Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, April 3rd. This is episode 164. I am Tony on a spare microphone. I am Dennis on a microphone. Tony got me for Christmas, but my real Christmas has not yet begun, maybe. No, trust me. It's just. No one knows what we're talking about. Yeah. We've missed the ability to do April Fool's yet again. I know. One of these days. We last saw each other actually a week ago because it was Texas Pinball Festival. Yes. But the listeners don't. And we'll get in. Don't you, guys? Shh. Shh. Don't worry. We're going to talk about Texas Pinball Festival. And we've got video game stuff. It's not just going to be a pinball episode. It's going to be a normal episode. But like we would normally do with a normal episode, we go over what's been going on. So aside from TPF, Tony, what's been going on? Well, I, being environmentally conscious and not wanting to bother my spouse and children, turned my computer off before we left to go to TPF. And you saved them $50 in power. Yes. I'm sure. I saved them 50-something. Because that's really more of a command center than it is a computer. Computer sounds like a guy that's got like a mini tower and then maybe one or possibly two monitors. That's all I got. Okay, so you turned it off. So I turned it off and then came back, got home on Sunday, and I sat down and I hit the power button to bring my computer online and it wouldn't turn on. Oh, the whole computer would. Well, no, the computer turned on, but the monitors were just garbage. Oh. All of them. All two of them. Yes. Both of the monitors were trash. And no matter what I shifted to, they were trash. Everything was trash. So I just shut it down and was like, I'll work on it tomorrow. Because it wasn't terribly late, but I hadn't seen my family. So I was doing family stuff Sunday night. So I start working on it Monday morning. and immediately I have a couple ideas. I'm working on it, and then I fall down like you do. I fell over. Oh, no. That's my Austin Powers. I'm sick, so write it in the Gamer's Podcast at gmail.com to let me know just how not British that Austin Powers was. You're right. Just enjoy the vocal fry. It's all I've got left. All right, so you fell. I fell. This has nothing to do with the monitor. Or did they trip you? They didn't trip me. I was working on them, and I went to sit down in my chair, and my chair had moved a little bit. So when I started to sit on it, it shot out and slammed into the wall. Oh, because it was a roller chair. Right, and I slammed into the ground flat on my back and laid there for a while and had an extended discussion if we needed to call 911 because I was in so much pain. So others were there? Yes. I was literally getting ready to take the kids to school and drop them off at school, and then I like was laying there in massive pain. And then I was like, no, I think I'll be okay. So my wife took the kids and went to school and I laid on the floor for a while. And eventually I got out. Now, this is a hint. Normally, when you're fine, you don't lay on the floor for an extent. Well, I mean, I do like normal because my back hurts and furniture. I often lay on the floor because it's so flat. Right. That it makes my back feel good. But I'm not lying there in pain. I'm lying there in comfort. Right, right. I was lying there in I can't stand up right now. Maybe when you get back from dropping the kids off at school, I'll be okay. You were thinking about all those stocks you could have bought in Life Alert. Right, exactly. I was thinking about it. It's like I spent the whole weekend at TPF, and I walked around, and with my new shoe things and all my stuff. Compared to Expo, you were super mobile. Yeah, I was super mobile. My feet didn't hurt. My legs didn't hurt. I felt great. We went to a Latin cuisine restaurant. Everyone else was complaining about how long the walk was. And Tony's like, what are they talking about? What is wrong with these people? It's like, we do this walk every year. This walk is a ritual. It's like a mile. It's part of it. It's like a mile. It's 15 minutes. So I spent most of the rest of the week on the couch or just wiped down. I did not work on my computer anymore until like this morning. Oh, yeah, so back to the computer story. Have you solved the problem? I've solved the problem. I had to change cables to something that could not handle the refresh rate because my monitors are 144 hertz monitors. I had my refresh rate at 144 hertz. So I switched to HDMI cables, which can't handle 144 hertz, which forced it down, which made the monitor it forced down worked. So I went in and I reset everything to 120 hertz on both monitors. They're fine. Went back to the digital. it's fine. For whatever reason, the monitors can't handle 144 hertz. So you're back to using the traditional cables too? No, I went back to my old, my fancy digital cables. I just turned the hertz down. They work fine at 120 hertz. Okay, so it's not the cables then? It's not the cables. It's not the port because you're using the same ports now. Right. It's just the refresh rate. It's just the refresh rate. I don't know if it's something on the graphics card just can't handle that refresh rate anymore because I've had it for a few years or if the monitors can't handle that refresh rate anymore. Both of them going out at the same time. It's like you buy a light bulb you buy a pack of light bulbs. They don't, even if you put them in at the same time, they don't burn out at the same time. I bet you it's a chip on the graphics card. That's my guess. So you know what that means? Time for a new card. $5,000. Yeah. It's kind of like what it is now. That's why I was like, oh, it works at 120 hertz. It's okay. I don't need to change nothing. 120 hertz is fine. It's perfectly fine. I mean, I'd pulled the graphics card out and I'd done all sorts of stuff. Yeah, that was that. But since I had no computer, I played zero games. Well, I mean, I played I played Balloon's Tower Defense on my tablet a little bit. Right, right. Well, that's not a computer game. That's a tablet. Right. Otherwise, I read, and that was most of it. I did. I mean, since I had no computer, I wasn't sitting at the computer, which means I didn't do what I normally do at the computer most of the time, which is scroll news. So it was actually probably really good for my mental health overall because I just streamed movies and TV and stuff to the TV and didn't do my normal, you know. See how bad the world is. See just what kind of a mess the world is. Yeah. I mean, it was a man. So it all worked out. How's your back now? My back's pretty good now. Okay. It's been, I was, by Thursday, I was back to my normal 75%. Well, it's definitely been an adventure, even post-TPF for you. It was something. I would have been, TPF was so much fun, and then I fell and killed myself. Yeah. And the real world was like, bam, right in the face. Yeah. Shovel to the net. That was actually, I've got a dog bed, a wooden dog bed, and it's got a wooden corner, and it hit my ear. That's how close I was to landing on the wooden corner of a dog bed, right where my spine joins my skull. So that would have been pretty bad. Yes. Instead, I just had massive pain. Yeah, massive pain. That went away. Yes. As opposed to no pain. Yes. Or anything else. Yeah. The risks of wooden dog beds, don't underestimate them. How have you been? Well, I actually, like many people at TPF, I got ill. The con crud. Yes, I have the infamous con crud. Those that remember the before times will remember that going to conventions often meant you caught something at some stage. Herpes. Along your way, yes. Possibly herpes, possibly something else. We don't know. So when we got back on Sunday, I felt fine. So Monday, I was starting to – my voice was off a bit, but I'd been talking so much at the conference, and it could very well have been that my voice was worn out. Right. And I was sore, but that's not surprising after spending all day in the car. So I was just like – I went about my Monday, and Monday I took off because Tuesday through Thursday, I had another conference. This wasn't a work conference. Which was even more fun. Which was even more fun. So Tuesday when I drove out there, I was not feeling great. Now, Monday, I took a COVID test just because I was going to do that no matter how I felt on the theory that I should really take some measures to not get a public health conference. And in fact, I was on the planning committee for that conference. And one of the things we had discussed was what to deal with the mask situation. Because again, everything's so political. Right. The question that came up was, how does it look if you have a public health conference and what its position is on masks? Like, are you sending a bad message? Are you not practicing what you preach? Now, masking in low transmission areas such as where TPF was, was already removed as a recommendation by CDC. And I checked before we left. There was a low transmission area. So anyway, for the health conference, the idea was, well, we'll just give everyone in their bag at the registration COVID tests. And the idea will be everyone should self-COVID test every morning. So that was their plan to solve that issue because it wasn't going to be practical logistically to run PCR tests on everyone at the entrance or anything like that. That was just a little too much. We probably have the tests, but it was just too time consuming. Anyway, COVID negative, go out there. But again, as we know, when you're not showing symptoms, antigen tests don't do a great job about detecting positivity. I have done five COVID tests now, thanks to all those free ones I had while I was at the conference. All of them have been negative. So, con crud, possibly allergies. My eyes have been super itchy, which is usually the absolute telltale sign that I have an allergy issue. It could be both, though. Yeah. Honestly, it probably was. So, I probably still don't sound great because my nose is kind of stuffy, but I don't feel bad anymore. But, so that conference was horrific because I just couldn't sleep. So I was operating on these, you know how it is. Oh, yeah. I'm waking up at all these hours, and I have to get up early, and I have to socialize with these people and try and do all the work stuff. And I was facilitating one session. I was just going to go in as an attendee, and last minute I got shoved into facilitating one session. And then at the conference, they shoved me into moderating another session, and it was just like, oh, my gosh, this is not going to go great. As of the last day of it, I was feeling better. But anyway, it just made it annoying. and then Friday all I wanted to do was sleep. But in that Friday off I had to work. So I got to work from home at least. Well, that's something. So as Tony can see, that's why I look totally trashed here. It's like I haven't shaved in three days. I haven't had to talk. You've got bags under your eyes. I'm still not sleeping as well as I would like. Still wondering about the like 12 empty bottles of Jameson laying around and all the glitter. Glitter. You know how that stuff is. You can't ever vacuum it up. It's true. I think I still have glitter from my niece's stickers down in my game room from when she was five. So anyway, so that's basically been it. Oh, in terms of I haven't played any games either. What I have done is, while all of this has been happening, TPF and all that, the big annual Watch World Convention in Geneva, Watches and Wonders, has been going on. It's actually still going on. It's like almost a week long, I think. So a lot of watch announcements have been coming out. So I have been doing videos for like, I just put out a second one last night. And so I'm going to have some content that I'll be able to go through for a while, which incidentally, this is about, it's been a year since I formed the channel. I'm about a hundred subs shy of being able to finally monetize that channel. Nice. But, um, so I thought finally some content, cause there's wasn't anything to talk about recently. So nobody wants to announce anything just before the big convention. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I mean, Omega did, but right. They don't, they don't do watches and wonders lately. They're trying to stand on their – I don't know. If it's going to be like an E3 thing or what. We'll do our own thing at the same time. Yeah, Watch World didn't handle COVID very well because they don't even handle online well. Like they're really bad at it. They're trying to get better. But that is for another show, not this show. So speaking of this show, let's go ahead and let's go into the pinball segment. And pinball will entirely be Texas Pinball Festival or TPF for those that don't know what we normally abbreviate it as. So let's do a breakdown. So you and I, we drove down on Thursday. Thank you. On Thursday, which is the day before the start. It starts in the early evening of Friday. Right. We found in our experience, we did that the first year. The first year. And it's like, I don't want to do anything. I'm tired. Because it's about an eight-hour drive for us. Right. Not counting stops. It's about eight hours just in the car. Overall, I think our trip down went fine. It wasn't eventful in any real way. Oklahoma remains the worst. This is true for the way back, too. It remains the worst about construction. It always is. I don't know if it's just that Kansas and Texas don't do as much or that Oklahoma is just really slow and bad about it. Well, I mean, I think the thing that confuses me is, And Kansas roads may not be as good as they used to be. We used to have a very good highway system. But most of our projects start in the summer, and they end usually in early to mid-fall before the snows start. I know Oklahoma gets less snow, but Texas gets less snow than Oklahoma does. Why are they doing projects in March? I don't understand. If you know, write into the Clicker Gamers Podcast at gmail.com. If you work for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, specifically if you are involved with letting projects, let us know what the logic is. Yeah. Just leave it off. It just really gets in our way in March. Yeah. Just stay off I-35. Now, it wasn't – it has not been as bad as it was the first couple of years we went where they're now seeming to do like these little stretches where it's like a mile or two, and then it's back, and then you go for a while, and then there's another little one-lane stretch. It wasn't like, here's five or ten miles in one lane. At 15 mile an hour, maybe. We did yet again. I think I've seen this every time I've run into this in Oklahoma. Yet again, had an instance where there was a semi that was like, people ain't going to be zippering on me. I'm going to drive in both lanes. Yep, that happens every time. So we get down there, and we go out to dinner with some people we know. We mentioned Gloria's. That's where we like to go on Thursdays. And let's go ahead and go into, people don't need our entire itinerary, so let's hit on some of the stuff we experienced at the show. And I think we should start with the P3 platform game, Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity. I'm going to say it was the only new game. I know I'm discounting like 2.0 kits, but in terms of a new full game reveal, as I think of it, Weird Al was the only one there. Right. And you and I got to play it multiple times. They had two available for play. One was an LE version and one was their standard edition version. We played both of them. Correct. So, Tony, what were your thoughts on Weird Al? Obviously, we don't have a ton of time on it. The lines were massive. Yeah, they were. The lines were really big. That game was popular. It was. I didn't mind it. It was fairly fun. Obviously, the music was in the call-outs that you could hear. It's hard. It's hard in a con. It's always hard in a show. But what I could hear sounded really good. I activated an interesting mode where it was purely based around the LCD screen, and a wall came up. Oh, you did germs. I did germs, and the wall came up. It completely blocked the upper play field, so it was all about hitting targets that were moving around on the LCD screen. That was pretty cool. But all in all, I enjoyed the game. I still, even after playing it multiple times, I might like Heist better. I still think I like Heist a little better Yeah I actually I mentioned similar on the last episode of the pinball show which I did solo after we got back from TPL Right I gave my thoughts on the game and it's like you know without more time on both it's really hard to pick they're both good games I think the layouts are designed well on both of them and I would say that it's so tough I guess my initial reaction is Heist as an overall package seems integrated better around the theme of it. Like there's a plot to it. Right. Whereas Weird Al is oriented around the songs, much like a music pin would be. So instead of, you know, they have the museum as the linking matter, but the songs are so disparate from one another that when you're playing it, you're in a mode and you're experiencing that. It's just a different experience. Right. And I like the more cohesive experience that Heist has with the story. You know, I prefer, but that's been true forever. I prefer story-based pins to music-based pins. And then, of course, the crane toy on Heist is just like, it's my most favorite toy ever. Right. Conceptually, I just think it's, I mean, this is really cool. I'd still it down to something so trite. It's cool. That's why it's cool. This is a really, the engineering behind it's cool. The use behind it's cool. but we're not here to give a love fest on heist um but yeah weirdo i thought was quite impressive and we talked a little i mean i didn't meet anyone at the show who who didn't like weirdo there there were people that didn't like the platform right like they're like they still didn't like how the flippers were i i struggled with the upper flippers yeah i see you want you want to touch on that well i just i did i i've never been happy with their little triple button flipper layout and the and i've never been real happy with the i'd prefer to be able to stage the flippers off of one button than having separate buttons for everything and i still think their flippers feel mushy oh even with the even with the new kits even with the new kits it's better but it's still yeah i still feel like it doesn't have the kind of snap i want yeah i mean they don't feel as snappy as stern's to me uh i but even the original p3s to me never felt mushy like how I felt with like JGP. No, yeah, they're not. They're not that bad. But others have said that they think I've met others like you that feel that they don't like the flippers very much. You know, I've been curious to try because I know you can go into the settings. Multiple people have told me you can go in the settings and set it so that you can use one button to work all the flippers. But my understanding and someone can write in if I'm incorrect on this, but the way it's set up is you wouldn't be able to stage them. If you do that, you'll push it. and then all of them will flip. And I don't know if I would want to sacrifice. I'm terrible at stage flipping, like in the proper Fancy Pants Pro player style, where I've got balls trapped up and I'm keeping the button halfway in so I can warp ramp on Star Trek and do all the cool things. But where I do like it is I have done it in things like multiball when things are going and maybe I want to just keep one ball trapped and try and do a quick flick or something. So I'm not sure. I do think I'd probably just get used to using a couple buttons instead and coping with that. The main item I pointed out, which, again, it wasn't about the Weardown module itself, but those two upper flippers, because they're flush to be out of the way, oh, that's the most frustrating thing for me because I can't see the flipper unless I put my head to the side. I don't play like that. You can kind of see there's a spot where you can kind of see where the end of the flipper is, but it makes it very hard for me to judge where I am on the flipper when I go to use it. So playing-wise, that was really the negative. I've learned to name a negative. That was the negative that stood out to me is I didn't enjoy my experience with those upper two flippers, and it was a visual thing. It wasn't a feel thing. But, you know, that's the way. I get the engineering compromise they made there because they don't want to make the owners take those flippers out all the time. Right. So they're putting away to be unobtrusive and not interfere with the geometry. I wonder if it would work out well if the module actually had markings to show at least where the flipper was. There was someone there, I can't remember who it was, who told me that there was something that they were able to use visually. I don't remember if they said it was an arrow or what. I didn't see it. I didn't notice it. Right. But, you know, again, old dog, new tricks sort of thing. Same like with the stage flipping and the use of one button. Maybe I'm just too used to judging the ball off of being able to see where it is relative to the rubber around the flipper that I would never adapt to another visual cue anyway, that I'm just too used to the old one. Could be. I don't know. I don't know. I am pretty old. But overall, the game, I think it was a great success. The show, a game of the show to me easily. And the crowds demonstrated it. I'm sure it's going to do even better now for Multimorphic. They already was doing well just on the theme. I believe I read they're already out over a year now on orders. So it sounds like it's performing very well relative to their capacity to build. Excellent. You know, I think this has put the company in an excellent position. and the experience, I mean, they were up most of the time. I only saw one of them was down the last day. The non-LE version was down for a little while. I don't know if it was down very long. I just saw someone was working on it. But, I mean, it's a serious stress test to put it at TPF. That ain't no joke. I mean, I've had games at shows that are less popular than TPF and manifested issues. And, of course, Jerry's P3s have been through the bringer before. I mean, I think he uses the same ones, by and large, same platforms for the shows. Right. So, I mean, they've taken a beating. They can hold up. So, anyway, really good job, I thought, out of Multimorphic. Mm-hmm. Now, here's a game that wasn't new to this show, but we finally, finally, finally, finally, we got to play them. We played them both. Halloween and Ultraman. Let me tell you. Games like sold out in a day. Let me tell you. All of you who successfully sold your spot in line on that game, oh, man, you're so lucky. That game is such a pile. Now, we've played them both. And as absurd as it seems, Ultraman is more fun. That doesn't mean it's fun. It just means it's more fun. I think it is the better theme wise of the two with how everything works and how everything looks and everything going on but yeah ouch do you think it's just theme or why do you think I do agree with you I actually thought Ultraman felt better executed well one of the things is like like the the plastics on Halloween, I felt like hit the ball more often than they did on Ultraman. Okay. So you would have bad timing or you, if you weren't paying exact attention to the exact spot, you'd have a worse timing issues because the ball was just, you never, you didn't see it as much. Both of them have like this plastic bridge thing and I hit it a lot. It's like just clear plastic. Oh, That's kind of over where the drop's in the middle. Right. I thought that was an airball protector. If it is I hit it a ton I hit it a lot I hit it a lot So either that game gets a lot of air balls or that thing just hangs down too low I don't know. But overall, neither of them were games that I would really want to go play a lot more. I didn't really enjoy either of them, but Ultraman, I thought, was better. Yeah. All right. Let me show some kindness. You being the second nicest person in pinball. I would be that regardless of how hard I am on Halloween and Ultraman. Niceness has nothing to do with how you treat a machine. Oh, no. Commander Data, that is your name. Let's take you apart and make humanity better. You're a machinist. All right. Art package on both. Not the screen. I'm talking art package on, like, the trans light sides. Excellent. Yes. Excellent job. And I do prefer the Ultraman art package. I do too. Even though I don't know Ultraman, and I am a Halloween fan. I own Halloween. I usually watch it approximately once a year. And Ultraman, I'm on Easter just to be contrary. Just like biting into those chocolate bunnies. That's right. Go into that laundry room. All right. I thought whoever, I'm assuming it's a sound alike, because I can't imagine they got clips from the movie, but the Dr. Loomis sound-alike for the call-outs on Halloween, pretty good. I thought he sounded like Dr. Loomis to me. I've not seen the movie since so long. I thought the call-outs were good. And at least in terms of Ultraman, I thought as near as I could tell, like the clip asset integration was pretty good. Yeah. All right, those are my positives. That's about it. Here's some stuff. You already touched on the, I guess it's the airball protector or the plastic, whatever. All right. Yeah, I was hitting it a lot, especially on Ultraman. I was hitting it a lot. That center ramp, it's so wide, but it's like rejecting all the time. Yeah. Like 80% plus, and I'm like, I'm hitting it. I mean, I see the ball go up, ball go down, knife go in, guts come out. I was just like, I don't, is there something up there that's saying, oh, you're not, you haven't qualified this and you can't? Or it felt like I was just bricking it, but it didn't look like I was. So I was very confused by that. Speaking of confusion, scoop shot on the right. This was just a, there was a flasher there on both. It was an exposed flasher on Ultraman. On Halloween, they had like a plastic pumpkin over it. Why does it flash at you after the ball goes in there? It's been a little bit. It flashes at that scoop, but then the ball comes out at the right flipper and not out of where the flashing is. Because they hit you? Yeah, I'm guessing it's to trick people, which is great, all at one time. Right. And then it comes rolling out of the in-lane of the right flipper. I mean, here's the thing about not like – And the plastics over those in-lanes mean you can't see nothing anyway. No, no. You just have to be aware of the timing. But there is a flash that goes down there. Yes. It's less noticeable because, especially on Ultraman, and this is one of the instances where I'll probably say Ultraman was worse. While there was, I do agree with you, it seemed like it was easier to see the ball on Ultraman, like they had less overall plastic. The flasher at the scoop where the ball doesn't come out was much more obtrusive because there was no cover over it. Right. Versus the pumpkin, which helped diffuse it. But the bottom line is it was always easier to see that flash than the flash down by the sling. My point with this whining, this is our show, we can whine about what we want is the whole purpose of a flasher at a point after a ball has been consumed by a scoop or a saucer or whatever is to let you know where it's coming out at. So if the plan is, Oh, I ha ha ha. I tricked you. Not only does that run counter to the purpose of it, the trick is stupid because after one time, you know, see that's right. I've where people say they don't like, if you don't know where the ball's coming out. Yeah. The first time, But after ball one, I understood any of the three scoops on the left would then come out of a, quote-unquote, hidden feed at the left flipper, and the scoop at the right came out of a hidden feed at the right flipper. So it was totally predictable. There was no variance. That's not my biggest complaint, though. My absolute biggest complaint was those scoops, those four scoops, the three head scoops on the left and the little flat, I'm going to call it flasher scoops. Flash the scoop. Flash the scoop on the right. Whee! Sorry. That this game was advertised as being a high-flow game when it came out is absolutely laughable. This is the most stop-and-go game I think I have ever played. Because you are waiting. Oh, my. Tony, the waiting. It been eight of all year. I was just like especially when you're not trying to activate hedge multiball and whatever the version is on Ultraman I totally understood it, really clear there's a little stand up by the hedge you hit that, qualifies the lock then you go in the relevant scoop you get all three of those scoops you start your multiball I think I did it on both games I definitely did it on Halloween I had a really good ball one the very first time I played Ultraman which I played Ultraman after I had played Halloween So I kind of knew the geometry already. But it's like, what about when you're not the world's greatest player? So you're like a me, and you're like, oh, I need the top scoop. Oh, I got the middle scoop again. Well, let's sit here and wait and wait for that ball to go down, do whatever, come up. Get a massage, stop the flies. Yeah, I think I heard something like, and people will know better. I'm assuming that's where this elevator system is because you don't hear a vertical up kick it's a quiet which goes up and releases that ball into the inline but you're just waiting just waiting and it's like I missed my shot but I got into a scoop because there are scoops everywhere so I'm waiting then I go and I pass it over to the right flipper and I do the shot again oops same wrong scoop or maybe a different wrong scoop if I'm down to just one left I have two wrong scoops over there let's wait again and let's wait again. And you can't see the ball the entire time. So for me, at least, you really feel that you're waiting. Yeah. You really feel it. And that's my biggest complaint. I just felt like I was waiting the whole time to play pinball. Yeah, it was weird. I activated a mode and it started showing a scene from a movie. And it's like, okay, I'll just sit here. I'm not going to hit flippers and try and skip anything because whatever. It felt like it was like a 42-minute... It felt like I watched the movie. But I'm sure it was only like 30 or 40 seconds of this scene. And I'm just like, this is way too long. And then it dropped the ball into one of those weird places. And suddenly the flashers start going, and the scene's still going on. And it's just like, what in the... It was terrible. It was... How would you compare these games to Rob Zombie? which I think we both would agree was Spooky's worst game. Setting aside maybe some of the contract games, which we didn't have a lot of time on, like Jetsons. Rob Zombie's prettier. It's got better call-outs. Honestly, I think it's more playable. Hmm. Yeah, I agree it has better call-outs. I don't know if I'd say it's prettier. Like, I hated Rob Zombie's play field. Now, the cab and the trans light were very, very good, but so was Ultraman's. True. So I'm torn there. Spooky's art packages, at least not kind of in Playfield art, have been pretty solid. I do think the Playfield art is better on Halloween and Ultraman than Rob Zombie, though. I think, and we didn't get deep enough in the rules on Halloween and Ultraman may have better rules than Rob Zombie did. I hate it. I never played the last version. We lost our location Rob Zombie. For those that don't know, we had Rob Zombie on location for a long time. A long time. And I played most of the code revisions other than the final one, which I'm sure made some improvements. But it was just not a very well-balanced game. I've heard Halloween is not yet very well-balanced, but it's also not to its 1.0 code, is my understanding. I don't know yet. Here's the thing. I don't know if this is worse than Rob Zombie. It's definitely kinder. Like, it was a lot easier to keep the ball in play. Yes. So, from like a... But does that count all the, you know, 15 and 20 second wait times while the ball takes a nap? It does. Unfortunately, it has to, because I have no way to just... Like, I didn't... I should have pulled out a stopwatch. So I got out my G-Shock and actively had a little timer to see, like, because the first time I played Ultraman, my ball one was long. And we were playing with the Looser Kid pinball podcast guys, and Scott had a really long ball, too. Two as in, well, both of our ball ones were so long, I think Josh asked us if we were going to take as long on ball two and ball three, because we only had 30 minutes until the line cue for the Twippies. And at this pace, we weren't going to be done in time, was the concern. Especially if you and Josh had ended up going just as long as we did. So, yeah, no, it would include that. So, in a way, I would say Ultraman and Halloween are probably friendlier games for someone, especially someone new to pinball. But I did not have fun with either of them. They're better than Rob Zombie. They're all still trash. But it's easier to shoot than Rob Zombie. I don't know. it's better. It was, I need more time to know for sure. But the problem is I don't really want more time on it. Does that make sense? It does. It does. Do you think that perhaps by the time it hits the 1.0 code and it is considered code complete, that they can make up for the terrible shots and the terrible no ball times and all the other built-in flaws to the system, do you think they can code around it enough to make it playable? For me, like playable in a sense that I would enjoy playing it, no. Because, however, as I noted, my fundamental problem isn't the rules, isn't exploits. I'm not even going to set aside things like the weird center ramp that is difficult to get up for no obvious reason, or the bridge airball blocker thing, which is kind of like, why are we airballing so much? saying all that aside it's just the fact the system they chose with all those scoops it's it was my gut reaction there are too many scoops on the game the thing is though like there's no way for them to program it in like TNA style that's what it would need you would need for me for me to like it to be able to even have the potential to like it that ball has to get back into play a lot quicker right and you remember with like TNA you're in the scoop a lot And Scott Danesi, he solved that issue by making that scoop an enemy. He's going to be like, bam, bam, bam. But this, you don't even need it to be like TNA. Why can't it be like firepower saucers when you don't have a ball lock qualified? It goes in. It's in there for, what, a second and then, boom, out. Or silver slugger, same way. It had a lot of kickout holes. You were in them a lot. You're not sitting there waiting unless there's a mode activating or something. And even then, it's only a few seconds. it's faster to get your ball back on silver slugger going into a mode than it is going into the top hedge scoop and then just waiting for your ball to come back on something you already qualified. Yeah. That's the gimmick to get the balls back to the flippers through the hidden system is slow. And my assumption, which may be wrong, but my assumption is there is no way that they can program that faster. And now I finally understand when I was following one of the Pinside threads, not the owner's thread, but a different thread. And they were discussing how they wished, like, the solution would have to be, given what they've done, I believe, based, you know, my agreement being with some on Pinside, was if there was a way for them to essentially stage balls. So when a ball goes in a scoop, there's already a ball that's saved down by the flipper. It comes out, and then the ball that goes into the hedge goes down and becomes the new staged ball. You'd have to do something like that. It's too late for that. Right. So the long answer to your question, now shortened, is no. No, that would be what I would need. It's just too slow. I want to play pinball. I don't want to wait. Devil's advocate. Sure. Maybe. Maybe they designed it to help bar owners so that people have a time to take a drink while they wait for the ball to return, because that's how long it takes. There are people, and I'm sure there are people, I know there are people, who love these games. And as is always the case, even when I strongly say this game is, you know, if I go and find a game and I say this game is trash, remember to follow your own opinion. Don't let Tony and me tell you what to like and don't like. We're just telling you what we like, and that's what we do is we give our opinions on this show, as is our right. Their opinion is not necessarily universal truths. Not necessarily, but maybe. It's our opinion that maybe, yes. But, no, here's the thing. That is a good point, Tony, about the take a time and enjoy the – there are designers who do that. Now, most of the time, they let you see the ball while it's happening, though. Now, I don't love that format, but that's a thing like Oktoberfest and the roller coaster ramp. That's part of that experience. George Gomez has designed ramps. I believe he said in interviews where he's like, oh, yeah, I did this so that the ball slows down at this point to give you a chance, to give you a chance to catch your breath, to give you a chance to do whatever. It's not my preferred format, but I'm totally cool with the idea of Ultraman and Halloween doing that. But it doesn't work. I mean, you're basically punished with waiting when you don't get the right shot on their most common multiball. Oh, but here's the thing. Any side-to-side action has a high risk of going in. There are three scoops over there. Three. That's one more than Kellogg's Raisin Bran. That's a lot of scoops. That's a lot of scoops. And there's one on the right, too. There are four scoops, and they're all like nom, nom, nom, nom. They're waiting. They're hiding in your closet. those scoops multiple times when they were not the target, just from bounce action. Yeah, as you would expect. And that's fine until it's not, and it's not, because it takes forever to get the ball back. If there's enough time that I can drop my hands from the machine, take a stretch, and go back to the machine, and it happens like every other shot, even unintentionally, there's a problem. It does. Anyway, that's my fundamental thing. The upper playfields, when I was up there on them, yeah, they're all right. You're not on there very long. There's not a lot to do up there. I'm not a huge upper play field fan, but those were okay. But it's such a small part of the game. Most of the time in the game is spent in a scoop. So that's my part. Anyway, I didn't like it. I didn't like it. If I spent more time on it, would I like it more? Maybe. But the bottom line is the game made me not want to put more time on it. That's how it is. I agree. All right. Were there any other games That you wanted to We didn't play We didn't play Totem 2.0 We didn't play I still haven't played Rick and Morty There were two of them there but every time I looked at it There was like a small line There was the Big Lebowski which we still haven't played It was only rivaled by Weird Al's line Of course there was only one TBL there There was an Alien there but I've already played Highways Alien so I wasn't interested Right And we spent most of our time interacting with people Over just wandering and playing We played some A nice restored Evil Knievel We did, that was the very first game we played There were a bunch of really nice Evil Knievels There was a whole Evil row And a lot of them were clear-coded It was very nicely done And we played a fair number of other games that were Fun and good I finally got to play Gottlieb's World Challenge Soccer Might have to go off my list Might have to go off the whistle Oh that was bad That was bad Carhop might be better Without the Rams I don't know I won so I was kind of happy There's that Alright well then The other major thing at the event That I think we should probably touch on Would be the Twippies You know we've Always attended the Twippies ever since they've been at TPF So we did it again this year. Tony, what are your thoughts on 2021's Twippies as celebrated in 2022? It was rough. It's like you're rough. You're so nice. It was rough. There were technical issues. Well, let me paint the positive scene, if you don't mind. You are the more positive person. You are the second nicest person in pinball. Yes. We met the nicest. That was the first person I think we spoke to on the TPF floor was Steven Bowden. Yes. Nicest person in pinball. Oh, we should. I'll do that for Rumor Corner. I can't say the source. I have some American pinball information. Okay. So we get done with Ultraman. Yeah. And we head over for the Twippies. the line is massive it is huge it is massive they got a little kind of cool little red carpet thing off to the side where people are doing like interviews and stuff which was a nice little kind of oscars-esque effect yeah bear in mind this is all like before we knew about the will smith uh chris rock thing right let's get it completely changed yeah yeah so we we can't we couldn't we weren't thinking any of those jokes at the time super long line longer than weird outline. It was like the only thing longer than the weird outline. I had serious considerations of we would actually be able to set. I was starting to get worried too because we were not anywhere near the front of the line. Thank you, Scoops. Maybe that's part of my bitterness. I don't like being in the back of the line thanks to Scoops. Anyway, alright. So we get in there. There is still seats available. We're not in the back row but we're pretty close to the back row. But we're not all that far away from one of the speakers. Right. Because there are these speakers mounted along the sides on stands. I mean, I'm like, I think I can read the brand of the speaker. We're close enough to it. So we're there. They got a bar in there. People are sitting down. Stage setup was cool. Yeah. They had all of the games that were up for awards were up on the stage. So you're like, you see a Halloween. You see a Godzilla. All that. That's it. Yeah. And they got the... Yeah. That's it. Well, really... That wasn't a Twippy spoiler. Spoilers! We covered all the winners. And so the show. I'm not really interested in going over all the... Well, honestly, the favorites I don't even remember all of. I'll just say congratulations to the people who did win. We're not being dismissive of it. It's just I don't want to pull up a list. Yeah. And in terms of the games, like Halloween got Best Topper. Godzilla won everything that was game oriented. Yes. Like everything else. Which it should have. You know, I still think it's incorrect that it won Best Theme. Theme integration, absolutely. Best Theme probably should have gone to Mandalorian. I just think, Broleg, I've mentioned this before. I'm not saying anything new. I don't like that category because it's just about who bought the best theme is what that is. What is that? The integration is what matters. I think theme integration should stay and theme should go. I mean, I struggle with the theme one on this, and this, like, who should have won it, because Godzilla is such a well-established, I mean, it's a well-established theme, so that makes sense to me. But which is more popular in today's world? I think, objectively, it's probably Mandalorian and Star Wars over Godzilla in Toho. But remember, the people voting on this are penheads, not the world. Yeah, but I remember people were before we saw Godzilla, there were a lot, I mean, you were an exception, Tony, because you were a Godzilla fan. I am. There were a lot of people who were like, oh my gosh, why are they doing Godzilla? Oh my gosh, why is Stern got Toho's Godzilla? Why aren't they doing the new Monsterverse Godzilla? Because they're smart. It turned out smart, but at the time, everyone was like, they're going to do a bad job, it's going to be dumb, they're not going to respect the property. People are like, they only took it to so that spooky couldn't have it okay i was gonna ask you speaking of are you glad that stern ended up getting godzilla i am glad stern got godzilla because it's a theme i love and they treated it with respect and they did it well and quite frankly i don't think spooky is capable of that shoot the wamps you didn't know i had a wimp come back in my pocket i was right it makes me laugh this is every time i've been i have been only playing in japanese but when i shoot the reps i just go shoot the whams it makes me laugh every time anyway um and it's fun so you mentioned that there were technical difficulties could you elaborate there was in the room, we couldn't hear. The mics were terrible. Only on a couple of rare occasions could anybody come clear. That was with us sitting next to a speaker. But the sound quality was horrible. It sounded like people were either overdriving the mic to the point of cutout or that the mic was just not a good mic. I'm not positive. The sound quality was absolute garbage in the room. And from what I've seen, it was no better on stream. Yeah, I've still not gone. I probably won't because I just don't have any interest. But from what I have read from people reporting online, it was like opposite day for the stream. So because people in the room realized that there was a challenge hearing, a lot of people's natural response was to try and be louder to the mic. Like the thought is, oh, the gain is too low. Right. And, in fact, you were the first person I saw, heard, in fact, mention the idea that maybe it's an overdrive issue. Because some people we could hear. Some people you could hear and they were too soft. Some people you could hear fine. And then there were some people you couldn't hear through the speakers at all. But it sounded like they were trying to be loud, which would fit with your theory. Online was peak gate. Mics were getting blown out. The sound was too loud. People are over, like, overdriving the mics, but they don't cut off. Right. So it's just you get that horrible, you've reached peak, and you break the sound. So that's what I read there. So, yeah, no, it was a – I recounted on TPS the example of – who is it? Sylvester McCoy? Is that his name? Yeah. Yeah. He was doing the presentation for one of the awards. He had a whole bit. the people around him seemed to find it really funny, but I couldn't hear it. Yeah, it was just like there was nothing to be heard. And it was just like, I'm sitting here and I'm like, I don't know what's going on. And I don't like it. I'm like, there's a joke and I'm not in on it. But the thing that surprised me was it never got better. Never. The sound was a problem the entire time. They never stopped to resolve it. and it was just like the show must go on and I'm like what show I can't hear anything so that was one technical issue what else there were issues with the videos they were not in the correct order or their notes weren't in the correct order or there was there was a definite disconnect of what was where and when and who should be doing what and it was very rough yeah So elaborating on that there were a couple elements The smaller one I only remember seeing this once but there was one instance in the video where they showed a bunch of clips from Mandalorian but then said it was Led Zeppelin Right. Which, okay, mistakes happen. Interesting that no one caught it. But the thing that was kind of funny about that is, and maybe they said it and we just couldn't hear it because of the microphones. I don't know. if the nominee was Led Zeppelin or Mando in that instance. I think it was Led Zeppelin. I thought so, too, because that was the one they said. And, again, in a way, that this was for 2021 was the biggest saving grace because no matter what the confusion was, you knew it was Godzilla that won. Yeah. So it was okay. Like, the answer was always Godzilla. This wasn't the Oscars thing where the person reads the wrong. Yeah. I mean, as we noted, the only thing like game related that didn't go to Godzilla was Topper, Best Topper for Halloween. Because Godzilla's Topper isn't out yet. And there's my Godzilla roar. Because it would do its atomic breath and win that too. Right. So. As would be expected. Yeah. So anyway, it was just. But still, I was really confused. confused and um then the part you really were focused on relatively early in the show the presenters came up and presented you know they'd say they'd either just introduce themselves and say then the words for whatever are but whatever they were saying art rules layout then the video would play it would be best something else right and it was like I actually felt like I was watching a Leslie Nielsen movie where someone had tripped him and the cards had all spilled and he picked them back up in the wrong order and then he's just going through staying in the wrong order and comedy ensues. Except this started funny and then it became just sad. Because they paused. They did pause that the first time because they're like, oh gosh, what's going on? And they tried to sort it out. We couldn't hear what they were saying But it seemed like they were trying to sort it out. But then it happened again. And then it happened again. And it's just like, I'm there and I'm really wondering, did someone trip? Did someone spill the cards? Where's the master sheet? Right. Or an email that says, here are what everything, like, isn't there something to refer back to if you've messed up the order? Apparently there wasn't. Or whatever there was to refer back to was wrong also. Yeah. I don't know which is worse. I guess it doesn't matter because they're both wrong. So there was that. Is there anything else? There was the point where at least for the first several categories in the room, there was no video audio when they start showing the videos. I did not realize they had Marc Silk as the narrator until, as you noted, we were maybe five awards in. And then we could finally hear him saying things like, best off work. Yeah. That's my Marc Silk impression. I know it was perfect. Write in if you'd like me to become the new Marc Silk. Click the cameras podcast at gmail.com. Yeah. And the other thing that I'm going to tie to that, that you've pointed out, because that reminded me was there was walk on music for the presenters. I don't, I'm guessing it was just like a fixed length clip because it would go, the presenter would get up there. The music was, they were coming in from like a, they had like a loading. They were like Halloween and Ultraman. They were, except as people wanted. So they were like preloaded in a little spot to come on out. And the distance was pretty short. So my point is the walk-on music was way longer than it took anyone to walk on. And it was loud. It was. It was like the one super loud thing. Yes. And so people would start to talk. And either the person who controlled the walk-on music was slow at fading it out. Or there was no person. And you just had to wait for it to reach. its natural fade-out point. Regardless, you couldn't hear what they were saying, because they're trying to talk over the walk-on music. And let me tell you something, if you don't know about walk-on music, Tony, there ain't no way you're talking over the walk-on music at this show. The walk-on music was, yeah. It was the one loud, clear thing. It was. And that's where I'm like, what's going on with the sound? Because the speakers are working. I can hear the walk-on music. Yeah. I can't hear anyone talking. I mean, it got to the point where the two hosts were Jack Danger and Emoto from Emoto Arcade. They, and I think it's because they spoke the most, they got to the point where I could hear them. Yeah. Because I think they figured out exactly how to position the mic and how much volume they needed to use. But the rest of it was like, bleh. I wonder if they, I mean, I just thought of it, but did they not have somebody actively mixing the audio throughout the whole thing? I don't know. Did they just do a series of presets and then walk the heck away? And that's why everything was messed up? I mean, when I went out of that room, my initial reaction was there was no rehearsal on this. But I did look later online once we got back home, and I saw a post that Jack Danger had on Deadflip saying that where he was at a dry run. So they must have done something. The dry run might not have involved the sound. Yeah. It might have just been him and Emoto working on, like, the order or how people were going to come on and be like that. nothing went right. Nothing. It was just constant. The final thing was it went long. I don't know how. These things are always long. Will Smith slaps aside. The Oscars are too long. The Golden Globes are too long when they were still doing the Golden Globes. All that. Everything's too long. Except the Tony's. The Game Awards are too long. And they're all trailers. It's still like by the end I'm like Oh, my God, it's three and a half hours. I mean, three and a half hours. But my point in this instance was I think that coupled with all these technical issues, the online people didn't see this. Folks were pouring out of the room. They were. I talked about that huge line to get in. There wasn't no line at the end. We stayed the whole time. We did. There was no line to get out. No. I have estimated, and I'll see what you thought. My estimation was by the end of the awards, at least a third of the people were already gone. Yes, easily. And the hosts knew because Jack Danger started to say something like when we were six or four awards out, he's like, there are only X amount of awards left to do. And I'm like, dude, it's too late. Yeah. I mean, I get what you're trying to do is to assure people that we're almost through it. But there was like, I mean, and there wasn't other than we had like reached a certain point an hour or whatever. There wasn't really any rhyme or reason. It wasn't like a bunch of people got up after they heard best YouTube streamer or favorite YouTube. It wasn't like they were all waiting to hear podcast or rules or topper for their award thing. It was a continuous, just slow trickle. We talked to someone afterwards, and he said when favorite YouTuber was won by Todd Tuckey, He took that opportunity to get out of the room because there was a standing ovation for Todd, so it made it easy for him to slip out. And he thought he wouldn't be noticed. He wasn't the only one who left. He wasn't. Lots of people did. It was just, oh, my gosh. It's a lot of work. I've worked on convention planning, meeting planning sort of stuff. and doing a separate, though very different structure, we've never done a live event, putting together a pinball award, any sort of award thing is, I find it very frustrating. And so I don't want to just rag. I'm curious what you think in terms of improvements should be done. So Jeff, with This Week in Pinball, he went on Pinside and he acknowledged, yeah, there were a lot of things went wrong during the show. And when they're going wrong live, there is only so much you can do. I mean, most of that stuff I don't think could really have been fixed. Maybe the sound thing, which in my view could have solved a lot. But, you know, if they didn't have someone mixing, I don't know who would have done it. Right. Is the thing. So and the only thing he's really announced so far is that it will be different hosts. Like he wants to rotate hosts. He didn't he didn't blame Emoto and Jack and throw him under the bus or anything. Just that he wants to rotate hosts every year, every other year. OK. Which, you know, I mean, they have done it for two years now, which I don't, I guess I don't feel one way or another about the rotation. Yeah, I don't. I mean, if I were to critique anything, again, it was so hard to hear. It got to the point where I could kind of hear Jack and Emoto. I think it felt very ad-libbed, and that, if you really know someone well, I think you can play off them and ad-Bob Libbe. Like, I mean, I don't know. Look at me. Put myself out there. But that's not what I mean. But like you and I can ad Bob Libbe because we know how each other think pretty well. Right. It's not that we're talented individuals. No, it's not. I'm like, oh, God, this sounds horrible. It's not that we're talented. It's not that we're trash. We're garbage. We're basically garbage here. But the point is, we've known each other so long. I basically know most of your reactions to things that will be said. And you. Right. Likewise, and so we have the ability to do that sort of thing, and I'm not sure that Jack and Emoto have that same sort of deep knowledge of each other. That can be solved with a script. That can be solved with a script. But if you don't want a script, because, again, I saw some people online going, what do people do? They run back to what they know, and they're like, bring back Greg Bone and Zach Minney as the hosts. Well, Greg and Zach might have done a lot of scripting. I don't know. I'd have to ask them. But Greg and Zach are like best friends. they can play off each other because they know each other so well so that's part of that they do a whole show they do a whole show together so there's there's like chemistry and history so they're able to to actually make stuff work right right and so so if you have something like that ad-libbing may work otherwise you may want a script and the thing is like if your hosts are volunteers and i'm assuming they were you know if i volunteer for stuff there's only so much work I'm willing to do. Right. Which means you might need to get someone to crap the script for you is sort of thing. But I guess my suggestion is setting whatever that's going on with that aside because that's the only portion I've seen Jeff really mention. And I thought I mentioned this on TPS and it was like I didn't know how to fix it because there's so many things that happened. I've had more time to think. So here would be my thoughts. If we're doing it live and on stream together, obviously that adds complications. That's the same at the work conference I was at. We did a hybrid option where there's a virtual conference and an in-person. I won't, like professionally, I won't do that. I'll do virtual only or I'll do in-person only. I don't do both because it's so much harder, so much harder. So here would be my suggestion. Record it to put on YouTube later. Don't live stream it. Do it in person if you want to do it at TPF. Get someone who's handling the soundboard for you. That way they can control the fade in and out of the walk-on music. They can tweak the microphones if things aren't going right. They can adjust the background music of the videos. I'd simplify it even more and probably ditch the video of the nominees and ask the presenter maybe to do that. I would too. But that's just to simplify it. I think having that, if you have the sound person in there to handle the video feed for that, especially if they don't have to worry about an online component, you could do that. And then just have some camera capturing it all and put it on, you know, you run your sound compression and throw it online afterwards. I guess that would be how I'd quote unquote fix it is I'd just simplify it more. Yeah. But I think the big question to decide is, is your priority to put on a big award show to have fun at the TPF? Or is it more important to have it like streamed live? If you want to do both, you can. But it's just then you need, I think, I guess the way I'd solve that is you need another person who's so focused is the online part. Separate from the in-room. I don't know. But honest, I'm just making stuff up here because I'm Mike. I don't understand all the logistics behind what went wrong. Right. And part of it is since we don't know, I mean, how much of it was volunteer work and how much was someone actively paid. I think what you need is you need a sound engineer running a sound board to make sure everything works in the room so they know everything's working right. I think there needs to be a director slash producer, probably a paid position that is somebody who it's his actual job, not just volunteering free time to make sure everything is right. I'm not saying they have to be like rich or anything, but I mean, like, hey, man, here's a little whatever. Make sure that the note cards are in the right order and that we have a master list and that what it says on our paperwork and what the video, if you're going to do a video, is matches up. Make sure that the scripts are right. Make sure that there's a sound engineer in there. Make sure that everything's set. There needs to be somebody who that's their entire job is to make sure that everything that is needed is in place. I think those two items would have prevented every issue that happened this year. I like yours better than mine. Yours is more straightforward. I mean, I can see dumping the video because the video's, it's the exact same four-second clip of a game. And there was, you know, and someone had suggested to me afterwards, I think, sent me a message. I sent it to you as well, I don't remember. But where they had suggested, you know what? do a video introducing the games at the start. And then, like, you could have a little thing like, this year's Twippy nominee games are, and then go through and does all of that, and then you don't have to do it anymore. Right. And that's a great idea because basically you just throw up a sizzle reel that shows more than a quarter second of each game. It's like, oh, Godzilla and Halloween and whatever else and Mando. and do that right at the beginning when you start doing the game sections and then that's all you need to do. Or you could front load the non-game related awards. So front load all the favorites. So you go through all the favorites and between each favorite you put up a video. It's like, you know, games up for this year. So you do like a favorite website. Then you show a video of Godzilla, then you do favorite tournament, then you show a video of Halloween, favorite location, video of Mando. So each one gets a 30 seconds or a minute concentrated on the game, maybe show a little gameplay, show some pictures of interviewers, some video of interviews with the creators and stuff, do all that and get through the favorites and then drop into the game categories. That would break up the favorites still. Flow-wise. So they wouldn't be straight together. But there I wonder how much of the fear is that there are certain favorite categories that people will walk out once the favorite categories are gone. You know, favorite YouTuber, favorite podcaster, favorite wham-wham, favorite mod. Yeah, you know, I don't know. I would hope that the awards stand on the awards and it's not about a single award because that seems a little flimsy. Well, and the other thing is if people leave after hearing their favorite thing, who cares? Well, and in this instance, you know, I wondered, like from an online perspective, they don't really know. So that's fine. That's a good point. In this instance being at TPF, you know, they had this. This was different. They had that after party thing. And I walked in there very briefly. So do you want to touch on the after party? Let me explain the after party to you. There was lots of bass. Did it get dropped? We literally stood outside where the after party was, talking with friends and other people for hours. I'd say at least an hour still inside, yes. I mean. Because we moved outside eventually. We did move outside. Well, that's the thing is we moved outside and we headed back to the hotel room at like one in the morning. Yeah, I think we were outside at least an hour as well. Yeah. So, but it was lots of bass and apparently games to play. And there was supposed to, I don't know how they would have danced because there was chairs everywhere. I didn't go in and look because nobody wants to see this getting down. There was lots of bass. Scott Dinesi DJ'd an after party. I guess it was probably I'm assuming that was sponsored by Marco Marco Specialties Parts Supplier which sponsored the Twippies several sponsors of the Twippies I went in briefly because someone was going who I was talking to went in because they wanted to see if Halloween was available to play I guess it was up on the stage where they go and play the games where they were set up for display and I couldn't stay in there because it was too loud for me. Get off my lawn We're old men, we understand We're old So there weren't very many people in there. That was probably about an hour in. And I was like, oh, I think they had hoped for better. But so many people had bailed on the Twippies while it was still going that, you know, I don't know what they thought. I don't know what was expected. That may be more moot than anything because that doesn't involve online or anything. That's just something for the people attending. Right. It's just an interesting idea. I didn't have any problems with any of the stuff I heard I just, it wasn't for me I mean, again We were talking to people Doing the normal, it's like, oh yeah We went to bed at like 3am And we're sitting here going We were like young men for once It was like, holy crap, we got a message That our hotel was on fire or something We're not at the hotel What are you talking about? Sure, yesterday we were in bed by 10 But, I mean, today this is a Saturday sorry it's Saturday night I didn't lay down until like one so anyway it was it was interesting all the dreaded term it was interesting but you know it is a lot of work so I don't I don't envy what all Jeff had to and has to in the past worry about the only thing that just as a takeaway was I thought it was going to be smoother now that it wasn't online right And that was the shock to me. That first year, the 2020, where it got canceled and they had to go online, it was, I think, Emoto and Cary Hardy did the hosting. It was better than this. And that was, like, with less than a month's notice. Or they had several months to pull this together. And that's what shocked me. It was just like, that's where, well, we've touched on all of it. So I was just really surprised. You know, I did stick through the whole thing, but I was just like, I was frustrated. Yeah. So was there anything else that you wanted to talk about in terms of TPF, any highlights or lowlights? I will say a lowlight. It's like now we're being Debbie Downers here. Let's drag it down. The food truck quality this time was not good. No. Thankfully, I only ate one thing at the food trucks. And normally we hit the food trucks a lot, but there was just – There were – when we went outside, there were three, and one wasn't like an ice cream truck. So there were only two, and one of them was out of almost everything. Yes, and the other one had fried eggs on every side. So did the food trucks all go out of business during the pandemic or what? Which is completely possible. Because I think in 2019 there were at least five out there. Oh, yeah. And I know some people haven't favored the quality of the food trucks versus the restaurants nearby. And this year we just happened to end up going to a lot of other places to eat. But just from like a convenience factor, I was just like, wow. Well, I've always been pretty happy with their food trucks. They normally had pretty decent stuff, up to a point of even a couple of the food trucks me being disappointed when they weren't there on the – where they were there one day and then not there the next day because I really enjoyed whatever I had the first day and wanted to try something else from them. Yeah. So I – and I forget which day this was. I think it was Saturday. I think this was Saturday, Twippy Day. Yeah, I was like, this is disappointing. I do feel like they had a much expanded food service choice inside the convention hall. And I wondered if that was part of it. Yeah. I mean, we did eat it. No, we did not. But they definitely made it easier to access if there wasn't more stuff. It was at least easier. Because they had clear queues set up where people could go in and try and get nachos or pizza or whatever they were doing. So, yeah, we didn't eat that stuff. A highlight, this doesn't directly involve the show, but this is the first time we decided, Let's not sit and wait and enter the raffle and stay through an hour's worth of game awards. And instead, let's plan to leave earlier. And so we headed out at about 11. Right. That was so much better. Oh, my God. It was such a good choice. It was like we didn't get super – other than construction, we didn't get super bogged down in Oklahoma like we always have every year. otherwise. It's weird because we get through Texas pretty quick and then Oklahoma is just like a brick wall. Didn't have that. We got back in daylight. Yeah. I wasn't walking in at like midnight or one because normally the show ends, the raft lands by the time we get out, get to the vehicle. We go get lunch. Late lunch. Get out and get on the road. We normally don't get home until midnight or one. And this time we got back before seven. Yes, it was great choice. So I'm going to be like, I'm voting for that in the future. And I bet a lot of people do that. The only behavior changes I kind of noted was, you know, they do charity raffles and a lot of times there's a pinball machine to win. I think it was a Willy Wonka this time. You do it, which I've normally contributed to, but the only way to win is to be present when they do that drawing and they only do that drawing after they make you sit through giving every single game an award that was worthy. And those awards are cool. I mean, it's been neat to see them. And that's an example of an award ceremony, which is low key, but has always been well done. Yes. And but it's just it's so late on a Sunday. And while I normally, in fact, I think I've always taken the next day off of work to recover. It's a lot different when I actually get back before I would be asleep versus getting back after I'd be asleep and then trying to recover in that one day. So, overall, that was a highlight in decision-making for us. I vote. You know what? My chances of winning a raffle aren't big enough. I'm perfectly willing to leave at, like, 11 or noon, grab lunch, and Banzai home. Yeah. It was nice. Yeah. And we saw so much stuff for a drive-in. It's like, I've never seen this road going this direction. Yeah, I know. Hey, I absolutely, positively know. we are on the interstate this time and not cutting through the weird parts of Oklahoma. We're not on Bob's road. So, so it just, yeah, overall I had a lot of fun. I was glad. It was even nice to talk about the, at least the twippies were something to talk about after like the whole show. I was glad I did it. Yes. So it was, it was nice to have a sense of normalcy, not have to worry about work. Even compared to expo is the number of people actually, Actually, in particular, because Expo, we did that a few months ago. But there were so many people at TPF that knew our voices from the show. I mean, we were constantly talking to everyone. It wasn and Expo is kind of like walk around and maybe eventually you meet someone who like oh yeah whatever We start talking with folks And here it was kind of like there were all sorts of people that come up oh yeah I heard your show before And one of the nice things about doing a podcast and it not about oh pat us on the back That's great. Thank you. But, you know, that's one of the nice things about doing something like this is then people come in and engage and you hear their perspectives. Because a lot of people don't write in all the time. And so they'll be like, oh yeah, I heard that episode that you guys did, and you guys are totally wrong. Like, well, tell us why we're wrong. We're not, but tell us why. Tell us why you're wrong. I think that we're wrong. So it was a lot of fun. It felt lighter attended to me than the 2019 TPL. They sent out an email today or yesterday. I just saw it today. Oh, okay. But I want to say it's at 4,500. And I don't remember what the old numbers were. I don't either. The games all had lines. It was crowded. It was crowded. And compared to, I guess, throw that in real quick. What are your thoughts of this TPF versus the Expo we went to? Expo is so garbage. Expo is, this made Expo look even worse than it was because it had been so long since we'd gone anywhere and done anything that this made it even worse. I mean, between the fact that at Expo, the hotel where I was at is the only hotel nearby. There's nothing food-wise within walking distance. There's nowhere to go. And not to mention at Expo, there was almost zero seating. So there was almost nowhere, if you needed to sit down for a minute, for you to walk out and sit down, like in a chair or something. Considering the fact that there was no hotels nearby to walk back to. There was no food to walk to. You had to drive to everything. Where there is a ton of stuff right around TPF. We could easily walk back to our hotel with no concern, which was one of the big things I've been looking forward to because, as you said earlier, I had such a mobility problem at Expo because I was in so much pain that I didn't have this time. But I was looking forward to this because I knew I had the ability to walk back to the room. And it wasn't like, hey, Dennis, throw me the car keys. I'm going to drive back the five to ten minutes it takes to get back to the hotel, and I'll come back in an hour or two when I feel better. I hope you don't need to go anywhere. I could have just walked back to the room and chilled for a while. It was no big. And a lot of the people we talked to, there was multiple times where people would be like, okay, I need to take a nap or I need to rest because, you know, I partied until 3 a.m. Then I was here at 9. I'm going to go chill for a little bit. And that's something that you can actually do there compared to Expo. Yeah. And we did have multiple, I mean multiple people who did come up to us because they heard our past coverage. Yes. Our podcast stuff about Expo. And for a lot of them, it was their first show or the biggest show they had been to. And they were pretty positive on Expo. And I did not have anyone tell me opposite of this. and it was, you guys are right, TPF is a way better show than Expo. Right. Yeah, we do the hyperbole from time to time. We're not doing it about shows. Expo is not remotely as good. No. You hit on almost all the major items that I would about the differences, but some of it is just the little things on top of it, like Expo's weird decision to charge you to go to seminars, yet they're free streamed on Twitch. Right. Expo's weird decision to segregate the vendors from the rest of the free play area and put the vendor section on shorter hours, which is where all the new games are. Or Expo's weird decision to alienate the entire Illinois collector community so that you only have essentially the show organizer bringing in their overflow storage games in, of which most of which are broken. And you want to talk about little things, little things that make the huge difference. Expo was on a solid concrete floor TPF is carpeted and your feet tell you can tell the difference yeah so anyway it was great to be back every time somebody walked up to us who we had talked to after Expo who just could not believe how hard we were on Expo but they'd never been to TPF and then they're like yeah no TPF I'm going to give you my theory of of expo defenders. Here's what I think most expo defenders are. There are people who live in the Chicago land area and it's convenient for them. I can see that. Or it can be people who they, they can be, how do I want to put this? You know what? I'm just going to be, they can be the hanger on type people. The people who are very much about the celebrity. They want to meet the designers. They're the people who they're all about talking to. It's just like the people who go to Comic-Con and don't care about anything except for who the voice actors or actors and actresses and wrestlers or whatever is there in the autograph area. That's all they care about with Comic-Con. It's that type of people. It's more about focusing in on the specific people and less about the overall experience. They're not going to meet normies like you and me. Just meet other fans and go sit on funny panels or fun panels and have fun. They're there about, I want to meet whomever. So that's their whole reason. If that's the only reason you care about going to a convention is to meet a designer or a coder or anything else, go to Expo. Yeah, that's true. Because it's so close to where the major manufacturers are, they do have a high volume of people who actually work on the games you love. There is that. I mean, they had that giant circle table they did where you just walked in a circle around the table and got signatures from everybody. But if you want to have fun, enjoy yourself, have a good time. The one good thing about Expo was it was in Chicago, so we got to do some stuff like eat good Chicago food. That was it. You think the best parts about Expo had nothing to do with Expo? Yes. The best parts about Expo was 100% its location. Yes. And just so, this won't stop at 100%, but I'll go ahead and throw it out here because I've had some people, including at TPF, ask, quit asking us. Tony and I are not going to Expo. No. No. We're done. In fact, yeah, we have no intention of ever going to Expo again. I will say I would be willing to consider going to Expo if and when people confirm with evidence that it is actually reformed, significantly reformed. And one of the Expo show organizers was at TPF. As I said it on TPS, and I'll say it here, I hope he took some notes. Yeah. Because he just saw a real show. Yeah. Yeah. There are too many shows to choose from to add to go to. Yes. To go to, for us to go back to. Exactly. I'm not saying that I would, I will only ever go to TPF, but I would much rather go and try like Pentastic or Allentown or MGC or Southern Fried. I mean, there's so many other shows. Why would I go back to one that I don't like how it's run? Right, exactly. I mean, it is, I'm sure it's easier for a lot of people to go to a whole bunch of shows. I can guarantee one doing more than one is hard I have to do a lot of planning to make more than one show work we did Expo because there was no TPF in 2021 that's why we did it right it's just relatively normally it's about a year between shows for us and in this case it was just a few months because of how the schedules worked out the way things had fallen but I see no reason to waste my time effort and money to arrange going to a show to go to somewhere where I know I'm not going to have fun. Yeah, I mean, it costs us hundreds of dollars. And we do it pretty cheap. We do. We do things very much on the cheap when we do it. And when I say just to meet people, I don't mean I enjoy meeting people. I enjoy meeting the fans and other casters and other people in the hobby. I don't actually care about meeting the people who work. Right, no. that's less important to me it's like yeah you make cool games sweet it's just the same way with like actors it's like yeah you were great in this movie that's cool I'd rather I would rather interact with the fan base because then we have a common outlay the way I think of it because I'm not I'm not a famous person so the way I always think of it is how would I feel if people people like came up and kind of obsessed over what I do at my job. And I'd be, it'd be weird for me. So I don't want to ever do that to anyone else. It's just like, I have a job to do and I do it. I hope I do it. Well, some of them have, you know, they have their jobs to do. I think a lot of them do it. Well, I'm more than happy to tell them, Hey, good job, but I'm not going to like try and, I think your term was hanger on. I've never seen the point in it. I, I mean, and just as an example, I spent a number of years working in an airport. I worked in the private aviation industry. So we dealt with corporations and private owners primarily. And that was one thing is on multiple occasions, especially when there was a really big event going on like NASCAR and the NASCAR drivers and their crews and stuff, their planes are very plainly marked, but whenever they would come in, there would be masses of people out there to meet them and you could tell how annoyed they were almost every time. Yep. And, and, and you could always see it. I mean, I've met, I met a lot of famous people who were really cool and I've met a lot of famous people who you could tell they just wanted to be left alone. And that's one of the things I've always taken with me. That's why I don't get as huge into the, the, the whole, Oh, like, like if I see somebody, like if I'd seen Sylvester McCoy, not at his booth I might have said hi but I wouldn't have done the fan gushy thing because I mean that's his life he deserves to have some free time too and that's just how I am from what I've seen well I think we've sucked dry the marrow we went really long on that well hey it was TPL So, video games. Okay, video games. Luckily, there's not actually a whole lot in here. It kind of looks like a lot. It looks like a lot. It actually will go really fast because it's just a couple updates on stuff. One, a thing that you and I have talked about on multiple occasions, we enjoy Summer Games Done Quick. They are returning to an in-person format. Ah. It's going to run this year from the 26th of June through July 3rd. They are going to have reduced attendance. They are running mandatory mask Ryan Policky, and they are not having any panels or board game rooms like they normally do. Ah, okay. So they're basically just going to have the running floor and the runners. But still, I think it'll work better because I think the purely online stuff hasn't worked as well, and the interactions haven't been as good. Yeah. There's always some technical quirk here and there. I think this will be better for them. And they have pro sound. I mean, they do have those sound people working to resolve that sort of stuff. But when you're bringing in so many different voices remotely, obviously it adds complications. So, yeah. Plus having the kind of excitement, the hype of the room behind. Even if it's Captain Tendence. The room behind them, the couch. Yeah. No, it'll be good. It'll be a lot better. Also on things normally happening in the summer, E3. E3 is gone. We already knew the in-person event was canceled. They canceled it back in January. The digital event has now been canceled. It is no more. They have claimed, the Entertainment Software Association, who puts on E3, they are concentrating on delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 next summer. I'll believe it when I see it. E3 has been tanking so bad. All of the major players have left them except for Microsoft at this point. E3 might as well just be a Microsoft show. And with the popularity and the ever-growing popularity of Summer Game Fest, which is going on this year, I think E3's niche is just gone. so many companies are doing their own standalone digital specials and their own stuff i think e3 if it comes back is going to be a much smaller event and i'm not sure that it's going to come back you know tony i don't see how e3 comes back i just maybe i'm i lack the creativity but for me it feels like they sat there high on the hog for such a long time with i'm going to be blunt, second nicest blunt, but blunt, just overcharging for space, making money hand over fist. And to me, the only way E3 survives is they have to just make it sane. In fact, they probably have to make it cheap because everyone has realized we can do all of this on our own and save so much more money. Why would we pay you these obscene amounts of money to essentially host a convention? and I just don't think that they can bring themselves to not be rich with it. And that's the only way to save it, in my view. So it will fail because they'll always be like, but we have to charge them like $30,000 for a booth or whatever they do. I think you're right. I think they have to make changes if they even want to in an attempt. And don't forget, the last time they held an in-person E3, they also accidentally released all of the personal information of every attendee onto the internet. Yeah, mistakes were made. I mean, we should, like, phone numbers, home address, everything of everybody was... They doxed their attendees. Oops, we doxed our entire attendee list. Sorry about that. are bad will get better. Yeah, no, I think, I get it. They don't know that they're dead yet, but that they're not even doing it this year when, as you've noted, even Games Done Quick's going back in person. Yes. They were late enough in the year. This surprised me, other than that they've been struggling. Right. Well, that's the thing, is they canceled the in-person show in January, which was Omicron was already peaked and starting yeah I mean it depends where in the country we here in region 7 in the HHS region speaking we're going to get a little technical here we were in the slowest we were the last to peak in Omicron because we got it last basically and we peaked out in mid February but most others had already peaked right but they're coming out of California Yeah, I don't know. These things are, look, it's science and math. These things are, like, surges are predictable. We knew when we were going to peak weeks before we did because we already saw the burn rate ever since we saw Omicron crop up in South Africa. Right. It's all just science. So, anyway. No, you're mad. No math. Math is bad. Just like we know when the stealth variant was TBF really well-timed because it basically was going to be in the next week or two that you start to expect to see cases go back up from the stealth variant of Omicron. But they weren't saying that would go up and not a surge because so many people got Omicron and that basically gave you immunity to Omicron too. So we're going, we're going, we're going too deep. So my point is, there's no reason I would have thought that they would have avoided an in-person event. They could have just put in protocols at this point because, I mean... I don't think they could afford it. I think they had to cancel early to save what they could to try and put together I don't see how they bring it back then. Because where are they getting their money from? I don't know. Tony, where's the money? It's like Deep Root. There's going to be a weird bank heist. E-Root. E-Root. Oh, man. Okay Nintendo did announce that Breath of the Wild 2 Is going to be delayed Until next spring Originally it was slated to come out in 22 Yeah it was going to be a Christmas purchase Which would have been wonderful But let's be honest Breath of the Wild 2 is going to sell Gangbusters No matter when it drops out So does that mean though that they're going to still try and get it out Before the end of March to put it in Q4 Of their fiscal year I would assume so What happened they just said they wanted more time to polish on it okay well that's good my normal stance is yes delay versus turning out we've seen enough terrible games pushed early we don't need Link to look like a potato we don't need Breath of the 2077 rolling out there so and in the humorous twitch they have their hype train thing where people start dropping the subscriptions and buying gift subscriptions and dropping bits that it throws out and throws all the extra stuff. Well, they created a version of the hype train called the boost train that would do that, that when you did it it would move and whoever has enough would be moved and would be put on the front page where everybody can see it. So, obviously, that was abused almost instantly because it went into place in March and it was immediately people realized they could do this. So they started going to the streams where the streamers are just tiny little streamers and they just stream straight up triple X porn movies where they, where they put up, Oh yeah, we're playing legend of Zelda. And then it's just a straight up triple X movie that they play until somebody can show you the new adventures of link. Wait till you see my master sword. uh hi ya so obviously the boost train people hit that and drove it straight up there until suddenly you'd log into twitch to go oh who do i want to watch today and it's just boobies oh god so i guess that feature's off now that feature has been turned off while they make some adjustments. I'm guessing they're probably going to put a person into the loop to make sure. I don't know what it's going to make aside from manually screening it. Yeah, because that's a problem they've always dealt with is that people put a report out on when somebody's doing, not just porn, but people are like, oh yeah, I'm playing Fortnite and they're showing over the top. I mean, they're just showing a movie. Right, right. So they're using it to do that. While they're saying they're doing something else, something where the algorithms won't grab them. Yes. Until it's reported and somebody manually shuts them down. So, how'd you like that there? I threw in that quick over-the-top reference. Yes, yes. That's right. What happened to that movie? Well, we did get a video game email. So we put it in. It's from Jeff K. Jeff Kay is who wrote us and gave us that YouTube link to the crypto NFT explanation. You remember that video. Yes. We watched that video in Dallas. We did. Now, do you remember the weird little game that was played? Yes, the stupid little game. The pay-to-earn game where you get to earn these items in-game and you can sell them for crypto. Right. And it was the one where people would manage other people. Yes, and they had whale sponsors. And then the whale sponsors got all the money And they paid you basically Indigent servant wages Indentured Indentured servant wages It's like I played for 18 hours today And I made 20 bucks yay Yes So that game Axie Infinity I have a link in the show notes to the news article on this But that's what Jeff K emailed us That play to earn crypto game Apparently hackers Got in And then he stole approximately $615 million worth of crypto from it. Here's the kicker, Tony. It took them almost a week before they realized they'd been robbed. Well, from what I learned from the video we watched, that's probably how long it took to process the transaction. And they lost $600 million of that $615 in transaction processing fees. I will say it was a long video, but it was very informative. I mean, it informed me that I was right in my thoughts that crypto and NFTs are scams. So I was on the right side of that. I did enjoy the video. It was very long. I actually saw someone on one of the discords I'm in. He had a great little, oh gosh, one of those flow charts. to do. Yeah. It's like someone, they were discussing something about the blockchain and that's crypto and NFTs and they're all on the blockchain and this game uses the blockchain and he goes, oh, huh, I think I need to pull out my flowchart to determine whether or not this project should be used on the blockchain and the flowchart is, do you think you need to put this project on the blockchain and there's just an arrow down and it just goes, no. That's it. It's like, should this project be on a blockchain? No. It shouldn't. There you go. You saw the problem of whether or not you should consider using the launchpad. I was like, there we go. Never change, crypto. Never change. Speaking of never changing, Tony, I think we will plan to be back in a couple of weeks, kind of like we normally do. That's the plan. So for those that want to reach out to us, you can always email eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. You can also go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter. I am so sorry to the Instagram people. I made like one post. Probably while we were driving down. While we were driving down. And then nothing else. I mean, I went like radio silent. I apologize for that. They're probably watching right now like, they probably think we died. Refresh, refresh, refresh. I feel kind of bad about it because I got to thinking about that when we were driving back. I was like, I didn't. And then I didn't take any pictures. I took like a few score pictures, like four. I think I took like seven total pictures the entire trip. I mean, we met good people. We posed for tons of selfies and stuff that would have been great fodder for social media. I didn't take part in any of it, apparently. I didn't take any pictures. I didn't. But you know what? We had fun. Yep. And that's what's most important. And I hope everyone else had fun, too, that showed up. Yeah, but we hope that you enjoy everything else. Yes. Until next time, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.