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Episode 9: It's just filling in the dots...

The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 43m·analyzed·Nov 30, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Justin Kelly shares his pinball journey and the technical process behind colorizing games at Color DMD.

Summary

Justin Kelly, a Color DMD developer, discusses his journey into pinball starting with Jurassic Park, his discovery of game depth through rules and objectives, and his detailed technical process for colorizing pinball machines. The conversation covers the first Color DMD project he completed (The Sopranos), the complexity of frame-by-frame colorization, the difference between LCD and LED display options, and the collaborative efforts with other developers like Eric Prepke to achieve high-quality results.

Key Claims

  • Justin Kelly completed The Sopranos as his first Color DMD colorization project, which took approximately one year from start to finish with roughly 100+ hours of work depending on complexity.

    high confidence · Justin Kelly stated directly in the podcast about his first game assignment and time investment.

  • Eric Prepke (EptheGeek) colored Spider-Man Vault in 8-10 days while working on Red Bull, setting a record for fastest colorization.

    medium confidence · Justin Kelly recounted Eric's achievement, describing it as a record-setting effort with specific timeframe mentioned.

  • Color DMD's colorization process uses a 'VCR-like' flash drive recording method where developers manually trigger every possible switch, animation, and scenario in a game across multiple player configurations.

    high confidence · Justin Kelly provided detailed technical explanation of the Color DMD workflow and recording methodology.

  • The Color DMD platform maintains the original 4-8 brightness levels of dots from the original plasma displays, preserving shading effects while applying color.

    medium confidence · Justin Kelly discussed the technical preservation of brightness levels during colorization.

  • Randy Perlow and Chris Enright founded and developed the Color DMD platform from scratch, pioneering hardware and software that didn't exist before.

    high confidence · Justin Kelly identified Randy Perlow and Chris Enright as Color DMD founders and creators of the entire platform.

  • Justin Kelly owns a Jurassic Park pinball machine that he transported on his first acquisition attempt with minimal protection (one strap) at approximately 4 mph with hazards on.

    high confidence · Justin Kelly recounted his personal acquisition story for his first pinball machine.

  • Justin Kelly was initially not interested in pinball until his brother explained the mission-based gameplay structure and System Shutdown mode of Jurassic Park, which revealed the depth of rules and objectives.

    high confidence · Justin Kelly detailed his conversion moment playing Jurassic Park with his brother in Cincinnati.

Notable Quotes

  • “There's depth to this. Yeah, I get it now. It's not just like ding, ding, ding, hit a ball, get a score. I'm bored, you know.”

    Justin Kelly @ Early in episode — Describes the pivotal moment when he understood pinball mechanics and abandoned his initial dismissal of the genre.

  • “It's just you just kind of just jumped into it and just learning why you did it. Yeah, on the fly, man. School of Hard Knocks.”

    Justin Kelly (responding to question about programming) @ Programming section — Illustrates his self-taught, practical approach to programming through tinkering rather than formal training.

  • “It's a labor of love and he doesn't want to just let any random person like, okay, I'll sign up and do a game because he knows how long it takes and he knows the challenges and hurdles that go into it.”

    Justin Kelly @ Mid-episode discussion of Randy Perlow's selectivity — Explains why Randy Perlow is careful about assigning games to new Color DMD developers—quality control and preventing stalled projects.

  • “You try to activate every little tiny possible thing so you have all of that basically in a catalog. And then you start getting funky going cross-eyed with dots, man.”

    Justin Kelly @ Technical explanation section — Humorously describes the exhausting nature of capturing all game scenarios for colorization.

  • “It's almost like a bit of a puzzle. So in every little frame, you have to find a unique piece that only exists in that one frame so it knows how to color it.”

    Justin Kelly @ Detailed technical discussion — Core explanation of the technical challenge in Color DMD colorization—identifying unique mask signatures per frame.

  • “When you play a game that's in color and then you have the same game and it's not in color, you're like, well, I guess I know where my next $400 is going.”

    Justin Kelly @ Near end of discussion — Summarizes the compelling visual upgrade that Color DMD provides, justifying the cost to consumers.

  • “I was like, yeah, yeah, but would it look so much cooler if the boxes were like orange and the background wasn't?”

Entities

Justin KellypersonSpencer KlinginpersonSeth HolderpersonRandy PerlowpersonChris EnrightpersonEric PrepkepersonPDX MonkeypersonBill UngpersonColor DMDcompany

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Extended technical deep-dive into Color DMD colorization process featuring detailed explanation of frame-by-frame masking, brightness level preservation, and dynamic vs. static animation challenges.

    high · Lengthy podcast segment devoted to step-by-step technical explanation from developer perspective, including specific examples from The Sopranos project.

  • ?

    design_innovation: Color DMD represents a non-invasive colorization platform using hardware interception and frame recognition via unique mask signatures rather than modifying original game software—maintains copyright compliance while adding color overlay.

    high · Justin Kelly's explanation: 'It's just like changing the color of your car – it's totally acceptable' because it doesn't alter underlying software; uses 'magical wizard board' to intercept and recolor display information.

  • ?

    community_signal: Color DMD development ecosystem features skilled developers (Eric Prepke, Justin Kelly) collaborating on complex technical challenges, with founder Randy Perlow carefully curating project assignments to ensure quality and prevent bottlenecks.

    high · Justin Kelly's account of Randy Perlow's selective assignment process, Eric Prepke's assistance with Sopranos dynamic animations, and the explicit goal to prevent projects from being locked down indefinitely.

  • ?

    product_concern: Colorization projects face significant time investment (100+ hours per game typical) and completion delays are common because work is done on volunteer/passion basis rather than full-time employment.

    high · Justin Kelly: 'It's obviously – everybody does it. It's not a full-time job, you know. Everybody does this on the side' and discussions of how Randy manages this by being selective about assignments to avoid stalled projects.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.310

0:00
Welcome to the Spinner's Lit Pinball Podcast. Tonight's episode, episode 9, it's just filling in the dots. I'm your host, Spencer Klingin. My guest host and engineer as always, Seth Holder. Hey, everybody. And our very special guest, who's been doing some work with the folks at Color DMD, Justin Kelly. Justin, welcome to the show.
0:25
Hey, guys. What's going on? Yeah. Talking about pinball. How you doing, man? I am good, man. Just living the dream. Pinball, yeah, is a big part of that. So, good times. Cool, cool. So, you've been doing some work with Color of DMD for a little bit now.
0:40
And, well, let's start off. What was the first game you ever bought? Okay, first game I ever bought, let's call it 2003, 2004, something like that. And it was actually Jurassic Park. Nice. So, you're a fan of the films? Yeah, a fan of the films. I thought the game in general was just kind of cool. Actually, kind of a funny story of why I picked that game. Because you love Data East. It's fine. It's okay. I understand. You know, actually, the first two games I owned was Jurassic Park and then Last Action Hero. It's okay, honey. Data East is fine. It's okay.
1:19
Data East still loves you. So I literally just assumed that every single game had a shaker motor, right? So I forget the next game, but I go to buy some Williams game, and it didn't shake, and I'm like, this thing's broken. It was like a 64, you know, wedgehead Gottlieb, and you're like, where's the shaking motor? This thing doesn't shake. It's broken. I give you like $200.
1:40

  • Justin Kelly deliberately chose The Sopranos as his first colorization project because it was not one of the high-demand titles (unlike Indiana Jones or Medieval Madness which were already done), reducing pressure and managing expectations for his first attempt.

    high confidence · Justin Kelly explained his reasoning for selecting The Sopranos over more popular games.

    • Justin Kelly @ Discussion of dynamic animation challenges — Shows his commitment to aesthetic quality over cutting corners during the colorization process.

    The Sopranos
    game
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Medieval Madnessgame
    Attack from Marsgame
    Spider-Man Vaultgame
    Indiana Jonesgame
    Popeyegame
    Last Action Herogame
    The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcastorganization
    Pinball Expoevent
    Golden State Pinball Festivalevent
    Pinsideorganization
  • ?

    design_philosophy: Justin Kelly demonstrates commitment to aesthetic quality in colorization work, explicitly choosing more complex dynamic animation solutions over simpler shortcuts (e.g., spending extra effort to make score boxes orange rather than matching background color).

    high · Justin Kelly's dialogue with Eric Prepke about Sopranos score spinner: willing to put in extra work to color boxes separately from background rather than taking the easy path.

  • ?

    technology_signal: Color DMD uses a unique 'VCR-like' recording approach where developers physically play through games across multiple player configurations to capture all possible screen states and animations for colorization mapping.

    high · Justin Kelly's detailed explanation of taking USB flash drive, hitting 'record,' manually triggering every switch and scenario, recording 1-4 player games and various credit configurations.

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Expo serves as significant showcase event for Color DMD releases; Justin Kelly specifically timed Sopranos completion for Expo debut, indicating event carries weight for community visibility and credibility.

    medium · Justin Kelly: 'I really wanted to jam out and get something solidly playable for Pinball Expo at that time. You know, because it's our show. We love Pinball Expo, right?'

  • $

    market_signal: Color DMD display retrofits cost approximately $400, offset partially by sale of original display (~$100-125), creating a $275-300 net upgrade cost that customers find compelling given visual transformation.

    medium · Justin Kelly's discussion of justifying the $400 Color DMD purchase and his strategy of selling original displays for $100+ to reduce net cost.

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Color DMD evolved from LCD displays (sourced raw laptop screens) with custom mounting and casing to LED display options; suggests ongoing manufacturing optimization and hardware platform diversification.

    medium · Justin Kelly: 'When they first came out, he did all LCDs... And then he would build them into his own nice casing... at the end of the day, he had developed this really cool system.'

  • ?

    content_signal: The Spinner Is Lit Podcast serves as platform for technical education and community storytelling in pinball, featuring detailed guest interviews that document development processes and community lore.

    high · Episode 9 structure featuring in-depth technical explanation from Color DMD developer, personal origin stories, and community relationship details (PDX Monkey, Eric Prepke, Randy Perlow interactions).

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Justin Kelly represents emerging technical talent in pinball community who entered through enthusiast passion rather than formal industry hiring, demonstrating self-taught programming capability applied to niche platform development.

    medium · Justin Kelly's self-described 'School of Hard Knocks' programming background, starting from taking apart Nintendo systems, eventually contributing to Color DMD ecosystem after persistent outreach to Randy Perlow.

    • Yeah, I was all the way. And, you know, it's funny because, you know, the reason I picked that game was actually kind of how I got into pinball, which was, you know, growing up in the arcades, you know, I was really always more of a video game guy. I remember some pinball machines in there, and I might pump a quarter here and there into them, but nothing real too crazy. And then my brother actually ended up getting a Ms. Pac-Man machine and the actual arcade cabinet, and then he also picked up a Jurassic Park pinball. And basically what happened was I was out at his spot, and I was just playing Pac-Man nonstop for like hours, and I just really didn't have any interest in pinball. And my brother was like, hey, come on, let's play a game of Jurassic Park. And I'm like, no, it's not my thing. He's like, well, do you know what you're doing? I'm like, yeah, just don't lose the ball. Are you stupid?
    2:25
    It doesn't even know what I'm doing. And he's like, no. He's like, look, so you do all these missions, and then you get to this end mission called system shutdown, and the whole machine looks like it's breaking, goes crazy, and this and that, and all of a sudden it just clicked. Then there was levels and goals and objectives, and then I was just like, oh. There's depth to this. Yeah, I get it now. It's not just like ding, ding, ding, hit a ball, get a score. I'm bored, you know. so yeah so then i came home and that was out in i believe cincinnati uh and then i i flew home and the next week i just called up a random local uh arcade machine operator and said hey i'm looking for this jurassic park and you happen to know a guy who at the time was just getting a brand new in box elvis and needed to move his one game out which was jurassic park and uh and he hooked us up and i went over there no idea what i was doing borrowed my buddy's truck put the game on its legs on the back bed of the truck with the head up with like one with like one strap dude to this day i have no idea how it did not end up in a ditch i i drove home with my hazards on going like four miles an hour you know it was ugly i still have it by the way yeah that's awesome and and do you still have your jurassic park towel i do i do so uh funny story Actually, our friends there, if you guys know him from Pinside, PDX Monkey, obviously, was buying a Jurassic Park. And I was getting it from our man Seth here on the microphone. And he included this lovely Jurassic Park towel. Now, when Monkey comes out to Sacramento, he's from Portland, we basically play everything we do all weekend. We play for dollar. Dollar card games, dollar side bets, dollar pinball, whatever. And whoever had the winning tally at the end of the weekend won that towel. It was me. And I put it on my wall. And I still have it.
    4:09
    Poor guy. Yeah. Now that's a good story. Yeah. People go by. They see this giant Jurassic Park towel on my wall, right? And they're not even sure that it's a towel. They, like, feel it, and they're just like, is that like a towel? And I'm like, yeah. It's a trophy, too. Yeah. It's a towel trophy on my wall. Like, just deal with it. Yeah.
    4:29
    So that kind of covers your real discovery into pinball when you figure out, oh, there's rules and goals and objectives. Yeah. It was a complete game changer, man. And before that, like I said, a couple quarters here and there. But I was bored because I didn't know what I was doing. It was just ding, ding, ding. I hit a couple balls. I'm like, yeah, whatever. Get me back on to like Spy Hunter and the Simpsons arcade game and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where I can just chow through my quarters. Well, it seems like you've developed a real taste for more modern games. What's your journey been like in terms of exploring the different eras of pinball? Why have you settled where you have? You know, it's funny because I started out with just the DMD games because obviously that's what I started with, being Jurassic Park. And then, you know, I pretty much just liked newer games. I pretty much stuck with anything like 1990, 91 and newer, something like that. Pretty much all DMD games. And what I did was it kind of went in a reverse way where, you know, because there's only so many games. But once you try out every game and you kind of played them all, well, then you start going back and you really start, you know, checking out like these older games. These solid states, these old electromechanical games. and you kind of develop a new taste for that because you're like, wow, all things considered, this was pretty cool technology considering it's 60 years ago or something like that. Yeah, Spencer was in high school. There was dinosaurs around. It was amazing. Pretty close, yeah. Yeah, so it was – so playing the newer stuff, obviously they play completely different, but playing the newer stuff has kind of given me an appreciation and taste for playing the older stuff, which actually by all definition is very difficult when you play in these high-end tournaments. They just had replay effects. When you get these top-level, world-class players, they often stick them on these old electromechanical games because they're really short ball times and really difficult to actually master. Yeah, exactly, especially the more rare ones. It's harder to study up and practice on them. So do you have older ones in your collection right now? No. The oldest one I have, I've never owned an electromechanical, ironically enough. I've just owned some solid states. I babysat like a Ballyzenon for a while.
    6:37
    I've found some other ones. I had like a Mouse and Around. I babysat a Radical for a while, which I had a lot of fun with. You know, yeah, I think Back to the Future, Dr. Dude, those kind of games. Yeah, right. The original Simpsons, the Data East one back in the early 90s. You just love Data East. That's impressive. Dude, I do love Data East. Just let it happen. If you don't struggle. Gary Stern must be so proud of you. He loves me. We're on a first-name basis. Good old GS, dude. We're cool like that. So how did you get into programming, Justin? You know, I've always kind of been a techie guy. And back to when, you know, oh, you're going to make a web page. You open up Notepad and you just start typing raw commands. There really was no, like, fancy web editors or any of that front page stuff, you know. And that's kind of how I got into it. I didn't go super deep in programming, but I've always been, you know, just a bit of a tinkerer. You know, whatever I needed to kind of edit or tweak in whatever code I was in, And I just kind of like putzed my way around and figured it out.
    7:37
    And yeah, so I don't know. I'm kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. You know, when it comes to the programming thing, I'm just a bit of a tinker. As far as creating, you know, raw applications from scratch, that's not really my thing. But if you give me the car and say, ah, it already works, but we needed to do this and not do this, then I can probably, you know, make that happen. Okay. Well, that's actually pretty cool. So it's just you just kind of just jumped into it and just learning why you did it. Yeah, on the fly, man. School of Hard Knocks. Yeah, pretty much. And computers in general, man. As soon as I was old enough to basically find a screwdriver and take apart my Nintendo system, I was like, all right, computers are cool. Let's do this.
    8:14
    Yeah. That's cool. I always like to hear those stories because those are some of the people that usually come up with some of the coolest ideas and innovations. It can go this fast, but we can make it do this. So how did you get involved with ColorDMD? Did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you? I spend a lot of time outside Randy's house in the bushes talking to him. Can you quickly give us, the audience, an idea of who Randy is? Yeah, so Randy Perlow, along with Chris Enright, I believe, is pretty much the founders of Color DMD as a whole. The entire platform, the hardware, the software, I mean, these guys created it all from scratch. They pioneered something that I don't really even know up to that time had really even been thought of. and I remember when they released their first promo video for the game which was Medieval Madness it was this big thing where it was just talking about this orange king and these orange trolls and their orange guards and the orange knights and this and that but the only one problem is they were all orange and then all of a sudden it just flashes and everything's in color and I just remember the first time you see that it's just like, it's a game changer it's jaw dropping it's like a whole new game you know? oh yeah Yeah. I still remember seeing that video. And that's been what? Six, seven years ago? Eight years ago? Years. It's been a while. And yeah, they created – Randy and obviously Chris too, they're just absolute beasts.
    9:43
    They've put so much work and time into this platform that has actually migrated and basically became more and more complex and in-depth over time. and he always goes back and he makes it a point to his support is amazing if anybody has any issues i still think i'm the only guy uh in the entire world who's blown up a display board installing color dmd but it was completely my fault we won't get into that randy's like nobody's ever done this before i'm like well that's what happens when a dabbler dabbles yeah leave it to me man the dabbler uh so yeah yeah i got involved with them uh i really liked what they were doing uh and i really saw some awesome potential in that and obviously there's enough games that need to be colored and I assumed at the time, I didn't know much about it, that it wasn't an easy task. And, you know, I hounded him for a while. I mean, I hounded him, you know, for, I don't know, probably like multiple times over the span of a year just seeing him at shows and everything else. And, you know, because it's a labor of love and he doesn't want to just let any random person like, okay, I'll sign up and do a game because he knows how long it takes and he knows the challenges and hurdles that go into it. And it's really easy to get frustrated and, you know, a lot of people can give up and or just say, well, I'm doing this game, and then they just sit on the game forever, and they kind of lock down a title, especially one that everybody's looking forward to, or that everybody wants done, you know, so you don't really want to put somebody who's just, like, brand new, starting out, trying this for the first time, onto one of those titles, you know? Right, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly, because they do, to a lesser degree, just like designing a game, there is a timetable.
    11:11
    Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, he's really lax with it, you know, some games take longer than others, obviously. we'll get into uh some of the most insane uh i think one of the games that took the longest uh yeah uh but uh but yeah it's uh yeah you know and he's he's pretty lax about it uh as long as he you know just kind of knows that you're working on it and it's on your radar you know it's cool with it it's obviously everybody does it's not a full-time job you know everybody does this on the side and they do it because you know they want to make an impact on pinball and it's for the love of the game you know awesome so okay so the game the first game you did obviously is uh sopranos for the listeners that don't know that, did you pick that game yourself or did they say, hey, you want to do this one?
    11:50
    You know, I did actually. So funny story, I actually didn't really watch The Sopranos Show too much. I said like one episode here or there. And PDX Monkey, back to him there, that is his grail game. He lives, breathes, and dies by that game. And he's owned that game five times because he just keeps finding nicer examples and then selling his old one and keeping a nicer one. and I'd never even played it and he'd always bragged about it and I was just like, yeah, whatever. I kind of wrote it off and then one popped up locally on Craigslist and it happened to be like two miles from my office, right? It doesn't get closer than that when it comes to pinball hunting and I said, ah, what the hell. I go over, I made the guy an offer.
    12:31
    There's a great story there too, actually, but I made the guy an offer. I threw it in the truck and I just went back to work. I did it on my lunch break. Did you take the legs off and drop the head? Yes. Yes, guys. I know how to move a pinball now. We're good. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much.
    12:49
    But, you know, for those of you familiar with the Sopranos game, obviously, you know, it's Sopranos. It's Mafia-based, yada, yada, you know. And, you know, they have this mode called F-Multi-Ball where they're just spewing obscenities, right? And, you know, he basically said, you know, it's pretty funny because when you opened up his door, it was just this one game right in the main room. It was one pool table right when you walk in and then this one game. and he basically said he had some door-to-door religious people, I forget exactly which one, but knocking on the door, you know, hey, do you have a minute? Can we talk to you about, you know, the Lord and Savior or whatever, all that goodness, right? So he was like, okay, whatever. So instantly these older couple are with their two kids and their two kids see the pinball in the back and they're like, oh, can we play? Can we play? Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And so, and the parents look at him like, is it okay? He's like, sure. Obviously adult mode is turned on. so so so these kids run back there the very first mode they activate was that obscenity multi-ball and all of a sudden every single switch you hit in the game it's just bah you f this s that blah blah blah blah blah going back and forth and that's all they hear and all of a sudden their faces just turn ghost white and they're like all right kids it's time to go bye thanks for your time and they just like run down the street with their kids i'm like that's so great what are the odds oh i love it i was like well that's one way you know either put that no soliciting sign or just have a Sopranos pinball there. Yeah, exactly. That's great.
    14:12
    So I chose it because of PDX Monkey, and I figured, hey, man, I know you of all people want this game in color. And it is pretty funny because once I finally finished it, obviously all of the hardware is the same, but when you go onto the website, you basically, when you order your display, you pick what game it's for, and then they'll preload the software for you and make it a little bit easier. But all the hardware is the same, and you can pull them in and out of different games. Well, whenever PDX Monkey, to make me look good, Whenever PDXMonkey would go and order displays, he needed like three or four displays for different games, he would just click four Sopranos.
    14:45
    And so Randy would always give me smack like, hey, your buddy Monkey apparently ordered another four Sopranos displays. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know anything about it.
    14:55
    I do the same thing, but I do it with Popeye. That a boy. I love it. Oh, that's funny. The other reason I picked it is because, you know, like we talked about earlier, it was my first game. I wasn't sure how long something like this was going to take or how much really time I could devote to it. And I didn't want to do some game that everybody was just dying and waiting for. You know, this is, you know, Attack from Mars and Medieval, they'd already been done. But, you know, these games, these big titles that, you know, everybody wants done, Indiana Jones or whatever. You know, I'm just like, I don't want to pick one of these titles and then just lag through and just kind of like not, you know, I wasn't, I didn't know, I didn't know what I was getting into. So I wanted to kind of pick something a little bit more obscure, if you will.
    15:34
    So that's another reason I went with Sopranos. That's solid. Well, I mean, it really changed that game. I mean, a lot.
    15:43
    Having played yours at Pinnagogo when you debuted it a couple years ago, it had such a profound change on that game. Yeah, thanks, man. And honestly, it gave me a really, really great sense of accomplishment, and it was pretty funny because I kind of crunched the couple weeks before that. And another guy who really helped me out with that is Eric Prepke. He goes by EptheGeek on Pinside as well. He's also, I believe he did all the programming for the original Cactus Canyon Continued. Absolutely, you talk about a programmer, programming rock star right there. And so with some of the more complicated things with Sopranos that we had to be extra clever to color correctly, I needed his help with. So, you know, came crunch time, I really wanted to jam out and get something solidly playable for Pinnagogo at that time. You know, because it's our show. We love Pinnagogo, right? So we always count on Spencer's ridiculous daily countdown for the year before. So it's good.
    16:37
    And as a side note this year, Golden State Pinball Festival coming soon. Yeah, buddy. I'm looking forward to that. So yeah, so Sopranos, I crammed to get that thing done. And once I actually built – Randy built me the test ROM. I put it in the game, and I just actually played a game enjoying it rather than looking for every little thing. And every screen was color. It just worked. I was like, tear. Tear. you know because i probably spent from start to finish granted i had other life things going on in there you know some random you know stuff but from start to finish i you know i didn't devote that much time to it i definitely lagged for a while and there was periods where i didn't do much but it took me almost a year you know i mean yeah you know and then you know again but hours wise let's call it i don't know the color any random game depending on complexity a hundred hours plus something you know somewhere in that range you know depending on how much you're doing how deep the animations and graphics are, stuff like that.
    17:29
    That seems more reasonable than I would have expected. Yeah, I mean, 100 hours is... It just depends. I know Eric set a record for coloring Spider-Man Vault. He did that game. He wanted to set a record, man. He was just like... I think he was just cracked out on Red Bull like a rock star. Wow. And he colored that whole game in like 8 or 10 days or something. Oh, wow. The whole game. He pushed it. And you know why? Because he had already done the original Spider-Man. and then they released the vault. He wanted to release them together as a package. So regardless of which Spider-Man you had, you were covered. And that's kind of part of the thing that drove him to really go hard on that title. And yeah, nobody will ever touch that. That's insane.
    18:07
    He's an evil genius. Wow. That's cool. So how do you colorize a game? Take us through the steps from basic start to finish.
    18:16
    So let's see here. I'm going to say there's a couple of things that I can't touch on that are super proprietary. Uh, but, but, you know, I can definitely allude to certain things. So let's get fun with it. So basically the way you colorize a game is this. I use the same, uh, you know, hardware that you guys use. Essentially, uh, ColorDMD will send me a developer's kit, right? Uh, so, and I will pick the screen. There's two different screens for those who aren't familiar. You have a, a giant LCD screen, uh, which is kind of like the size of like a laptop display. Uh, and then you have an actual, uh, LED display, which is the same size pretty much as the existing display that's already in your game. It's just made up of little color-changing LEDs instead of a larger LCD display. So I pick which one I need depending on which game I'm doing. That comes out to me. And we do it in a special way that's a little bit different than you would think. So for those of you who have messed with that custom software that somebody built on Pinsider a while back, Pinball Browser lets you go in and it lets you basically deconstruct the software that goes into the pinball game. And then you can see all of the individual little assets, right? All the little number fonts and all the little characters. Then everything, when you're playing, comes together and overlays on the screen in certain ways and stuff, and it just looks good. But all of these little assets can be broken out. That's not at all how we do that at Color DMD. So at Color DMD, what we do is we essentially stick in a flash drive, and think of it as a glorified VCR. I take off the glass. I put in the flash drive. I hit record. and I go through and I, with my finger, try to hit every single switch and activate every possible scenario, animation, whatever, that is possible in that game, which is actually, and basically record it all, and then so I have that footage now on a USB stick, and then I use it from there. But it's more difficult than you think because there's so many things involved that change the dynamics. So I record an entire game as one player, two player, three player, four player, at least. And then I record some games where you get an extra ball instead of a replay or some games where, you know, you're not on free play anymore. Now you're on this many credits because you need to have every possible scenario. Prime example, one of the things I forgot in Sopranos was I always had my game with adult mode turned on. So you go to the strip club, you see the girls on the stage, this and that. Well, when you turn off adult mode, it's just an empty stage. So I go test it. I have one of my guys beta testing it. And he's like, why is this screen all white? And I was like, because I've never seen that screen before, I'll get right on it. Because it's just an empty stage with lights. So you try to activate every little tiny possible thing so you have all of that basically in a catalog. And then you start getting funky going cross-eyed with dots, man. And pretty much the way that it works in a general rule of thumb is every single screen, you have to tell it what screen. the computer has to know what screen it's seeing. So the information comes from the display board on your pinball. It goes into this magical wizard board that ColorDMD built. And then that then takes that information and says, oh, I know what screen this is. This is how I color it. And then shows it on your display. So we're never changing any of the software, any of that stuff, obviously, which is great for copyright issues because, you know, it's just like changing the color of your car it's totally acceptable um and uh it's interesting because what we do is when that information comes in we have to find a unique segment in every single frame to tell it what frame it's looking at so essentially uh when something comes on there uh it has to know that okay this is the vault and money flying down the screen in sopranos right and the way you tell it that is you pick a specific section on the screen called masks right um and you pick a specific section on the screen and says hey whenever you see this section with this chunk of dots in this particular order at this brightness level because you got to remember i forget the exact amount of brightness level so i'm going to be wrong in this i think it's like anywhere from four to eight different brightness levels of dot that's how they basically did all these cool dot effects on just plasma display so every dot has eight levels of brightness so the really cool thing about the ColorDMD platform is they maintain those brightness levels. So if you had something that was shaded really nice, but the object was blue, well, you can paint that all blue and you still keep that nice shading and it does the different shades of blue automatically. Gotcha. So that's real nice. But again, you have to find a unique, so it's almost like a bit of a puzzle. So in every little frame, you have to find a unique piece that's only exists in that one frame so it knows how to color it. And you can see where the problem might lie if let's say, okay, the money falls in this frame uh and it has this this text in the middle but then that same money animation falls in a different frame later but has completely different text in the middle well how do i tell it what's what it's going to try to color it like the other one because i already told you when you see money color a frame like this so it's really really really you have to get very clever with it and that's actually where some of that stuff uh like with eric came in so there's two different things there's static animations which never change and then there's kind of what we'll call dynamic animations, which essentially can be anything where anything could be anywhere at any time, kind of like video modes, right? When you play a video mode and you're moving the guy around, that's going to be different every single time it's on the screen, you know? Right. And so what essentially we have to do is we have to find a clever way to follow objects around the screen, if you will, and color them. And it gets a little tricky. But that is one of those prime examples in the game I did Sopranos was the score spinner. When you hit the little spinner and it gives you a Sopranos letter, it just piles up random little bricks of scores, 27K, 28K, 30K, whatever. And they could be anywhere on the screen at any height or any width, whatever. And so essentially what I did was I recorded me hitting that spinner for like an hour, right? Just like just sitting there spinning it, spinning it faster, spinning it slower, how high does this score even go you know basically do what about if i start 2x scoring and then hit this spinner you know so i'm just trying to get every single variation of where any of these boxes could be and then essentially we had to do that dynamic thing where the color would follow those boxes and um and it was definitely a trial and error thing and uh you know thank god for eric man you know labor of love dude when i and i mean it because he's like you know we could just cheat and just color this whole screen this one color and then the boxes that go over it or automatically be that color i'm like yeah yeah but would it look so much cooler if the boxes were like orange and the background wasn't and he's like yeah yeah you know so like so i was like yeah so there were certain things where you know it's a give and take thing but i was like can we please do this can i please have your help please yeah yeah so yeah i mean you know but when it all comes love yeah yeah when it all comes together as a package though i mean just it's it's night and day man And it's like when you play a game that's in color and then you have the same game and it's not in color, you're like, well, I guess I know where my next $400 is going. Yeah, it becomes a really easy decision.
    25:20
    If you have the money. Yeah, of course. And the way I personally – because I like justifying things to myself because I'm sick like that. So the way I justify that purchase is that I'm pulling out a perfectly good display already that I can sell probably for $100 and some change. So that helps offset the cost. Right, right. I'm like, hey, look, but I get like a $125 discount because I sell this to my buddy. Yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I always ask myself you know what would my mom do if she was here And so to me that just like the clear indication Clearly she would go color DMD Well because your mom a woman of impeccable taste
    25:56
    Exactly. I love it. Exactly. I love it. So great. So you touched basically real quick on LCD and LED.
    26:06
    What are the differences? I mean, you know, some games can only work off one, or how does that work? So essentially, when they first came out, he did all LCDs. And basically what he did was he found – he would buy in bulk large, essentially raw laptop displays. And then he would build them into his own nice casing, which I believe I think Bill Ung may have originally helped on, who did the saucer mod in AFM or Revenge for Mars. I think. He may not quote me on that. We'll see. But at the end of the day, he had developed this really cool system, and his own board and everything mounted and worked real nice. And like you said, it worked on these standard games like obviously Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, all of these other ones. And the only difference is obviously it wasn't the standard size of the display that was in there. But we got away with it because if you look in the head of the back of the pinball machine, there's a big hole cut out there. So essentially it could sit in there and take up more space, and it wasn't a big deal. Well, not all games are created equal. uh so when you get uh games with different type of displays like circus voltaire has a display that's sunk down in the very back of it and there's only enough room for that size display you're not squeaking anything bigger than that normal display in there uh so that make games like that basically undoable um other games other prime examples are like i think maybe godzilla's one of them starship troopers one of them any of those uh sega showcase yeah the rounded cabinets, right? There's only a basically place in there for an LED. You know, you can't, you have to have just that exact size screen in there. So there's certain ones, some of the newer sterns, actually, the newer sterns with the slanted metal speaker panels, the spike systems, you can fit a color DMD in there. I mean, an LCD one, but you have to use some special standoffs and stuff, and it's going to sit a little bit farther back as opposed to if you get the LED one it's going to look closer uh pros and cons of the actual units now that's just mounting them right uh but the led will pretty much work in any game uh another example that is data east you know i love them uh so you can fit the lcd in a data east back box but you have to like i think cut up some of your back box which is like a big no-no because those are tough to find so uh you'd be better than avoids the manufacturer's warranty too yeah yeah i was like call them up from 93 like hey my machine has a problem are we still covered it's like 24 years we're good uh so yeah so you want to go you want to go leds in ones like that now lcds versus leds the lcd uh isn't going to quite have that bright vividness of like an led dot you know just sticking out right in your eyeball and hitting your retina there um and the other thing with the lcd is in the lcd randy's created these amazing modes that actually it's funny because the ability was always there because we were just coloring the raw data but he just never really had him in there because he didn't think anybody would care uh and then one day there was this pin side forum talking about like well what if the dots were a little bit bigger? Or what if the dots, you know, like, were, like, just a square and it looked like an 8-bit retro Nintendo game or something, you know? And Randy's just like, yeah, I can do that. And he, like, busts it out like a knight, you know? He's just like, yeah, the information's already there. Like, so now you have these different modes that the LCD can run. I believe they're dots, and then they have dots XL, which is the bigger dots, which is actually my favorite because it just fills the screen with more color, but you still get that original dot effect. and then you basically have the high-res mode, which is this super, super clever tool that they created that essentially merges the dots together and creates solid objects rather than dots. And then you have that same mode with scan lines to kind of look like an old-school TV. And then you have that 8-bit mode as well, which, like I said, looks like square blocks, like old-school Nintendo.
    29:48
    And it comes down to a lot of personal taste, and some games look better in different modes than other games. I know a lot of people really prefer the merging of the dots and that kind of cool mode on games that have like custom cartoon animations, games like Family Guy and Simpsons Pinball Party, games like that. A lot of people prefer the high-res version in that. You know, it really just depends. Or actually the high-res version is actually also really popular in games that have essentially movie scenes like Transformers and Spider-Man, and basically where you have scenes that were taken from the movie and then digitized into dots at the time the game was made, well, it's kind of tough in all one color to even really see what's going on in a lot of those instances. And so by doing this in this kind of merging dot mode, it actually kind of makes it a little bit easier to kind of distinguish what's going on on the screen.
    30:41
    Now, that's all with the LCD. With the LED, unfortunately, while it may look a little brighter and crisper and more vivid, you don't get the ability to do those because you're actually working with physical LED dots. So you get the normal dots in an RGB color, you know. So it's really, you know, it's personal preference. I have both. I've seen both in different games. Like, for instance, I have an LCD in my Tron. I've played an LED in my buddy's Tron. They both look phenomenal. Honestly, I don't even really care. I have like no preference between the two. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter too much. I like actually personally having a mix of both in my collection. That way I can kind of move them around and swap them in and out as I want if I want to mix it up. Cool. Wow. That's really cool information. Are you working on another title right now?
    31:32
    It's funny you ask that. I am. I came out of dot retirement, if you will, about a week or two ago, you know, I was hounding Randy. I'm like, hey, buddy, I got this game sitting in my garage. I might do that. How would you feel about that? You know, and it's cool. I'm actually really having a lot, a lot, a lot of fun with it. It looks great so far, and I've had a lot of these, like, just, you know, and it's funny, because talking, and I think Randy, actually, Randy Perlow was, you know, kind of partly responsible for this, because I talked to him, and, you know, And I'm just – he's like, hey, what's up, man? He's like, I just didn't get much sleep last night. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, dude, I was up and I got onto something and I just thought like, hey, what if I colored this one thing I've been having a problem with like this? And he's like, this was like at midnight and I just couldn't stop. I was just like hammering on it until like 4 a.m. And I'm like, all right, that's way better than like, oh my god, like somebody ran over my cat. I was just like, okay, good. And so I've been doing that. I mean, I've had some super late 3, 4 a.m. sessions doing these dots on this new game here for about the past week, and I'm really, really, really cranking on it. And I think I'll probably – my plan is probably knock it out within the next couple weeks to a month. Wow. Yeah. We'll stay tuned and see what the exciting title reveal is. Oh, it's so cool, man. I've been waiting a while to do it. And a little hint, it's a slightly more obscure title. I mean, well, you're talking to the guy who did Sopranos, so I don't know what's obscure and what's not, obviously. But, you know – Somewhere between Popeye and – Yeah, nobody saw Popeye coming, so it's not like, you know, it's going to be a major culture shock. But it's a fun game, and it's what I call – it's one of these games that I've always called my guilty pleasure. People are like, oh, that game, you like that game? And I'm like, I love that game. I bought that game, I sold that game, and I bought it back. You know, like I love that game. Yeah. Must be a day to ease. Oh, my God, get off it. Gary Stern's right behind you nudging you. I can hear it. I can feel it right now. Oh, my God. Well, so – Yeah. So beyond the game you're currently working on, is there another game that hasn't been done yet or another title that you'd like to do? Yeah. You know, there is – I mean this was actually really one of the ones that I wanted to do. And actually one of the ones I'd been tossing around the idea of doing for a while. And I have actually a guy here in my local pinball league who offered – who has the game and offered to lend it to me. And it just so happens that I had another buddy, you know, my buddy Joe Abate, if you guys know him there, you know, Ace Jedi. He basically, you know, he, you know, we were talking about how nice the one I had was. And I did a really nice shop job on it. And I should have never sold it. And then he's talking about how, oh, you know, hey, I just actually saw one pop up locally like, you know, a couple days ago, whatever. And, again, it happened to be fairly close to my office at the time. And I went to go check it out. And that was my actual one that I had sold three owners later. And I bought it back. so that is in my garage now and that's the one i'm working on uh as far as another title uh yeah i have i have one or two up my sleeve and uh i may or may not already own those titles so you know i can't get inside right now yeah i can't get in it too much time oh look he does own a popeye yeah oh my god it's the worst it's the worst i you know and and actually and i know you know obviously what else is getting done right now and uh there's just some really really really cool stuff coming down the pipe. And one of the things that I like is that as these new games get released, people, they buy a game, they sell a game, they still might keep their display. A lot of times you see games for sale and they say, okay, what's this price with the Color DMD and this price without? Because let's face it, I'm not going to give away an extra $400 because we all know I'm just going to go out and buy it for whatever game I get next anyways. So, you know, what I like is that all of these Randy and Color DMD team has made it really, really, really a point to make everything backwards compatible all the way back to the very first generation of his display, which is saying something because all of these different dot modes and everything else takes more processing power, more memory, more just beefiness and backend that some of those older boards didn't actually have in the beginning. And so what he's been able to do is go back and rewrite it and make it, you know, basically thorough enough and clean enough code where everything works on every display, which is just rad because there's nothing more than like, oh, yeah, you have the Generation 1 display, like, oh, whatever, well, you can't run this, sorry. Here's the 10 sets of dots you can run and the other 30 you can't. Yeah, super lame. So I really got to commend them on that. It's really, really rad. So, yeah, what can I say, man? I'm just honored to be part of the team and we have a lot of fun, you know? Yeah, it's a really cool setup. I actually took advantage of Randy being at Pinnagogo a few years back and picked up display for my Star Trek Next Gen. And I went over and talked to him, and he said, yeah, I got one. I said, awesome. And then, like, I don't know, three hours later, he had already come over and installed it in my machine for me. Oh, I love it. I hadn't even paid for it, and it was already installed and good to go. So I was super stoked about that. Yeah. Why were there – not color-deal, I'm sorry. Didn't Nifty also LED out your Star Trek at the same time? Yeah, it got the double-bling treatment. Oh, dude, you went from zero to hero right there. That's awesome. Basically. And then sadly time passes and I realize I'm not playing it as much even though it's one of my favorite pins. It just wasn't getting played. So I decided to send it off into the world. But the first thing I did was remove the color DMD from it. And so I got to experience that whole process of upgrading it with a new set of dots and putting it into my fishtails. and that literally took me like 10 minutes total. It was just such an easy process to do. My fish tails look 20 times better with the color DMD. It's one of those games I think is quintessential to have a color DMD. Yeah, it breathes new life into a lot of those games. I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this. Maybe it was me when I was in my heavy game modding phase. I still kept it tasteful, but I would definitely throw a lot of crap, extra crap in these games. and I feel like when you do a mod and you do an upgrade and you throw in the color DMD, I feel like somehow and call it superstition, the game just rewards me I play just a test game and I just knock it out of the park and I get like a grand champ high score and I feel like that's the game being like, hey thanks man, thanks for the love Yeah, here's some love back, exactly You know, I think that's part of the key of pinball machines if you keep them tuned up and clean they need to be played They need to be loved by somebody. If you just send them to a warehouse or a garage and forget about them for a year or two, they'll develop problems.
    38:28
    Yeah, yeah. So is there anything else with ColorDMD that you want to share with the listeners? Man, I don't know. Well, I guess just a disclaimer of I'd recommend not actually hanging out in Randy's bushes as much as I did. I still have some weird like poison ivy rash. so i'd recommend i'm sure he appreciates that as well yeah yeah you can definitely just reach out to them uh at their uh their email there at their at their website uh but great support i guess the only other thing is if you guys have any issues with the display you're on the fence about buying one i'm sure you have a friend that has one um you know i mean hell if you bribed your friend with a case of beer maybe you could even borrow it and go put it in your own game and just see if you liked it but uh at the end of the day man uh if you're on the fence about buying one reach out to him go play one go check it out and uh i mean if you don't like it i'd be pretty surprised yep yep i can't think of anybody who went went by that upgrade because it's a great upgrade and i mean for the price you're paying again hey down the road you can play the game you can move it you can sell the game keep it keep the display just pop in another game and that we're talking about the reverse engineering that's i mean that's so customer friendly that's that's something even i didn't know about so that's pretty cool yeah it's one of those things where you know it actually costs me more money than just the display because i'll see them release a new title i'm like oh that looks amazing. I remember. I miss my Tales from the Crypt now. Now I really want to go buy this. Now I need to buy a display, and I need to go buy the damn game. You know what I mean? I'm like, now you're costing me thousands, bro. This is not cool. Not cool.
    39:57
    Yeah, every time I think about a display, I go, okay, well, I could pick up an EM. There are $400 EMs. I have to do that bang-for-your-buck balancing, and so that's where it gets down to a subjective kind of preference. Yeah, but those take up way more space than a color display. A color display It just fits right in the corner. Don't worry about it. Forget about it.
    40:20
    Well, good info. That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing all that with us because it's really informative for the listeners. And it's also, obviously, sharing your love for pinball and sharing a good company that's doing something really positive and good for the hobby. And I think it also helped kick the pinball industry in the butt to get them into the full-color displays as well. That's a great point. It's a very great point. I think that that definitely – between that and JJP, it really kind of gave good old Gary, since I know he's sitting right behind you listening, gave him a little kick to really, really, really push and finally get those LCD displays pumping out. But yeah, it just breathes life in the hobby and it just makes a classic game look better.
    41:08
    And that's our goal when we're coloring these titles. That's our goal. It's like don't go crazy. Just you want to make it look factory. You want to make it look like it was made that way. You're not trying to put a mustache on the Mona Lisa here. You're just trying to put a nice frame around her. Yeah, yeah. Just church her up a bit. Yeah. There you go.
    41:29
    There you go. Well, you have a game update, don't you, Seth? Yeah, if we want to switch over from the Color DMD talk.
    41:38
    I noticed a couple weeks ago that the Time Shock guys had updated their Facebook page and put out a video. So I just – it's one of those little hidden nuggets that's been floating out there for years, and I don't know how many in our audience have even heard of this title. but it's coming soon.
    42:01
    By soon, I mean anywhere from one year to five years from now. And it's slow growth. That's fine. But just to give you a little bit of background, Time Shock has been around since the late 90s. It was a pinball company, virtual pinball company, that produced on PlayStation and Windows and Mac. so the time shock it's called pro pinball so the pro pinball time shock table came out like 97 on windows and so that it has kind of a cult-like following it's it's been out there for decades and and people really liked it so this company based in netherlands called silver castle pinball formed together about three years ago and and and started pushing forward the idea of taking time shock and making it into a physical table. So kind of breathing new life into that title and attracting a built-in audience to that table. So that's kind of what they've been doing. They've been releasing, they've got, you know, 3D renderings of what it'll look like. They've been showing some of their toys and stuff along the way. But what was it? A couple weeks ago, They posted a full-blown color, nice high-definition color video of a completely finished play field with all the artwork and all shellacked up, all the inserts and everything for people to see. So it was pretty striking.
    43:35
    I've never played Time Shock, so I don't have a theory on how well it will play and what kind of game it's going to be. Is it a catch-and-shoot or is it a free-flowing kind of game? But it's always fun to watch some of the new stuff coming and kind of see how it shapes the rest of the industry. So just something I've been kind of keeping my eye on in the background.
    44:03
    Yeah, I'd heard about it, but I hadn't even really paid any attention to it until you mentioned it when we were putting show notes together. So I went and looked it up because I've never played the digital game either, but it looks really cool. It's got three ramps. It's got that cool gym toy in the middle.
    44:21
    Looks pretty cool, man. And, you know, original unlicensed theme, which even when the last, you know, they were starting to get unlicensed themes out again out the door in production, you know, a few of the smaller companies, they weren't really taking off. But then now you're seeing, you know, tomorrow they start taking preorders on a little nuclear annihilation. So, you know, down the road, man, this could really, really turn some heads and get some more cool new unlicensed titles, you know, out in the world. I guess you'd have to – that's an argument there. Is this considered unlicensed? They're probably having to license it, but it's a license built off of an unlicensed virtual table.
    45:05
    Right, right. So it's an original theme. Yeah, sure. Sure. Okay. Okay, we'll go with that. So if we can check that out – where can we check that out online? You can go out to – it looks like Facebook is where they're posting most of their stuff. So facebook.com slash silvercastlepinball, all one word, and check out their feed directly. If you head over to our friends over at pinballnews.com, they have one or two updates out there and a lot of info about the guys behind it. guys and girls, I should say, behind it. So lots of good info out there for you guys that want the details. Cool. Oh, wow, yeah. I just popped up their Facebook page, and I'll take a look at the – they have a video of going over this prototype play field. It's rad. It looks pretty freaking sweet, actually. Yeah, yeah. If you head out to – scroll down on their Facebook site, you'll start seeing, like, from two years ago, a year ago, you'll start seeing mechs and all sorts of prototype stuff. Well, the cabinet artwork looks great. The trans light looks great. I mean, the whole thing actually, it looks quality. I mean, I guess that's how you could sum it up, you know? Yep, yep, exactly. So something to keep an eye on out there. Very cool. Well, having said that, I do want to get to a new segment. We're always trying new things out here on the podcast. I have challenged our illustrious host, Spencer, to a top ten of all-time best sport-themed pinball machines. and Justin was gracious enough to join us to also put some thought into this. Having said that, I did want to kind of work from number 10 down to number 1 on Spencer's list first before we start agreeing or disagreeing with him. Okay, all right. Before we start needling him, be like, dude, that game is garbage. Yeah, we'll let him get through like number 10 through number 6 and then we'll start laughing at him. But I think the most important thing we do first is talk about what is Spencer's definition of a sport. Okay. I put a lot of thought into this because you and I talked about it. Now, these things are debatable, things like auto racing, bowling, things like that. Hey, look, don't try to sugarcoat it. What is your definition of a sport? I left it to more – well, okay. I'll tell you. I did not find one. There's not one. No, no, no, no. He's already back. Are you a politician? What is that? Sort of, kind of, but not really. But I play a lot on the TV.
    47:49
    No, I get into things that more usually like have a ball or a puck. But there's a couple of, there's not one. Spencer, what is your definition of a sport?
    48:00
    I don't really, the definition is so broad, I don't really have it. Okay. I'm just going to go down. That's what he's saying right now.
    48:08
    Okay, right. Okay, like baseball, basketball, but I don't have one football game in my list. And I did not – I was very – I have three baseball games, but they're all actual pinballs. No, no, no, Pigeon Bats. Although I love Pigeon Bats, I left those out. Okay, so you refused to give us the definition, which is totally fine. Okay. What eras of pinball did you decide? Are you going all the way back to EMs? I am. We know you've eliminated – okay, so it goes all the way back to EM, and you've ranked them. EM side-by-side with solid-state side-by-side with D&D. I have no particular order here. But you're not including Pitcher Bag. I'm not including Pitcher Bag. You have no particular – okay. So when I said top ten, you said give me ten. I'm giving you ten, man. It was a tough list, so.
    49:00
    All right, give me your first five. Okay, my first – I'll bite my tongue. Okay, my first – well, it's going to make it more interesting this way. Okay, my first five. Number one, or number ten, you pick World Cup Soccer by Bally, of course. Okay, hey, that's a pretty fun game, and it integrates the theme well.
    49:19
    Okay, up next is Surf Champ by Gottlieb, you and I both own, and the theme, of course, is surfing, which is a sport because it is competitive.
    49:28
    Up next is Volley by Gottlieb's Wedgehead EM. The theme, of course, is tennis. You're really showing your age right now, but okay. Okay. Okay, next one up is NBA Jam.
    49:41
    Okay. Fun game. And number five on my list is – Wait, I'm sorry. Is it NBA Jam? He meant NBA Fast Break. I'm sorry. Fast Break. NBA Jam is a different game. When you get to his age, it's hard to say Fast Break. He's heating up. Yeah, I'm warming up here. Yeah. NBA Fast Break. I'm sorry. So, yeah. And then Title Fight, which is boxing. Also a sport because you do it competitively. So competitive eating would be a sport for you. I competitively pick my nose, too, so I didn't know if it was a sport. Right. Well, you know what? I competitively listen to podcasts. That's what I got, man. That's what I got. So come on. What do you – Well, let me ask you this. So that's five of the ten, and they're not ranked in any particular order. But the last one was title fight. That's a EM, isn't it? Godly Premier. Oh, okay. No, no. Godly Premier, Solid State. Oh, is that the one with the animated back box with the two boxes? Yeah, yeah. Okay. It is. That's actually my favorite part of that game. Wow, I can't believe you put that on your top ten list. I'm still – I don't know if I'd put it on my top 30 list, but okay. It's going to get worse. So your remaining five, how many EMs are in those remaining five, just out of curiosity?
    50:51
    No, none. Okay, all right. No, no, no. Next up, the next three are baseball. No, you just hold your horses because I'm going to turn to the voice of reason.
    51:04
    Go, Justin. Justin, let's make this right. Give me your – because you probably ranked them, right? I sure did. Right, because that's what we asked, right? Because it's called following the instructions, right? And I can actually answer your first question like definition of sports and what year is there between. Okay. Let's start with your definition of sports. Okay. So we're going to go with anything that's ever been aired on ESPN for starters. Okay. Any ESPN or the prime ESPN? Even ESPN ate the Ocho for sure. We're going deep. We going deep Okay That fine Fair enough And then years of release I just picked because you know I more of a newer guy you know because like I said I wasn around when they were inventing trains and dinosaurs So everything from 1980 to current is pretty much what I picked in that range Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. The other definition of sports is actually, according to the pinball database at IPDB.org, they have different categories. I punched in sports as the game theme, so it has to have that at least in one category. Oh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah. They gave me a list of 121. He cheated. All right. I'm now more disappointed in you. No, no. He did what he did. No, he cheated. He had to have a helper. That's too bad. That's really too bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, whatever. I might have cheated too. Yeah, you did. All right. So my number 10 to start it off is NBA Fast Break, otherwise known as NBA Jam apparently. Okay. Yeah. There is an NBA Jam, and it's a great game, but it's a virtual game. Nice. See, NBA Fast Break, cool. One of the things I like about it is that you can – you never see it, but you could link two of them up and play head-to-head, which is really cool. I think we had that in the Bay Area. I think one of our – Scandia in Fairfield, I believe, had that. I don't know if they still do. Yeah, you can thank TJ for that. Yeah, TJ did that. Yeah, TJ did that up there in Scandia. They went from like having one or two broken pins to an actual pinball lineup, so thank TJ for that all day. Cool. Excellent. All right. Number nine, a little bit of motocross action. We're going to go with Bonsai Run. All right, all right. Oh, good choice, good choice. You mean you didn't consider that, Spencer? Never even crossed my radar, man. It was racing, and I didn't want to get grief from you about having racing it. I would have put any 500 if I'd known that, but no, good choice. And for those of you who haven't played Banzai Run, make sure you, if you get a chance to play a good working one, it's got this really, really crazy vertical back glass that's a whole other play field that you like, unlike anything you've ever seen. And because the physics and gravity are completely different up there, it's actually way harder than it looks and it's a lot of fun so if you ever get a chance to play a nice working one definitely shot so uh so above that uh we're gonna throw out another little bit of a random one we're gonna throw out to the alvin gottlieb football which is actually a heads up player to player game and if you guys have ever seen this again you don't see very often uh but when you do they're a lot of fun and you literally have two players at the same time one on each side shooting targets on their own side of the play field, and then you can also shoot the ball to the other half of the machine, which is the other player's side. So you're playing at the same time against each other trying to score. That's hot. Yeah, yeah. I know. It was good for me. I can't believe that's in your top ten. It's good for me, too.
    54:15
    Okay, also, okay, now the number seven. I talked about owning it for a minute. Ramps galore. It's just kind of a fun, wacky, quirky game. It involves skateboarding, and it's radical. Yeah, radical. I like it. That's a great game. Yeah. Especially if you've never played it before, every ramp you shoot, you're like, where's the ball going to go? Because there's ramps everywhere. Right. Yeah.
    54:38
    Follow that up with the one that Spencer had mentioned, World Cup Soccer 94. Or 94, 92, 93, whatever it is. I don't know. Whatever it is. World Cup Soccer. Cool stuff. I don't know if it's public information, but you guys can out me if it is. but there's a special company that may be doing kind of an unlicensed re-theme of this title in the near future that may have done other titles like re-themed Johnny Mnemonics into Matrixes, things like that. They may or may not be possibly re-theming this title into something else. If that's public knowledge, great. You already know, and if it's not, then I'm not going to say it. So those might get harder and harder to find. So definitely keep an eye on those, for sure. and number five my number five is Fishtails okay nice fishing is a sport you can do it for money so or competitively for not money that's true oh in that case Guitar Hero is a sport so they definitely made a couple hundred bucks all right so that's your actually I guess that's your bottom six oh yeah oops yeah that's all right you gave us a little sneak peek into Fishtails all right so this is tough i was curious what your guys's definition of sports was um i decided to go anything that's competitive and required physicality um so it's just gray right is chess considered a sport and has it been on espn no i was gonna say no to chess probably no to poker i almost thought about throwing wpt in there because i'm a poker guy i mean i played last night till 4 a.m so yeah i'm a right you know i mean yeah So I'm with you. So I was like struggling on that, but I ended up striking it off the list.
    56:27
    But the color DMD looks great in it, FYI. Nice. But, yeah, so most other things that you guys have been talking about fit.
    56:40
    I think I'm a little surprised. Well, I don't know. Spencer didn't give us his top ten yet, so I'll hold off judgment. But I'll give you my bottom ten here. At number ten, only because I'm a fan of the era. It's not my favorite wide body ballet, but Practical Steve is desperate to get one soon. Good old hot dogging. Yeah. Number ten. Yeah, good choice. Yeah, yeah. That's a solid game. It can play slow, but I think when dialed correctly, It's a pretty fun game. Lots and lots of shots. At number nine, because I decided billiards was a sport and meets the criteria of physicality and competitiveness, I put nine ball. I love Steve Kirk and a lot of the titles that he's done. And so I love that floating spinner on that nice early stern. So my number nine position goes to nine ball. staying with the big. And a great skill shot. Yeah, and a great skill shot. Really, really good skill shot. Number eight, I'll stick with billiards and go eight ball deluxe and not the ugly cab version of it.
    57:56
    Number seven, I've got to give love to my Harlem Globetrotters on tour. Love that game. Love the chimes. Electronic chimes in that.
    58:08
    And then where is my number six on my list oh here it is uh number six was radical so we actually have our first uh crossover definitely uh love the um cheesy 90s on that game a lot like you said lots of good ramps good fun there so i haven't mentioned any ems yet but there are em or two to come so spencer let's uh let's polish this list off what are the other five on your top 10 in no particular order. Okay, well, I'll go down the order. Silver Slugger, Gottlieb Premier, baseball theme, layout slightly, I find it slightly similar to Firepower. It's, you know, got multi-ball, no ramps or anything. It's a street-level game, one of those street-level games. I just enjoy playing it because I love baseball and I just enjoy the game. It's got drop targets, spinners, you know, it's a fun game and you don't see them very often.
    59:04
    Next up, so we'll say number four is Another baseball is Big Hurt Frank Thomas, Big Hurt, another baseball theme Dot Matrix game, Ramps, Multiball Played it Cheddar, our buddy Cheddar had one For a short time It's got a really unique skill shot Cool toys, cool theme integration A lot of fun So if you find one out there, give it a shot Especially if you're a baseball and pinball fan I think you'll get a kick out of it Another rare one You never see come up For sale around here anyway is 1983 Valley Grand Slam.
    59:41
    It's a baseball theme, but it's a bullpen ball. It's got these weird targets. They're not drop targets. You hit them and they flip up, kind of like a flip flag, but in a vertical position.
    59:52
    It's just an interesting layout. I played one a year or two ago at Pinagogo. Kind of really liked it. Todd Tucky did a tutorial video on it a few years ago, so if you want to go on YouTube and check that out.
    60:06
    next up is Bobby Orr Power Play great early solid state especially if you're a hockey fan still got the chimes remember playing that one back in the day at the local cookie mart or actually fast stop it was called then the last one is a System 80 Gottlieb Striker which is another soccer team really interesting layout fun game not to be confused with Striker Extreme very different game Not ever. If you use the Striker Extreme or the NFL games or any of that. Well, I'm really surprised, Spencer, by the number of Gottliebs you got on there.
    60:44
    That's it. So that's your top ten list. So if you were told you can go pick out any ten machines to bring home that are sports-themed, those are the ten you would bring home. Well, now that you guys have mentioned some other really great ones, probably not. But, I mean, some of them, yeah, like I really want a Silver Slugger. um you know i really want to volley i'll take a world cup soccer because i like the game but i'll probably get bored of it in a couple of months but you know who knows okay fair enough justin do you want to show him uh where he's gone wrong yeah yeah in fact nobody has mentioned any of my top four yet no one's mentioned any of my top five okay so i i wonderful have a crossover in these right here so uh you know again and maybe that's because you know some of these can subjectively be a sport if you will but like i said i gave you my criteria you know if it's tagged does a sport on uh ipdb i went with it uh number four uh how about whitewater some rafting okay sport okay we'll go with that right they do it extreme sport you could die if you could die it's a sport okay there you go fair enough i can't argue that long yeah so whitewater's cool okay then if you didn't like that one you're probably not gonna like this next one okay uh we talked about uh if it aired on espn it's a sport and this falls into the bowling thing. I'm going to go Big Lebowski.
    62:04
    Okay, yeah, we're going to need you to leave the show now. And part of that is just because I want it to be true since I have like $8,500 sitting there with some random company overseas and I really like my game. If you're listening, thank you. Appreciate it.
    62:19
    I'll tell you what. That actually looks like a fun game to play. I've never played it. I don't have a problem with the game. I don't even have a problem with being in a top ten list. I have a problem with you calling that a sport game just because it's based on a movie that happens to have bullying in a couple critical scenes. Well, like, you know, man. I just say shame. Shame on you. That's like your opinion. Take this list seriously. That's like your opinion, man. You know?
    62:41
    Nice. Okay, I'm going to throw this out there. Nice. I'm going to throw this out there. Yes. You know, this isn't non-there are rules, okay? That's all I'm saying. Okay. Says the guy that didn't come up with his top ten list like ass. Okay, well, then number two should make up for any lack of sports because it has a crap ton of sports in it, which is No Fear. I knew you were going to say No Fear. I love No Fear. Who didn't have No Fear back in the 90s? Come on. I still have a No Fear hat that's collecting dust somewhere in the bottom of my closet. Suspension, you love No Fear? Oh, I absolutely love that game. And it wasn't in your top ten. Interesting. All right. It's only got every sport ever. Racing, man. I love racing. I know. But I always think of racing. I love racing now. Because I figured, well, racing is not really a sport. Also skydiving, snowboarding, it's all in there. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, Glenn Plake is in there, and I literally have a signed poster on my wall that my brother got me from Glenn Plake, like however many decades ago, that says, don't eat yellow snow, bro, like Glenn Plake. Like, straight up. I mean, no fears, rad. Yeah. No fears, rad. And side note, Color D&D Style, they did do that one in color. I think it was released in the last couple months or maybe before that. But at the Geek, Eric Prepke did that one, and funny inside info, I was just reading on our developer forums in the back, there is a scene where it's like a side view of basically this stadium, and basically every other dot is lit up. And it's just this random – you don't know what's a person, what's a shirt, what's an arm, what's a leg, what's a cup. It's just a pile of dots. And essentially, rather than trying to color that all by hand, he's like, dude, I would just – I'd just put the gun in my mouth if I tried. I don't know what's what. I don't even know where to start. It's just all the same dots, all the same brightness. He wrote a cool little script that just said, throw me out a random color palette of dots across this. There you go. In this shape. And he just hit run, and it spewed on the screen, and it looked frigging perfect. And it took him, like, you know, whatever, five minutes. Yeah, much better. Yeah, it was super cool. So that's funny. My number one. Are you guys ready? Ready. I'm ready. Drum roll, please. This holds a weird little special place in my heart. I've never actually owned one, but every time I see it, I play it and I have fun. I guess if I owned it, it might potentially get old, but I like it. I like the idea. I like the style of it. Champion Pub.
    65:01
    Okay. I love that game. I like the little things on it. I like that you can jump rope the ball. I like that you're fighting the guy in the middle. You know, there's just – Number one, though? Yeah, yeah. Number one? Oh, what? Okay, well, I want to hear yours. Let's go. Come on. Hit me with it. Number one? Hit me with it. Well, it's the most expensive game on my list besides Lebowski. What do you want from me? This is not about price. This is not about availability. This is about what the top ten sport themes are for you. I'm about price and availability. Really? No, I'm just kidding.
    65:29
    So number five, this is one that's been mentioned already, Surf Champ. So I'm with you there on that, Spence. Number four, this will probably get some derisive laughter, but roller games. Definitely. Oh, yeah. The best theme song ever. Totally have one of those. And it was, again, guilty pleasure. Anytime you can look and see that the sponsors on the play field are companies like Slice, Slice One Soda. I'm like, this is rad. And Thurman's. Yeah, bright pink neon spandex and just like, oh my god, the hairdos. I mean, if there's any game that screams like this is the 80s decade, it's that.
    66:08
    We've all owned it. All three of us have owned that game. Rock and roller games. Number three, a newer one. The newest one on my list, Full Throttle. Yes. You know, I saw that and I debated it.
    66:25
    Yeah, I just – I haven't really spent enough time with it to like super love it. But the couple of times I did play it, I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah, it's got great, great flow, good art package. So number two, hope to own this soon someday.
    66:41
    And just like Justin clearly loves Data East from the 90s, I love my Bally's. and my sterns from the 80s. This is Skateball. Nice. Love the drops. Love the shot selection on that pin. Love the gentle ocean waves in the background. Love the beach. Yes. And, you know, anytime you can include a van and a most awesome mustache into a theme, you know you've got a winning theme. I do. And number one, I think, is evident by the fact that I own it, and it's my only sports theme that I do own, would be fishtails. Nice. I think we got, Justin and I crossed over on that one. So it's interesting, top ten-wise, there wasn't a lot of crossovers between us. The World Cup, the NBA Fast Break, fishtails, and that's kind of, and Radical, and that's it. Radical? Yeah, Sergium. Oh, yeah, yeah. So out of the 30 possible choices, there was only about six or so that bled over, which just goes to speak what an interesting genre of choices you have you guys have any honorable mentions that you kind of hemmed and hawed about that haven't been mentioned yet tonight uh how about space jam okay oh i don't even think i've ever played that uh my honorable mention is uh uh uh not nascar the other one because i really like it um indie indie 500 i love indie 500 man i just you know i'd love to find one it's a fun game it's got you know it's got some great shots, decent flow, some cool toys. I'm not really into racing per se. I was going to say, being a sucker for Data East, actually, I thought about it for all of 1.2 seconds about possibly WWF Royal Rumble from 1994. I love that game.
    68:28
    It's funny. I was just about to call Spencer to the carpet for not selecting that game because he does love that game. That's why I did not because it has a shaker motor all right it does so you know it qualifies it has a shaker motor no no it's not broken well you know it's it's actually it's it's actually a really fun game it's not a huge flow game it doesn't have some elements but it's got a fairly deep rule set cool multi balls great upper play build that gives a lot of fun well i'm surprised uh you didn't go with monday night football justin just given your your opportunity i guess maybe it's a little too early for you yeah it's a little too it's a little too early for me it's a little before my time but uh you know i don't know it Monday Night's actually kind of cool. Monday Night Football, yeah, I thought about it. I like the music. What else was on there? Let's see, some other ones just looking down this list.
    69:17
    Blackwater 100, I thought. This coming in, I was just going to – I finally got to play a really well-working one at the pinball show I went to in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Showdown. And it was interesting, but I would never want to own it.
    69:34
    Just that – it's interesting to play because, you know, you play with the full play field and it can, you know, it goes behind the flippers and I mean, it's got all those weird channels, but it feels like more of a novelty thing than something you would, and that's me playing it for five minutes. So, um, you know, I've, I've said many horrible things about games I now love, uh, after only five minutes. So, um, that's pretty much my ex and my ex-girlfriend's relationships too. Yeah. I was surprised no one said strikes and spares. I'm surprised nobody said Shack Attack. Well, there's a reason for that.
    70:10
    Some honorable mentions I'd throw out in the EM realm that weren't mentioned would be Sky Jump, Grand Prix, Ice Review.
    70:19
    Even Nippet, right, if we're going to go fishing. A little Nippet. Lots of interesting choices. If you consider golf teed off, no good gophers, any of those, you know? Yeah, exactly. That's actually, man, what did I forget about? Yeah, me too. No good gophers. Dang it. I still wouldn't make it in my top 10. I'm still happy with my top 10. Spencer, are you happy with your top 10 still? Yeah, for the most part. But, you know, everybody's mentioned it on the game show. Oh, that's good. You know, why didn't I think of that? So, yeah. Yeah, I think there was one or two. I'm happy with my top 10. I think there was one or two that you had mentioned, Seth, that I forgot about that I was like, ooh, that's a good idea. But, yeah, all in all, yeah, you know, if I just had like a sports section in my house, because we all have so much room for all of these pins. Right. You know, why not put those together? Yeah.
    71:03
    Exactly. So that concludes our top ten lists. Spencer, you actually did much better than I expected. I'm proud of you that you mentioned Spencer. Oh, okay. Thanks. Well, I got ten games listed, and I got nine of the names right, so you know. I know Mike is out there just super pumped that you mentioned like seven Gottlieb Premier games.
    71:28
    He's going to actively try to hunt those down for you. So let's move on to our game of the week. Spencer, you nominated Star Trek, The Next Generation. Yeah.
    71:40
    Okay, well, you know, I like the theme well enough. You know, I watched the show. You know, it's a Steve Ritchie. You know, what's not to love? But, you know, the few times I played it, I just did terribly because, you know, the outlines can be brutal on that game. But I've been playing it a little more, both, you know, in the real world and then also on Pinball Arcade, now that I understand the rules better and realize that if you just keep it, if you keep the ball from the bottom third of the play field, you can do pretty good. And I'm just having fun with it. That's true of all pinball. Well, yes, that's true, but especially of that game.
    72:21
    I just thought it would be fun to talk about some of the – But, you know, another neat thing about that game is it's got so many great call-outs from the actual actors. And that's just something you probably won't see any time together in the near future, where they have, what, seven, eight of the cast members, something like that, all doing call-outs for that game.
    72:43
    Yeah, custom call-outs. And I was going to say, so, funny fact about that, I'm not super, super familiar with the game. I have, you know, a funny story I kind of touched base on that we'll hear shortly. But another fun thing about those actor call-outs, for those of you familiar, Greg Colton, very active and vocal in the pinball community, goes by Rare Hero on Pinside. He, you know, he's one of the executive producers on Family Guy. He's been kind of in the industry for a long time. So he has a chance sometimes to get fun kind of weird games and mix elbows with celebrities, you know, that a lot of us wouldn't normally get to. And he ended up in his office. I've been out to his place out there in the L.A. area. And in his office, he obviously has a family guy. and but you know what else he has and he did the artwork on that by the way what else he has is he has a Star Trek Next Generation next to it that belonged to one of those cast members I forget exactly which one each one of the cast members received a Star Trek Next Generation with a special plaque on it with their name and a custom ROM with their own special extra sounds on it so I forget which actor it is but that is there and it's got that ROM minute and I played it. I think I know the actor. It's Gates McFadden who played Dr. Beverly Crusher. I think he's the one who got that. I think that's right. I think that sounds about right. Because I remember reading about it on Pinside some time ago. Yeah.
    74:10
    Well, to level set, just for the kids at home, Star Trek The Next Generation is a Williams pen that came out in 93. It is one of the super pens, so it's an extra wide body pin. They made 11,728 units, so they did quite well with it. It is a Steve Ritchie concept, Steve Ritchie design. Dwight Sullivan is the guy behind a lot of the software and design, and then the artwork is Greg Ferreri. So definitely Mount Rushmore of folks there involved in that pin so it's it's um no uh no surprise that it's uh in a top 10 kind of category for most people uh ranking wise i i uh obviously have as we talked about earlier owned it so i definitely love it it's it's my all-time favorite tv show if i was stuck on a desert island with one tv show um i i would have to to uh have the next generation series as as that show so So it has a special place in my heart, and mainly due to a couple things. But the primary reason is the custom call-outs by the entire cast puts it over the top for me, plus the great gameplay on it. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't a keeper long-term because I find this to be true on a lot of my pins that I get rid of. When it's highly available, I tend to not hold on to it because I always have a note in my heart I can get it later if I get desperate enough. and so I make room for things that are harder to get that I know I can't find later down the road. So that's why I had to go bye-bye. But I will say the two best mods for it, in my humble opinion, and this is one of those machines that has like 5,000 mods,
    75:58
    the two best mods on it are the Color DMD and a Subwoofer. I think those two things really make it shine. So one thing I wanted to touch base on about this game, for those of you who are familiar with it, is that you have this – he talked about that it was one of the wide-body games, right? You have a few of these wide-body games that were all made around the same time. You have a game like this. You have Indiana Jones. You have Twilight Zone. These – Popeye. Yeah, these – God, Popeye just keeps sneaking back in, man. But these games had literally so much – because, I mean, the pinball market was so competitive at this point, right? I mean, everybody was just trying to have the next best thing, the biggest, baddest, coolest toys in pinball, that these games had so much crap stuffed into them that they couldn't even run all of the coils and diverters and all the electronics on and off the one board set that they've been using. So these are one of the few sets that actually has another board, an extra board, that just powers an extra set of stuff in it that is stuffed into the back of these games. And because of that, most of the time, if you see one of these games that isn't in a collection and just out on location and beat up, if you push both flipper buttons, kids, and the game just resets, call your local operator and tell them they have a low 5-volt problem. Yeah, exactly. Exactly Obviously the color DMD display that goes in there just runs off the 12 I think it runs off like the 12 line and 5 line some combination of the two That essentially what was happening is people would have all of these mods crammed in there and then they'd plug in the color DMD, and that would just be just enough to be the straw that broke the camel's back. And then their game would start doing random reset issues, and they're calling up Randy, and they're just like, oh, my God, my game broke. You broke my game. The world's ending. Sky is falling. Brah. And it's like, dude, no. The problem is that these games are already, and they're all old, they're all 20 plus, 25 years old going on, and basically what happens is things get old, right? And so when you start piling in a game that was only made to just work out of the box, and then you start adding in all these extra things that are sucking power, like these extra mods we're talking about, you encounter those problems. So you'll find that frequently on these wide-body games that are just packed with stuff. yeah and and not only they pack with stuff uh they're packed with stuff so and saying which is another way of saying they're heavy i mean i i gotta believe these are over 300 pounds each um when i went to pick mine up uh when i i i found it on craigslist for a good deal and jumped in the the truck and headed down there um it uh was downstairs of a two-story house that It was on a hill, which meant I entered on the second story and walked down to the first story and started scratching my head. I'm like, yeah, I'm taking it, but how? We had to walk it up about a 60-yard hill that was covered in bowling ball-sized rock up the hill and then through more rocks to get it up to the front of the house. that and just me and another gentleman that was one of the hardest moves I've ever done because we just would move a couple feet set it down move a couple feet set it down and I'm surprised I didn't snap an ankle but yeah that's that's one you know that machine Twilight Zone some of the super pens that are just packed with toys they're just way too heavy for for two people to really move safely it is well I'm actually kind of glad and sad all the same time that you brought that up uh is it story time should i tell you about my experience moving yes all right guys well gather around the campfire kids get your marshmallows it's it's story time so uh you know everybody knows that's that's been into pinball uh you know it's great because you know everybody's always about the thrill of the hunt man i mean if there's a certain title you're looking for and you know i at this point in my pinball hobby i just rather just buy a nice game from a collector where i don't even have to look at it twice i don't even have to turn it on i just go up give you money throw it in my car and like, cool, I'll see you tomorrow, next week, whenever I see you, you know, those are kind of the deals I like to do. But I definitely used to be a solid Craigslist scavenger and like, oh my God, I got to clean my husband's an arcade operator and I got to clean out this storage unit. You know, you don't even have power to turn them on, but like cash money talks and these kinds of deals all the time. That's actually kind of how I started really accumulating a lot of games because before everybody and their mom, Sean Casey, you know, basically sitting there with their car running, waiting to go snag a deal off craigslist 28 seconds after it was posted i used to be able to get good deals on craigslist uh you know a game you know was worth two grand you might get it for a grand you know it was cool right um and uh so it's fun you get it's kind of like a rental that pays for itself you do the legwork you get the game you fix it up you enjoy it and then you can sell it or trade it and actually make a couple bucks or get your at least your money back um so i found this good deal uh i forget how it was given to me it was either craigslist or word of mouth and and Basically, this lady was like, look, I got this Star Trek Next Generation, whatever. I don't have any pictures. You want it? Come and get it, right? And I thought, all right. And I think she was asking, what's the current market on Star Trek Next Gen? What, 4 to 5K, something like that-ish? Yeah, depending on toys. Sure, yeah. So 4 to 5K, condition toys, all the above. So I think that she was at, I want to say, 3K, something like that, right? Yeah, 3K, right? But that was her starting price. I figured I could maybe get a couple hundred off, something like that. So I thought about it, and I just got busy that weekend. And I said, you know what?
    81:35
    Honestly, it's not even worth my time. I just don't even really care. I didn't know anything about the game, the seller, anything. So I turned it over to, I don't know, somebody else in our sack pinball group, something like that. And they went, and I never heard. And I told her, I was like, hey, I turned it over to my buddy. I gave him your number. Like, boom, that's it. I figured I'd never hear another peep from it because I was supposed to go look at it like Friday. and Friday comes and goes, Saturday comes and goes. I didn't hear anything. I figured guy went, checked it out, picked it up, bought it. Cool. Like whatever, right? Sunday I get a text, hey, are you still interested in the game? And it's this lady. And I write back, dot, dot, dot, I thought so-and-so was going to get it. And she's like, oh, well, he came and looked at it, but he wasn't sure about it, so he left.
    82:18
    And the guy I sent to go get this game was pretty damn knowledgeable in pinball. and I'm like, if this guy passed on this game, there's got to be a reason, right? And she's like, well, do you want it?
    82:31
    And I was like, why didn't he take it? She's like, I don't know, whatever. And I'm like, okay. Well, and this time I had a roommate buddy of mine who just, he just loved going on little like adventures and scavenger hunts. He's just a tank. He moves, he moved big objects all day. He didn't care. So I said, hey man, I'll buy you lunch. You want to come with me and go check out this game? Sure. So we get in the car, about a half hour drive, pretty close. We go to check it out. We pull up this, you can tell this lady's kind of got this like I'm recently divorced and very bitter about life kind of attitude.
    82:59
    And, you know, like a relatively nice house, but she was extra, but it wasn't like really, really nice. Right. But she was extra picky about like everything. And they're like, Oh my God, don't step there. Don't even look at this, you know, plant in the corner. I'm like, Whoa, relax, calm down. This isn't like the Taj Mahal. Okay. So anyway, so I was like, okay, well, where's the game? She's like, okay, come with me. So to start, we walk in obviously on the main floor. we walk up a ridiculously long oversized spiral staircase to the second floor already and we talked about yeah we talked about everything as we start walking up the stair i just look at my buddy and he looks at me and i'm just like this is already sucking this is not going to be fun right um and we go up the stairs there's this huge like decorative mirror on the wall that she's like oh by the way you're gonna have to and this mirror must have weighed probably 300 pounds itself it's like oh by the way if you get this game you're gonna have to take this mirror off because you knock in this mirror. You have to take it off the wall and then move the game down and then put the mirror back on. I'm like, look, you didn't call the mover company, okay? You know what I mean? So as we walk up, so apparently she was getting some work done on her house. Her main room upstairs, we walk past this. It's got a pool table that's way too big for that room in it, right? And you can barely even squeak by the side of the pool table, and we walk past that. So I'm like, okay, well now you're telling me wherever this game is, I'm gonna have to move this friggin' pool table, and we all know how light those are. No doubt. Okay. Yeah. Right, yeah. Okay, exciting. So now we have a spiral staircase, some oversized gaudy mirror you want me to move, and a frigging pool table. I already hate you. Okay? Let's just stop right there. How much is she going to pay you to take it? That's the question. So then, you know, and she had a couple workers around her house, I think, like doing painting or whatever, right? So then she's like, okay, cool. It's right here around the corner. And she goes to this all glass door. Oh, God. And it's pretty bright on the other side. I'm thinking, there's no way this is what I think it is. And she opens it up, and it's sitting out on the sunny-ass balcony in about 105 degree heat. No blanket, no cover, no nothing, head up. Whole game just sitting there. Just on the balcony, right? Is that where it's been? And this is what I ask her. I say, so why is this game out here? And she's like, oh, well, I was having some painting done. I'm like, well, how long has it been out here? And she's like, uh, and she does that. And she pauses for like a good five, ten seconds, which is pretty much an eternity, right? Right. And I literally was like, no, I'll wait while you make up a number, like just an hour, five days, two weeks, like who knows who cares, you know, right? And I'm just like, oh my God, whatever, right? So I look and so first thing I say is, okay, well, I take a look at the play field. It's actually unbelievably, the ramps aren't melted. It's actually doesn't look to be faded. So I'm like, okay, whatever. And so first thing I say, okay, well, where's the key? Oh, I don't have a key. okay it's check out this game pull the glass look at oh i don't have the key okay so i say here's it so right there i stick out my hand i look at it say hand me 20 bucks huh hand me 20 bucks and i'll drill in to this lock and open your game for you and then we can go from there so i started out with charging her 20 perfect deal starts right i pull it out i look at it game looks all right relatively speaking it's definitely like needs full shop job full everything right but it actually boots it doesn't seem like there's any air there's no battery acid damage in the back bottom of the cabinet definitely has some water spots where it's seen water god knows if it was from an outside on a freaking ledge like it was who knows um but you know i'm looking around the game i'm like all right whatever and uh so i got good news and bad news for you i was like good news is uh i got into your game so you're welcome uh bad news uh i i don't want this at all like not even close i was like this is not worth 3k in your wildest dreams you know and uh and she's like oh you know and i'm just like yeah she's like and so i'm like all right well you know it was nice it was good meeting you you know good luck you know i'll see if i you know throw the deal out to somebody else and i turn to walk away and she's like well how much is it worth and i'm like i don't know man like 1500 at most you know like on a good day right uh and she's like well will you take it right now for 1500 and i'm like uh and i just look at my buddy and he looks at me i'm like do you feel like moving a game right now and he's like it's your call bro and i'm like i really i've never like not wanted to buy a game more because i knew i have to move all of this crap and it's just and literally you're paying me to be a moving company at this point because obviously there's profit in it but it's gonna suck you know yeah and uh and so i'll tell you what i looked at her i was like i'm gonna hand you fifteen hundred dollars and you're gonna hand me $100 right back to my friend here because this is going to be a pain in our ass.
    87:29
    She's like, and she's like, deal. So that's what we did. We moved the pool table. I refused to move her stupid mirror. I said, if it falls and breaks, it's on you. I promise I won't hit it. End of story. And it took us a good hour, probably, to break it down, dolly it up, move the pool table, get it down the stairs, move the pool table back. All this crap. And funny story, I posted it straight up because I'm an honest seller when it comes to pinball, dude. I do not try to pull shady J-Nervo.
    88:01
    Shout out to Gore. So at the end of the day, it's basically what it comes down to is, I was like, look, man, here's what I want to know. I expose to sellers what I would want to know if I'm buying the game. It's got a couple water spots at the bottom of the cabinet, but it doesn't seem swollen or bad. There's no battery acid damage. The game boots. It's going to need a shop job. Everything looks there. Probably has the displays out gassing a little bit. You're going to need a new one, et cetera. Boom. Some guy and this guy must have the needle deeper in the pinball vein than I do because he hits me up that same night. I was like, whatever, dude, just totally parts working. And I listed for three grand straight up, like $2,900 or whatever, right? Three grand. I think I listed for three. He gave me like $2,900, right? Same day, same exact day. Awesome. Dude came up from the Bay Area, and I call him. He's like, I'm interested. Call me. I call him, and I'm like, look, dude, I don't want you to be any surprises. And his exact words to me was, I love fixing games, and all my games are working right now, so I'm bored. and i'm like you are like a seller's wet dream right so anyway super cool dude and he's like all right well i can i was like i gotta come tonight i'll be there right now and then um and then i gotta get home because i leave early in the morning and i'm like where are you going early in the morning oh i'm taking my wife to hawaii and i'm like you are the ballsiest guy on the planet that you are making a two-hour each way trip to grab a project game before you take your wife on a trip, like, dude, hats off, you're the man. We've all been there.
    89:25
    So this lady ended up basically paying me like $1,400 to be moving company for a day. That's worth it. For literally like eight hours, six hours. Yeah.
    89:36
    I wanted nothing. The game was already like a thorn in my soul. I wanted nothing to do with it. I was just like, move it on. So you owned it for an hour.
    89:44
    Yeah, I turned it on. I looked at it. I turned it off. There you go. Bye. That's funny. So that's a great story. That is epic. Good pinball, man. Okay. So we've covered the game of the week with a great story. Thank you, Justin. So now we have a show updates. Uh, I guess I'll start. I actually have two, um, two upcoming shows. Uh, first one is the Buffalo pinball summer open. So it's actually more of a tournament, but that's it. in Buffalo, New York, it's a Papa circuit event. and that is August 18th through 20th and it's at Pocketeer Billiards and Bar again in Buffalo, New York. So if you're a heavy tournament player and you're in the New York area, you might want to check that out. The other one is, this is a newer show. It's the Cleveland Pinball and Arcade Show in Independence, Ohio. It's four days. It's a third annual show. It's in Independence, Ohio, September 7th through 10th and it's at the Holiday Inn in Independence, Ohio. And they have a couple of tournaments. They've got a modern tournament and a couple of classic tournaments running. So if you're in the Ohio area, check out that show and support your local show. Seth, you have one, don't you? Sure do. Vancouver Flipout. So Vancouver, B.C. So West Coast show. It's coming up September 22nd through the 24th. You can head over to www.vancouverflipout.com for all the details. It's going to be a tournament Hundreds of machines on free play All that good stuff you come to expect From that show Some of the cool special guests this year We've got Jersey Jack's going to be out there Sidekick Butch Will be there with him Dirty Donnie's going to be there with a lot of his art Homepin is going to be there So Mike, founder of Homepin Will be there Speed on what's going on with his factory And his machine Jack Danger from Deadflip will be there streaming and wandering about so good opportunity to meet him so lots of interesting folks to talk to and PDX Monkey will be there along with Bill Brady to go party Vancouver, Canada, hang out awesome so that's what I've got in terms of pinball shows as a side note the Stockton con is coming what is it August 26th and 27th, so next weekend, next Saturday, Sunday in Stockton.
    92:19
    And the Golden State Pinball Festival, we'll have a booth out there with some pinball machines, and we'll be meeting and talking to folks and talking about our upcoming show in Lodi next May. Which, out of the three of us that were all scheduled to go to the volunteers' party at Lodi, at the Lodi Great Festival to get a sneak peek. I was the only one that was able to make it. It was a good time. You can see the photos on Tim's side and I think they're probably on Facebook somewhere. Facebook.
    92:51
    The pictures do not do it justice. You guys are going to be absolutely blown away when you see the new facilities.
    92:58
    I'm looking forward to it. I'm super looking forward to it. As long as you still got that Pinnagogo feel of love, man, because that is awesome. And I'm sure we will, David. It will. I'm sure we will. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're dedicated to keeping the same feel. We just needed a little bit better weather control and a little bit more space. True. We just kind of outgrew things. So we unfortunately are changing our name, but it will be basically the same show, just slightly better location. Outgrowing things is the best part. Yeah, exactly.
    93:29
    Unless it's my waist. Yeah, the space is no longer going to be an issue. and people that are doing the swap, you know, Saturdays, there's a covered area for it with electricity. Yeah, with electricity.
    93:44
    And to be clear, too, I mean, we're not trying to grow the show. We don't want to become a mammoth show. We really like to keep it around the size it is. We just want elbow space. We want people to be comfortable, be able to walk through the aisles and have good layouts, give the tournament a nice dedicated area. So this will allow us to do a lot of those things that we want to do. Exactly. Super, super rad. Yeah, I'm super looking forward to it, man. Yeah, I'm stoked for sure. Well, the Canada trip sounds pretty fun too. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, Bill up there actually has his hotel out there called the Kingfisher. And I have – I've been threatening to go up there, you know, with PDX Monkey to go check out his hotel for quite some time. And it's just a world-class resort. He just built this whole new crazy bar and this massive restaurant and all this stuff. And I've just been threatening to come up and hang out, and I just really haven't had the time. But now that we'll call my job situation a, quote, in-between opportunities, I definitely have the time to get up there, and I'm going to make it happen. And it's actually cool because it's not that bad of a drive from Portland, which is where PDX Monkey is, and we're all good buds. So I'm probably just going to fly into Portland and then drive up in the van that says free candy with monkey. you have to get a picture of that please he actually no joke dude monkey is hilarious super good dude i actually met him we just did a random pinball deal and he drove down and we traded some games and that's how i met him and and it's just been super buddy buddy ever since but he has this really funny cool sign that he made on a stick that just says sweet van and so whenever we're driving by because he's just it's his pin movie right because he can fit like four games in this thing and still yeah yeah and so like so he just drives it everywhere and it's great i said hey man how you know what's what's the deal with the van man any regrets about buying he's like my only regret is that i didn't get one sooner you know and so we're driving down the freeway and uh and i just remember every time we drive by another sort of like econoline van or whatever and they look over at us you know you just look over at somebody else you naturally have like that you know bitchy resting face kind of mean mug i just super seriously look at him and slowly raise a sign from like out of view but hit the window that says sweet van and they just lose it. They start laughing, like tears streaming dry. They're taking pictures and I'm just like looking at them. They're looking at me and I'm just like, and I slowly raise the sign that just says Sweet Van.
    96:06
    That's awesome. Yeah, it's a blast. It's a blast. Alright, we're at over an hour and a half. Great show.
    96:14
    We're going long tonight, but that's okay because this is all such good stuff and I think the listeners are going to really enjoy it. So, guys, final thoughts and shoutouts.
    96:23
    Shoutout, if I may, to, if you guys are anywhere in the Northern California area. You've probably heard of Coin-Op Game Room. They have a location here in Sacramento. They're actually opening up a new location in Gaslamp down in San Diego, actually, so a little SoCal action coming up shortly. But they opened one up earlier this year in San Francisco. They have a San Francisco Coin-Op location. Joe Abate there, Ace Jedi, runs all their games. They have a wide selection of games out there. They actually have a really, really cool Tron VIP room there in the middle of setting up, which is really cool. It's straight got the Tron arcade game that like opens as the door. Super, super rad. And yeah, so I have Family Guy, Lord of the Rings, and Transformers out there where I'm yanking Transformers and that's going to be for sale if anybody's interested. And then Star Wars LE is going to get, in pending any shipping hiccups, I'm going to literally get it Tuesday and we're driving it right down and opening it up right on the game floor. You can be one of the first people to pump money into that thing. So come on down and check it out.
    97:19
    That is awesome. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to play one so I'm going to have to make a trip to San Francisco. Are they going to get one for Sacramento as well? Do you know?
    97:28
    Yes, I believe they are. I believe, yeah. We ended up, you know, JJ is our official distributor of, well, I guess, friends and fam, right? I mean, he's who I get all my games from pretty much. So at the end of the day, yeah, it was me, Joe, a couple of people. We ended up getting, I don't know, like six of those things from him for sure. JJ being JJ from Colorado Game Exchange. Yep, absolutely. And so number 50 of – how many are they making? Do you guys know how many they're making? 600, 700, 500? I have no idea. 800, I believe, aren't they? Yeah, well, there you go. So mine's number 50. I figured that was a nice even number. So number 50 will be on location at CoinOp SF. There will also be one in Sacramento. And I believe there's even going to be one for Gaslamp down in San Diego. So visit any of the locations. But I know that we are JJ's very, very, very first shipment of 12. He instantly got them in and turned around and shipped them. He got them in Friday and had them reshipped out same day because he gets faster shipping lanes out of Colorado. So JJ has literally shipped me games that I've gotten in 48 hours. so it doesn't get quicker than that guys so definitely i recommend jj highly as a distributor uh not to mention when it comes to service though real quick sick plug no no no special perks for me but uh service wise is where your distributor shines and any issues i've ever had with the game i mean that guy just handles it he's got all the pull with stern him and his family his dad started the business they've been going hard with stern for decades and at the end of the day like you He's the guy who can call up Gary and be like, hey, look, I got this customer. This isn't right. Let's fix this, and it gets fixed. So he's the guy I've been going with the last 10 game purchases or so. Of Data East?
    99:03
    Shut your mouth. You said it. That's great. All right. Seth, you got any shout-outs or anything you want to – final thoughts? Yeah, sure. I guess on a more personal, private basis, I'll share out that I'm excited to announce my partnership with a dear friend of ours, Moff. He has gone in partnership with me and purchased his very first EM. And so our Mars track arrives safe and sound. Thanks in part to, I believe, PDX Monkey helped bring it down. Yeah. But got that over to the shop. It's getting worked on. So really excited about bringing that into fold and excited about Moff starting his journey into the world of all things electromechanical. Nice. Very cool. Hey, EM is a special breed, man. It's a new experience for sure. I'll get there one day. One day when I grow up. There's no data EMs, though, just to warn you.
    100:02
    But they have motor motors, right? That's all I need. They have a child. Spencer, what do you got, buddy? I got a special shout-out, and it's going to go out to Steve Borrell. He just had a birthday, if you know him. He's a great pinhead local operator along with, yeah, good dude, along with Joe Abate, a shut-eye.
    100:21
    He lost one of his locations. Unfortunately, Wicked West Pizza in West Sacramento has closed. Yeah, they closed their doors, unfortunately. So this is a shout-out to all our listeners, too. So if any listeners know of a possible local Sacramento area or, you know, Bay Area location where you can get some games in and get another good location running, you can probably reach him on Pinside, or you can e-mail me, and I'll forward it to him. You can e-mail me and Seth at thespinnerslit at gmail.com. So that's my shout-out for tonight.
    100:56
    Yeah, Steve, real quick. I've got to interrupt, man. Real quick, Steve's a great operator. I actually got the chance to. I went out there with Joe, who's also an operator. And, you know, operators, dude, it's like it's not even really a competitive thing, man. It's just like we love spreading the love, spreading the fun, you know. And we went out to Wicked West Pizza, and we pumped tons of money into his pens. I think we played Star Trek. I think he might have had a Jurassic Park out there, a couple other games. But you know what was cool is that he also had other games out there, like random games. You don't see like a monkey ball game where you just roll a ball to move the monkey. That's like a kid's game, right? and he had a couple of these games and they were just on free play just for the kids dude like just he's not making any money he just put them out there for just just to share the love and that i thought that was so cool super super good dude so another one of his locations i believe is fanny ann in old town sacramento um so yeah so uh old jack that's just funny in itself definitely go down and uh check out fanny ann's uh great location multiple like floors and just pins in random spots and just playing there you go yeah no and yeah both great both great operators in local area We're really, really, really lucky to have these guys keeping location pinball alive in the capital city. So big shout-out to both of them. I think that's our show for tonight. Justin Kelly, thank you, sir, for coming on the show and entertaining us and giving us all the cool information. Yeah, definitely. We're going to have to have you on again in the next season. Yeah, great choice. Absolutely. Well, maybe after I do my next title, mystery. Yeah, that would be cool. and remember listeners uh your your frustration with uh spencer's top 10 list uh feel free to email us what what he missed out on uh at the spinner is lit at gmail.com oh i'm gonna hear about that so and if you're looking to play pinball anywhere pretty much uh anywhere in the usa for that as far as i know uh check out pinballmap.com uh just google man if you live in an area if you're not sure they have a show just google for shows in your area google sort of kind of is our friend and apparently now the thought police I don't know anything about that though so that's our show for tonight thanks everybody this is going to be a great show this has been the spinners lit pinball podcast episode 9 just filling in the dots you guys be safe out there keep playing pinball support your location pinball play pinball keep America strong night guys night everybody