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Ep 87: Virtual Fun

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 12m·analyzed·Jul 19, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Final Round explores virtual pinball rankings, tournament pacing issues, and World Championships results.

Summary

Geoff Teolis and Ryan C discuss their recent travels (Indonesia, Austria), the IFPA World Championships 20 in Austria won by Jason Zoller, and debate competitive pinball tournament formats and pacing. They discover the IFPA's virtual pinball rankings system (1000+ players across platforms like AtGames and Zen Studios) and discuss its potential for mainstream growth, with particular focus on top virtual players like Mad Ben Hand from New Jersey. The episode touches on timing complaints at major tournaments, the challenge of making pinball spectator-friendly, and virtual pinball's accessibility as a gateway to physical play.

Key Claims

  • Jason Zoller won IFPA 20 back-to-back world championships despite Escher not competing

    high confidence · Geoff Teolis discussing the World Championships held in Austria in July

  • Virtual pinball rankings on IFPA website have over 1,000 players after only a few months

    high confidence · Ryan C and Geoff discovering and discussing the IFPA virtual rankings while recording

  • Pinball tournaments are not growing exponentially due to slow pacing and long format requirements

    medium confidence · Geoff's opinion on IFPA tournament structure and audience appeal

  • AtGames runs virtual pinball tournaments weekly with $25 prizes for winners at no entry cost

    medium confidence · Ryan C checking AtGames website during the podcast

  • Mad Ben Hand is the top virtual pinball player and is also from New Jersey, like Jason Zoller

    high confidence · Ryan and Geoff reviewing virtual pinball rankings

  • Geoff commentated the World Championships online from Austria

    high confidence · Ryan and Geoff discussing commentary duties at IFPA 20

  • Kate Martin visited Australia and had a flight delayed due to hurricane/bad weather

    high confidence · Geoff discussing Kate Martin's recent visit before Brisbane Masters

Notable Quotes

  • “I really believe this time that you'll edit the podcast and release it within a week of us recording, not a month later. That's how excited I am, Jeff.”

    Ryan C @ Opening — Running joke about editing delays; sets tone for casual, informal episode

  • “Pinball is at a standstill right now. You can show me all the numbers showing tournaments are growing in number of games played, number of people. Yeah, that increases every year. Whatever. It's not an exponential increase.”

    Geoff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Core critique of IFPA tournament format and its impact on competitive pinball growth

  • “Nobody in their right mind wants to watch a competition where somebody takes five minutes in between a ball or waits for a tilt bob to settle or cradles up, makes a decision.”

    Geoff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Specific complaint about spectator experience and pacing in competitive pinball

  • “I wish somebody would put together something and the pinball players would back it where they said, okay every game is pick the number of minutes five minutes ten minutes whatever it is and then you done next person up.”

    Geoff Teolis @ Mid-episode — Proposal for timed tournament format to improve spectator appeal

  • “The greatest player in pinball right now is Jason Zoller from New Jersey. The greatest virtual pinball player also from New Jersey, Mad Ben Hand.”

    Ryan C @ Late episode — Humorous observation about New Jersey dominance in both physical and virtual pinball

  • “I think of what got me back into pinball and it was the pinball arcade and seeing, holy shit, there's Attack from Mars, there's Medieval Madness, there's all these games I used to play years ago.”

    Geoff Teolis @ Late episode — Personal testament to virtual pinball's role as gateway to physical pinball engagement

  • “I will see the boom in virtual pinball overtaking physical pinball in one year you heard it here first.”

    Ryan C @ Late episode — Bold prediction about virtual pinball market trajectory

Entities

Geoff TeolispersonRyan CpersonJason ZollerpersonKate MartinpersonJosh SharppersonMad Ben Hand (MBH)personEscher LefkoffpersonKeith Elwinperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Jason Zoller wins IFPA 20 back-to-back World Championships in Austria; notable competitors like Escher absent; strong European representation at event

    high · Geoff: 'Zoller wins it back-to-back. Pretty impressive.' Ryan: 'I saw you commentating Jeff' on the finals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts discover IFPA virtual pinball rankings system with 1000+ players and express genuine enthusiasm for this new ecosystem

    high · Ryan: 'I'm amazed that it seems to be run like a real tournament there's TGP values' and Geoff: 'Again, kudos to the IFPA for doing this virtual pinball... I think it's great'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Geoff criticizes IFPA tournament format for being too slow/long, making it uncompetitive for mainstream viewership and growth; suggests timed format instead

    high · Geoff: 'Pinball is at a standstill right now... it's not an exponential increase' due to 'the way we play our tournaments' with excessive downtime

  • ?

    content_signal: Geoff commentated IFPA 20 World Championships online; streaming of major competitive events is standard practice

    high · Ryan: 'I saw you commentating jeff' and Geoff discussing being in Austria at EPC but commentating Worlds online from different location

  • $

    market_signal: AtGames runs weekly virtual pinball tournaments with $25 winner prizes at zero entry cost; represents alternative tournament economy

    medium · Ryan discovering AtGames offers weekly tournaments with '$25 bucks' prizes but 'what's it cost them nothing'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.217

0:00
It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round. Hello again, I'm Geoff Teolis. And I'm Ryan C. Somebody's excited. Somebody's Ryan. I'm excited. Wake up. I fucking love podcasting, Jeff. Do you? I'm awake. Yeah. I mean, I'm so excited, Jeff, that I really believe this time that you'll edit the podcast and release it within a week of us recording, not a month later. That's how excited I am, Jeff. I have no idea what you're talking about. How would you... Hey, are you putting your hand up? You'd like to edit the show?
0:55
Oh, all right. Hey, I've got to get this done quickly, and that's why we're recording this. It is January the 30th. I'm kidding. It's July.
1:07
Wait until Predator comes up. No, it's actually July 6th, and I'm going to be busy probably for the next few weeks. We'll talk about that Pemberg beast and other things going on. So this should be out before then, and then you'll hear us after those things. But what have you been up to since we last spoke? Since we last spoke, I think, what, Predator pinball has come out? What have I been up to? Oh, actually, yeah, I went overseas. I went to a place where there are zero pinball machines. I went to Bali and other islands in Indonesia for a little trip. It was a good time, Jeff. It was a good time. No pinballs, but beautiful part of the world. It did look very nice. I saw some of your Instagram photos and a few of your private shots too, which are not to be publicly released. But you bring a drone, don't you, with you when you take pictures? It's a cheap, like the base model DJI mini drone. So you don't need a, as long as it's under 250 grams, you don't need like special permission to fly it in most areas. so DJI know this and they make their drones 249 grams so yeah I bring it it's it's not that heavy well let's give a plug to it uh you bought it on peepingtom.com and uh Jesus Christ Jeff why do you have a drone what's the point of the I mean there are some cool photos there i i admit but sometimes okay when you it's it's hard to figure out where you are there's a different perspective like yes you can climb to a top of a mountain or be somewhere but your perspective might not be the best view in the area and you know you launch up a drone takes two or three minutes and you kind of zoom out you're like oh there i am like the most of the time when you see somewhere that's really beautiful in a picture you know online on social media these days but back back in the day it was you know in travel magazines at a travel agent those were taken on helicopters they don't usually take a picture of someone from the perspective of like being on a beach they go in a helicopter they zoom out a little bit and like this is where you can be so i like that that view and i've done a lot of solo traveling and hiking and and if i don't i'm either going to just be taking selfies of myself or i could have my my best mate droney mcdrone face to to launch up and show everyone where i am what kind of privacy laws are there because i know somebody one of my neighbors had a drone and i'm in the backyard you know trying to get a freckle by the pool or whatever i wouldn't be too happy about that it's it's different in every country and different states generally you're not allowed to launch them in residential areas unless you have a permit yeah there's automatic settings built into the drone so that you don't do things really silly like launch them in a high trafficked area with helicopters and low-flying planes or next to a an airport like i can't launch my drone at all like i i accidentally have tried to do it a bunch of times not knowing i was sure a small airstrip you aren't allowed to launch in a lot of national parks but there's no it doesn't stop you from doing it you just get a huge fine if you get caught doing it but yeah some of the settings are inbuilt and um it just knows from like the gps of where you are of what you're not to do but it's not yeah i could i could come to your house jeff um next time i come to canada you can spy on your neighbors let's let's put the script instead of people spying on your little freckle uh i still have a mark on the wall from the last time you came over here the guy i was thinking about that the other he goes upstairs and most people just carry their luggage and he just says you know what i'm gonna bounce it off a few walls see if i can scrape the paint there yeah still there that's my that's my ryan paint reminder talking of people coming from overseas i just hosted uh kate martin here for a couple of days she's flown down from new york to visit australia before the brisbane masters yeah i think a flight that delayed due to a hurricane or bad weather so she was a day late so we tried to to compact four days worth of stuff in in two and a half days that sucks she missed oh boy that's that's brutal yeah she was a little bit jet lagged poor thing so uh i was manically trying to show her around the city and and she tapped me on the shoulder at a certain point and was like i need to go home and shower please i've been on the air i've been flying for like two and a half days so So, yeah, we ran a little tournament in her name. It's already been approved by the IPA, so it's on there. If you jump on my profile, it's there. Cunt. Kate's Ultimate Nudge Tournament. Cunt. Yep, well done, well done. We did it. Yeah, that ran pretty smoothly. Ran A and B finals, Jeff, which is not a new thing, but I haven't done that in a very long time. So you had like a hybrid tournament or something like that? We just did best game qualifying, and then the top half played in A and the bottom half played in B, but it just meant everyone was playing some format of finals. That's good. Yeah, I said I haven't done that, haven't had the machines to do that in a long time. We talked about it a couple of episodes ago. When you do monthly tournaments on location, it's time constricted and machine restricted as well. So, yeah, that was good. All right. Well, that was pretty good. My two weeks or whatever, I came back obviously from Austria. I had a good time there. What else did I do? I've been kind of laying low because it's a busy July for me with Pinberg and the Beast, and that's coming up soon. And I also, I'm unfortunate not to be able to go to Sweeper City Pinball Championships, but I did want to give them a plug. I mean, if you can plug peepingdom.com, I can plug them. It's in Canton, Ohio. Good tournament run by Greg Kennedy, who made the trip to Australia last year, and Galvin Morgan, a couple of great players. You might have saw them at the World Championships in Austria. IFPA 20 won by Jason Zoller. And some thoughts on the IFPA 20. First of all, Zoller is a beast.
Greg Kennedy
person
Galvin Morganperson
IFPA (International Flipper Pinball Association)organization
Stern Pinballcompany
AtGamescompany
Zen Studioscompany
Final Round Pinball Podcastorganization
Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)event
The Beastevent
Brisbane Mastersevent
IFPA 20 World Championshipsevent
Flipper Friendsorganization
Attack from Marsgame
Medieval Madnessgame
Pinball Arcadeproduct
  • ?

    community_signal: Virtual pinball attracting 1000+ players within months on IFPA rankings; multiple platforms (AtGames, Zen Studios, Flipper Friends) hosting tournaments

    high · Ryan finding over 1000 players registered and 'Flipper Friends Tournament seems to be the number one' host

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Ryan predicts virtual pinball will overtake physical pinball within one year

    low · Ryan: 'I will see the boom in virtual pinball overtaking physical pinball in one year you heard it here first'

  • ?

    event_signal: World Championships rotation: IFPA 20 in Austria (July 2024), next event returns to North America, then Sweden 2027; demonstrates global competitive circuit

    high · Geoff: 'It'll come back to North America next year and then back to, I think, Sweden in 27'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Geoff argues that timed tournament formats (like Heads Up Challenge) would improve spectator appeal compared to traditional long-format tournaments

    medium · Geoff describing ESPN Heads Up Challenge as '30-second, two-minute challenges, zip, zip, speed runs' that 'people care about'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jason Zoller emerging as dominant force (back-to-back World Championship wins); Mad Ben Hand dominant in virtual pinball rankings

    high · Ryan: 'The greatest player in pinball right now is Jason Zoller from New Jersey. The greatest virtual pinball player also from New Jersey, Mad Ben Hand'

    • 7:34
    You know, Escher wasn't there, but you had Arvid, you had Vigo, you had all the likely superstars. And, you know, when push comes to shove, at the end of the day, Zoller wins it back-to-back. Pretty impressive. yeah i uh managed to wake up in the middle of the night accidentally and watch the last uh the last couple of rounds and i did see you commentating jeff that was fun to to watch you jdl pinball yep did you say jeff that you came back from austria is that what you said in the last two weeks i can't remember it's been i well i don't remember when we recorded i'm so confused what were you doing in austria i was there for the epc we might have talked about i really you're Right, I do take a while to edit these shows, so I could have been there and back and not talked about it. Anyway, I had a great time. Austria, they had the World Championships four weeks later, different location. I believe it was in Graz or near Graz. Okay, that's why I was getting confused. I'm like, I saw you commentating, but you were not in the booth. Yeah, no, pretty impressive. It'll come back to North America next year and then back to, I think, Sweden in 27. So, rotates. Hey, Jason Lambert. I was given some plugs for you. I'd love to see it in Australia. Put something together. Make it happen. I think that would be fantastic. You certainly have world-class events like BPAC coming up. It might be pretty cool to have all these great pinball players come to Australia. I think that would be something. Maybe shoot for that for maybe $29. Who knows? Get on it, Lambo. How does it work, Jeff? There's a lot of the people that are playing in Worlds from the U.S. the further away from the US it is. I'm guessing there's a certain amount of people that don't go or don't want to go. Maybe the price or the distance is too far. Do we see that this year? Do you know what? I think it goes both ways. And I used to think it was one way, but when I really looked at it, it does kind of go both ways. So when the event is in Europe, as it just was in Austria, a lot of the Europeans who qualify go, yeah, I'm going to go. It's a short flight or a train ride or whatever it may be. Timber drove from Belgium to Austria. So, I mean, that's only 11 hours. I mean, it's doable when it's in Europe. So not as doable if you're an American trying to go to Europe. Conversely, when it was at Jim Belcido's last year, kind of in a beautiful area in California, not the most convenient for a lot of Europeans. So I think whenever the event is in North America, you see a lot more Americans say, yeah, yeah, I'll go because it's a domestic flight. When it's in Europe, you see certainly more Europeans go, yeah, I'm going. Whereas a lot of the great players I've seen not come to North America when it's been here. So it goes both ways. So I guess Australia is that one extra step where New Zealanders and Australians will be like, yeah i'll come but everyone from europe and there's a lot of people i talk to when i i travel that want to come to australia but it's just something that is on people's list forever and there's a high chance that it just never gets fulfilled because it's so far away and removed from a lot of the world i like to think that this show and maybe even head to head prior to that has really tweaked the interest of a lot of people for Australia, certainly for pinball in Australia. I guess Brisbane Masters does a good job too, and that's coming up. But, yeah, are you kidding me? I'm looking forward to my next trip to Australia. So you heard it. I'll be back. Are we running a tournament, Jeff? We will. You've got to try to knock off the champ because the last time I checked, I've never lost when I've been on Australia. Does it have to be an IFBA tournament, or can we make one that gives you some kind of handicap? can we break some IFPA rules to make it fun? That's fine. Sure, do that. Then I'll still be the undefeated IFPA all-time champion. You want to do that? Go ahead. Okay, all right. Yeah, no, it'll be an IFPA comp. Okay, jeez. You made me drink fireball shots out of a penis cup. I had 20 shots. Yes, folks, 20 shots at the age of 50 and still beat all these Aussies.
    11:51
    Jeez, what did I do? I think the fires were raging in Australia at the time. this is right before covid and we said uh if you donate money uh towards some kind of charity jeff will be forced to drink a shot which is such an arsehole thing to do because then if jeff doesn't drink then you know money doesn't get donated to charity i had every one of them and then if you beat jeff in a flipper frenzy match over three hours or something so those two things combined jeff was was was pretty hammered but still won the inside still won still still the defending champ that's right you're darn right last little bit on that it's is besides the glory and the whoppers money wise are people making back if they're traveling across the world are they making back their money only if they finish first or second like what's Probably top eight, probably top eight maybe. But, I mean, certainly it's more expensive for the North Americans to go to Austria. Austria is a little inconvenient. It's great, trust me. Anne and I were just talking before we started recording about places we're going to go to, and I mentioned Austria, to go back even as early as next year. And we were both gung-ho on it. But it's, I mean, to get to Vienna, piece of cake. But everywhere else, not so much. It's a lot of train rides. It's not impossible. And it's not even that expensive. It's just I flew into Vienna to then immediately hop on a three-hour train ride to get to the EPC. So it's a bit of a hike here and there. I'm sure a car would have been maybe as fast, a little faster, but whatever. I would have liked to see more of the countryside. That's what I like about when people go on these big trips. You get to see a lot of the social media photos of where people have gone. I know it's not just Austria. I think Colin McAlpine has spent some time, I think, in Prague, and Derek Price has posted a bunch of great, cool pictures. I like that. But as far as the IFPA itself, you know, I did see a lot of social media posts about the tournament itself, and I saw it online when I was commentating. Oh, my God, it's taking a long time. Where's the clock? Where's the timer? I agree with every one of those comments. I'm not banging that drum anymore because it goes on deaf ears. Josh Sharp doesn't care. I think he would care if an opponent said, put that person on a clock. Then he would have to. It's in the rules. Okay, I'll put them on the clock. Or he would say, well, you know, maybe, and I'm not saying this, but somebody may think about this, may have a medical condition, right? You wouldn't want that to penalize a player, and I wouldn't do that either myself. What kind of medical condition are we talking about, Jeff? I'm allergic to... No, I'll give you an example for me. For me. You have to crop dust every... No. Well, here's the problem with the crop dusting. You've only got so many bullets in the chamber before the next one you fire isn't just dust. Anyway, so I was playing one time at Maple, and it was playoffs. I'm like, hey, I really... I got to go. If I didn't go, they would have shut that place down. Hazmat suit. It would have been contaminated, done.
    15:12
    They were kind enough. So that would be, that's me using me as an example. That would be a medical condition where, you know, common sense prevailed there. Wait, are you talking about needing to take a shit is a medical condition, Jeff? Sure. You could have IBS. You could have Crohn's. There's all kinds of things. Absolutely. For sure. I just came back from Bali, so I know all about IBS. Hey, man. I did like Bali. it was nice indonesia is great i didn't do some of the remote stuff that you did i would have enjoyed that but uh i don't think i'll ever set foot in there again and there's nothing wrong with it i just almost died when i was there had to get a doctor intravenous to keep me alive and then go to australia a few days later and still win the fucking tournament but uh yeah my bali days are done don't drink the tap water there don't think i didn't i didn't even have salad because i was worried about them washing the lettuce i don't know yeah truthfully it was right before covid maybe i had covid like really don't know yeah i've heard so many of those stories recently of people getting deathly ill uh right before covid and and you know thinking maybe they somehow got the first strain of it but you want to talk about a medical condition nothing was staying in there. You pick an end, it came out of... Oh, God.
    16:36
    Back to the World Championships. We're really good at kicking on top of it today. So, again, about the timing thing. I will say this about the timing thing. Again, going on deaf ears, and I know Josh Sharp listens to this program, as soon as it's out, I'll get an email right away. But so do a lot of the top players. Pinball is at a standstill right now. You can show me all the numbers showing tournaments are growing in number of games played, number of people. Yeah, that increases every year. Whatever. It's not an exponential increase. It's at a standstill because of the way we play our tournaments. And nobody in their right mind wants to watch a competition where somebody takes five minutes in between a ball or waits for a tilt bob to settle or cradles up, makes a decision. or in between balls, all that stuff. That's just that part. What about the game itself? Only diehard pinheads want to see our long game. Because you know who doesn't? The common person who is turned off probably pretty quickly. And I really wish someday, and it won't happen with the name IFPA, I'll tell you that right now. I wish somebody would put together something and the pinball players would back it where they said, Okay every game is pick the number of minutes five minutes ten minutes whatever it is and then you done Next person up because I watching pool i watching darts i watching big crowds for all these things freaking bowling all these sports what was the one i watched the lumberjack competition you know where they had to climb a tree chop off a bunch of axe do a bunch of saws all this kind of stuff but it was all speed based everything was speed based everything was timed. It wasn't, oh my god, it wasn't an endurance. You know what doesn't do well on watching on big sports? How many times you watch marathons? The Boston Marathon's great, and don't get me wrong, and the big one in Chicago, they're all great and stuff, but no one's sitting and watching that. You might watch the highlights at the end to see who came in under two hours. They watched the Tour de France, though.
    18:49
    Okay, the Tour de France? That's also high-paced speed, though, and dangerous turns and everything else, you don't see too many people in the Tour de France doing a lot of pit stops or coasting or putting on the brakes. Waiting five minutes to walk up to their ball. Like even the Indy 500, right? That's a long race, and a lot of the F1 races, those are long races, but it's high speed. It's dangerous. Pinball?
    19:15
    I don't know. We're at a standstill. I think, Jeff, that even if you created this amazing format that you're talking about. It still involves Pimble Machine where people don't know the rules of what's going on unless you play the most simple game, you know, something like Stars where it's like, see these things here, you have to collect the stars and hit the thing and you get lots of points. All the things that you mentioned, Jeff, Lumberjack, I've never watched it, but I'm pretty sure I am the fan of all of it. They have huge fucking crowds, massive crowds. Yes, that's, sorry, I've never watched it as in like I'm not going to pretend to know the rules of it, but I can guess what the rule is. Even in poker, they edit it down to only show the highlights because it's such a long, long grind. How are we going to do that in pinball? Edit it down or just make the game five, ten minutes each? There you go. Boom. Go. You know who doesn't give a flying fuck about this? Major networks. Anybody who wants to broadcast this. And Twitch ain't a major network. Sorry, kids. It's fun. It's good for us. But it's not a major network. And ESPN, the only thing they show on the Ocho or whatever, and I saw it was posted here, is things like the Heads Up Challenge. What's that? 30-second, two-minute challenges, zip, zip, speed runs. That's what people care about. And Hello Stern or anybody else, the reason I think this matters is because that draws eyes to people. If the networks are interested in that and it's showing people, holy shit, look at this brand-new Elton John game, this brand-new Jaws game, King Kong, whatever the game is, you pick it, Harry Potter, people are going to be like, oh, wow, I didn't know they still made these. and you're going to go through that again, but it's going to make some sales. I know you're pretty close to running the beast. It's not too far away, so I don't know if you can change anything, but it sounds like this is something that would be great to try out. Like when you're in disc, they have the high stakes, which I believe wasn't an IFBA tournament one of the years, maybe last year or this year because of the format. Because of the number of players they took to the playoffs. okay so you know this thing whoppers wise would be worth nothing which you know some people will care about some people won't but if you if you involve money and you're at a tournament where there are pinball tournaments that are worth whoppers etc wouldn't somewhere like the beast be a great place to to trial this out you're streaming it what's stopping you from doing it well why do people go to pinball tournaments the third reason i'm starting at number three is probably the social aspect. But the first or second, and flip-flop depending on who you are, is the whoppers available and the prize money available. So unfortunately, if you ran this idea, right now it's not endorsed. So there would be zero whoppers. Without the whoppers, you don't have the people. You would need a place like an expo where you have high-volume people or Texas Pinball Festival, maybe an Indisc, where you did something like this. And actually, they did do this at Indisc. They had a heads-up challenge, and it was fantastic. And I don't think it was IFPA, but they had a built-in crowd of, I don't know, 300, 400 players. And it did really well. I remember watching Ray Day play it. I can't remember if Escher won or not, but they did do it. But it's quick. My God, you could do a lot of them. Imagine that. But why do people play competitive pinball? So, okay, I'm confused, Jeff, because what are you trying to say? Are you calling out to, say, Josh Sharp? We're not growing exponentially in pinball and competitive pinball. It will grow, but I'm not talking like, holy shit, there was this boom all of a sudden. That won't happen the way we're doing it. And especially the way the IFPA makes these things go longer and longer and longer and longer. We had something that was kind of cool in the flip frenzy. Nerf, done, no one does that anymore. That got a lot of people kind of interested in it. Oh, wow, and they could see the little ratings and stuff. But it affected the top players. They didn't like the efficiency of it. Wah, wah, wah. Right now, look at things you've got to do. You've got to play X amount of hours. You've got to have 24 people in the playoffs to get the certified. You've got to have the playoffs on a different day. You've got to have 50 games played to get maximum TGP. It's endurance. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it because people go to it. People are interested. Is it bringing new people to pinball? I don't know. You talked about it last week. I hate seeing things happen in our small community that affect us negatively because it is a small community. yes it is a small community how would we make it bigger is my question by the way i see in your little show notes about stern giving away pinball machines does that make it bigger maybe if i was to put my josh sharp hat on uh i believe his response and you know him better than me i believe his response to this if he was on the show would be like he would oh i know what you'd say go ahead okay he would say if you think that what's going to grow pinball is to make it fun and run these cool wacky formats then what's stopping you from doing it full stop just do it which i think that maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle of you and josh as i said you're running it you're running the beast jeff if what you're talking about is so efficient surely you know i said probably this year you've already got a full schedule but next year you could run a side tournament where you can say hey this is not worth any whoppers but it's this many dollars entry fee let's stream it let's see how interesting we can make it what's stopping you from doing something like that the problem is the time away from the other tournaments it's all about the time constraints because the other tournaments have to be so fucking long and not just mine but everyone's they have to be days of qualifying and one or two days of playoffs so where's the time to do this you would be cutting yourself off by doing that. You know, and this is the part that bothers me. I'm excited and kudos for the IFPA for doing the virtual pinball. Did you see that? They have rankings for that. No. They do. There was a request. On the IFPA website. Go look. Oh, my God. Where? Where am I clicking? Oh, virtual. What? Virtual. virtual how long has this been here for uh a few months but last time i looked what do we got here over a thousand players in it and it's been only a few months over a thousand so there was a need for it i love how everyone's name is just their their username yeah yeah yeah rim daddy 69 what no it's not there is that you jess shankopotamus i'm looking yeah let's look at some of these names like yeah i i don't know why they have fake names kill lord 420 nice so i okay i have this was not on my radar at all where are they were these tournaments held in person like how do these things get verified and where are they done it's at games is that a thing forgive me at games the host is that games i gotta google this thing most of them are on Flipper Friends Tournament seems to be the number one. They must have been. Yeah, that's the AtGames one, but Zen Studios has got them. Again, kudos to the IFPA for doing this. And I'm dead serious about saying that because I think of what got me back into pinball and it was the pinball arcade and seeing, holy shit, there's Attack from Mars, there's Medieval Madness, there's all these games I used to play years ago. I don't see them anymore, but they're all right here and it plays and sounds and looks just the same. The gravity wasn't bad. I was having a ball with that. And there were little mini tournaments in there, and I got into that and then found out about real pinball. And I was like, okay. So pinball is not accessible. You know what is accessible? Virtual pinball. I love it. I think it's great. I really do. I'm not even shitting on the IFPA for saying about the time thing. I just wish that was a thing. I think that would be major growth and more eyes on something that is packaged together. There's nothing from that IFPA 20 you can package and put it on ESPN and make it exciting other than here's the winner. There's nothing you can do. You can do a couple of great saves, a couple of highlights, but it's a one-minute package at best. It's not a half-hour show like you can with the Heads Up Challenge or whatever I'm talking about. But anyway, in that sense, good for the IFPA for doing this virtual rank thing. You're obsessed now. You didn't even know about this. I know I'm clicking around and I'm I'm amazed that it's like it seems to be run like a real tournament there's TGP values uh I did click on the um at games website and they have basically a tournament every single week do you know how much the winner gets every single tournament Jeff how much 25 bucks but what's it cost them nothing no idea it's just I'm oh is there a dollar in this they're getting bigger numbers bigger numbers you know what it should be bitcoin let's be on if we're going to go virtual it should be bitcoin point zero zero zero zero zero one of the bitcoin yeah okay i'm gonna have to look into this because this is a whole new world that i didn't know about but pretty cool i like it and again i think of some of the young players that were really into video games and now they found pinball and because of how deep the rules are on video games when they come to pinball a game that looks deep to somebody who's old like me is nothing to a young person like oh got a piece of cake here's what here's what we do they absorb it so much better so hey i haven't heard any other podcast talk about this we will see the boom in virtual pinball overtaking physical pinball in one year you heard it here first i i okay two interesting things that I just thought about. One, when I play a tournament in my hometown for the very first time, I get a worldwide ranking. You drill down further, I get an Australian ranking. You drill down further and you get a state ranking. It seems to be that this is just, you get a virtual ranking because it's the interwebs. So it'd be interesting if they end up implementing that or if they can't figure that out because you can say you're anywhere. How can they prove you are where you are? How funny is this? The greatest player in pinball right now is Jason Zoller from New Jersey. The greatest virtual pinball player also from New Jersey, Mad Ben Hand. Oh, that's a name we'll be talking about for years. Old Mad Ben Hand or MBH as we like to call him. Let's get him on the show, Jeff. The best way to find out about this whole world is let's just get him on the show. He's on Twitch. That's his handle, MadBenHand. Ben Hand. You, sir, are a legend and maybe the greatest virtual player of all time. You are the Keith Elwin of virtual pinball. Mad Ben Hand from New Jersey. Yeah, he's way in front of everyone else. By the way, let's not... Knocking on the door is Tomato Grass from Tony, Alabama. He's only 30. So, Tomato Grass, we're keeping an eye on you, too. We'll keep you updated every week here on Final Round. Your home of virtual pinball. I'm interested to know if there is like a pinball person, I don't know how we're going to define it now, like an in-person pinball person that is high up on these ranking lists. I bet there are. Like is Mittens 7757, is that Jack Danger? You know, who are these people? Is Rimjob69, is that Escher Lefkoff? I don't know. By the way, who is the Josh Sharpe of virtual? Who is coming in second in all these big tournaments? Do they have majors? Oh, virtual. By the way, we have show notes. Virtual pinball wasn't on the show notes. We've spent 20 minutes on this damn thing. Sorry. Let's move on.
    31:18
    Okay. All right. What else is there to talk about, Jeff? Well, in the news, AI art was a bit of a controversy. Your thoughts? yeah so this is me having that little dig at you before about uh when you edit the podcast only because yeah we recorded that pretty much the day after harry potter was announced and um not that we the ai art wasn't there on uh the playfield when we saw it i just don't think anyone noticed it um until about a week later and that's my opinion on it really is that if someone didn't sit there and point it out to me and I didn't, uh, see all the outrage, I'm not sure if I would have noticed it now that I, that I do know about it, but it make me feel more compelled to buy the less compelled to buy the pinball machine. Maybe in, in the slightest, maybe by one or 2%, but the fact that I didn't notice it before my own accords tells me everything that I need to know about the outrage. What are your thoughts, Jeff? I, I haven't really done anything with AI yet. I mean, you tried to get me into chat GPT, and that's not even art.
    32:34
    And for what I do in radio, that probably could come in very handy. I know you did it in a previous career. You used chat GPT to do some presentations and stuff. I'm sure it could make mine better. I just haven't touched it yet. I'll get around to it, but I just... Sorry, Jeff, are you saying that you don't have a chat GPT account? Like you haven't had a little conversation with the robot yet? I did when you told me how to do it, but I can't remember the last time I've ever used it. Okay. But it's funny. Now, that being said, if I Google anything, if I type in my browser just anything, upcoming movies in 2025, the first thing that pops up is an AI overview. Yeah. So I guess I use AI all the time, but that's just Google. Yeah, I don't know. I think we're in the transition period right now, and who knows how long this transition period will last. But yeah, things are going to start to get enhanced and done with AI a lot more. And right now it's obvious because we're still learning the technology. The technology is still becoming better. but there will be a point where you won't know the difference anymore between something that was generated by AI. I'm sure it exists as well. I'm sure there's a bunch of pinball things. I mean, the whole Predator marketing was all, you can tell, was all AI-driven. People have talked about there's certain animations and videos on Kong that definitely look AI-generated. There's probably other stuff that exists that you haven't noticed.
    34:11
    I think the outrage comes from, like, well, there are a lot of pinball artists out there that can do amazing work. Why are you charging us the same amount but trying to save the money? I don't think that, personally, I don't think that argument is really valid. A company will save money where they can. If you want to point fingers and say, you know, this looks shit because this dragon has four eyes or this person has four fingers, that's them just fucking that part up. Should we let people in on a little secret? Go for it, Jeff. When we had Marty on our last episode, it was actually AI. It wasn't really Marty.
    34:54
    It sounded like him, didn't it? It was pretty good. It was good. Like the size, the gin gobbling in the background. The cheekiness, the hilarious, all that kind of bullshit stuff.
    35:09
    It won't actually be long. It won't actually be long where we can fake interview someone on the podcast.
    35:15
    We can do it now. Yeah, I kind of told you, Jeff, that I want to do, but I know that it might really piss off some people. It would only be as a joke to say, like, hey, and now we cross to Gary Stern to talk about the latest pinball machine and just have him just, you know, on the show for two minutes. But it didn't actually happen. But I just kind of want to do it to be like, that's how scary AI is. Like, be careful where you get your information from, because it's going to start to get really hot, Jeff. Well, I'm into sports and with baseball and stuff, I interview some players and whatnot for our radio stations. And let me just tell you that one of my favorite websites, I'm trying to find it on here. Let me look on Facebook. But it's basically sports interviews done by AI and it's just like the worst possible interviews you can ever imagine, and saying things that no one would say and it pretty close If I didn see and I wish I could see the name of the Facebook page if I didn see that it said AI I wouldn have known it I was like, oh boy, that's pretty close. It's really interesting with sports interviews over the years, and this is probably a long time ago, but I feel like in Australia anyway, they're given a very specific thing that they can talk about when they're being interviewed post-match, and it's basically the most generic thing. Like, well, yeah, there's no I in team and we all just go out and give our best and we just got to put one foot in front of the other and train. I'm not sure what it's like over there, but in Australia, you might as well just interview an AI robot. I'll give you the... On Facebook, it's called The Dangerous AI and it's just the interviews you want to see from your sports fans. The Dangerous AI. Give it a look. But do I have opinions of it? I like artists doing the work and honing their craft.
    37:10
    So that being said, years ago, Marty, maybe a couple years ago, Marty had me listen to a song. This was offline. I was like, oh, that's really good. It reminds me of, I don't know, Depeche Mode or something like that. He goes, yeah, I made it in 10 minutes. And so he made this song using whatever, it wasn't chat GPT, whatever AI program he had. And he said it took about three different trial runs to get it to where he wanted, I thought it was an amazing song. So that's kind of scary, but... I feel like, Jeff, I could really impress you. You're like an AI baby. After this show, I'm going to make a song about you crop dusting, and maybe I'll just write one little command. It'll be done in two minutes. By the time you air the show, maybe you can chuck it in the end part of the credits of the thing. What style do you want it in? What style? Do you want it in country? Well, no. One of my all-time favorite songs is Christopher Cross' Ride Like the Wind. And if you're doing crop dusting, Ride Like the Wind would be perfect.
    38:16
    You can't. I mean, I haven't made an AI song in a while. Made as in, like, you know, gone on a website and typed in three words and it spits out a song.
    38:27
    But my understanding is you can't. This is like they're stealing all the artwork from everyone. like AI is a collective, like, feed, everyone's working to the machine and it spits out something that it knows from everything. But you can't say, like, make it like this exact song, just change the lyrics. Just type in 80s yacht rock. 80s yacht rock? Okay. Yacht rock, yeah. Okay. It could be my new theme song, who knows? Okay. Maybe we'll stop getting copyright strikes if we generate a... There was a documentary on Yacht Rock. Bill Simmons made it. It's fantastic. If you haven't seen it, watch it. And I'm watching with Anne, and she is in front of me falling in love with a 1970s Michael McDonald of the Dew Brothers. Flowing hair, big beard, gorgeous eyes, all that kind of stuff. I said to Anne, I go, you would have done them back in the day. She goes, I'd do them right now.
    39:31
    So I laughed, you laughed. So that being said, the day after the Beast, I'm taking Anne to see the Doobie Brothers in concert, and I bought her a big Michael McDonald shirt that, I mean, she was out doing some gardening, and she goes, I've got to take this off. I'm like, why? And I go, I don't want to get dirty.
    39:52
    So anyway, yeah, a little yacht rock. But speaking of music, by the way, I've got to bring this up because, again, And today's July 6th. Yesterday, you probably have no freaking clue because of the shit music you like. But back in a little town called Birmingham, north of London, there was this little band. Once they were known by the name Earth. They later changed their name to Black Sabbath. They were the fathers of heavy metal. And Ozzy Osbourne was lead singer. Tony Omi, Bill Ward, and Geezer Butler.
    40:24
    They called it a career, capping off the final show ever. but it wasn't just them. Ozzy, sadly, with his sickness, and I'm not sure what he has. Forgive me, but I think it's Parkinson's. I could be wrong, but he's bound to a chair.
    40:39
    He gave it his all. He sang his Black Sabbath songs, Ozzy, but then there was Metallica before that, Guns N' Roses, Gojira.
    40:47
    Who else was there? Just tons and tons. Tool, just legends that came up. Pantera, what a show. It was great. I think Levy went from New York. And if he did, Levy, you're my hero because that would have been a great show to see. It was just one show. One show. Everyone played about 25 minutes, but they kind of did it. Guns and Roses. Holy shit. It was fucking awesome. Today, I've watched it already. It happened yesterday, and I watched it, and I was just in awe of how good it was. And everyone doing their either Aussie or Black Sabbath covers. So much fun. Good crowd. And the reason I bring it up is because I think I got into radio not because I like to talk, because I actually love music, love, love music. And I have been fortunate to see a lot of bands in my day. And some of my favorite bands, I can't bring myself to see them anymore because, sadly, time hasn't been too kind to them.
    41:48
    Maybe can't hit the notes, can't play the songs, whatever it may be. so I try to remember them when I saw them when they were in their prime now that being said I took Carson to go see a band called ZZ Top do you know them Ryan? Don't ZZ Top do the isn't that the getaway theme? They're on getaway, they're on Lethal Weapon yeah but the songs you hear on getaway and Lethal Weapon they sang in concert but they didn't really sing them I'm not saying AI I'm saying lip sync there were four songs that they just can't hit the notes. And you noticed, that's not his voice.
    42:27
    And it kind of was a little off-putting. Now, that being said, if you watched the Black Sabbath show yesterday, Ozzy sang all of his songs. Not very well, but I was okay with it. I admired that he did it. Whereas the last time Ozzy played with Black Sabbath in 2013 or 17, whenever it was, there were a lot of, again, lip-sync songs. And I'm like, ooh, I think I would rather see them sing it and sing them poorly than the lip sync show. Shit, I saw Lenny Kravitz in 2002. So he's in his 30s back then. And he was lip syncing a few songs. I was like, come on. They were filming something for a video, so it had to be just perfect. And I was like, dude, not cool. How can you tell, Jeff? Is it just because it's the exact same as what's on a CD, so you're organising stuff? that concert I happened to be in the front row and Lenny likes to kind of dance back and forth like swing his head around and when you swing your head around on a microphone you hear how it's going off mic and stuff like that well when you're doing that and you're singing a song you would hear the voice disappear so that's how I knew I was like come on anyway so there was that pinball no fuck this more music no you want to do didn't have music jaws 70 75th anniversary what do you what do you think jeff okay i'll talk about jaws 70th if we can take this into movies afterwards because heaven forbid this be a podcast about pinball the only time i will talk pinball is virtual pinball but by the way jaws 50th not 70th they did this with godzilla 70th on an l1 game hmm they did this with Jurassic Park 30th on an L1 game. Want my thoughts on it? Sounds like they're keeping the production line going at Stern. Sounds like there's not a lot of tweaks to that to keep that going. I think the timing of it is terrible and doesn't make sense to me. But what do I know? Could you imagine Godzilla being out of production and they do Godzilla 75th? Oh, fuck. I never got one of those. I'm just into pinball now. Now I got a chance to get it. I'll take the black and white 75th. I don't understand why you need Jaws 50th when you can buy Jaws right now. I don't get it. Explain to me. I don't get it. Because they can't do a Jaws 50 first or 50 second. Then do a Jaws 60th. It's already in production. Pinball might not be around in 10 years, Jeff. That's way too long. Tell me something. Does somebody buy Jaws 50th that wasn't going to buy the Jaws anyway? Ah, fuck. I don't know if I want Jaws. Oh, it's a 50th? I've got to have it now. a very small amount of people, but still someone. They're not selling zero of them. And it's not costing him that much more. Like, it probably just took a... This is me totally underestimating how hard it is to make a different pin machine. It probably just took him a couple of days. A meeting with Keith and George and the crew. All right, what do we do? All right, we've got this armor. Let's do this. Let's put a hologram sticker on there. Let's do it. I think they're damned either way. If they make it really good, people are like, ah, you undervalued my pinball machine. And if they make it really average, I want to say, like, it's not average, but it's just not, like, people aren't selling their premiums to buy this. Then people are like, why'd they do it? How can they win, Jeff? They can't fucking win. They just, they want to make money. Don't do it. What do you mean don't do it? Why wouldn't they do it? Why are you doing it? Because don't give a shit about anything except making money. It's a business. They're in the business of making money, and they will pretend that they're in the business of making everyone really happy, but the way they make everyone happy is by you giving them money. It's a business, so they will sell the shit out of anything they can, and they will re-release pinball machines like Metallica and Tron and Lord of the Rings and all these pinball machines they're going to do that's going to fuck up the resale value of pinball machines in the second-hand market. Who cares what I don't... And they don't care... Yeah, but what do you... Who cares what the resale? What do you want them to care about, Jeff? Like, what are you saying they don't care about? You've already got the main machine in production. Why are you doing this? It's just another option. Why do you have just, you know, why do you only have 70 flavors of ice cream? Why don't you just sell vanilla ice cream? Because people want variety. They want, like, a different choice. They want to say, I've got this version. Or if they were on the fence about buying it, they're like, okay, cool, I'll get this version. I don't understand the argument. I'll tell you why I liked Metallica when they came back. Because they tweaked it. They made it a little different. They changed the art package on it. They added stuff to it. And it had been out of production for a long time. Sign me up. That looks awesome. There's no lull between Jaws and Jaws 50th. There's no lull between Godzilla and Godzilla 70th. Why are they doing it? Well, they just happened to release Jaws 50, 49 years. But 50 is a number. Who gives a fucking shit? Is 70 a big number? I always thought 75 was bigger than 70. Like, why not wait five years? What I was trying to get at is that probably in the 60th anniversary of Jaws, there will be another version, and it'll be fucking way better than the one now. It's just, how do you improve a game that is pretty good after a year? I don't know. You can put a hologram on it. Like, there's nothing really great about it, but isn't that testament that the original game was pretty damn good? Oh, for sure. But I will never know how long this is going to be in production, how many units they're going to make, how many they're going to make distributors who have to buy.
    48:20
    It didn't look like a winner to me. I think, what did I hear? I heard someone say... Sorry, if you're going to give me something new, something new from something old, would you rather give me Jaws 50th or, hey, here's Lord of the Rings, or, hey, here's Tron, or, hey, here's something you haven't seen in a long time? there are so many choices with pinball machines at the moment that we like i think pinball people want everything like as podcasters would be like wow this is the greatest thing ever and is but everyone wants to shit on every release like it has to be the greatest thing ever like we are so spoiled no choice at the moment no it's not that it's it's it is 100 about timing i'm not talking about all those games i mentioned are great games the timing of it is not good look what Chicago Gaming has made a business model out of bringing back games you haven't seen in a long time and doing slight tweaks to them, and they've done pretty darn good with the ones they've released. For them, in fact. Because we haven't seen them in a long time. People are like, I've got to get my hands on that. Oh my god, and it's new, it's not going to be 30 years old. Not, oh, my god, there's a Jaws 50th, because my Jaws machine from a year ago is too old. Forget it.
    49:26
    This doesn't make sense to me, because Stern are doing that, i.e. Metallica. they're just that's right that was i loved it that made sense but they're also doing other stuff like do people want stern to only release the things that they really want or can they release maybe the argument is there are too many pinball machines coming out right now is that the argument no no the argument is i don't think anybody wants jaws 50th that's what i think it is everyone who bought a jaws has already bought a jaws yes they can tap into it again in a in a in a couple of 10 years would be huge oh my god and they probably will do it they're just like as you said they gotta keep because they gotta keep the line moving jeff and they that's the answer money yeah i'm not i'm not arguing that we're on the same page about this jeff we're just not using the same words they like to make money it is they're not going to make that much money off this compared to any of their other pin washings that they've re-released and that's okay like it's just it's just a Instead of releasing Jaws three years ago and then this would have been like, wow, or they could have done something better, they accidentally released it last year and there was only a one-year gap. That's all it is, Jeff. It's just bad timing. It's terrible timing, just like Godzilla was.
    50:40
    Just like Elvira, Blood Red. Although maybe not so much that one because did they limit the number of Elviras? If they did, then it made sense to do another version. If you couldn't get the original Elvira, House of Horrors, than when they did the other one. That makes sense. But there's no shortage of Jaws. There's no shortage of Jurassic Park. There's no shortage of Godzilla machines. So I don't get it. But anyway, I hope I'm wrong. I really do because I want everyone to succeed, but I just couldn't give a flying poop about that at all. And there's a lot of Popsicle references. Oh, boy.
    51:18
    Red, white, and blue. Yikes. Good time to get into the powder coat business. If you are interested in a Jaws, regardless of what Jeff said, call Zach from Flippin' Out Pinball at 1-300-Zach-Greg-Bone-and-Ken-Crumwell.com.
    51:38
    By the way, I want to shout out to the Flippin' Out program. Congrats for them doing it. Ken's doing it with Greg. And also a shout out to our former pinball network because Dennis Creasel sent me a note saying, didn't realize you guys were doing a show again.
    51:56
    And he used our old URL that we had when we were on the Pinball Network and redirected it to our new one. So thanks, Dennis, for doing that. It was really nice that you didn't have to do that. And he just out of the blue did it, and I thought that was really cool. So who knows? We might have doubled our listeners to like 10 now. Seven, yeah. What's in the mail bowl bag?
    52:17
    Dude, we're going to get fucking sued. I've heard Bruce. He likes to litigate. Bruce and Ron are after us, so we will not, don't ever say mail ball bag again. Bruce is too busy getting his mail ball bag fondled on a cruise to sue us. He has no time. That guy is too busy on cruises. I will not use the term MBB again. So let's do something that is exclusively final round. Let's talk about repairs.
    52:47
    Actually, I do want to talk about repairs. what are you repairing jeff so i had league over at my house and i've got a i don't know if it's 1980 or whatever it is the old stern ali game that i got from pinberg and i noticed some of the lights were out and i went in and changed three 47 light bulbs now you may think big fucking deal that's a huge deal that i figured out that they were 47s that i actually found some 47s that I bent the frame back, changed the light, and you have to push it in a little bit and do a little twist, put the back in, mint. Mint game and league went off without a hitch. Every light was shown. That's a big, dude, that's a big repair for me. I did that all on my own. There was no one else, no help, and I even kept the old bulbs to show the guys over at league. I go, I'll show you. Jeff, pinballrepairs.com. Register it now, Jeff, before someone snipes you. This is, you know, fuck radio, fuck podcasting, fuck sales, fuck all the things you do to make money. Pinball Repairs. If you need your bulbs changed and you're in the Toronto area, $100 an hour, $50 call-out fee, Jeff will replace your bulbs for you. Plus the price of the bulbs. The bulbs, yes, yes. It's not included. Okay. Thank God it wasn't a socket. And I knew that could have been a problem. Now, that being said, I'll give another shout-out. What I want to do is learn how to put on those Yopskulls And Yopskulls helping us out at The Beast They sponsoring our class experiment David Yop has a wonderful place called Flipside in Memphis On a lot of these older games, they use those Yopsicles. So you don't need a socket. You don't need bulbs. You don't need to do LEDs. Like these Yopsicles, you put them on and they never grow. They're great. That's what I want to get in. I believe. I just tried. It's Yop. Yop with a P. Y-O-P-P. Yeah. Not popsicles, yopsicles. If you try it, I'm spelling it wrong because it keeps on saying, do you mean obstacles? No.
    54:53
    I think I have them in one of my games, but I believe they require soldering. Yeah, you've got to solder. Yeah, so do you know how to do that? No, no, no. No?
    55:05
    Not very well. I've done it a few times. This huge glob of solder is just like, it's not pretty. not to mention whatever falls in the bottom the first time you solder usually you do a lot of pasting it's kind of like pasting glue and it's it's not not a solid connection but maybe we can have some uh some video sessions jeff and i can give you some give you some tips but sure um yeah i believe i do have them in one or two of my machines which i didn't i didn't do the guy who repaired uh my pinball machines i do believe that if you if you own pinball machines this is You know, there's a certain level of comfortability. I always tell people that, you know, it would suck that if something really small broke, you would have to call someone out to fix because pinball machines do require regular maintenance depending on how many plays they get. But things just naturally need replacing. Rubbers, flippers, flipper shafts. Don't go to Slam Tilt Podcast. just email finalroundpinball at gmail.com. We'll do it in our repair segment. Ryan and I will deduce the problem. Don't you worry. I've started to get, I know this is a silly thing to say, but there was a period where I really just didn't like repairing my games. I still did it, obviously, but listening to pinball podcasts, like the Slamtail podcast, for example, while I'm fixing pinball machines, I can lose hours just doing it and I just get into this flow state of listening to Bruce and Ron either talk about repairing pinball machines or something highly politically incorrect and fixing pinball machines. And it's a great time. It's my hobby. I'm getting back into it. So thank you. Thank you, Bruce and Ron. You'll hear from our lawyers soon.
    57:05
    So game you love, game you hate. Yeah. Would you or would you not buy that? All right, go to eBay right now. We're going to give you a 12-digit number. We're going to give you a number.
    57:20
    Cornhole. Oh, it's a dildo. Okay. Too funny. Hey, let's talk about some other things that we've seen online. What is Linus Tech Tips?
    57:33
    Linus Tech Tips, I believe, is just a YouTube channel. I think it's also just a normal website, but it's a guy, it's a group, it's a company that talks about all things technology, upgrading your PC, hardware reviews. And I'm guessing the reason why you're asking me, Jeff, is I think the main guy from Linus Tech Tips happened to get a Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine delivered by Stern. Is that right? Did he win it? No, I don't think he won it. I think this is part of, I was adding on to your show notes, Jeff, about Jim Jefferies and, you know, the guy from Stranger Things.
    58:15
    There seems to be a certain type of celebrity social media influencer that are taking similar pictures in front of pinball machines and saying, thanks, Stern Pinball, for my latest pinball machine. and it's grabbing the attention of everyone because I think the unboxing video or the gameplay video from the Linus Tech Tips guy, I don't know his name, I don't think it's on their main channel, I think it's on his sub-channel, I think the comparison was his video of him talking about and playing Dungeons and Dragons was released maybe a week after all of the Harry potter videos and that video had more views than all of the videos combined from harry potter which doesn't equate to sales but you know when you talk about expanding the hobby and and getting pinball in the public eye uh i guess i guess that's how you do it it is how you do it so you don't need a closing rate with the number of views that you have oh we're only at 0.01 percent uh get it in front of eyes. Let people make that decision. Let them kick the tires.
    59:25
    That's their job is to sell the sizzle, not the steak. You ever heard that term? That's what we do in radio. We try to get you interested in the thing. It's up to the salespeople to go on and make you sell it afterwards. But, yeah, so get it in front of as many eyes as possible. The Jim Jefferies thing is really cool. Yeah, he's got a King Kong machine. By the way, I think I told you this on a previous podcast, or you're Australian. He is one of the funniest guys. I listen to his At This Moment podcast all the time. That's my jam. He does this with his buddy Amos, and holy cow, are they funny. I took Anne to go see, it was Father's Day. We went and saw Jim Jefferies.
    60:03
    And yeah, he's got a King Kong machine. I'm just shocked at how much pinball I've seen in the media. I just went and saw the F1 movie, the Brad Pitt movie, which is awesome, by the way. It was really cool. It starts off by playing Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, and they don't cut the song. They play the whole song. It's the best video for Led Zeppelin's Whole I Love ever.
    60:24
    With all the racing in the background. They're playing Grand Prix Pinball Machine. They had a trailer before that for the Bob Odenkirk sequel called Nobody 2. They're playing Iron Maiden Pinball Machine in that. And then Jim Jefferies. Lots of pinball. Well, maybe pinball is coming back, Jeff. Maybe there is exponential growth. Just not in... It's not the IFPA doing it. Not the IFPA. wasn't there wasn't there a movie about competitive pinball that like during covers do you know what i'm talking about there was some movie that came out like some d-grade movie uh it was filmed at it was filmed at portal just outside of atlanta georgia i think aceworth georgia um where dalton plays yeah it was it was filmed there i i saw a bit of it and didn't see the rest of it. Yeah, it was, I don't remember if it was about competitive pinball, but it was pinball based. Sure. Listen, again, watch it, that F1 movie, Brad Pitt, speaking of, you know, Michael McDonald in his heyday being hot stuff in the 70s, I'm watching Brad Pitt at 61 years old, shirt off, and I'm looking at Ann and I'm like, that's just, I'm like, that's just not even fair. Like, he's 61. Is that your whole past, Jeff? Is that your, Me and Brad Pitt? Yeah. Me? I got a semi. No, I'm just saying. I'm watching. I'm like, that's not even fair. He's 61. Their guy's 50. Their guy's 40. There are guys 30 who would like to look like that. That's not fair. He's wrecking it for everyone.
    61:59
    Although. Maybe. Yes. Maybe he gets your partners all fired up and they close their eyes and pretend. I'll take it. It counts. You'll never know, Jeff. You'll never know. As long as I'm participating, that's fine.
    62:14
    Oh, Jeff. You called me Brad. Shut up. Go with it. Shut up. Maybe the next big movie, Jeff, that really elevates pinball will be about Mad Ben Hen. The number one. The virtual god of pinball.
    62:36
    We'll do virtual updates. no other podcast does that take that yeah let's do okay if we can't steal segments from slam tilt podcast let's do what do we get we'll think of a name I'll generate a theme song on AI well everything's gonna be virtual everything's gonna be AI enhanced and computer enhanced let's do it by the way I don't have I was almost set at the MBB I don't have our mail open but finalroundpinball at gmail.com we did get a lot of comments about Marty coming back. It was great to hear him. It had been a long time. I've already... I actually... I asked Marty to come on this show. He said, every few months or so. So he'll be back again, which is nice. But... I had dinner with him the other day, Jeff. And? It was great. Well, I let him order all the food, which is... I really love when people just like, yeah, I'll just do everything. And holy shit, I've got leftovers for a whole week. We... Nice. We had a feast. It was a great night. What did he talk about to you? I mean, to me, he just said it was, he said doing it, he was a little uncomfortable. But listening back, he just was giggling and laughing and loved it. So that was a good sign. We actually talked nothing about the podcast.
    64:01
    We talked about life and other things, Jeff. That's kind of all we talk about, too. Things that matter, right? virtual pinball we talked about virtual pinball who's gonna stop mad ben hen i guess i don't know he's pretty far ahead of everyone else you know what i want to find out okay we already know there's some goats in mad ben hen but who are and i'm sure they're out there who are the billy mitchells of virtual pinball uh who's regulating that who are the eric stones who are the people who play two games of virtual pinball and say, I fucked it, sorry, guys, I'm the worst at pinball, and then come back and blitz everyone and get into the finals. Who are the Eric Stones of virtual pinball? Is it Tomato Grass? Is it DrFreeman777? Who knows? Okay, all joking aside, do you think virtual pinball has a better chance of gaining a bigger audience than actual pinball? That's going to be really hard to answer because I actually haven't watched any of these things. I'm not saying we watch any of it, but I'm just saying. Yeah. Esports, hello. Because there's no barrier to entry except getting your parents to buy you a $10 thing versus a $12,000 pinball machine and going somewhere. Of course, this has a bigger opportunity. Yep.
    65:32
    Yeah. Interesting. if there's a flow on effects to the the boring old mechanical pinball then i'm i'm all for it so again this guy may be passe but he was a big thing at one time on twitch ninja and minecraft and all that kind of crap right who's the ninja of virtual pinball i don't know i'm gonna it's funny because when you click on someone's profile it does actually link to their twitch account so you can watch these people play um i've watched some virtual pinball on twitch yeah i'm gonna click on mad ben hen he actually isn't that far ahead of the the tomato guy who's just a little bit behind you think tomato tomato grass is playing possum waiting for the big one mad mad ben hen has four followers ben i thought four followers jeff is not a big streamer he's got five now he's got five and six you and me both are following him tomato grass doesn't he have a twitch thing oh god yeah sorry you're in the You're in the minor leagues. Please write in to finalroundpinball at gmail.com and let us know if you ever want us to talk about virtual pinball again because we have spent more than half of this podcast talking about this thing that nobody possibly cares about. We'll read it on the next MBB, I promise you.
    66:50
    Can't sue that. All right, that's enough. We'll talk again soon. For AI Ryan, I'm AI Jeff. Finalroundpinball.com. What? Go on. The Beast. The next time we talk, will the Beast be finished or Pinberg? When are we talking again, Jeff? Oh, after that, for sure. By the time I edit this, are you kidding me? Pinberg happens kind of the week after BPAC. So shout out to Brisbane Masters. Pinberg's happening. Pinberg and the Beast and even that Super Cities, you're going to watch them all on Fox Cities Pinball. So the Beast is coming up at Pocketeer Billiards. That's my Stern Pro Circuit event that I'm pretty excited. biggest one yet at Pocketeer Billiards in Buffalo, New York it's poor Kate, she's flying back from Brisbane and basically has 12 hours at home and then goes to Pinnberg and then goes to Beast right after go, go, go, that's the way to do it yeah, there's some people that are pretty pimple when she told me she was doing that I'm like holy shit, but yeah if you can use pimple as a as an excuse to fly places and go and check out koalas. I took her to the zoo, Jeff, and kangaroos, I mean, I'm pretty sure people that come from overseas want to see kangaroos hopping around. If you see them in the zoo, unfortunately, they just sit there and basically scratch their ass and balls. That's all they do is they just sit there and their giant claws just scratch their balls. That's all she saw. When you say you took her, did you take her or did you just kind of fly the drone over top of it? Have a look here. There you go. There are some balls scratching right there. All right, I've got to go. See you later. Bye.
    68:58
    We'll be right back. Where the crops won't grow Arcades, humlights, flash and gleam But Jeff's got a secret behind the machine A stealthy whisper A phantom sound Blame the breeze, blame the air Jeff's not the culprit, he's not there Crop dust trails where he's been Silent thunder rolling within Tokyo streets to London skies Pinball flips while the whispers fly Jeff's alibi, a sly grin so keen Leaves the crowd wondering what they've seen
    70:45
    Blame the locals, blame the sea Jeff just points as it wasn't me His legend grows with each arcade But the air's his mark that won't fade Pinball tilts and laughter roars But Jeff's escape leaves swinging doors A master of the game in the air Spreading chaos without a care
    71:19
    Thank you. While the whispers fly Jeff's alibi A sly grin so keen Leaves the crowd wondering What they've seen Blame the breeze Blame the sea Blame the breeze