Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 18: Blue Balls

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 41m·analyzed·May 27, 2022
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Triple Drain debates Guns N' Roses: fun party game or shallow spectacle?

Summary

The Triple Drain hosts discuss Jersey Jack Pinball's Guns N' Roses extensively, examining its appeal to casual/family players versus competitive tournament players. Joel recently acquired a GNR LE and is impressed with its light show, backbox monitor, and accessibility features, though he notes the game remains polarizing. Tom and Travis, who have owned and sold the game respectively, emphasize it's a party/home game rather than tournament pinball, critiquing its layout and constant multiball design. The conversation explores JJP's design philosophy versus Stern's approach to competitive balance.

Key Claims

  • GNR LE production expected to reach 5,000 units, with final calls for distributors underway

    high confidence · Joel reports Zach Mini told him distributor final orders are happening; Joel's LE is unit 3,212

  • JJP games are rarely seen on location or in tournaments; majority are owned by home collectors

    medium confidence · Joel's observation based on his experience; notes GNR appeals to non-pinball fans who are GNR enthusiasts

  • GNR's design gives training wheels to novice players—auto-qualifying band members by ball 3 if not earned

    high confidence · Joel describes feature and demonstrates it with his father; the backbox monitor guides new players on required shots

  • GNR's light show and audio immersion dramatically improve with headphones and RGB strip modifications

    high confidence · Joel tested with headphone adapter built into LE and hyper lights pin mods from CheapDrainz; describes experience as 'unbelievable'

  • Guns N' Roses layout concentrates action in lower third, causing constant chaos from middle scoop placement

    medium confidence · Travis critiques layout design, suggesting wider playfield (like Godzilla) would improve shot flow and reduce multiball spam

Notable Quotes

  • “The light show got deadpool which isn't bad like the light show of deadpool is really good but it doesn't hold a you know it like gnr's light show just blows it out of the water there's no you can't argue that you can't deny that”

    Joel @ ~15:00 — Direct comparison of JJP production quality vs Stern; establishes GNR's visual dominance as a selling point

  • “it almost feels like that the actual pinball itself is a backdrop to the music and the light show”

    Travis @ ~32:00 — Core criticism of GNR's design philosophy—theme spectacle overwhelming mechanical gameplay

  • “I don't think every single pen needs to be for competitive play. I think pinball can just be just that, just pinball. Because the majority of people that play pinball, they don't play tournaments.”

    Travis @ ~42:00 — Articulates key market segmentation debate: casual vs. competitive pinball design priorities

  • “Being able to control the lighting in the pen is awesome...where you're just rocking out and just like the light shows absurd”

    Joel @ ~28:00 — Home environment advantages over location play; headphone + RGB lighting immersion multiplier effect

  • “it's just like, it's such immediate. Like, even if I suck in ball one and two, I'm still going to be able to get to a song.”

    Joel @ ~48:00 — Highlights accessibility design vs. traditional skill gates; party game philosophy

  • “I don't see tournament pin. And that's okay.”

    Tom @ ~41:00 — Acceptance that GNR succeeds in its niche despite not serving competitive meta

  • “it seems like you're just flailing away at multi-ball the whole time”

    Chat comment noted by Joel @ ~51:00 — Community perception of GNR gameplay as chaotic; Joel admits validity

  • “the top 64 for Worlds? I mean, think about that. And that's over thousands of people that play. And the vast majority of them, even though they play in a tournament, let's face facts here. It's very casual”

Entities

Guns N' Roses (Jersey Jack Pinball)gameJoelpersonTravispersonTom GraffpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyZach MinipersonJoe KatzpersonKeith Johnsonperson

Signals

  • ?

    design_philosophy: GNR implements explicit 'training wheels' for novice players: auto-qualifying band members if not earned by ball 3; every novice reaches song mode without mastery

    high · Joel describes feature and tests with father: 'by ball three, all anybody has to do to experience a song is hit the scoop right in the middle...they just give them to you'

  • ?

    business_signal: JJP games historically appeal to home collectors and IP enthusiasts, not location operators or touring tournament players; different business model and success metrics than Stern

    medium · Joel: 'majority of owners, they're rarely on location...seems like...they're in homes...homeowners' and 'how many GNR fans did they get and this is their one pin'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: GNR remains polarizing: strong enthusiasm among casual/home owners and GNR fans; skepticism from tournament players and rule-set enthusiasts; no middle ground

    high · Joel: 'overall view of this game is still incredibly polarizing. Some people think this is one of the best games ever made, and other people are like, nah. It's just all frills'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: JJP games (particularly GNR) rarely appear in tournament rotation; Dialed In is exception; hosts debate whether JJP prioritizes tournament balance vs. Stern's approach

    medium · Joel: 'I don't really think I've seen any of jjp's games used competitively...Dialed In is the main one'; Travis affirms GNR is not tournament game

  • ?

    design_philosophy: GNR's playfield layout (center scoop, tight flippers, left ramps) concentrates multiball spam in lower third; Travis suggests design may have been intended for different layout geometry

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.305

0:00
the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast all right boys travis are you ready i just told you five seconds ago i'm emotionally exhausted you gotta wait for the button oh whatever all right did you hit the button we're five seconds in and i'm already you're already worn me out You were recording that? You already warned me out, Travis. Oh, sorry. Let me put on my show face. I'm doing great, Joel. Let's get this going right now. Oh, boy. Tom, you ready? Oh, hell yeah. See, there you go, Travis. That's genuine. All right, here we go. That's fair. We're three guys who like to talk and ball. So we came up with a clever name. We're Joel and Travis, Tom and Tom and Ball. And we call ourselves Triple Drain. Triple Train We're Triple Train Okay, yep. Welcome, everybody. Hello, hello.
1:12
Yeah, I feel like I should just apologize right off the bat. There's a... Again? Well, I am sick. I am going to be muting multiple times. I have a cough. Thank you to my son. Sick kids in the house. It's just been a joyride in this house for two weeks. Travis looks just awful You know his camera Well for one your camera finally turned on So he I'm proud of you for actually getting that to turn on But I kind of wish you would turn back off Because you look terrible man I'm so tired right now Yeah I mean it's show time now Yeah you're the only person The one of three of us that's like Juiced and ready to go is Tom Graff Tom how are you feeling tonight buddy I'm feeling great do you have a Pepsi right before we started no I diet do I'm going to be up all night ready to go Tom is pumped okay calm down Tom alright so no I'm going to get confident here we go I'm muting already well yeah well thank you boys thanks for being on tonight well thanks for having us Joel oh you're so welcome You know, there's no two other people I'd rather do this with. So episode 18. First off, I'd have to say thanks. We got a lot of feedback on the last episode. Apparently making fun of, you know, Travis's fashion choices is a hot thing. I mean, we should. It was well received. So, you know, Travis, I know I know it was entirely at your expense, but you never back down. You were fully comfortable in what you're wearing. And the one disappointing thing was I heard you didn't wear it on the plane and you didn't wear it to the next tournament. So you've already done a tournament without the comfy. That's a lose or fail. It got confiscated at the airport.

Travis @ ~43:00 — Context on tournament player representation; casual tournament players vastly outnumber competitive circuit players

Mike Castleman
person
CheapDrainzcompany
Deadpool (Stern Premium)game
Flippin' Outcompany
Buffalo Pinballevent/venue
Godzilla (Jersey Jack Pinball)game
Ninja Turtlesgame

medium · Travis: 'because basically with the way that the layout is...it just feels like there's a lot of action happening in that lower third...total chaos the entire time'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: JJP explicitly designing for casual/home play and non-pinball fans (GNR theming enthusiasts) rather than tournament circuit; low-scoring ruleset, heavy theme/spectacle focus

    high · Joel: 'if you're a non-pinball player and you're a huge GNR fan like this this pin would look incredible in the corner of your office'; Travis: GNR is party game not tournament pin

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Home environment with headphone audio and RGB lighting modifications dramatically enhances GNR experience vs location play; Joel calls it 'night and day difference'

    high · Joel: 'Being able to play with my lights off...Bluetooth headphones...plug it in...just a night and day experience' and RGB strips create 'unbelievable' immersion

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball market clearly bifurcates: casual tournament players (vast majority) play for fun/beers, not competitive circuit; top 64 Worlds represents tiny fraction of tournament entrants

    high · Travis: 'top 64 for Worlds? ...thousands of people that play. And the vast majority...very casual...drink three or four or maybe even five beers, play a strikes tournament'

  • $

    market_signal: GNR LE production run of ~5,000 units with distributor final calls underway; unit 3,212 already in circulation suggests strong sell-through

    high · Joel: 'GNR you know is this number 3,212...they're going to make 5,000 of these' and Zach reported distributors placing final orders

  • ?

    product_strategy: GNR LE light show objectively exceeds Deadpool Premium light show; JJP's LED/visual production quality now competitive with or superior to Stern on premium tier

    high · Joel: 'gnr's light show just blows it out of the water there's no you can't argue that you can't deny that' comparing to his Deadpool Premium

  • ?

    product_strategy: GNR LE features built-in Bluetooth headphone adapter as standard, plus 27-inch backbox monitor with shot guidance for novices—explicit accessibility tier differentiation

    high · Joel confirms 'all the LEs, they have a headphone adapter built in. It's by default' and demonstrates backbox monitor guiding his father on required shots

  • ?

    product_concern: GNR's constant multiball and lack of shot progression creates gameplay that reads as 'flailing away'—spectacle overshadows mechanical depth for skilled players

    high · Joel admits stream chat observed 'you're just flailing away at multi-ball the whole time' and Joel agrees 'the secret's out'; Travis: pinball becomes backdrop to music/light show

    • 2:59
    Why? That's not true. I don't work for the TSA, Joel. I can't tell you why. They did not confiscate. They don't give me any answers. I know you still have your comfy, and you did share photos of your children apparently found your comfy. Oh, yeah, that is true. Yeah, I got trolled hard about that. That's pretty great. So I don't know, to any of the listeners out there, I don't know if any of you guys bought a comfy after, you know, how clearly we sold it. Well, um, Oh, Travis is reacting. Did somebody, three people, you know, three, three. I need to have like an Amazon affiliate link to this podcast.
    3:33
    Yeah. Well, maybe, I mean, if they weren't so expensive, they're like 50 bucks. But if that was something that, uh, you know, I mean, just sacrifice three gallons of gas, it'll be fine. Three gallons of gas. Well, what I was saying is like, we should give one away and like put a triple drain logo on the back, but that's going to add up pretty quick. When I look at the income that this podcast has made, I don't think we have the money to do that. That's fine. Does Travis realize that's the back of your head? You know where the camera is, right? You were complaining earlier, so I'm just going to get comfortable now.
    4:07
    Tom, you've known Travis a lot longer than I have. I have a lot of respect for you for lasting this long. Thank you. He's something. Joel, have you ever watched Saved by the Bell? No, I'm definitely too young for that. Are you saying Joel is Screech? No. I don't. I was going to ask him if he's ever heard that song Friends Forever from Saved by the Bell. Neither one of you have heard that before?
    4:33
    No. We have seen every episode of Saved by the Bell, too. Yeah. And you don't remember that song at all? No. where Zach imagines that there's some famous rock band, and literally their hit song is Friends Forever. You know, part of me was going to say, hey, if any of the listeners have heard that song, feel free to email us. But the truth is I don't want you to. I want Travis to actually feel like he's the odd one out. So everybody play Dumb. You've never heard it. It's a poor and bad reference. I'm just dropping nuggets right now of the next pinball machine coming out. Oh, wow. Okay, okay. Saved by the bell. You heard it right first. Well, let's go ahead and look at our list. So, yes, follow-up. Yeah, last episode. It was a good time. We laughed a lot. It sounds like a lot of other people laughed. That was great. I'm glad. I don't know. I think we did talk some pinball in there, but, I mean, the majority of that podcast was just making fun of Travis, which I'm fine with. I think it was great. So, Travis is wearing a black T-shirt right now, so I don't have anything. I don't think really anything. Travis just gave Joel a dirty look. Yeah. Yeah, he's tired. I'm not going to give him any ammo at all today, Tom. Just turn the camera off. Zero.
    5:48
    Alright, well, so topic number one. Topic number one. Jill's just chomping at the bit here. I'm trying to move us along. Chomping at the bit. We've got to start somewhere here. Tom, you know what it is. I just got done playing a pro circuit event. You're about to go play an If The World's. And what does Joel want to talk about, number one? Guns and roses. Guns and roses, baby. Yeah. My pinball life is a lot different than your pinball life. My pinball life is typically me here in my basement playing by myself or on stream. That's how I experience pinball. And then I read forums and I chat with you fools and others online. That's how I experience pinball. I know the two of you guys get on airplanes and go fly around and play other people and try to win money. So very different. We're a diverse group that way. Travis drives a lot. I do. And I do a lot for charity. I mean, this podcast, prime example. What are you? Do a lot for charity? That's what you hear? Oh, my gosh. All right. Wow. We got Mother Teresa over here. Jeez.
    7:03
    Big Papa, Mother Teresa to you, Joel. Yeah. Okay. So we got to get serious. Zach Mini came. I streamed for Flippin' Out and he picked up Rush and he dropped off GNR. And so I had an opportunity. I've owned a Hobbit before, so I've owned a JGP game before, but I've never unboxed one. And I will just say the unboxing experience was really good. Like, I don't know if it's because it's an LE, but it's, you know, all the legs are wrapped individually. The powder coating is really nice. It was packed really well. the thing is just a beast of a game like a tank of a game comes with invisiglass i forgot how big the back screen is 27 inches is no joke the play field you lift that up and it's just like the amount of stuff the amount of mechs the amount of crap that's in this game is absurd and um it was just one of those like wow and i set it down and i know these two can see it but i have it setting down right next to my Deadpool premium. And these two games are, you know, now this, the value of this Deadpool is they're comparable in value at this point. And it just, to me, it was kind of just, even with the games off, when you're comparing side by side, it's like, holy cow, like there is a ton going on in this JGP. Like there's so much here. There's so much here. And then you turn it on and the light show just like hits you in the face. It just, it's, it's crazy the light show especially it's another thing when you're comparing it side by side like the light show got deadpool which isn't bad like the light show of deadpool is really good but it doesn't hold a you know it like gnr's light show just blows it out of the water there's no you can't argue that you can't deny that um and i put a few games on it and and i've had a really good time and then i streamed it for the first time last week and having some people in chat you know talk me through the game and what to do. To be honest, I had a great time. I had a great time streaming that. And, you know, sometimes some of the some of my first streams of newer games aren't the most fun. And that's because I just don't understand the game or I'm still learning the game. I'm trying to find the things in the game that I appreciate or, you know what, some of these, you know, once you really wrap your head around some of these complex rules, that's where you get deeper into the game and you see, you know, some of these wizard modes and stuff like that. like GNR kind of just vomits it all at you right at the beginning. And you're just, you just have to take it like you. And, and I don't know. It's the reason I'm bringing all this up is I was surprised with how much fun I had. Like I was surprised early on. I understand I'm still like in the honeymoon phase, or maybe I'm still on the shallow end of the pool. Like I barely dove into this game, but I'm having a lot of fun with this game. And I know Tom owns the game. Travis has owned the game and sold it. And I've had a similar conversation with Mike Castleman from the pinballers, who he's owned the game and he's sold it. And I'm just, I'm curious how this is going to go for me. Like, am, I don't know. It's just like, I will just say the initial impression of this game is, is actually really positive. But yet I still know the overall view of this game is still incredibly polarizing. Some people think this is one of the best games ever made, and other people are like, nah. It's just all frills. There's nothing to it. You'll hate it, or you'll get bored of it. So, I don't know. I'm curious. Did the two of you guys have a similar initial experience with the game, or did you kind of just cruise right through it? We'll start with Tom, just so Travis doesn't you know... Well, Tom, you still own the game. I still own the game He still owns the game Doesn't mean I play it But what I mean Your first week of owning the game though I mean like What was your initial impression Do you remember your initial impression It was freaking awesome I mean like you said The light show and everything I mean there's so much to do In the game There's like 20 some songs or whatever Yep Um, every, every song is different.
    11:15
    Um, and then all of a sudden you're playing a song and you're doing really well. And then you go to the next song and then you have like a hundred million jackpot and then you miss the scoop and then you want to go kick your dog.
    11:34
    Kick your dog. Okay. Pretty accurate actually. Yeah. Throw one of your kids down the stairs named Neil. So, well, okay. So talking on that, one of the things Mike Castleman said, he goes, he said that was his biggest frustration with the game is you do so much work, so much work to build because the game is kind of in two phases. You kind of have like a song prep phase where you have to qualify the seven band members. But at that same time, you can be locking balls that you will then take into the song. so it's almost like you have to do all this prep work then you start the song and the song is going to continue until you drain everything out and unless you cash out at the right time if you push your luck too far and you drain out all of that's gone like all of it's gone and that's what mike was like i hate that he goes you do so much work that he's like at least give me like a quarter of my points or even half of my points like give me something but for it all to be gone he just hated that and um i don't know if you guys agree with that or not yeah i mean but it's that risk reward thing i mean that's the big thing i mean if you if you can do the thing you're gonna get all the reward for it. Yeah, I mean... So, but is that the... I mean, so are you saying right now your distaste or you've kind of lost some of your initial love of the game just due to that? Like the risk-reward? It's too much? Or it's too much? It's burned you too many times? No, not necessarily.
    13:11
    It's the constant multi-ball, I think, that really makes me not want to play it that much. Sure. okay to me it's a fun game it's a fun you shoot it with your friends kind of party game i mean you know i mean it's fun to play by yourself too but it's just it it's not the same as other games like i don't consider it a tournament game which let's be honest that's that's that's what you're all about a big well not all about but it's a big part of it sure so to me it kind of doesn't have that uh one more game type of feel okay so travis why like how did your family react to the game initially or how did you react to the game and then why is it gone like well i mean pretty much my entire family really enjoyed the game i mean my kids really enjoyed it my wife really enjoyed it and you know i enjoyed it to a certain extent in a home environment yeah now in a arcade environment not so much just because just for reasons that we talked about in the past not being able to hear the music as much yep the sounds the call out so on and so forth um for me personally just as a tournament player when i'm playing pinball i i tend to really get zeroed in on the shots and i tend to get really zeroed in on rule sets and i tend to really get zeroed in on this is my path to doing the thing. Yeah. And so with GNR, there becomes clear a couple of paths towards really doing the thing and blowing up the game entirely. But I mean, overall, it's just it's one of those things that if you're at home and you just like flipping away and you really don't mind too much about what all's going on in terms of score or anything like that, I think Guns and roses, people are going to have fun on it. If, because there, there is a lot of things close to the start button and that just goes into as much multi-ball that is there for me personally, just with my play style and what, what I enjoy out of pinball. It's not something that I necessarily enjoy out of a game. And it's not something that would make me keep coming back to it even once or twice a week. And so that's one of the main reasons why I ultimately ended up playing it, got done with it, moved on from it. But when it came to my wife and my kids, they loved it because, you know, I mean, like, let's take Ninja Turtles, for instance, right? One of the big selling points of it, or I say one of the big quote unquote selling points of it is Donatello having that turtle power multi ball right there, which is one shot to the right ram. Right. And so basically, as soon as you hit start in Guns N' Roses, you're going to have a lot of ample opportunity to get things going early on, which for a lot of players that could mean a lot of positive things. And for a lot of other people that don't necessarily like that kind of thing to where it just feels like multi balls are just falling out of the sky. It's understandable. And a lot of the reason why it feels like that as well as because of the light show, because of how loud the game is, it's like there's just so much going on in there. it almost feels like that the actual pinball itself is a backdrop to the music and the light show. And that's what it kind of felt like for me. It didn't feel like that pinball was necessarily at the beginning. But at the same time, that's just how I feel about it. That doesn't mean that that's a bad thing because obviously it's sold really well. A lot of people really enjoy the experience. And that's why I was telling you, Joel, before that when you were asking me GNR or Star Wars, I told you immediately GNR. And I'm a Star Wars fan and I had a Star Wars. And that's just because certain people really are. They adapt to different types of games and you could tell what they enjoy. And that's the great thing about pinball is there's different types of pins out there for different likes, for different things that people enjoy playing. And I think GNR happens to be just one of those games that if somebody wants a game that's going to have a lot of things close to the start button, is going to be loud, is going to be in your face, is going to have a light show the entire time, I mean, that's going to be the game for you. I agree with all of that. So a few of my takeaways. One, I have played this game before. I've played it on location at least three times. And having it here in my house, it is a completely different experience. And it's part of it's because I'm able to play with my lights off. I'm able to play with the music set at a volume I want or on all the LEs, they have a headphone adapter built in. It's by default. So if you go to an arcade and there's Bluetooth, if you go to an arcade, pull out your Bluetooth headphones or take some headphones with you and plug it in. And it's just a night and day experience. But I've said that we've had the same conversation about any of our pins. Like I add headphone adapters to all my pins just because the moment you can plug in and you just, and hear all the audio, like perfectly clear, it just amplifies the immersion that you're going to get in the game. Personally, that's my view. And so audio wise, awesome. Being able to control the lighting in the pen is awesome. I do have to give a plug. There's a guy that sent me he um his website is cheap drains with a z he sent me the gnr hyper lights pin monk victor actually hooked me up he connected me with him and he said hey if you're streaming this game i'm going to send you these and basically it's four led strips two on the back box and two under the pin pinball machine that replicate the same light show that the ce version of the game gives you and so now with my lights off getting these crazy rgb lights on the back wall and on the carpet. It's just like the overall immersion in this game is unbelievable. It's incredibly good, especially when you put the headphones on, where you're just rocking out and just like the light shows absurd. I will say, I mean, this 27-inch monitor is awesome, but when I'm playing the game, I never look at it. But the one monitor I am looking at is the monitor in the back of the play field. Yeah, that's a cool addition. Oh, it's so helpful because it's always telling you what to do. It's always saying what shot you need to be doing at any time. And my dad actually had come over, and I showed him this game. And, like, you know, he hit the start button, and it looks like a spotlight announcing Guns N' Roses. Like, you could tell he was already kind of getting a smile on his face. And then I start kind of showing him what he needs to do. And what's brilliant is he's flipping away, drains ball one. Well, to get into a song, you have to qualify all seven band members. Well, if you don't qualify any on ball one, when you start ball two, I think they give you two or three of them. If you still haven't qualified enough band members by ball three, they just give them to you. So by ball three, all anybody has to do to experience a song is hit the scoop right in the middle. That's it. And the fact that they kind of put in the training wheels and they're like, OK, clearly this has to be somewhat of a novice playing. We're already on ball three. They haven't accomplished anything. I'm going to give them the song. So that's all my dad had to do is hit the song that he was able to pick what song he wanted to do and then just rock out. And he drained like four or five times in the first 10 or 15 seconds. But they kept giving him his ball back because the game was smart enough to realize like this is a novice, like let the person enjoy the game for a little bit. And when I was able to point that out, I'm like that monitor right there is telling you what you need to do right now. He's like, that's awesome. And after the game ended, he's like, well, I'd have to say that light show is amazing. But the fact that there's a monitor telling me exactly what I need to do at any given moment, like that is huge for him. Like as a novice, like that's his kind of biggest frustration with some of these other games I've let him play is he has no idea what he needs to do. And so, I don't know, it's really just kind of opened my eyes to like, do you think JJP is, you know, they don't have Keith Owen. They don't have Raymond Davidson. They don't have Tim Sexton. Like they don't have, and I'm not downplaying the skill level of the JJP employees. No, they have tournament players there. I mean, they have Joe Katz. They have Keith Johnson. Yep. Yeah. They have good players, but I just don't know if they're designing their games, like how much how much of a priority is it that their games are competitive games or or balanced in a competitive way because i don't really think i've seen any of jjp's games used competitively dialed in was i mean i i it's actually it's actually a world there's a couple every now and again dialed in is the main one and i think Wonka was used at Pinberg in 2019 in the final bank. I remember that, which it was shortly after Wonka came out because I remember thinking like, oh, I'm going to see Wonka played a little bit. But it's just like I think – I don't know. Like I feel like a lot of Stern games, people are highly, highly critical. Turtles is a perfect example of score balancing. Like, oh, the game is blah, blah, blah, but the scores, it's just – and maybe it's because they're way more common. People play them a lot more in tournaments. tournaments are a thing but like i just don't feel like people are so critical with jjp when it comes to scoring and rules and code like i don't are jjps am i just oblivious like am i just now realizing this that jjp games are kind of their own like they're kind of a different animal entirely or i mean or is that the goal i mean if you're talking from a tournament player standpoint or a point of view i i know that the majority of talk about it is just that the scoring it's just a little bit different since it's lower scoring usually. And I mean, regardless, either way, I mean, if a game's in a tournament, it's in a tournament. We all try to figure out how to play it and how to score regardless. So, I mean, it's just, it's one of those things that, yeah, it's kind of its own thing. It's kind of a little bit different when you see the way that the scoring is. But I don't know. I don't feel like, to me, when I look at GNR, I don't see tournament pin. And that's okay. I don't think every single pen needs to be for competitive play. I think pinball can just be just that, just pinball. Because the majority of people that play pinball, they don't play tournaments. I mean, tournaments are still very much a niche thing. The competitive player is a niche thing on its own. The traveling competitive player is a very niche thing. That's just the reality of it. And there's a reason why I like where Tom's going. That right now, I think it's what, the top 64 for Worlds? I mean, think about that. And that's over thousands of people that play. And the vast majority of them, even though they play in a tournament, let's face facts here. It's very casual of what they're doing. I mean, it's drink three or four or maybe even five beers, play a strikes tournament, have some fun. And that's usually what it is for lots of people. So I don't think necessarily that JJP really has to worry too much about that. But, you know, I think I do remember and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, I could have swore when the GNR was first, I guess, debuted on, what was it, Buffalo Pinball. Yep. I could have swore I heard Joe Katz mention that this is geared or something in it is geared towards being in tournaments. Or he spoke briefly about it. So, obviously, I think it was probably on their minds. I mean, Keith Johnson, he's a tremendous tournament player. He's a great player himself. And, you know, he does rule sets for these. So, I mean, they've got a lot of a lot of experience over there and a lot of high level experience. It's just to me, it's just a different way of approaching pinball. And this is what they've chosen to approach for it. And whether or not it works for competitive play the reality is is that the game sold very well and they on an upward trajectory Now the question is can they keep producing games at a good clip to keep selling them That's really what it comes down to at the end of the day. Yeah, and this LE is number 3,212. So I think they said they're going to make 5,000 of these. And I think Zach told me that they're kind of on final calls for distributors, like place your orders kind of thing. So I think they're going to make all 5,000 of them. I mean, I don't know. Stern never releases their numbers. But like 5,000 games sounds like a lot of games. So they've sold, and they've sold well.
    25:59
    It just, to me, it was one of those, the majority of people that I know that own JJP Games, they're rarely on location. It's like I rarely see them on location, and I rarely see them in tournaments. So it seems like the majority of owners, they're in homes. They're homeowners. owners and GNR you know is this a game that a lot of pinball you know fanatics own kind of like Tom obviously owns one or is this like how many GNR fans did they get and this is their one pin and I mean if you're a non-pinball player and you're a huge GNR fan like this this pin would look incredible in the corner of your office just going nuts with the light show and everything and I don't know to me what I found is typically when I play when I stream I'll play a game for two hours but if i'm gonna play pinball and i'm not streaming i'll fire the games up and i'm only gonna put one or two games on it like i just kind of want quick immediate satisfaction and i will tell you you know like deadpool i can find that in hitting a few shots because the shots feel awesome i had that same feeling with godzilla you know ripping certain shots like i don't know like turtles pisses me off most of the time but i still like it when i hit my thing and they're like tn tna like it'll as soon as i blow something even if i only blow up one reactor in a quick game like i still feel like I achieved something. GNR though, it's just like, it's such immediate. Like, even if I suck in ball one and two, I'm still going to be able to get to a song. I'm going to just experience that and have a good time. Um, but I am aware, like when I'm in a song, I'm just flailing away. And I have no, I had a few comments cause Zach posted my stream afterwards. And there was a few people that said that, like, it seems like you're just flailing away at multi-ball the whole time and it's like well the secret's out i kind of am you know because you are and that's and that's probably the biggest knock on the game yeah and don't get me wrong i really like the game um but that's that's the big knock on it yeah i still remember so one of my friends that's a non-pinball person got to play one because i guess somebody local had bought one and And it was funny because they text me. They're like, hey, I'm playing this game, but I'm not quite sure what's going on because I think it's malfunctioning. I'm like, okay, well, what are you talking about? Just show me a video of it. And, of course, they showed a video. It was GNR. He's like, it just keeps spitting out balls, and I have no idea what's going on. I'm like, well, no, that's how it goes. And, you know, that's obviously a creative decision. And I think for what it is, I don't think it's not necessarily a bad decision. You know, I mean, because it's the only the only gripe that I have about it is that it somewhat feels like that the rule set was meant for a different layout to me. Just because basically with the way that the layout is, because you do have that scoop right in the middle. Right. You do have some ramps that are pretty close to the flipper on the left hand side. Yeah, it kind of feels like it's not necessarily a classic and layout. So that's my big gripe about it is that it feels like there's so many multiballs. And because of where that plunge goes to, it comes right back down to the flippers in the middle of the play field. It just feels like there's a lot of action happening in that lower third of the game. And that it's just total chaos the entire time. And I think that's just my main gripe about it, that maybe if the play field was a little bit more wide open, maybe kind of like a Godzilla type layout to where it's very open in the middle right there. Maybe that would have allowed for the flow of shots and allowed for some breathing room with that. I don't know. Maybe I would have felt differently about that. But that's just kind of my issue with it. But that being said, other people, they love it. Travis's video is out. Of course it is. Why not? Might as well be.
    29:46
    Joel, are you really sick? What's going on here? I'm dying, man. No, yes. No, I told you. I have a sick kid. And when you have sick children, it's just a few days later, you're going to be sick. That's just how it goes. He's got COVID. I'm going to go get a mask on. We've definitely played that game. I like how Joel's like, I have a sick kid, but I'm here doing the podcast with you guys. I mean, I have a – Priorities. The kid's asleep. I don't have to nurse him to health right now. He's good. He's fine. I have a mute button. Just don't make me laugh. So if your camera freaking works, we want to have a problem here. It does work. Look. I'm sorry. I cut you off. My cough cut you off, Travis. You were clearly saying something important.
    30:25
    Nope. I'm good. I'm back. All right. So, I don't know. All I'm saying is it's just I've had a very strange – Travis is back, everybody. Yay. I've just had a very weird feeling about it. And I'm like, I am enjoying this game way more than I thought I would, like way more than I thought I would. And so many people, pinball media included, have just kind of bashed this game or said like, eh. I read somewhere it was like – it's kind of like the hot chick at the bar, like super attractive. You think they're all great. You take them home. You have a great one-night stand or something, and then you realize she has no personality. That's kind of the way they describe GNR. And I'm just like, I'm okay. I don't know. We just lost our lady viewers. Thanks, Joel. I didn't write it. I read it. That's not a sentence. And I said viewers. I meant listener. Joel's like, this ain't no one-night stand. I'm making a small term right now. Yeah, she's got me coming back for more. Guns N' Roses is not a horror!
    31:30
    That's the takeaway. Yes, it's a, I don't know, it's a fun game, but to relate it to your comment, Tom, it gives me immediate and quick satisfaction every time I play it, okay? You know? And, yeah, I'm enjoying it, and I'm curious how many weeks, and I'll definitely follow up on this, you know, in a few weeks or a month. And when I have to give it back to Zach, I don't know if I'll be bummed like, oh, no, don't take it away or be like, OK, I've had you know, I had my cheap thrills. I don't know. But I mean, that breakup is going to come pretty soon, Joel. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, the one night stands got to end. One night stand. Yeah. No, she may be moving in. I don't know. But I'm just telling you, it's it's crazy to me because I really enjoy Deadpool and I've had a ton of fun with Deadpool. But when I look at the two sitting next to each other and it's like these are the same like these are worth the same amount of money. you know it's like i'm getting a lot of satisfaction out of gnr and i will tell you the few people that have come over have really enjoyed gnr like really enjoyed it and if my collection is always kind of trying to find a way i saw tom's eyes light up yes i'm passing her around we're all taking our turn guns and roses in and you're gonna get godzilla back i know i well that's yeah so that's where it's it's this i never thought nothing wrong to you joel It sure didn't. And I've never thought I'd be in this position in the hobby where it's just like, it's like you're never satisfied with your lineup. Like you have games you love, but you don't want to give any of them away. But there's so many good games, like there's other games out there you want to. I put a ring on all mine, Joel. I'm satisfied. So I don't know. I will just say my initial impressions. I'm enjoying GNR. This is something like feel free to write in triple drain at Gmail dot com. Like, do you agree? Is GNR way better than people realize? Or like, is this a slow your horse, Joel? Like, it's great for the first week. But trust me, you're going to I don't know. I'm just curious to see what people's opinions are. But it does. You do know what the opinions are going to be, right? It's going to be a mixed bag. It'll be exactly. We already know. I mean, it's been out for a couple of years. It's going to be a mixed bag. You just happen to be the last horse to this race right now is what you're saying. Yeah, I'm just now getting a taste of this. And I don't know. My initial review of this when I first played it at Zach's Place, whatever, two years ago, was that the plunge was super weak. And what's funny is my wife actually put a game on this. I was playing video games with my daughter, and my wife's like, hey, something's wrong with your flipper. I was like, what? And she goes, the flipper. Something's wrong with it. I was like, what? You mean the plunger? She goes, yeah, that's it, the plunger. She goes, it feels like it's broken. It's like, no, that's the plunger. Like that's is what it is. She goes, oh, well, that's not very, that doesn't feel very good. Like my mom, my mom. Wow. My wife. That is not the slip up you want to make guys.
    34:24
    Yeah. My wife. Thank God. Nicole doesn't listen to this, but my wife, Joel is just, yeah. My, how is your mom doing there? Joel, my wife, my, my, my mom is doing great. My mom is fantastic. My mom also does. My wife, my mom, my mom, my wife. God, that was not the mistake to make amongst you two. I don't know. I just thought that was funny. She doesn't care about pinball at all, but the fact that she even hated the plunge I thought was kind of funny. But I don't know. Well, so the other thing I want to talk about, though, is being that I've enjoyed GNR this much, I actually am still like I'm getting excited for Toy Story. Toy Stories, or at least rumored Toy Story, just because, like, J.J.P. kills it with Light Show, and I hope to God the Hot Rails are in it. And the Hot Rails, like, sell me so much. Joel. What? This isn't on our production list. It's a quick comment. I see, number one, Joel wants to shill GNR. Shill GNR, yes. What does number two say? I'm not to number two yet. I'm almost there. I'm just ending this conversation. I'm wrapping it up in a bow, which I'm just saying I've enjoyed this enough that it's like this has given me such a fun experience with the light show and the music and everything that if they can still if they can bring that into Toy Story, but give me somewhat maybe more of a linear code set or something like that. I'm eager. I'm eager to see what Toy Story is going to be. And and will a JJP game end up in my small lineup? Maybe. I don't know. But a thumbs up for me so far. Thumbs up for me on GNR. If you haven't played one, try to find one in your area. If you're going to go play one, grab a pair of headphones and plug in and rock out. Have a good time.
    36:14
    End of number one. Is Toy Story, is it coming out soon? I don't know. I hope it's soon. Yes, that's the rumor next pin. Hopefully it's soon.
    36:25
    Yes. Do you know who's designing that? Your mom. All right. So number two, number two, what I wrote was I wrote Gomez interview and, um, there's another podcast, the super awesome pinball show. It's a great podcast. Um, yes, that's perfect. That's a perfect, that's a perfect segue there. Tom, uh, super awesome people podcast. It's a Christian line. Um, Christopher Franchi. And then they just got a new host. Um, crap. I don't remember the guy's name. Do you guys know he's? I don't think that's his name. What? Crap. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. His joke's Tom. Tom, can I have the soundboard again, please? Don't. No, the other button. The wah-wah-bah-bam. No, that's not. Okay, we're done. There we go. Just label that. Go ahead and label that, Travis. Why can't we play that right after Joel got his mom and his wife confused?
    37:26
    We don't. No, we do not need this podcast. to be all about the soundboard. It's not needed. I don't remember. I'm so sorry. You are talking about super awesome pinball show, though. Yes, super awesome pinball show. We've got to produce the hell out of this now. Let's go. Oh, Lord. We're trying.
    37:43
    Okay, so I don't remember. I'm sorry. The third co-host is new, and he did a great job. I just don't remember his name. But anyways. I thought they only had two. No, they just got a third one. Okay. So they just released two podcasts, and it was basically, it was a George Gomez interview split into two parts. I would highly suggest people listen to this because anytime George Gomez is on a podcast, like the guy just talks and I think he shares stuff that he's probably not supposed to share, but he just shares it anyways. And as a listener, I really appreciate that. So there was a few exclusives he shared. I don't, I didn't write them down. I don't remember them off the top of my head. But, um, uh, one of the things that he did share was that Steve Ritchie, Steve Ritchie was in the middle of designing a game. Steve Ritchie left to go to JJP. And so what we've heard is they have completely scrapped everything that Steve Ritchie did. And George Gomez is taking on that project. So George Gomez is designing another game. It is going to be what Steve Ritchie was working on. So I think this has been mentioned before, but does that excite you guys? Like, I don't know. is George Gomez designing a game? It excites me that it's public knowledge now, and we can actually say the quiet part out loud. That's pretty awesome. I like George Gomez games. Did he say how many flippers the game has? He did. That was another exclusive. So we can talk about that too? Yes.
    39:09
    That was another thing that he dropped on that podcast. It's a three-flipper game. And when was the last – like when I think of George Gomez, I think Deadpool, obviously. I think Monster Bash, even Batman 66, those are all two flipper games. So what was the last game that he did that was a three flipper game? I mean, the guy's been around a long time. So this is kind of – Beatles?
    39:37
    Yeah, but he didn't design that. Well, he kind of like re-changed some things, right? I mean, he did a very small adjustment. But it's just like George Gomez isn't known for that. Mr. Gomez, did you hear that? Joel doesn't think you really did much with Beatles. I highly doubt George Gomez listens to this podcast. He has much better things to do. But I know he said it was he did some tweaking, so I get it. But I don't know. But a three-flipper game. I think the only one I can think of off the top of my head besides Beatles would be Corvette, maybe. Tom said that like three hours ago. Did you just say that? Yes. Did you really? Nobody listens to me. I heard it, Tom. Did I just pull like a Tom from like seven episodes back? Oh, I forget what he said. That was so great. Yeah, it was something about, oh, that guy's at a – don't forget that Dennis Nordman's at American Pinball now. That's what it was.
    40:36
    Shut up. Yeah, that was so great. But I don't know. I mean, so George Gomez on a three-flipper layout. Is that – if that's not his norm, is that like exciting? Like, ooh, what's he going to do? Or is it more like, hopefully he does. I don't know. Is there any caution that George Gomez is doing a three-flipper layout? Or you guys just don't care? I don't. I trust in George Gomez. That's fair.
    41:01
    I think it's safe to trust in George Gomez. Yes. I don't know. I thought that was exciting. So he did talk a lot about that. He talked a lot about Stern and obviously the culture of working at Stern and how they're trying to build up the company. And there was some discussion about, well, do you have employees that are really good at one thing that want to kind of branch out and do more? And how do you handle that?
    41:29
    One thing that came up was like quality control and the rush scoop. He actually – we're going right into number three here. And I'm curious to Tom what your thoughts are on this. But the rush scoop came up. And basically what George Gomez said there was if you look at the original marketing material, there was no scoop protector. There was no scoop protector in any of the marketing material. The entire time the game was designed, there was never any plans for a projector. Tom, we called that. Did we not? We did call that. We called that. Yeah. So it was never. Vindication, baby. It was never planned. But apparently when all that original marketing material came out, there were enough people that made comments of like, that scoop's unprotected. Are they not going to protect that scoop? Like, why aren't they protecting that scoop? And there was enough stuff online that George is like, well, looks like we have to put a scoop protector on that or we're going to get torn apart on not having one. So it sounds like it was a very last-minute thing. I don't know. Tom's – I got my scoop protector right here. Oh, he got his scoop protector kit. I thought you got stuck between your pinball machines because I just heard you go, oh. And then you were just between everything. I hit my head. Oh, boy. Well, don't do that, Tom. We need that.
    42:54
    So you got your scoop protector now? Yeah, I just got to install it. But I was waiting for after my 16 tournaments I got to go to.
    43:03
    I'm a busy man. You're too good at pinball that you have to play all the time. I'm not good at pinball. That's the problem. We'll talk about that later. Okay, okay. We will. He was talking so much crap on everybody else earlier. I can't wait to discuss this. Yeah, watch out, Keith. Hope you lay awake at night thinking of this guy. Don't you even fucking insinuate that. Ray, you're going down.
    43:25
    How many other top-tier players can we piss off, Joel or Tom? They're all pissed at me already. Tom had his own. Tom had like a TV segment you know with the local news crew and what happens three weeks later they really wanted to interview Neil okay trying to get out of it he just pushed him out of the way he's like I got this boy I love that it was posted though online with the Neil's dad but all I'm saying is Tom had a TV bit and then a few weeks later then Ray gets his own TV bit I mean they're all just trying to catch up Tom who's more important me or Ray Neil I think Ray would go I agree I mean but it's Tom though Joel I know I feel like we're about to do a final round type thing where we gotta save one and kill one we're gonna pull a Marty here until we kill Joel or Travis what? we're going down you saved me of course he's gonna have his comfy on it's just gonna be dragon them down all right you want to go down this road let's go down this road it is obvious that i have so much more survival skills than you would joel because i take i wear comfy that means i'm going to be warm i will not freeze to death i have a mirror let me go get one of my guns out of the gun cabin you were wearing like exotic joe pants last week or last time we did this there's no way they're cheetah they were leopard print so i blend in you know with the with the the the predators will see me and be like, don't mess with that guy. I'm just saying you need a comfy to stay warm. Yeah, if you had like a 70s couch, you would have blended in.
    45:11
    So, wow. Travis has beer coming out of his nose right now. Yeah, I'm drinking beer. Joel's just struggling to keep himself together because he gets sick. I'm obviously the superior version, so, I mean, come on. You've got to kill him off. Kill off the weak one. Yeah, that's – yep. Yeah, okay. All right, Travis. Yep. All right, what were we talking about again? We were talking about the rush scoop protector. Rush scoop. Okay, yeah. Sorry about that. So long story short, apparently it was like right at the very end they decided we got to throw a protector in there. He said that scoop is smaller than like any other scoop they've done. Not only that, it's close enough to the flipper that because it's so short, that ball is hitting the back of the scoop but then coming forward and hitting the back of that protector so hard that it's causing it to bend. So they used a material that they were told was rated for what it was, and it turns out it wasn't. So it was like it was a material failure, a lack of testing, and it wasn't planned. And so all of a sudden, oh, Travis is acting like he had a good idea again. No, we talked about that. Yeah, we knew. We were like, it's almost like it was the wrong part. That could be what it was. And so here he is having to test or adjust it afterwards. And he's like, this is not the first time we've had to do this, but it is unfortunate. One thing that I did find really interesting is he said there were a whole bunch of aftermarket solutions that people created, and he told his team to buy all of them. I just punched the mic. He said, buy all of them. And so the idea there is, like, if any of these are better than ours, like, let's learn from this. and um there was what travis did you have another we discussed that exact same thing too did we not in one of our chats at least i was talking with tom because we were talking about the changes and we're just like stern should just like straight up copy it oh yeah well i think gomez has our dms like yeah they have it bugged obviously but one of the one of the scoop protectors i know mike the pinballers mike castman has it it's a 3d printed scoop protector but it's made of some sort of like i don't know flexible membrane is that the one that's like really super light yeah it's called ninja ninja something ninja mods or something i forget who makes it but everybody that i know that's bought it they they really like it and so i'm really curious that if that's one of the mods they got he did specifically say he goes i know one of the more popular mods is like a 3d printed flexible part we would never 3d print the part but if that like if that material is rather successful we could mold it so i i'm just really curious like i i think it would be crazy if two games from now all of a sudden the scoop protectors in the game in in these sterns instead of being a metal are now like a flexible molded like i mean if it works especially on a rush i would much rather prefer that than the ultimate version that they came out with yeah yeah i i don't like that at all i i know that tpf had a premium with that and it just felt like it completely changed the the complexity of the game it was just like that scoop just got super small and i don't know it just it looks weird feels weird shooting at yeah so if they can do something like that i think that that would be a great thing for that particular game i played it a midwest gaming classic and i mean i didn't feel like i had a lot of issues with it so tom this is i mean rush is your dream theme you have an le that game is obviously bolted to the ground like that's never leaving never so you obviously care about how good your scoop looks are you planning on putting on the official stern fix or how are you addressing the yeah i will eventually I'll put it on. And you'll put, because it's a new, essentially, inner ring, and then it still has. I do what Stern tells me to do, damn it. So you're going to put on the sidewalls with the big rubber blocks at the end. That is correct. All right. Is your scoop messed up currently? It must not be if you haven't.
    49:25
    There's like a very. Like a hint? There's a hint. there's a very small hint on the like the right corner so what you're saying is what's actually happening it's not enough for you to justify you to go through all that work to put it in I'm just fucking lazy that's all alright it's not like the thing is going to magically get on my game he's just been practicing a lot Joel that's all it is obviously Eric Stone's going down so yeah yeah that's why i mean tom's been telling us all about it he saw eric he saw him put up like 24 billion on kiss and he texted me immediately 48 billion i do that all day i'm gonna go yeah i'm gonna go punch that guy in the mouth and i'll repair it afterwards but yeah no so i mean you've got neil like you have a kid that does nothing and gets to play those amazing games but why don't you make him replace it for you he does nothing you can't tell him to replace the Scoop Protector? I don't want him to damage the fucking thing. He could tell him to do it. Doesn't mean it's going to happen. Joel, you obviously do not have a teenager. When I have half a play field, you know. Yeah.
    50:41
    I tried to fit this on Tom going to come back home He like why is this Rush Scoop Protector on Paragon What going on How did you put this on the buck Yeah. No, I get it. Okay. Well, that's all I've got for topic number three. Unless, I mean, Tom, is there anything more that you want to say about your scoop or protecting your scoop? I love Rush. Is Rush going to be at If The World? No, I wish it was. It's not? Man. It's all a fucking conspiracy. Yeah, that's a political move right there. I can't believe they're trying to keep you from winning. Well, I haven't played Rush, so I can't be in. Oh, gosh. So realistically, though, Tom, if Rush was in a tournament, would you pick it?
    51:22
    Yes. Okay, Tom, between Rush and Cosmos, which one would you pick? Well, that's tough. That's tough. Mother effer. I thought I heard from people that some people don't want to pick the games that they really love because obviously the game is going to play very different than, you know, what you're used to playing at home or do you want to, you know. Sometimes.
    51:46
    Well, that's what losers say, right? Let's overrate it. Did you find the shots on Iron Maiden this weekend, Travis?
    51:54
    I found the outlanes. Hey, I can show you where those shots are. Nice. All right. Speaking of this weekend, great transition, Tom. Elwin never coded in the post to Iron Maiden. I don't get that. Tom, you're the post saver. Thank you for the layup there because that's a fantastic transition. Silver Ball Showdown. Travis, you actually played at that over the weekend. This is where I get to sit back and don't do anything. So between the two of you, you know, feel free to talk it up about just recapping that tournament or, I don't know, takeaways. What did you learn? Yeah. Well, since I wasn't there, I'm going to let Travis talk more. I just watched it from home. Well, I've actually played in a couple of tournaments since our last podcast. I went to Delaware and promptly just, yeah, I got my ass kicked the whole entire time pretty much. Jason Zahler? Should have taken the comfy. Oh, man. He is an excellent player. My God. Comfy would have helped you there. Just saying. I know. I should have. But no. So I went to Delaware, played a little bit there. Didn't do so well, but I managed to scratch out. I think it was a third or fourth place in the last tournament. That was a strikes tournament. But now I played in the Silver Ball Showdown just this past weekend, and it was a Stern Pro Circuit event back on my home turf of Oklahoma City at Cactus Jacks. Oklahoma. Yep. Thank you to Josh Sharp for that. And I actually learned what it is to be Josh Sharp because I ended up taking second place. And that's never happened to Travis before. No, no. I played in 135 tournaments and I've won 134. Oh, I don't know what that is. Wait, let me check your IFPA profile.
    53:38
    Okay, I might have been bullshitting there. Travis has never been known for his math skills, but just because he can count to one doesn't mean you won every tournament. True. Who won, by the way? Who won is Mark Meserve from Texas. Nice. Robert Byers, he was in the final with me, and then another local, Chad Lauer, was in there with me. I have to interrupt you for a second. As a person watching the stream, I was like, holy crap. It was like the Packers versus the Bears. It was Texas versus Oklahoma. Everyone was like, yay, Texas won. It was a fucking war or something.
    54:19
    Oh, yeah. They took that serious. And I was just on stream showing chunguses, and I was just having a grand old time. I didn't even realize that there was an internal struggle between Oklahoma and Texas. It was. It was serious. Well, and the thing is, because because I'm an OSU fan, because my wife graduated from Oklahoma State. So I've been kind of forced down that path. And, you know, we don't really have a rivalry with any Texas schools that I'm aware of, at least. But I know obviously there's like the whole OU and Texas thing and then Oklahoma, Texas thing. But, yeah, I personally have never really gotten into that too much. But yeah, I noticed that afterwards in the chat, it was kind of getting like that, which I thought was hilarious because literally the whole time we were playing, none of us even mentioned that once. Not even one time to each other. So, I mean, because we've all known each other for a while. But overall, you know, the tournament's a lot of fun. It's basically a Pinnberg format, which means you're going to play four games per round. So we had three days worth of play. There was a qualifying day and then there was a divisional playoff qualifying day to get into the top 24. And then we had our finals on day three. So lots of moderns, lots of solid states, lots of EMs. And it was just a lot of fun for not being able to play in that format for a long time. It was nice getting back to that and getting to play with the same group of people for four games and just taking those two hours and just getting to know different people, playing different eras. I mean, those types of tournaments I really enjoy. and the thing that I absolutely loved about this particular tournament is that the tilts were all set up really reasonable to where it gave you plenty of play on the games and none of the games were bastardized to the point that it just wasn't fun there was lots I mean we could it let us play and so as a pinball player I really enjoyed that it didn't feel like anything was necessarily overwhelming so I mean really fun tournament I look forward to doing it next year and hopefully I do a little bit better than second. So that way Joel will be proud of me then. Yeah, maybe. Neil and I were originally signed up for it, and I kind of wish we had gone. It was just hard with, you know, Worlds coming up. Yeah, if you two would have gone, Travis could have got fourth.
    56:40
    That's fair. Yeah. Because we'll still get the win. Do I need to talk you through the math? honestly i think next year though i think because this was streamed for the first time on uh i think it's try to tilt pinball yeah it's a stream on twitch from chris and he's a great guy by the way and he did a phenomenal job yeah and i first first tournament stream yeah yeah i mean it's a lot going on i know tom you were helping him out a little bit and you know i he was very thankful to everybody that was helping very thankful to everybody that's watching i mean it was definitely an overwhelming experience for him and he earned it. He did really well with everything. And, you know, getting that out there, I, I got plenty of text messages from all kinds of players. And I think a lot of people finally realized that this is an event that kind of is like Pinberg. It's a smaller version of it. Granted. I mean, there was only about like 75, 80, I say only, but that's, that's a lot of people. But for, for the setup, it's such a hard tournament to set up for because you're having to set up multiple banks. I mean, there's like 70 plus games there and you got backup games. And I mean, luckily, like Eugene was there helping with the solid states. You had people, Kerry Wing helping with the EMs. You had Sean running all over the place. Sean Lee, who was the tournament director, just running around like a madman for three straight days, at least that we could see. What we didn't see was behind the scenes, just months of planning in the past two weeks of just setting everything up. Carolyn there at Cactus Jacks. I mean, just all kinds of people coming together, putting the pins there. So for me, that's just a special event because, one, it is in my hometown. But, two, it's a special event to me just because of the format. And it makes it a lot of fun in general. And I highly encourage anybody that is thinking about going to it, consider it for next year. Yeah, it would definitely be on my list to go to.
    58:36
    Even Joel. I'll even invite Joel. Sure, yeah. I'll put that on that list. Joel, they have a B division. I know. No. Yeah, I need to make some plans because, unfortunately, I think I've already said this before. I will not be at Expo this year in Chicago.
    58:53
    My wife's family vacation. Thank you, Tom. Well done. It's like we had to base our entire this big family vacation around my nieces and nephews' spring break, which happens to be that exact week. So the one thing I knew, I was like, oh, at least I'll go to Expos. I know it sucks. Who made this decision? Was it your wife or your mom? His wife. Oh, Lord. It's my wife and my entire wife's family. You're not going, Joel. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe I could find some other event to go to this year, which would be good. But, no, next year it would be cool to do. I don't know. What other event would you go to, Joel?
    59:34
    Well, we have been joking around that when Zach Minney finishes his barn that he needs to throw some big get-together. and get all the TPN people or other pinball people in the area to come in. Above ground pool, hot tub. Would you get Carl to come in with Mystery Castle? Oh, let's go. I don't know. I mean, that's only three hours, so that would just be a fun – I don't know what other event, but we will have to see. But Sober Ball Showdown, well done, Travis. Way to take second. Could have been better, but that's fine. You do you. I'll take it. You know, but that leads us to number five. And, you know, there's only one of the three of us that's participating in this. And this is Worlds, which is coming up. So we're just before Tom, you know, tells us all about it. I'm just going to go ahead and hit this button.
    60:23
    Tom talks. He's got something to say. Tom talks. He's got nothing to say. Tom talks. I got nothing. Tom, if you notice the screen, Travis's camera is out there. He's back. It's so bad. So, Tom, please tell us what it's like to compete, or how are you preparing? Just tell us all the things that are going into your head. Introduce it, how you feeling, what's coming up, what is happening later this week. Ready? Go. Okay. So, IFPA 17 is happening. That's it. No, just kidding.
    61:06
    So this event is a major in the IFPA world. But as Joel was saying, top 64 players from around the world are going to it. And it's been postponed since 2020 because of the pandemic. So they've rescheduled it a couple of times. It's at Pinball Asylum in Fort Myers, Florida. And, yeah, I am going to go there and get my ass kicked.
    61:39
    But I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. Yeah. Travis is like, what? You're not going to get your ass kicked, Tom. I'll be all right. No, no. You're going to do better than all right, Tom. Teolis, I know you're listening to this right now. Tom is going to defend America for us, Teolis. What do you know right now?
    62:01
    I'm trying to be Tom's hype man the best I can. As you should be. I mean, so you're saying this is a few years old. So, Travis, you are not participating in this. No, I'm not good enough to be in FS17. That's the thing. You're not good enough. Like, you qualified for this in when? 2019? 2020?
    62:22
    2019. Was it 2019? Yeah, based on the standings from 2019. Wow. So, Raymond Davidson was in, like, third grade. I think so. I think Escher was probably five. Escher, yeah. Escher couldn't. But both of them are in it, I assume? Yes. Yeah. That's crazy. And then who's the other real young guy? Zach McCarthy? Is he in it? No. See, that's the thing. Like, Jared August isn't in it. Zach McCarty.
    62:53
    I don't even think Colin Urban's in it, although he probably should be. Travis Murray. Yeah, that guy. Yeah. That's crazy. So this is the best of the best in 2019. Our finally competing. It's like a time machine. Yeah. Why is Rush not in this? This is perfect. This is the only theme. That's a question, though. I am demanding that Rush is in this freaking thing. But are they limiting? Is there any limit? Like, are there games in the tournament that are after 2019? Or should they limit the games to of the year it was qualified? I think on the list. So there is a list of games. Avengers is in it. Avengers is in it and Jurassic Park. Joel actually brought up a good point. How come there's all these Elwynn games in here? If the tournament would have happened on time, Avengers would not have been in it. I'm just saying.
    63:51
    If there happens to be a chance. You make a good point. I'm going to bring that up to the FPA heads. If there happens to be a chance. Only use it in your favor if you happen to lose on Avengers or something. I actually like it as a tournament game. Oh, shit, I shouldn't have said that.
    64:07
    So, I mean, if we had to predict, so Keith Elwin, he's in this. I mean, there's some big dogs. Oh, obviously. Yeah, he's pretty good at pinball, Joel. I know you don't know, but. I've heard Keith is decent. No, that's exciting. So I'm assuming it'll be streamed, and this is hopefully. Yeah, Pinball Asylum on Twitch will be streaming it. Nice. So we're recording this on Monday, the 23rd. Hopefully we'll get this out, you know, Tuesday or Wednesday this week. So this, hopefully if you're listening to this on time, this is going to happen either, it starts Thursday. Well, Thursday is the Epstein Cup, which I won't be a part of, but it'll be the top eight players from the U.S. versus I believe the top eight players from Europe.
    64:53
    So that'll be pretty exciting. I think that's Thursday night around like eight o'clock ish Eastern time. I think they're streaming that. And then the next day, the, the tournament begins for worlds. So is this, how does this tournament work? Cause I know a lot of these tournaments that you do that are multi-day. It's like, it's actually a bunch of mini tournaments and there's qualifying all for two days. And then the finals, I think there's eight sessions of qualifying and, uh, based on your rank they place you in your first match so right now i'm i'm with uh raymond teolas and uh i believe another gentleman from austria or australia oh yeah those are two very similar countries yeah yeah they're pretty close by yeah so that's what do you mean by qualified so so wait raymond's in your group and teolas Is that what you're saying? Yeah, at least some changes, you know. Well, how did it get there? Jeff, I swear, Tom has been talking so much trash.
    66:03
    Joel can verify this. Oh, I know. Tom can be kind of mean with some of the stuff he says. Tom, the cocky guy. Let me tell you.
    66:14
    So, Tom, how does this work, though? So, I mean, like, if you're saying you're paired up in those four, is there a chance you can be, like, eliminated day one? No. So, you play in eight rounds, basically, three games in each round. So, there's, like, a newer game, kind of like a mid-game, and then, like, an early solid state, and then, like, an EM. Okay.
    66:46
    so you do that eight times but are you for all eight rounds are you playing with the same three people or no like after the winners go up and yeah depending on how many points you get it switches and wasn't this a whole thing what is it it's like ride the dip or something like what we coined this it's like purposely don't if you like don't win every single round but you it's a raymond term yeah it's like if you are third every single game you can stay in it or something and then at the in, that's when you want to start winning. That's when you rock it up. Yeah. I don't know. I know Tommy, I'll have issues doing that because you're just used to winning everything. So just, you know, first or your last, right? I mean, but no, that's exciting worlds. I mean, that's, yeah, that's pretty exciting. When do you fly down there? Wednesday.
    67:32
    Yeah. And so Thursday is mostly to sign autographs. I'm taking the most direct route. I'm flying to Minnesota and then to Fort Myers. So you're flying north to fly south. That's pretty normal. Yeah, it's pretty direct. Pretty direct. All right. Well, cool. No, congrats, man. That'll be exciting.
    67:49
    I know the trophy for that's pretty sick. But, yeah, so that should be some quality entertainment Friday, Saturday. And does it go to Sunday, too? Yes.
    68:00
    Sunday's the finals. Nice. So that means you'll be on the stream then. Your group will be on the stream. Because if you're in Raymond's group, you're probably what? Possibly. Are you 32 or 33? I think I'm 33. 33? Okay. See, Joel? I can do math. Why does... You don't know why that matters, do you? No, you said a number. Why does that mean you know math?
    68:25
    Because Raymond is number one. Oh! Therefore, there's 64, so you go to the middle. Okay, I just was like... Hey, we're teaching you competitive pinball, baby. 45! Look how smart I am. I said a number. Oh, no. Well, let me say a number for you. I'm going to say number six. Wait, first off, Tom, thank you so much for explaining that, and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. Any other additional comments? I don't want to cut you off. I'm going to try to bring it home for triple drain pinball. I'm going to try to do as many triple drains as I can while I'm there.
    69:00
    You don't have to do that. Oh, wait, that's not the goal. Okay. No, it's not the goal. You can do this, Tom. Tom, you got this. World championship, baby. How did Tom triple drain on an EM? Yeah, nailed it. There we go.
    69:28
    Well done, Tom. Well done. Thank you. All right, so believe it or not, we are already on the final, the number six of our notes here. So user submitted questions. This is something that basically we, the three of us are like, hey, when are we going to record next? And normally it's like, I think I can do tomorrow. Let me ask the wife. Yep, I can do tomorrow. Can you do tomorrow? Oh, Travis is tired. Oh, Travis can do tomorrow. So it's like a very last minute thing. And then day of, we're like, what are we actually talking about? And so Tom, for the last two episodes, has actually posted on our Facebook, hey, what do you guys want us to talk about? And people give us questions. It's really nice. And a nice picture of Joel, too. Oh, yeah. Wonderful. picture in a row. So what I will say is feel free to follow us on Facebook. That's Triple Drain Pinball Podcast on Facebook. And it's awesome. It's a great way to submit questions or topics that you want us to talk about. One thing I will say is there was a picture of me that Zach Manning put up on the TPN Facebook a while ago that I happen to not have a shirt on. It's a very old picture. And there were people that submitted some comments that were very, I don't know. I actually have no idea. They submitted all the comments. He was young. He needed the money.
    70:39
    so travis travis has all these comments apparently travis is too lazy to compile them right now i don't what did you want to say travis we're not talking about them right now is what i've learned currently like about about your shirtless photo yes apparently the roasts were going to be shared last episode it doesn't happen yes so the question is Tom put that picture up again.
    71:08
    So are the roasts happening this episode as far as I know? No, they're not. No, they're going to come next week or next time. They will. Hey, you've got to cut me some slack. I drove five hours today, had to unload a U-Haul, had to take all the pins out, all the weights. You can't expect me to do all the production for this show, Joel. I can't do it. I can't do it all. He needs his rest.
    71:31
    I'd say his beauty sleep, but that's not going to help. You know what? Here. You're right. We need to do a couple. I'll bring them up right now. Do you remember your email password? We'll do it. Isn't it like Big Papa with an exclamation point or something?
    71:44
    Can the B's capitalize? Yeah. That's a real big B. All right. Well. All right. Let's see here. No, no, no. We got this. Okay. This is from Scott Larson. That's Loser Kids. The Loser Kid. Yeah. And Ball Podcast. Yeah. so glad that TPN has an emo vampire as an administrator now, dark rooting and super glittery as he plays any Dwight flasher game.
    72:16
    Thank you, Scott. Yes, I have absolutely heard. I don't know why, but, uh, Robert Pattinson, Robert Pattinson is the, the dude from twilight. And I've heard people say, I look like him. Don't really follow it except for he was the Batman, the last Batman. So I'll take that. But, uh, there's, there's another one yep tpn now featuring full frontal mel nudity thank you joel yeah thank you you're welcome i'm glad that i can uh yep i can do that all right there's one more no we got more keep going yep this one says joel i noticed that you like tattoos why is it that you look like you get your tattoos from the toy store with little gumdrops i don't know what that means what does that mean i have no idea i have no idea i was supposed to take that what's what's a little toy store with gumdrops what does that mean i don't know i i don't know i should i be offended i don't know what is your sexual reference i think so like what is this one i have writing on my shoulders and it's my handwriting and i actually wrote it in a sharpie and took it in and i was like this is what i want on my shoulders and he's like oh wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait you wrote it what do you mean you wrote it with a sharpie i wanted it to be my handwriting so i wrote in it with a sharpie on a piece of paper what i wanted and then i handed it to the guy and i was like this is what i wanted yeah i thought you were saying you wrote on your own body with a sharpie nope uh yes so yeah it's i got it back in grad school it's good it's a fun tattoo but you know you try to take a picture of yourself when the writing's on the top of your shoulders. Like, of course you got to take your shirt off. And I, it was weird. I get it. Okay. So thank you. Is that all? Do you, is that all you have? I mean, that's all I'm going to do for now. Okay, fine. Fair.
    74:16
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's what I'll say. We need more of these because I still have like 10, but I want to put them all together. So if you're listening to this and you just want to roast the hell out of Joel, please send it in and we'll read it live on it. So Travis, send it to, send a personal message to Travis. Isn't that what you were doing? I mean, we can send it the email. You can read it if you want to. I'm going to read it out loud in either way. Oh, wonderful. So triple drain at gmail.com. I will say pin monk, Victor. Uh, he took my picture and he Photoshopped over. The joke was somebody asked, well, what does it say? And I said, misunderstood. That's what I, that was my joke. Is that what, that's what it wrote. And he actually Photoshopped where it says misunderstood on one side, some congee on the other side. I forget what that says. And then he added a teardrop to my face. So well done, Victor. Thank you for doing that. But all right. So we are at user submitted questions, user submitted questions. And there's some really good ones here. One of them was talking about Cactus Jacks. You've already talked about that.
    75:15
    Somebody asked, why does Joel hate Rush? That would be Ron Hallett from Slap Save. So thank you, Ron. He likes Rush.
    75:23
    All right. That's a great question. Let's go with that one. Because you were fawning over all these other games. Why do I hate Rush? Rush. Oh, I love Dances and Roses. I love TNA. I love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah.
    75:41
    Deadpool's fun. I love... Fuck Rush! Oh, man. Let's talk about the scoops right now, Tom. Look at how shitty the scoops are. What do I know?
    75:59
    Say one good thing about Rush. One good thing about Rush... He going to say that too easy for him No I don think he can do it Rush the music The music very good I actually really enjoy the music Say what I mean that too easy for him Say two good things about the gameplay Joel You've asked me about five questions here, and I've been able to answer one. Okay, two things. The code is actually very good. Like what Ray and Tim have done, the code is actually very good.
    76:27
    That's one. It's complex in a very good way. It's still one. Okay. The code is really good. Stay tuned. And the expression lighting kit. Oh, I knew it. No. You didn't even have the expression light kit. No, I played in L.E. And it is a big difference. I said about the gameplay, Joel, not about the lights. What am I supposed to say? Oh, okay. So if I'm not allowed to say anything more about the code, then I have to talk about the shots. And I will tell you, there are comboing. We and I could actually combo a few shots. It felt really nice. I struggled. It was not very often. It was not very often for me. That was my biggest issue with Rush is the game kicked my butt. And when so much of the code is based on comboing or achieving – like, perfect example, one of the modes, the La Villa Staggiatto, whatever the song – I don't know the word. But it's 12 shots in a row. That's because it's in 12 parts. Don't you get this? No, it's good code, but I'm just telling you, like, it's 12 very specific shots and you have to hit them in that order i think what we're learning here is that g and r was the one night stand that put out yeah yeah rush is the one blue balls the whole time i had it you know the whole freaking time it was a tease and i was putting in work and it never happened okay i can't hit any combos everybody's talking about how great of a time it is. And oh man, it was the pretty girl that wouldn't get her number to Joel. That's what it was. But I kept buying her drinks. I don't know. I just, no, it's, um, I mean, the game just kicked my butt and I was frustrated by, I, to be a hundred percent honest, like watching other streams and watching other people blow up the game and do all the things that Ray is telling me I can do in this game. And then I can't do any of them. I just didn't, it was hard for me to come like that. I would stream that game for two hours, and I'd just be destroyed. They make pills to help out with that situation there, Joel. Hey, trust me. I had already lowered the end lanes. I had set it. Ray corrected me. I set it to home mode. I feel so bad for Raymond that he was live with Joel, and he's, like, watching this train wreck just go. And I was as limp as I'd ever possibly be. I could not hit a shot. I get it. I am well aware, okay? So I can't be a freaking stallion like Tom over there just drilling everything away.
    79:08
    Let me sink this in the scoop. Bam. No, I get it. Thank you, Ron Hallett, for the question. Yes. So why does Joel hate Rush? Because it never put out, okay? I tried, and I never got the satisfaction I was waiting for. Oh, my gosh. So what's the next question? Let's just roll through these. I don't know. This is great. What other questions are we going to get? Is competitive pinball getting harder? Speaking of hard, yeah. Are the players getting better? What are your thoughts on that?
    79:42
    Yeah. Yes. Okay. Great answer. All right. I think as a competitive player, you just eventually plateau at some point. It gets harder and harder.
    79:57
    Oh, my God. Sorry. And I don't think Joel got that. No, I got it. I can't do that. I get it. We're back to that. We're talking about competitive pinball. Joel's brain is just turning to mush right now. He's just going to turn around and go play GNR. Tom's been hard for way over four hours, and he's just plateaued at this point. There are a lot of players coming out and playing, and they're getting better, and it makes it tough.
    80:29
    I think, too, there's the rise of a lot of players understanding the rules at a higher level and really starting to put things together. I think it's a combination of that. It's a combination of people playing a lot more often than probably in the past. And it's a combination of there's people picking this up at a younger age as well. And so you're seeing a lot of those players that have already been playing for several years and they're putting it all together. I mean, Tom's son is a prime example of that. So, I mean, there's tons of players out there and I guarantee there's players out there that we don't even know about yet. that's probably getting very close to that level, and they're going to show up pretty soon. Oh, yeah. And don't you think pinball streaming, too, like to be able to see this, to see the competition, to see what other people are doing or how they're attacking different games or playing different stuff. I remember I was listening to an interview on Pinball Profile, and it was a girl. I forget her name. I think it was Carrie, I think is her name. Carrie Wing? Yeah. And she was talking about how she was able to look at past streams. So she was playing in a tournament, and she pulled up the past streams from that location and watched. She had a whole notepad where she was taking notes on how different balls kicked out or played or where it would land. So she was able to see what the games did before she even showed up because of the streams, the past streams, and being able to learn and see how different players handle different things. I'm not streaming anymore.
    82:03
    It was pretty impressive. So, yeah, that's a good question. I'm glad, I mean, hey, for the two of you guys to both be top whatever, 20 at this point. I mean, it's well done. I don't think you've plateaued, Tom. I don't think, you know, you're on your way to, you're already at the top of the mountain and you're only halfway up. Scared, Joe. Tom's about to skyrocket later this week. Dr. Disrespect quote right there. So, all right. He hasn't peaked yet. Here we go. Uh, what else do we have? Firm handshakes all around. There we go. Yeah. Uh, can pinball companies do more? Oh, so I, I should, you know, first off, Christopher, thank you for, Christopher Doyle asked that question. Thank you, Christopher. Uh, Michael Winn, Winnie, uh, can pinball companies do more to accommodate disabled slash injured players such as optional options? official official options for one-handed play foot pedals for flipper uh operation allowing players to change with button flips which flippers like upper flipper flippers etc what are your thoughts on that you want to take this one tom or you want me to take it first go for it no i i think something like that would actually be pretty cool i've always been interested in seeing uh pinball machines that were handicap accessible for somebody that was in a wheelchair I've seen photos of that before. And so that's always intrigued me of having something that's very accessible to other people that obviously the way that the games are right now, they might not necessarily be accessible to. So something like that would be pretty cool. Obviously, I think when it comes to the one handed or using a pedal, that probably could be done from a software standpoint, but would have to come via third party. But it wouldn't shock me if something out there already exists like that and we just don't realize it. I'm sure there's somebody listening to this that is well aware that it already exists. So I've seen some stuff online like with the wheelchair. I think they did like a mirror so that it was easier to see. And then I know Ben Heck not too long ago did that mechanism for a one-handed person, which was really cool. Yeah, it was basically like a suction cup device that would go on one side of the machine with an actuator to flip the button and then a suction cup that attached to the other side of the machine so that you'd use the right side of the flipper button. And then you had this additional button that would control the left side. So it was a two button thing. One of the thoughts that popped into my head was now that Insider Connected is here or Scorebit is here in almost any modern game. if you could go into your account and say like hey i am a disabled player if i ever log into scorebit then make it so that hitting one flipper button actually actuates all the flippers you know like that should be relatively easy to do i would think same thing with yeah insider connected like oh when that person logs in understand if one flipper button is hit go ahead and make all the flippers go. I feel like that could work. Now, if there was a foot pedal or something, then yeah, they would have to add in some sort of auxiliary jack or something. You could plug it. Okay, you two fools are clearly typing back and forth. What? What am I missing about?
    85:22
    Are you texting Raymond? I'm texting Raymond. Tom's talking all types of shit on you, Ray. I said, I ain't saying shit.
    85:31
    You know, Ray, I love Raymond and he, he literally consumes all pinball content. I think he listens to every podcast, like before it's even released, the guy is on it. So Ray, Ray will absolutely hear this before you see him in person, but yes. Um, no, that's a good question. I, I, I do think that's there. And I think from a software standpoint, some of these things, I think they could implement rather, rather easily, um, compared to, uh, some of the hardware stuff, but yeah, it's a good idea. Uh, George, uh, George Fisher, that would be a don't panic flip. He asks a really good question here, and it is, why does it seem so difficult to create a game that is both commercially successful and tournament-slash-competition and a tournament-slash-competition darling? Do games need to focus on one versus the other?
    86:20
    I say no. I think there are games out there that already do that every Keith Elwin game. Yeah. yeah well commercially successful like i mean iron maiden isn't the biggest theme um even godzilla isn't the biggest theme but i i think commercially successful i i think a lot of that depends on the theme so is there any reason are you still bashing rush no i never said anything about rush no but it's like uh like mando mando is a fantastic people love mando people want to play mando but then there are some people that complain about mando as a as a competition game so i don't i don't think there's any reason why uh you know an a tier license can't have you know high quality code um i if i want to completely change george's question i would say can you have a game that's both incredibly like home friendly and tournament friendly? Like, can you have,
    87:27
    I don't know, like some people like Simpsons Pinball Party. Some people love Simpsons Pinball Party for the depth and so much to do and so many ways to do. But I don't like ever see Simpsons in a tournament.
    87:38
    Can you have that? Or like Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is this incredible, crazy home journey of a game. Nobody ever wants to play that in a tournament. So is that? I think there's a game right behind you that's a good fit. Yeah, GNR. No, Deadpool.
    87:58
    People like Deadpool in a tournament. Travis, I don't like Deadpool in a tournament. Isn't this marrying the two? Oh, so you're saying this game, commercial success. I thought we were staying on topic here. Joel, that was the question, Joel. Where were you going? Joel was like, let's talk about GNR some more. He is so in love with that. Go give it a kiss, Joel. no it's not my game i'm not gonna it's uh and you can't touch the glass so no i i assumed we're giving examples of that don't do it but no that's a good example i think deadpool is a commercial success it's a well-liked theme it's well-liked for home buyers or homeowners and it's well-liked in the tournament scene um so great job uh is there another i mean could you guys think of another one though or is that nope your honor i rest my case tom has talked almost talked well done uh travis you gonna contribute to this conversation or uh no i think he's pretty much hit the nail on the head i mean it's it was just one of those things obviously theme sells you know when it comes when it comes down to it it's we don't know about the rules until we get a chance to play at the bottom line. The only time that anybody can assume that the rules are going to be great is if Elwin's on it. I mean, because he's pretty much earned that. I mean, he's four for four on games that are very balanced, very outstanding, very fun to play. And, you know, it's funny. It's just one of those situations. And we've talked about this before. It's I think that Stern has gotten to a point to where they're big enough to where every single theme is pretty much going to sell. it's just a choice of okay who do we put on what game to in order to sell it it's like they could have put anybody on mandalorian it was going to sell because it's mandalorian it's star wars you know and so it's just i think that that's kind of the situation that they're in and so i don't know sometimes you just get some of those games that it makes sense that you have a great theme you have a great tournament game such as deadpool yeah you have a great theme I mean, Godzilla, even though it may not be an A-tier theme, it's still a well-known theme and obviously a great tournament game. So, yeah, I mean, just like Tom said, just echoing exactly what he said, pretty much. Well, I mean, I am curious. I haven't seen or heard, but I'm curious of how well Godzilla does on location. You know, like Godzilla has won every pinball-related award show that there's been. It's number one on pin side. Pinball people clearly—Travis's camera's out again. third time today uh so godzilla is is just universally loved and praised by the pinball community every every type of collector or player in the pinball community but i'm curious to like how how well does how how well does godzilla do on location um i don't i mean do either of you know any operators like it does does it compete in coin drop with with whatever like amando or stranger things you know it's a very good question the reality is is that theme very much plays a big part in what your overall coin drop is going to be and your general location your demographic is ultimately going to determine what the coin drop is also i mean i've heard of situations in which there's a star trek and a monster bash together and we're talking about stern star track right at a bar in the monster bash out earn the star track eight to one oh so there's been situations like that there's been other situations i can tell you that stranger things is just absolutely kills on location and that's a game that was just torn apart due to its code early on but guess what when it got put on location nobody cared because people just see a theme they're going to drop it's a very relevant theme yep and so i mean yeah it it does very well on location. And, you know, I've talked to other people that have said they had a Stranger Things and it was one of their worst ends that they had or an earner and they had to get rid of it. So I think it just very much just depends on location. It depends on what your demographic is. I would imagine that if you have a bunch of kids around and, you know, you trend younger, yeah, probably Avengers, Deadpool, games like that, Guardians of the Galaxy. Those probably all do well. If you have a little bit older crowd, you're going to see Led Zeppelin, Metallica, ACDC do very well. You know, it's just, I mean, even, uh, guns and roses, I've heard half and half. I've heard some say it just, it blows everything else away. I heard others say that it earned very well the first week. Then afterwards it just kind of dropped off. So again, it just depends on the situation and the atmosphere. So nothing is a sure thing is what it sounds like. The only thing that's a sure thing is that if you only have a couple of pens, just make sure they're a modern. I mean, if you stick an EM or an old solid state, it's going to have a hard time earning compared to a stern. That's fair. You had said Guardians of the Galaxy. To me, that's another triple A theme, well-liked. Guardians is really well-loved, and I think Guardians is considered a good tournament pin. Am I wrong on that?
    93:22
    No, it's well-liked. I really enjoy it in tournaments. so I think there's two examples in Deadpool and Guardians well yeah so that's all I have for user submitted questions so once again please follow us on Facebook Triple Drain Pitball Podcast we'll probably start doing that more consistently so think of your questions you can always email them to tripledrain.gmail.com and we'll save them for the show otherwise yeah let us know what kind of day of or two days of whenever we post that and we'll try to get to your questions on when we come to record but But, yeah, guys, that's it. That's the list. Is there anything else either of you guys want to talk about or share? I'm going to be on the Slam Tilt Pinball Podcast with Eric Thorne from District 82. Nice.
    94:11
    Did they say the words Whopper Farm at all during the podcast? Probably. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Let me check. Nope. I haven't been asked to be on anything else.
    94:24
    but but but but you are a top five streamer my friend oh wow yes um i forget the guy's name i feel bad there's a dude that does uh it's retro something it's a guy that does he's an international guy that makes like pinball and arcade related videos and uh the guy yeah he made a video I got to pull this up. He made a video, RetroCingo, R-E-T-O-C-E-N-G-O. He made a video on who he feels are the top five pinball streamers. And I was one of them, which was hilarious because, one, he didn't know my name. He said, this guy. He like pointed to me. He's like looking and he's like, it looks like he's on Flippin' Out. But really what it comes down to, once he explained it, the guy had gone on YouTube and searched Godzilla pinball streams.
    95:24
    And he basically, the five that he, or the four that he mentioned were Hottie, which is Frisco pinball. He has some of his Godzilla streams. Mine, which were from Flippin' Out. Jack Danger's, Dead Flip. IE Pinball being Carl. So all people that have, yeah. So the order he did it was Hottie was fifth. Carl was fourth Jack Danger was third I was second who was number one Kaneda he put Kaneda as the number one pinball streamer out there had nothing to do with Godzilla or anything but hey I'll take it I mean I'll take it so I appreciate that guy why wasn't I mentioned have you posted a Godzilla stream no there you go I just happened to fall into the one thing that he searched but hey I'll take it he was always in my top five thank you yeah there we go at least one person likes me uh more than one tom if you like tom right into triple drainage yeah yeah if tom is in your top five please let us know uh no basically the guy said he said he enjoyed my positivity he thought my stream was very easy to read like very easy to see what was going on i also include my chat in the stream because he's not watching it live he enjoyed that and then uh he goes he's not the best pinball player but he'll admit that and it doesn't matter and i'm like okay apparently it's okay that you that i suck at pinball as long as i'm saying is the benefit to watching this is your confidence in your own play goes sky high yeah if you want to feel better about yourself watch this guy it's the quality and the entertainment yeah and i'll i'll i'll try my best to do that skills coming okay i'm i'm learning. It's coming. It's slow, but it's coming. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. That was quite nice.
    97:17
    Yeah, so I got nothing. I think we can wrap it up. Does Travis have anything? What does Travis bring to this podcast? I mean, Tom, at the end of the day, it's me and you who make fun of Travis. Don't give him that. That he won't share. Yes, Travis is now, you're in a weird spot now, Travis. Now that you work for the man, you've got to keep all your secrets to yourself. All of them. Yeah, they don't tell you anything. All the secrets. They all belong to me. Nowhere else. They haven't even told you the Wi-Fi password yet. No, that's true.
    97:53
    All right, let's get to plugs. Travis, go for it, man. Yeah, you guys can listen to me on the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast.
    98:00
    Right here. I mean, you can plug your, like, I don't know. That's the only thing I have to plug right now. I have nothing else to plug. Travis works for the pinball company. If you Google it, I don't know. You can plug that. Google it. Google a pinball machine. You'll find it. Trust me. I literally have nothing else to plug. Okay. That's fine. All right. Fine. You want me to plug other things? Yes. Buy a comfy. We'll have an Amazon affiliate link at some point. So, yeah. There. Perfect. Hey, shout out. There was a guy that listened to our episode, and he said, I have to see a picture of Travis in the comfy. If you post a picture of Travis to the company, in a comfy, I will donate $100 to a charity of your choice. And the guy did it. Travis posted a picture, and the guy actually sent a receipt where he donated to the Lyman Foundation, which I thought was really, really, really cool. That's cool. Props to that guy. way to be a man of your word yeah so well done uh but yeah tom plug away man uh i do this podcast with travis and joel oh and i also do streaming uh on fox city's pinball mainly at district 82 but i do other things as well and uh we're gonna have a big tournament coming up uh june 3rd through the 5th, Friday through Sunday, the triple flip open.
    99:32
    Tune in on Fox City's Pinball for that. You'll enjoy it. Perfect. You do a great job with those strings, Tom. Well done. Check those out. But that's okay.
    99:45
    Absolutely. Oh, man. That guy screwed up because now Tom's going to go into Worlds just raging. You're on the list, buddy. You're on the list. Joel made it. Three other players are going to be like, shit. Joel made it top five, and he can't even play Rush? Come on.
    100:04
    Yeah, so feel free. Obviously, check out Tom this week and root him on from afar as he plays in Worlds. So, yeah, looking forward to that. And, yeah, my name is Joel. I do the pinball – I'm part of the pinball network, so I do the pinball network stream on Wednesdays. We're all a part of the pinball network. Thanks. Yeah, yeah, you are correct there. So I do part of the Pinball Network stream. It's on the Pinball Network channel. I do Wednesday nights from 10 to 9, and then every other week I stream for Flippin' Out. So thank you, Zach and Nicole, for letting me borrow games so I can stream them.
    100:36
    And, yeah, that's that. So you good, Travis? I'm excellent. I'm doing great. You know, I started this podcast emotionally distraught, physically exhausted, and now I'm on Tom's level. I'm so freaking fired up now you still look awful though that hasn't changed that's fair that's the answer what can I say about it I can't defend my looks right now I'm looking at myself in the camera I know I look like horse manure you're not even wearing a comfy I'm so disappointed it's hot down here we're going through a heat wave the more of you that you can cover up the better you're going to look alright well like always Tom you've got the last words see ya at Worlds