it's like it's a keyboard but then you lose the function of your analog input it's you pull the plunger it acts as if you're pushing the enter bar um it's going to pull automatically back and then slowly decrease it but you can't just release this it slowly decreases doesn't work that way um so you know there's that frustration there is the myriad of ways to try and lower the latency they're setting up all the monitors and getting them lined up how you want them to do and I haven't even started yet with the whole pinup popper and everything else like that. There's just, it's not, boom, I plugged in my PC, we're ready to go. There's a lot of frustration that's going into this. There's a lot of knowledge out there, but some of that knowledge is old and needs updating. And I'm discovering that right now as I tried, there's a guy that deals with a lot of the at-game stuff and has a lot of tutorials and everything. uh john wagner he has uh wagner he's great uh yeah he just got hired by at games he got really yeah guess who you think is going to be media silent for a little while uh yeah him unfortunately now the good news is the good news is i would imagine that because he's now working for them and with them that maybe he can point out a lot of these things to them but the bad news is um i reported a problem with the plunger trying to see if games could solve it and their answer was oh here and they gave me the link to his page which is not up to date with yeah what it needs to be yeah community-led support does have its disadvantages yeah and it does come down to its community best effort yeah whereas with a commercial software and like a standalone solution or like a real game it's like well watch sees what yeah you know um you are at the mercy of the viewing angle whatever viewing angle you pick you're at the mercy of it you can't move your head and see around the object you know on the fly you don't get that option um unless you're using vr which is a whole different thing which is like you you reckon you're having fun with the configuration now just throw vr into the mix right and you know that might get better when there's more commercial offerings that have vr baked in yeah like uh zen when they eventually get it done that will be when i make the switch over to vr and doing it like that but still i anticipate it's not going to be smooth sailing yeah i'm still going to have to mess around with computer settings to get that right yep but you know it's possible to solve but how much time have you got yeah um the games you do play on the machine they're going to be easier because the ball movements are more predictable because there's not the infinite amount of options that there are in the real world physics that's just you have to remember that it is still a video game yep and that's the thing that people don't get all the time when they're talking about things like zen pinball and and zacharia and all that it It is at its heart a video game that's trying to be a pinball machine. Yeah. And you just need to remember that all the time when you're doing digital pinball. Yeah. Still a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. But it's not going to be like the same as a ball cap to a real machine. The digital cabs, while you can make them tactile, they're not nearly as tactile as a real machine. and i'm going to the caveat here is when it comes to playing on em ems are like having a wild live machine underneath your fingertips you feel everything everything's ticking and popping and like if if they were if you were trying to replicate in reality a oh sorry if you were trying to replicate in digital form an em machine the exciters would just not stop exciting and your solenoid actuators and stuff would not stop popping like the thing is just constantly ticking popping and grinding yeah beneath your fingers i'm so so true but even with uh playing a ball deluxe which is it's surprisingly quiet uh in comparison but there are times when that ball is just ricocheting between the pop bumpers and the whole machine is shaking because of it yeah because it's kinetics that even though that little ball is only a little ball it's still got gravity and momentum and i don't care what kind of exciters you have now maybe on these very expensive deluxe machines where they have a solenoid for representing every pop bumper there might be okay you're going to have a different experience there sure um but that's why i say that's not going to ever be, though, nearly as tactile. Yeah. So, and then the last two things that I have here. One, tech is going to tech. It's going to become obsolete. That's just a given. At some point, newer, better is going to come out there. All the people that bought the AtGames HD cab are screaming about it right now because now there's the 4K machine and they can't buy any of those titles. They want them. They have to buy the 4K machine. And I have no doubt. That's another two grand. Right? And I have no doubt that three or four years from now, there's going to be yet another machine with, you know. Of course. Maybe a PC built inside. I don't know. But there's going to be another machine. And it's very possible you're going to have to buy things again. So the other thing that I want to throw into the mix as well with digital, and certainly playing your Steam library and all that sort of stuff on a digital cabinet, you've got a problem where, yes, you can use it on the go and connect everything up to your PC and all that sort of stuff. But hang on, that's like your PC that you use for everything else as well. So if you really want to compare apples to mostly apples, but I'm talking Granny Smith apples to Red Delicious apples here, you really need to have a dedicated grunty PC in your cabinet all the time so that it remains almost like a solid-state configuration. for that cabinet and then have another pc to play you know your um all the other games that you'd like to play apart from pinball and and that's literally what i have i have a dedicated pc that's sitting underneath the cab connected the only thing that's loaded on it is the pinball titles that's what it is for um because honestly the punishment of having to go oh okay cool i just want to go and play um you know an adventure game you know uh on on steam oh now i'm gonna lug the thing back to my main monitor and connect it all up and i'll what plug goes in where you know it gets to the main problem of doing digital pinball which is uh i gotta do the configuration i couldn't be bothered and you don't do it and again thinking of price factor there uh okay so i the pc that i had it was second hand uh the board the motherboard was four years old there's my bottleneck um so i wound up going with the uh rtx 4060 card because it didn't make any sense to get a better video card because it literally was going to bottleneck there was i would be wasting the money so i spent three hundred dollars on that but if you were to build up a brand new pc for these you're easily talking about a grand to twelve hundred dollars um for what you're for one that will run things well so now your price factor now you're at say thirty two hundred dollars well if you buy an at games cabinet plus a piece right run all the other stuff well if you know that that's what the price of that's going to be how much more is it to get a dedicated cab now now you're not going to get any of those at games titles that are very convenient to use but yeah um you know these are the these are the factors that that you have to weigh in on um but you can go down and do like you know how long is a piece of string is the other problem here like you can if you've got money to burn and you're willing to pay nine thousand dollars for a pinball machine you can pay nine thousand dollars for a digital pin v-pin setup very easily if you want one that looks and feels and sounds and behaves like a real pinball machine as much as possible bearing in mind that 80 to 90 cent factor you can get one that does pretty well but you're paying bitcoin to do it but you know what sucks it's not going to retain its value no one wants to buy it eventually eventually the computer's gonna be old eventually the monitors are going to give out eventually uh you know it's it's the programs that you want to run on it are going to make all the other ones antiquated um you know it's not going to hold its value you're never going to see you know i've got a 45 no excuse me it's not 45 it's like 48 year old machine in my garage right now you're never going to see a virtual cabinet that reaches that age is just not going to happen. No way. No. And that's really the final point there of the digital cabinet. But it's an outlay that you will get no return on. Yeah. In fact, you'll end up sinking more money into it and get no return on it. Yeah. So that being said, knowing all the pros and cons of a real machine and a digital machine, are we saying don't get either no no that would not be the recommendation that would not be the recommendation we said we want to spend your money spend your money folks i'm uh i was leery about a digital cabinet whether i would enjoy it or not i'm loving the crap out of it it's fantastic. And I still haven't even gotten it 100% dialed in. But I'm having a blast on it. And I'm having a blast whether I'm playing the lower res, not that great lighting of what's available natively on app games. And then now getting the on-the-go version using the PC. I'm sorry. Me playing Demon's Tilt in cab mode is bonkers. And I'm... That is the way to play that game. And so now I haven't purchased it because I'm like, really? Only 10% off? But I will get Xenotilt as soon as next time it goes on sale. Yeah. Instant buy. Like, you set your Steam filters to 50% off like I do, and then insta-buy that thing when it comes to the special. It won't disappoint you. So, I mean, that stuff is just fantastically fun, and that's great. Owning the machines, now that I have two of them up and playable, again, also I'm just like, I need to go out and whack the ball around on these. I walk outside, turn them on, I'm playing. And just one more ball factor completely takes over, and these aren't even machines that I necessarily wanted. they were what was available for the price I think I know what you're actually suggesting here why not both? have both have a digital one and a couple of real ones and you're good to go I mean there's always going to be the people that are going to argue digital is not the same but you are a fine viewer we know you you started this when we were just talking purely about digital so you don't have that compunction you're perfectly fine playing digital pinball so yeah i'm saying go ahead make that leap get into the cab mode uh get something that's up on legs it's just a ton of fun if you don't want to make that price commitment uh buy the tabletop cab or wait just a little bit uh there is a digital controller that uh somebody that we've been talking to uh give some pinball look them up i know i've talked about it before um they're going to be having a kickstarter soon for their product that'll get you that taste that i got with my pin sim cab that's going to entice you gateway for you man it was totally the gateway you had that pin sim yeah like if then that's maybe the other thing and as soon as i had the pin sim and put on a vr headset that was game over right there oh yeah that was game over um so if you don't have this is the other thing like if you go that's cool jared and chris but like i don't have any space at all for a cabinet but i'm i'm gasping to try it then yeah get like something like the gibson pinball um controller a vr headset a decent computer and and you basically even if you don't have the space to play uh like you know a full cabinet experience in vr with things like vr desktop and stuff on pc you can put you can put things like um xeno tilt and um demons tilt into tape mode in a virtual screen and have this thing in a like 70 inch monitor in front floating in front of your face like that in itself is almost as good as having a physical cabinet that you're actually in front of like there are ways around not having the space to do it yeah yeah and then though with the uh with the buying a real machine just uh know yourself are you a tinkerer do you want to be like jared where it's fun to dig into it and uh put these things back together or are you like me where you're like i like to decorate them and play them game over i like to make it look nice i like to make them look nice I don't really like all this other aspect that I'm having to deal with. So know yourself because you're going to find out real quick when you do that. But I think you're going to be blown away. There are other options out there too. You can just pay someone to fix them as well. Like there's that. But again, the fact of the matter is once you have a machine at your house, you want to show it off to people. You can't help but be like, hey, you got to check this out. It is a conversation thing. If you and your mates come over, you're going to start a little friendly competition. There's no doubt about it. It will end up going towards your pinball machine, and you are going to play a game. It is inevitable. Yes. Anyway, those are our pros and cons of owning each. Hopefully we've laid out enough factors, and hopefully the cons. You were like, eh, that's not so bad. That con doesn't sound that bad. I could live with that. That's not bad. uh hey real quick before we go i found something here jared oh yeah what'd you find well hey look at that that's the site yeah there's his space run but look at this price jared 133.90 so that 133.90 will get you both modules plus the joining kit in the middle of it um and like they are like so you'll get that do that thing is really rad looking it's yeah that's the new one and it's It's got like a little ball elevator on it. But the other one, if you jump off to the other side, there's that one. And then there's one with almost like a wooden coil. So there'll be like another one in that spaceport. That's one there, the Marble Night City. Oh, Marble Night City. Okay. Yeah, so that's the one that I've got. And the Marble Night City is equally as cool. Oh, that is rad. flip-flop mechanism on the left there where you can stage balls in it and then a ball knocks them out. It's got about three different pathways the balls can go down. It's just so much fun to play and build. So if you're watching this and you're going, geez, I'm a little bit bored with pinball, just go and get one of these and just have fun. You can buy smaller ones if you're not quite sure you like it, like smaller kinetic sculptures. Yeah, so I mean they have like this one, it's only $42. they got a couple that are just 42 so that's not bad um and then if you all are wondering about the uh the pinball machine if i can find it real quick yeah they got all sorts of it's like real random stuff uh 159 for the pinball machine the thing is like i can tell you because i've made this like the the thing that really impressed me about it is like how they've made the flippers work and how they've made like the like just the the thought they put into this thing that you know when you turn it on you can just turn it on under power and just have it plugged into a five volt usb port and the thing just lights up the room and casts a light just like a real pinball machine does in the track mode and it's it's really cool like those pop bumpers fire and everything and it's got little um opto sensors on the ramps that will actually make those score things the score stars and everything increase like the thing is amazing it's beautiful and it's a piece of art as well yeah so maybe start here maybe there you go get spend your 150 bucks and get that instead because it's fun yeah it's a lot of fun what's whistle that way um all righty well that folks is all we have for you uh this week um if you got suggestions for topics you know that are a little bit different where we're not just showing the latest and greatest that's uh available out there but something that we can dig into please drop us a note on our uh twitter channel at blockade uh on twitter not x um and uh or drop a comment here in the uh in the youtube we read all these comments we try and comment back on any of the YouTube comments. We are dangerously close, Jared, to having 800 subscribers. I know we never do a subscriber push, but I would love to pass that 800 threshold. So if you haven't done yet, just do that. Eventually we'll hit 1,000, and then maybe earn a penny each time we put one of these up. And speaking of earning a penny, we are getting a little bit low on the old blockade, let's pay for our domain renewal. subscription each year. So look, you know, if you can spend two, three bucks, if you can spare some money and throw it our way through the PayPal account, um, Hey, look, we'd appreciate that too. But, uh, you know, there's so many different ways you can support the show. That's just one of them. We really appreciate you tuning in and, um, listening to us talk about pinball because we love doing it. Almost as much as we like talking about stuff and things. All right. Until next time, folks. Bye-bye. See you later, everyone.