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Episode 6 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 16m·analyzed·Nov 4, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Electric Bat Cast discusses October earnings, Galactic Tank Force bugs, and future pinball themes.

Summary

Kale and Rachel from Electric Bat Arcade (Phoenix/Tempe/Flagstaff, AZ) discuss their October earnings data, revealing Venom as the top earner despite not breaking Foo Fighters' first-month record, and Galactic Tank Force as the second-highest earner with significant refund issues. They announce an upcoming five-year anniversary tournament, highlight sponsors (Stern Insider Connected, Game Room Goodies, Marco Specialties), and explore a viewer question about overlapping licensed themes between slot machines and pinball machines, debating which IP (Beastie Boys vs. Dune, Willie Nelson, From Dusk Till Dawn) would translate best to pinball.

Key Claims

  • Foo Fighters holds the record for highest earnings in a first month at Electric Bat Arcade

    high confidence · Kale citing their October earnings data; Venom did not break this record despite strong performance

  • Galactic Tank Force has show-stopping issues including ball-tracking problems in the trough that require game resets and customer refunds

    high confidence · Kale describing major bugs with personal operator experience and refund data; issues reported by other operators as well

  • American Pinball's service department quality has declined compared to earlier (Dave Brennan era) and is currently overwhelmed

    medium confidence · Kale comparing current service experience unfavorably to Hot Wheels era support; notes department not responsive to bug reports

  • Approximately 75% of licensed pinball machine titles also exist as slot machine titles based on 20-year analysis

    medium confidence · Big Brother Pinball's question/observation; guest cited casino conference intel on slot themes

  • Tarantino is open to having his licenses appear as pinball machines

    medium confidence · Kale and Rachel discussing Kill Bill homebrew pin and From Dusk Till Dawn as a desired theme

  • Insider Connected has made a significant earnings difference for Electric Bat's connected machines since launch

    high confidence · Kale stating Insider Connected games 'shoot up' in earnings from day one; personal use by both hosts

  • Electric Bat Arcade's five-year anniversary tournament is scheduled for two weeks after episode recording

    high confidence · Announced in episode with Eventbrite tickets available; Aimless Pinball streaming the event

Notable Quotes

  • “Galactic Tank Force – it's a beautiful thing to look at... it's an expensive piece of art, let's be honest.”

    Kale @ ~15:20 — Summarizes the operator dilemma with Galactic Tank Force: visually impressive but mechanically unreliable and unprofitable

  • “The service department is often going to be the front line of a company that you're going to interact with. So you really want to put your best people forward in the service department there. I will say that I have not had that experience this time.”

    Kale @ ~13:50 — Direct criticism of American Pinball's current support; emphasizes importance of service quality in operator confidence

  • “If you have not retrofitted all of your Spike 2s with Insider Connected, man, do it. It is worth it.”

    Rachel @ ~33:30 — Strong endorsement of Insider Connected from active operator perspective; indicates strong ROI for retrofit

  • “Willie Nelson would be amazing... Trust me. I'm telling you. This is like your Beastie Boys thing.”

    Rachel @ ~56:00 — Reveals ongoing debate between hosts about theme selection and commercial viability; references prior Discord poll

  • “People want to get to 200 and 300 [levels in Venom]... we need some updates. People want to get to 200 and 300.”

    Kale @ ~7:30 — Indicates player demand for extended progression in Venom and potential need for Stern code update

  • “We only have sponsors that we really truly love what they do. And we've been a big cheerleader for Insider Connected since it started.”

    Kale @ ~32:00 — Reinforces operator authenticity in sponsor selection; indicates long-term confidence in Insider Connected platform

  • “This is what's very cool... Johnny Crap, who we also met and I learned is French Canadian.”

    Rachel @ ~2:30 — Reference to art package designer for 8 Ball Beyond homebrew; indicates community meeting opportunities at Expo

Entities

Electric Bat ArcadeorganizationKalepersonRachelpersonVenomgameGalactic Tank ForcegameFoo FightersgameStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Electric Bat Arcade five-year anniversary tournament attracting out-of-town players; will be streamed by Aimless Pinball; part of broader venue maturation and community role

    high · Kale: 'A lot of people from out of town are coming... we're going to stream it... Aimless Pinball is going to be streaming it'

  • ?

    community_signal: Podcast influence over operator machine rotation decisions; listeners responded to podcast discussion of underperforming games by playing them more, preventing removal from rotation

    high · Kale: 'With the podcast we can manipulate the audience... roller games and whodunit are out of the bottom five this month... people played it because they didn't want us to take them off the floor'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Paragon presents difficulty for Rachel in tournament play; European two-flipper version preferred; indicates playfield design/lower flipper placement affects competitive outcomes

    medium · Rachel: 'Every time I get that game in a tournament, that's almost a guaranteed third or fourth place for me... I had some notes here... scissored...'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Tarantino open to pinball licensing; Kill Bill homebrew already exists; From Dusk Till Dawn desired by operators/community

    medium · Kale: 'Tarantino's open to having his licenses as pinball machines, right? Yeah we know now. Do you remember at Golden State, were you there when they showed the Kill Bill pin?'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Strong positive sentiment toward Stern relationship and support; party/giveaways at Chicago operator event received well; jean jackets and playfield giveaways appreciated

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.230

0:00
all right one five four three you're about to do some fibonacci one one two one two three five eight welcome welcome everybody got speaking to the microphone if i want people to hear me don't i yes i'm gonna adjust my janky uh what do you call this tripod boom boom boom stand we're here uh it's uh my name is kale i'm rachel and we are the electric bats uh out of out of phoenix and tempe arizona we live in phoenix but we operate out of tempe and flagstaff and flagstaff yeah we're all over it's cold up there probably not anymore oh it's about to get cold It's about to get cold.
0:57
We're back from, we haven't done an episode in a while. I guess the last one was with our buddy Mike Vinacore. At Expo. Yeah, people enjoy. If you haven't seen that one yet, man, that one is an absolute gem. Mike Vinacore from Stern Pinball. He is one of the best guests, pinball podcast guests, I think in the history of the world. Yeah, I think he would be good on Howard Stern. He would kill it on any podcast. He's a photographer. Yeah. He has his own punk record label. He's a wrestling aficionado. I learned some things about taking it the hard way or something. Taking it the hard way, getting effed in the A. Oh, boy. All right.
1:41
Wrestling terms. Wrestling terms, yep. Getting color. We were at Expo. What did we see at Expo? We saw a bunch of cool stuff. Mostly our friends. And that was the best part, seeing everybody at Expo. The homebrew section. Very cool. Yep. We saw they had all your favorites, the Ghost in the Shell. The Tanner had his, what is it called? Trash Land. That's a cool pit.
2:12
And then, man, I had some notes here. The star of the show. 8 Ball Beyond. Is that what it was called? 8 Ball Beyond by Sean Irby. Yeah. We played it with Mike Vinicore. Yeah, we played it with actually several of the Stern guys. Right. They kept going back to it. And man, what a fun and like complete game. Yeah. I mean, this is really, he spent some money on this thing. Art package done by Johnny Crap, who we also met and I learned is French Canadian. Yeah. Had a very different accent than what I was expecting. Yeah. Very cool.
American Pinball
company
Spooky Pinballcompany
Insider Connectedproduct
Marco Specialtiescompany
Game Room Goodiescompany
Mike Vinacoreperson
Sean Irbyperson
Johnny Crapperson
Big Brother Pinballperson
Aimless Pinballorganization
Dwightperson
Centaurgame
Paragongame

high · Kale: 'It's nice to thank the people that... we buy a lot of games... Stern was really hooking everybody up. They did a lot of cool stuff... a few thousand dollars worth of prizes'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Insider Connected widely recommended for Spike 2 retrofit; operators seeing immediate earnings increases; both hosts actively using companion app on watches

    high · Rachel: 'If you have not retrofitted all of your Spike 2s with Insider Connected, man, do it. It is worth it... It's on my watch. It's on our watch.'

  • ?

    announcement: New Elvira variant showcased at Stern factory tour (not at Expo); features black and white with red highlights and glitter; existing operators like Electric Bat not purchasing duplicates

    high · Rachel: 'They dropped a new pin but was not at Expo... had to go do the tour at the new factory to see it. Very cool-looking Elvira. Beautiful. Black and white with red highlights.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Venom strong first-month performer but did not break Foo Fighters' record; indicates hit performance without being record-breaking; character leveling system driving sustained engagement

    high · Kale: 'Venom did very well. It did not break. Foo Fighters has the record. Venom did not top Foo Fighters... people are loving this game... they're kind of addicted'

  • ?

    product_concern: Galactic Tank Force experiencing critical ball-tracking bugs in trough that require operator refunds and game resets; service department unresponsive to repeated bug reports

    high · Kale: 'We had to give so many refunds on this game... major issues... show-stopping issues... loses track of balls... programming issue... not provided us with any usable fixes'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Insider Connected has additional features in pipeline for next few months beyond current home leaderboards functionality

    medium · Kale: 'We know that there's some more great stuff in the pipeline coming out in the next few months too, that everyone's going to be really excited about'

  • ?

    operational_signal: American Pinball service department perceived as overwhelmed and declining in quality compared to earlier era (Dave Brennan/Hot Wheels era), creating operator dissatisfaction

    high · Kale: 'Their service department is overwhelmed... not bending over backwards to be kind and helpful. American used to have the best service.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Significant overlap (approximately 75%) between licensed slot machine themes and pinball themes; slot machine industry showing advance indicator of potential pinball themes

    medium · Big Brother Pinball question: 'About 75% of licensed pinball machine titles also exist as slot machine titles... These are some of the new slot license themes coming out this year'

    • 2:49
    This is what's very cool. So I don't know if it's the latest one, but it's one of the latest episodes of Pinball Innovators and Makers. They interviewed Sean Irby. I saw that in the Discord. Yes. Wow. So go check that out, Pinball Innovators and Makers.
    3:07
    And I guess just search for them on your favorite podcasting app. They're on the Pinball Network. Oh, okay. Should be easy to find. Just search Pinball Network and look for those guys. And we met them. Yeah. At Expo. They were awesome. And thank you so much. We met so many listeners. Yeah. Or watchers. What do you call them? I don't know how they... Watchers sounds weird. Consumers. Yeah. They're watching us. They're peeping on what we're doing.
    3:38
    Thank you so much. We met so many of you guys. And it was really... It felt good hearing, you know, all you guys are interested in what we have to talk about. A lot of just people walking by, like, high-fiving you, saying, keep it up. Yeah, and we didn't even know who they were. Yeah, it was really, it felt really great. Man, what a great community we have here.
    4:01
    Right on, so. We do it for the accolades. That's why we do it, yeah. We want some more accolades, and if you want to send us any accolades, we have Electric Bat Arcade at Gmail, and we also have the Discord. Yep. And if you want to get in the Discord, head over to electricbatarcade.com. Check the podcast link. And then in there, there's a bunch of different ways to listen to the podcast.
    4:33
    And there's a link to join the Discord. Oh, I have to bring this up in case. There's so many people working from home nowadays, so they may have run into this. and and and prior episodes we had we had a thumbs up and a balloon just weird pictures popping up on the screen but thanks to gutter ghoul yeah in the discord he he's also on instagram i think he's got a ghoul there too he told us what the problem was hopefully we have it fixed apparently in uh ios yeah and and the latest uh uh os for mac um there there's by default when you use Zoom or we're using Riverside, if you're using some type of software like that for streaming,
    5:24
    by default in the operating system... It recognizes hand gestures. Yeah, it recognizes hand gestures. What's up with that? Yeah, so if you go like this, you get a bunch of balloons. If you do a thumbs up, you get a bunch of thumbs up. Anyway, we didn't want it there.
    5:39
    Right. But the biggest thing is it didn't really work. It like froze, like your frame rate started stuttering, and then the balloons would stutter, and it just didn't work. It didn't work, and we wouldn't like it even if it did. That is a, that's an Apple fail. Wow, you don't hear too many of those. I gotta, I gotta, I had to turn myself down. I wish there was a general knob for that. Yeah, yeah, rarely do we want to turn me down, but right now, yeah, okay. Okay. Today, this is a fan favorite because you have the data. I have the data.
    6:20
    And this is the top earners. Top earners. It's that time. It's the beginning of the month. So this would be top earners for October. And you have not seen this. And I also have the bottom earners because people want to know what doesn't earn. Okay. This is the top earners from the spookiest month.
    6:38
    Yes. You want to grab that? Yeah. Do you need your laptop? No, I know. Oh, you know. I know what's up. Is this where I guess? Yeah. Okay.
    6:48
    Number one is Godzilla. Incorrect. Oh, my God. I don't mind being wrong. You know that, right? It's Venom. Venom just came out. So usually a new game is going to take the top spot. Venom did very well. It did not break. Right now, Foo Fighters has the record for the highest earnings on its first month. So Venom did not top Foo Fighters, but it did have a commanding lead for the highest earner of October. So Foo Fighters holds the earnings record for electric bat? Yes. Right.
    7:28
    Interesting. and now the venom didn't beat it but it is for october and people are loving this game yes especially leveling up their character i mean there are a few a handful of people i'm getting worried about they're kind of addicted i'm not even kidding they'll message me oh i'm level i've rolled it yeah yeah i'm level 99 and now i'm trying to get yeah and uh so stern We need some updates. People want to get to 200 and 300. Okay. I don't know how they plan on dealing with that. But so far, what a success. Absolutely. Venom's been great. Okay. Are we moving on to number two? Number two. Do I get to guess this one? Yes, you do. Godzilla.
    8:16
    Incorrect. But this one comes with an asterisk. Okay. Because it was the second highest gross earner, but not net earner. Oh. We've never had to say this before, but this will tell you what game it is.
    8:34
    We had to give so many refunds on this game. I know what this is. So people put the second most amount of money into this game, but we also put a whole lot of money back into those people's hands because the game is buggy.
    8:51
    Yeah, that's Galactic Tank Force. Absolutely. Beautiful game. Great job, Franchi. Great job, Nordman. Right. We raved about this game, and it wouldn't be – we do this for the public, for the guys that want to operate and make some money operating these machines.
    9:15
    Galactic Tank Force – and I don't feel happy saying this. That is 100% not the way to go. You will lose a bunch of money if you try to operate these things. Yeah. Okay, go. Tell me all about it. So I'm trying to be the most positive but also real, right? I'm not going to lie.
    9:33
    I will say, again, it's a beautiful game. I love the way the game looks, the art package. And I like the way the game plays when it plays correctly. But the when it plays correctly is the problem. There are some major issues that we're having with this game. Show-stopping issues. Yeah, things that make you have to turn the game off and on again and refund people's money. because it loses track of balls. I believe it to be some sort of programming issue the way that it interprets the trough signals, but I'm waiting to hear back from them about it. We talk to them at Expo about these issues. We've talked to them via email. We are trying very hard to get them to rectify these issues. We've also talked to other operators that have the same issues as us and also some additional issues. So their service department, I think, is overwhelmed right now.
    10:37
    They have not provided us with any what I consider usable fixes for any of our issues. And American used to have the best service. Whenever we got our Hot Wheels, I believe it was Dave Brennan in charge of service back then. He was great. And, man, it was so refreshing. And the service department is often going to be the front line of a company that you're going to interact with. So you really want to put your best people forward in the service department there. I will say that I have not had that experience this time. It has not been bending over backwards to be kind and helpful. Yeah. That has not been.
    11:20
    So that's where we are with Galactic Tank Force. It's a beautiful thing to look at. 100%. And sometimes it's a fun game to play. It's an expensive piece of art, let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's move on to number three. Okay.
    11:36
    Oh, do I guess? Yeah. Godzilla. Yes. Finally. You're just going to keep guessing until we did it. Godzilla is in there somewhere. Yeah, it is. And it is right there. So Godzilla is number three. um not unusual for it to get bumped by two brand new games okay especially because ours is the only galactic that you can play in arizona right so yeah um number four and i can't see the screen i'm gonna guess uh bond 60th correct man yep another surprise earner yeah and number five scooby-doo jurassic jurassic it got that code update and i think people were really into that it's a great code update so aside from the two brand new games the other top five were all elwyn games you can't go wrong with elwyn yeah so if you want it to earn you got to make it a stern i can't wait for his next game i am so excited we all know what the rumors are and uh and even if those are not true it like really it can be anything again like about brushing your teeth i'll buy it did you floss elwyn says to me yeah no i would it's gonna be great do you want to know the bottom five earners i i do okay at the very bottom Escape from Lost World. What a weird game. It's a strange game.
    13:06
    And people like to play it a couple of times because it's odd. Then there's a few that are... It hurts me to see these games at the bottom. Who done it? Is who done it back on there?
    13:19
    Let's go in order. I don't want to screw up your order. Thank you. Second lowest earning game was Centaur.
    13:27
    Oh, man. That's a... It's such a cool game. Yeah, that's a great game and a classic, and it's actually been re-released. Yeah. It just shows you how popular it is. I love that game.
    13:40
    But again, that's on 50 Cent Play, so it is somewhat affected by that. Right. Johnny Mnemonic. Also a cool game. That is a fantastic game. I mean, I love that game. And the glove works for the most part. No, it does work. It works for all of the part. Lots of people have problems keeping the glove working. Ours is working.
    14:03
    Paragon, after that. Man, I love Paragon. I don't. Do you remember seeing the European Paragon? Yeah, it only had two flippers. It only had two flippers down here. That was cool. I wish I had that version, because I always get screwed. Yeah, which is why I got scissored. Which may be why you love that game and I don't. I do. I think it's a great game. Oh, I don't mind playing it just for fun, but every time I get that game in a tournament, that's almost a guaranteed third or fourth place for me. I don't know why I've never had the luck on that. And then finally, the fifth worst performing game this month is Diner. Yeah. Also a fan favorite, but not a casual favorite. Not a casual favorite, and I do like that game. I enjoy playing that. If I get that in a tournament, I'm happy about it.
    14:57
    Yeah, so roller games and whodunit are, I think people heard the podcast and were like, these games deserve to get played more. So those are out of the bottom five this month. So people played it because they didn't want us to take them off the floor, right? That's true. That's good. So this is a way, with the podcast, we can manipulate the audience. That is kind of what's happening. That's what media does, right? That is what they mean. All right. Well, let's do it. But that is one way we make decisions about what gets rotated on and off. So if you enjoy those games, make sure you play them. Yeah. And we are going to have to rotate some games because we are bringing in some new games. Well, not new games. Some games that haven't been on the floor in a while for the big three-day tournament. Yeah, we've got that coming up in a couple of weeks, don't we? It's like two weeks from today. We sure do. and tickets are available if you want to if you want a link to the Eventbrite link go to electricbatarcade.com click on the podcast link and there's a link to get you tickets to the five year anniversary bash yeah it's going to be a lot of fun a lot of people from out of town are coming we're going to stream it that's going to be cool yeah Aimless Pinball is going to be streaming it Aimless Pinball a mat name we saw them at Expo we saw them at Expo so many people I really like. Yeah. And you don't hear me say that, like, a lot. Yeah. What about that super cool, we got these cool jean jackets from Stern. Oh, man. I don't have one around. I know. We'll show it another time. Yeah, we'll show it. We went to a party that Stern threw in Chicago, I guess Schoenberg, for operators. Yeah. How exciting was that? It's nice to thank the people that, you know, we buy a lot of games and we put them out and let people play them for money. And we got cool jackets. And they gave us some jean jackets. And they gave away play fields and all of this. Stern was really hooking everybody up. They did a lot of cool stuff. They did a game show where they gave away a ton of prizes. Including a Mando topper. I know, a few thousand dollars worth of prizes. yeah appreciate we didn't win that but we didn't win it but we saw someone very happy that did yeah yeah this one of the yeah yes well you had something you had a little gem well i was about to talk about how i didn't have dice in my pocket for once and i missed out on dwight asked at the game show if anybody had dice in their pocket it was the only time you you always carry dice if i am to make decisions you kind of kind of like the way two-face has the coin you have this isn't a joke she really does carry dice to make decisions and it actually it comes in very handy yeah so if you see me out in public i if i have a purse or something like i almost always 90 95 percent of the time i have i have a d20 in my pocket and uh this i could not believe dwight asks does anyone have dice in their pocket and i just turned you and like i think you could see by the look on my You were like, you turned white. You were like, why?
    18:10
    Why? This one time. Why? You almost wanted to walk out. I almost wanted to cry. Yeah. Okay. It would now be a good time to talk about our sponsors. Yes, it would be. We have a new sponsor. Who is it? Really excited about this. Stern Insider Connected. Stern. Stern Insider Connected. You know, get it connected. you better get yourself connected you better get yourself the writings on the wall uh really happy to have these guys on board because we have seen from the from the day it dropped from the for our first machine we had connected to insider connected earning shut up absolutely they shoot up and it's made a huge difference for us um both on the operator side and on as a player I only want to play those games that are connected because I want to get all of those Chivos And we talk about it all the time We only have sponsors that we really truly love what they do And we've been a big cheerleader for Insider Connected since it started. We're stoked about it. We love it. We love what's coming.
    19:27
    And we know that there's some more great stuff in the pipeline coming out in the next few months, too, that everyone's going to be really excited about. Super excited. If you have not retrofitted all of your Spike 2s with Insider Connected, man, do it. It is worth it. Totally worth it. Thank you so much, Stern Insider Connected, for the support. Yes. Thank you. And we're going to give it back to you. We're going to keep pumping this thing and using it. Every time we log in, we're logging in. We have it on our watches. Yes. Remember? Yes. Yeah. It's on my watch. It's on our watch. Also, a special thank you to Game Room Goodies for the continued support. We love those guys. If you need anything for your game room, GameRoomGoodies.com. Go to the website. Reach out to them. Talk to Aaron. He can get you. I don't know if there's anything he can't get you. Yeah, I think those guys are pretty well hooked up. Air hockey. Yeah. Jukeboxes. A claw machine for your kitchen. A claw machine. You know those things? We're not really the type of venue where that works. We're not like a family arcade. We're not a family arcade. But if you want something that earns, these claw machines are amazing. Absolutely. And Aaron can get you that. Of course, he can get you pinball machines. New, old, whatever. Give him a call. If he doesn't have it, he can find it. And they also build arcade cabinets, which is cool. All that. they they're your one-stop shop and you know we do have a claw type machine in the arcade with more adult prizes so that's um that's an option for you yeah yeah if you're running maybe more um 21 and over crowd and you don't want to put a bunch of stuffed animals in there are all kinds of the sky or the law is the limit adult items yeah so that's a lot of fun Thank you, Game Room Goodies, for the support. And then, last but not least, Marco Specialties. Everything pinball. These guys have everything pinball. Yeah. I mean, really. They do have everything pinball. As far as parts go, you can, like I said, like video games and air hockey, like our boys, Game Room Goodies. But they have every kind of part for new and old machines. And they're constantly building their catalog. Check them out at marcospec.com. Is it Margo Spec? Margo Pinball? I think they all go to it. All those get there. Whatever I put down here is where you need to go. MargoSpecialties.com. Yeah. They got me. I needed some relays for some System 11 games. They were here the next day. So they're in South Carolina. We're in Arizona. Those of you that know geography know that that is all the way across the country. I ordered it on a Friday and I got it on a Monday. It's like 2,700 miles. And we didn't even do expedited shipping. No, it was just regular. They are famous for getting orders out incredibly quickly, and the whole pinball community really thanks you guys. Yeah, it was great to see them at Expo, too. Yeah. We got to see Marco. The Marco Stern booth. We got to see Kim. They had a giant inflatable Venom. Yeah. Which looked crazy. Mm-hmm. And then they had all the Venom games. They dropped a new pin, but it was not at Expo. You actually had to go do the tour at the new factory to see it. Yeah. And it's a very cool-looking Elvira. Beautiful. Wow. Beautiful. It's mostly black and white with red highlights. Yeah. Very cool. Glitter, glitter. If we didn't already have one, we'd buy this one. Yeah, it doesn't make sense for us to buy a second Elvira. We love the game. But we know another arcade locally is going to get one, and we're going to go check it out. Absolutely. At their arcade. Thank you to all the sponsors, and we really appreciate it. We're going to do you guys right. We're going to keep making this thing happen. I mean, we do. And sending business your way. We turn away lots of people that have asked us to sponsor because they're not products that we are really stoked about. Yep. So we use all of these things, and we're excited about them. We do. If we're talking about them, we legit like them. And now we are moving on to viewers' questions. Did you have a particular question you wanted to touch on? Because I have this one I think would make a good discussion here. Go for it. No, no, no. Go for it. Okay.
    24:00
    This is from Big Brother Pinball. Oh, that's my friend. That's our guy. And he is in the casino business. Mm-hmm. Hey. Yeah. Good friend of ours. and he said i found that there is a large overlap in the licensed theme seen on slot machine and on pinball machines going back decades that's really interesting we've noticed that you go to vegas and it's like oh these are all the pins that we have we're not gamblers but we enjoy you know going to vegas and and and kind of more people watching than anything we don't really like gambling but when we saw there was a ghostbuster slot machine that did something it was like 3d 3D projected, though. Without glasses. Yeah. I don't know. Amazing. But those things make so much money, they can put all this crazy technology in there. It was like a weird hologram that was, you know, that was weird. Right, right. So, lots of overlap between slot machines and pinball machines going back decades. There are many parallels between both game types. Based on my analysis covering the past 20 years, about 75% of licensed pinball machine titles also exist as slot machine titles.
    25:15
    I just got back from a big casino conference last week, and these are some of the new slot license themes coming out this year. Ooh, we got a little inside info here. Ooh. Because we don't go. This could be some good dirt. Right? We would love to, but we don't go to slot machine shows. No. I would love that. Yeah, well. Okay, here's the list. These are the slot machines coming out this year. Squid Games. Okay. That's a Netflix license. Whitney Houston. Isn't that interesting? Whitney... Oh, because that movie came out, didn't it? I don't know. I think there was a movie about her. No clue. In the last five years. I don't... Casper the Friendly Ghost. Oh, I... You would like that. I like that. I have some old Casper comics. I used to read the... Yeah, the Casper comics. I like Casper. I still have them. I have to dig them up. Oh, my God. This is you. But this would be weird because it kind of already is one of these universal monsters slot machine. Yeah, we would buy it. We would buy that slot machine. I would buy the slot machine. Like, surely there's a way. We should get slot machines. Would that be cool? No, it wouldn't be cool because you couldn't pay out. Nobody would just be fun. All right.
    26:31
    Willie Nelson. No. Oh, man, I'd like that one. I know, and I would have to veto it hard. It's got like a big weed leaf at the top. Yeah, that would be the best part about it. NFL. No. Well, NFL slash Super Bowl. Okay.
    26:46
    Like just in general. I bet that's very popular amongst the gambling crowd. Well, remember whenever there was like the game, like you could get a specific team for the pinball machine? Like that didn't do too well.
    26:58
    Oh, yeah. Yeah, Stern did that. Right. Yeah. That could have been a timing thing more than a theme. Mask, the Jim Carrey movie. Oh, really? Okay. The green guy with the yellow suit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yellow suit. He does some facial expressions. Evil Knievel, which has already been done. That'd be cool to bring that back. Yeah, okay. You could do some cool ramps. Make the ball jump from ramp to ramp. Now, this one is actually a few years old, but he added this to the list because he would like to see this as a pin. And I would like to see this as a pin, and you would like to see this as a pin from dusk till dawn. Oh. That would be huge. Yes, I would do that. And Tarantino's open to having his licenses as pinball machines, right? Yeah, we know now. Do you remember at Golden State, were you there when they showed the Kill Bill pin? Yes, I was there. And it was based on dog soccer. Yes. And that was good. It was good. It was very good. I played it a couple times. And they actually did the software with movie scenes and all that stuff. That was very cool. I'm really impressed with what people put together in their garages that way, getting scenes. All that's – I think that's really cool. Yeah.
    28:17
    So Big Brother Pinball, he's wondering – it's far from a guarantee that just because it's a slot machine, it will become a pinball machine. But there have been some crossovers. I talked to him in person. He said there was a Jaws slot machine. Kind of interesting. That would make a cool pinball machine, right? Which of these themes would you personally most like to see as pinball titles?
    28:45
    Universal Monsters. Which themes do you think have the most appeal as a successful pinball title? Not the mask. I think that would tank.
    28:57
    Oh, not the mask. Yeah, I'm not. And Whitney Houston, we can scratch that off. I like Whitney Houston. Oh, yeah. I love some Whitney Houston. I just don't think it would. I sing very similar to her, wouldn't you say? You actually do. Can you sing us a little ditty? You know. Do us a little something. No, I've got a little allergies today. I may not. Maybe you can. Next episode. Ooh. Yeah. I'll sound like Robin. Yeah, right.
    29:22
    Casper the Friendly Ghost. That would be great. I would love that. That's like something spooky would do. That is like something spooky. It's like something spooky should do. Yeah.
    29:31
    I would love anybody to do that. That's nice because it's horror, but it's also friendly. I mean, it's not really horror horror, but... You would like Universal Monsters, but that's kind of been done, right? Do it again. Monster Bash. I don't care. Do it again. You know how many... There's two Jurassic Parks. Yeah, you're right about that. Okay. Let's do it. There's two Avengers. Yeah. There's two of... Plenty of things. There's two Knight Riders. There's two... There's the EM Knight Rider, and then there's the Solid State Knight Rider. While we're doing that, then there's several games that fit that.
    30:06
    Willie Nelson. Man, if Stern did Willie Nelson, this thing would blow up. Willie Nelson would be amazing. No. Yeah, yeah. Trust me. I'm telling you. This is like your Beastie Boys thing. Oh, no. Beastie Boys would be... Okay.
    30:25
    Let's backtrack. Okay. We had... I better get a sip of something if I'm going to hear all this. Let me get a little sip of here if we're doing some backtracking. Was it like two episodes ago? Yeah, it was something. You said Dune. Yeah. Okay. I correctly said Dune would make a fantastic theme. To be clear, this was which made the most business sense. Not what would make a better pinball machine as far as the IP tying in to pinball rules and what have you. What would sell the most? Well, I think those aren't really separatable questions.
    31:07
    I think that having a well-integrated, fantastic theme, because you would agree, Dune is a great theme. You're not disputing that. No, I love Dune. Ultimately, I would like to see both of those become pinball machines, but Beastie Boys would sell more.
    31:28
    I looked it up, and Beastie Boys had sold, in dollar amounts, twice as many. I know this doesn't make sense, but just to give you, they've sold twice as many. He's about to lay out some bad math for you. they've sold twice as many uh albums as the ticket sales on dune but it wasn't all of dune i know i don't even know why i bring this stuff up let's let's carry on you're gonna argue math with me that is an unwise all right all right so um uh beastie boys oh do you remember after After our last tournament, we were playing Starball, and I put it on the Beastie Boys channel. And I danced like a fool all night. Everybody freaked out. Yeah. And I was playing obscure Beastie Boys. I wasn't playing any License to Ill stuff. I was playing some deep cuts on Paul's Boutique, and everybody was like, hell yeah, and dancing around. And no matter what age, everybody got excited. Everybody there was in the Beastie Boys. Now, if I would have cranked up the soundtrack to Dune, I don't think you would have had the excitement.
    32:43
    See, you agree. But that's not, once again, not a fair, there isn't, one is known. What if you would have cranked up just the visuals of the Beastie Boys? I think people would get excited. People would enjoy it. If I would have put Fight for Your Right to Party, the video on the screen up there, people would have liked it. You're making a bunch of very inept arguments. It would be good if you were arguing with someone that didn't know what you were doing, but I know what you're doing. Ultimately, I won the poll. You did win the poll in Discord. We did a poll in Discord, and Beastie Boys won, and thank you for voting for me.
    33:23
    And everybody else wants to see both. Let's be honest. All right. So moving right along, you said you wouldn't like Willie Nelson. I would like Willie Nelson. I mean, in reality, there's so many other titles that would make sense. NFL slash Super Bowl. No. Nah. Mask, no. Evil Knievel. A modern Evil Knievel would be cool. Like a throwback. Stern did like a throwback Evil Knievel. I think that would be very cool.
    33:56
    And please, somebody do From Dusk Till Dawn because I think, man, what a cool title. Maybe that's a CGC or Play Mechanics, whoever.
    34:11
    Let's just go down with the Tarantino licenses. I think they could just do them all. Josh or whoever needs to get on that, let's go. Mark Ritchie.
    34:21
    Here's a good one, and I can't wait to see what you have to say about this. This is your wheelhouse here. This is also from Big Brother Pinball. Thank you for your questions. These are great ones. Yeah, I like this inside information, too. Yeah, yeah. Question for the program.
    34:40
    He knows it's the program. He likes to call it the program. We have the program going on here. One of the advantages of a card-based system, as opposed to tokens and quarters, is data collection and analytics that comes with these systems. A coin-based location would need to create their own system for tracking revenue. what do we use excel access other database tools to measure and track this stuff to track earnings per game i use google docs i just use a straight spreadsheet so basically excel i don't track earnings over time of day any of that i just want to know from the first of the month to the last day of the month how much that game earned we're in the arcade all the time we're in there some days we're in there very very early some days we're in there very very late a lot of times in the middle so me and you have a good idea just visually who's playing what what you know what are our busy times what are our not busy times we just inherently know that because we spend ungodly amounts of time at the arcade. Right.
    35:53
    So, Coindrop, I just track in a regular old spreadsheet, and I have it for the year, and then next year I start a new one, and so forth. Cool. That is your answer. Also, part of this, do you also have a system for tracking repair costs, parts and or labor, to get a picture of how well each game performs net of repair and maintenance expenses. So once again, I know this in my head. Our main costs on games is our flipper rebuilds. That's the thing that we do far and away the most of. And that is almost directly tied, unless you get just weird parts or something, with how much a game is played. So that cost tends to be a fairly steady and predictable one. The other, I guess, large cost that we expect to put into a machine would be if it's a classic Bally or Stern, we always put Altec boards in it. Yes, those are great boards. Yeah, maybe not immediately as it goes on the floor, but if it starts to have even a small little problem, I know that I can rebuild those boards. I can do all of that, but I love the Altec boards. So I'm just going to swap them out. I keep the old boards, if you're wondering. I'm not trashing them, and I do have them in case of emergency, and I note down this transistor and all of these things. I know what's wrong with each of the boards. But those would be our main expenses, so I don't track per game aside from that. We do know that we have a few games that have had a lot of extra issues, but again, we don't have a huge staff. It's me and you and Mark and John Choppel, and those are the only people working on the pinball machines, and we all know what's going on there. Right. And if you're not familiar with the Alltech boards, give Marko's Specialties a call. They sell the all-tech boards and deal with customer service for that kind of stuff. And they have a great rapport with the developer of that board so they can handle any kind of issues If they would just make one for WPC I would be in heaven That would be amazing But there also the Pascal boards for Gottlieb which is similar to it a plug for Gottlieb classic Gottliebs similar to the Alltech boards
    38:30
    Alltech boards work on classic sterns and classic ballys, and they're really great. And it's really our favorite era of games, aside from the new ones. Yeah. When people ask us what games would you like, inevitably it's like a classic Ballet or a classic Stern. For sure. And both of those boards are available at Marco's Specialties. Give those guys a call. Get on the website if you need some repairs.
    38:57
    This is also, man, we should just call this the Big Brother Pinball Show. Okay. He's got such good questions.
    39:08
    Okay, so this one's good. Do you know of any systems which automates the data collection aspect from each game but still allows for tokens or coins for payment? If not, would a system like that be attractive for a coin-based operator to eliminate the need to have to check audits and count individual coin boxes? I think Scorebit does a lot of that stuff. Does it? I believe so.
    39:36
    And we've tried one, Scorebit. Yeah, it doesn't make sense for us to do all that. Because we would be paying almost $200 per machine. I'm not sure if the pricing model has changed in the past few years, but it just... Plus, I don't know how accurate the data is.
    40:00
    I mean, I know sometimes it doesn't even add your bonus when it collects a score. I don't know if it's gotten better. To be honest, we don't have any kind of system like that in place. And I don't know of anything other than perhaps score bet.
    40:21
    Future insider connected stuff may include that. I don't know anything about that. But I think that would be the capability of it. For sure. This is a huge benefit of using a card-based system. Oh, my gosh, yes. Because one of our friends locally uses one, and he can just pull up everything on his phone. Yes. And we were blown away. I was a little bit jealous about that. I still, I'm hanging on to my analog coins, but I have also been, I don't know if you know this, but I've been going back and forth still with the card system guy. He wanted me to meet him in Florida at IAPA, the conference down there. he suggested because i told him you know we don't really have fifty three thousand dollars if this was something we wanted to do my checkbook isn't that big i can't just write you a fifty three thousand dollar check to come and put all this stuff in and he said oh no problem at all here's my finance person you can take out a loan to do this and they you know they're they've got some very salesy sales people over there and if this was something that i was on the fence about you know maybe but i you know i just i still love even though it's extra work i like the tokens i like the feel of the tokens i like using the token sound the sound i mean everything um sound feel all of the sensory stuff that comes with using a physical thing um but also i'm not into financing things right like i want to pay for something in cash i want to pay for it outright i don't want that weight over my head of god i hope i can pay this off in addition to all of my regular bills which man you know when you keep expanding an arcade the rent as it turns out keeps getting way higher no more expansion yeah we're done yeah that's a big check uh good that was a uh a great answer thank you so much uh big brother pinball for the questions thank you for being a part of the show okay now we have uh rich from utah all right utah is like above us right that is correct more geography well above us depends what you're looking at It's a relative term. It's all part of human. This is a good question, and I don't know the answer. I'm sure you're immediately going to have an opinion, and I can't wait to hear it. I love all of your opinions, right or wrong, good or bad. My wrong opinion. I love them all. Here's a question from Rich from Utah. You covered coin, token, versus card swipe. What is your take on an entry fee and everything on free play? Would you make more or less on average per customer? Good question. Us? I have no idea. He's asking specifically for Electric Bat. Yeah. No, no way. Because we have so many patrons that are coming for like a punk show at the bar. And then they want to just kind of walk in. Maybe they just want to hang out, play one or two games. Right. And then, you know, that's it. they're not going to pay the 10, 15, 20, 30, whatever you decide is the right amount for you for that. And I feel like... We wouldn't even be able to pull that off. There's no way to police that since we're connected to a busy bar. Yeah, that would be... Oh, you can't come in here unless you have a cover charge. Yeah. Yeah, so... For us, it does not make any sense at all. um financially like if none of those issues were an issue i'm not sure if that would be you know if you charge 10 bucks i really i don't know what the average spend is per person um but i also don't care so i don't i'm not trying to learn that like really our priority is i've often wondered when i hear about places like this i've often wondered But how does that make sense? $12 and you can play all day. Yeah. Like how? And you also know that whenever there's not a per game cost that, oh, I have kind of a bad game, I walk away. Or like you constantly have balls in the shooter lane, games halfway played. That's just a thing that happens. But I truly don't care how much, you know, if someone is spending $1 or $50. I mean, it would be great if they were spending $50. I like that part. But it's more important to us that they're having a good time. And if you just want to come and hang out and have a beer and play $3 worth of games. And we have a lot of people that we see daily that maybe only spend $2 a day. I'm thinking of Andres in Joker Poker. He likes to go have one beer in the middle of the day and go play a couple of games of Joker poker, and he does it every single day. You know what's really strange about him? But I like it. Strange in a good way. He only plays extremely classic pinball and that alien shooter game. You see him with the machine gun. That's all he plays. He played Joker poker and what's the other game he likes? Cleopatra. Yeah. And then he likes to hold a machine gun and gun down aliens. He said it's one of his favorite movies. Yeah. Really, really interesting stuff.
    46:00
    I have heard some locations do that to avoid the tags on the machines. Yeah. That's one way to get around that. But check your local laws. And what I mean by that is in many municipalities, you have to buy these, I guess they're tax stamps. I don't know what they're called. They're the tags for each machine. And in some areas, you can get around that by just not having them coin operated, just having them on free play and then have an entrance cover charge. Yeah, not for us, but I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it's fine. I think that there are many businesses that that model makes sense for, just not ours.
    46:44
    I like seeing the same people every day spending a couple of bucks. Yep. I love seeing the same people every day spending even more bucks.
    46:54
    I have. You're not going to believe this. I just found another question. No, you didn't. But this is from a different guy. This is from Big Papa. Big Pops. We've got Big Brother and Big Papa. Yeah, we've got Big Papa. This is via email.
    47:10
    He said, thank you for the podcast. Very interesting. He's really enjoying it. Thank you for listening. Yeah. Yeah, we enjoy it. I can't believe so many people in here just run our mouths. No, I can. I can believe it. We're so good. Oh, boy. We're so good.
    47:26
    Number one, it's got a couple of questions. Do you use silicone or rubber on your machines? I've heard silicone lasts longer and are cleaner, but I feel they're way too bouncy and change gameplay. When we worked at Marco, we went through all of this quite a bit. The difference between silicone, urethane, and rubber, and about durometer and all these different factors. Abrasion resistance. Yeah. And we've done scientific studies. Nancy over at Marco could tell you very specific down to numbers, decimal points, about all of the factors involved. Decimal points and zeros after decimal points. Then a number. Right. Yeah. So we have been exposed to a lot of data on this. And then we have a ton of real-world experience about this. And what we have found, in general, no on the silicone. It tends to not hold up for us. It is very pretty. I think it's the prettiest of all of the options. So if I was just playing at home and my personal taste was not affected by the bounciness or the grippiness, then silicone is probably the way that I would go. Sure. Because it's not going to get that much play. In a commercial setting, I don't find silicone to be a good choice.
    48:55
    Rubber, I like the best. We used natural rubber. Pinball rubber works is what we like. Yep. Available at Marco's Specialties. That's true. Sponsor of the show.
    49:08
    But that is what we use. That's true. You can get cheaper rubber in different retailers, and it lasts less. It does not last as long. Right. And then Superbands also, which is the urethane. Right. And we have those on games that have rubber, like on Bram Stoker's Dracula is the one that comes to mind. that it takes like five hours to change two rubbers because you have to take off everything. So on games like that, we will use super bands for those areas because that is an insane amount of work to change a rubber, and the super bands last forever. And just to be clear, what she's talking about on Bram Stoker's Dracula, not necessarily the flipper rubbers, it's all of the other rubbers. In the back of the machine. Yes, you have to take off ramps and all kind of crazy stuff to change those rubbers. If you just put super bands on there, you'll never have to change them again. And I know some people get confused.
    50:14
    Titan rubbers, those are your silicon rubbers. And those are great. They're fine. They come in all kind of different colors. You can get those at Marco Specialties.
    50:25
    The stuff that Marco actually makes, super bands, those are polyurethane. And they're very hard. They last for a long time. And they also come in all kinds of different colors. I would not use those as slingshot rubbers. That's my one. Right.
    50:41
    Because they're too stiff to allow the bounciness that I favor on that. Some people do. So try it. Yeah. They sell entire kits. Yeah, it's very much a personal choice, except for, for us, the stuff that's going to mean that we have an extra day of work. because you have to take off so much. For sure. Great, great answer.
    51:05
    I really love that. I love giving it to you. Yeah, Big Papa has another question. Do you turn off physical ball locks during tournament play? I've heard that some people do since that can change the play or other players by gaining or losing skill shots, for example, like in Godzilla. No. We don't do that. And I don't want to do that because I believe that's all part of the game. Every once in a while, you get favors from the machine in the game. You get shafted. And every once in a while, you get shafted. And that's all part of the pinball experience. Right. And so I... Although I heard on Galactic Tank Force, because the game basically doesn't work, you have to use virtual locks. We have not turned on virtual locks on that game, but I've heard other arcades have had to. because the optos are very bizarre. Right. Yeah.
    51:57
    Very, very good deal. And I've lost my place here, but that was from Big Papa. Okay. And we love... Are you going in any kind of order or are you just... No, I'm jumping all over the place. That's why I'm kind of lost here. Wonderful.
    52:14
    Did you have one? Well... Oh. I got a good one because we kind of talked about this okay uh this is from uh john i have his last name but i don't know if he wants me to use that first initial john oh john oh john oh from the johnny oh this is this is a really good one because i think we've already we've kind of touched on this you should delete these after you ask him and then then i'll have to go back and do that then we'll know yeah what's left uh great podcast i love it i love it when they tell me it's a great podcast you know i you You know I'm a love accolade. Yeah. Great way to get your question on the podcast, Joe. I'll tell you what. You start out with a great podcast. I'm going to read it. Yeah. At night, just over and over. Thank you. Did I say John? It's Josh. Oh, Josh. You did say Josh. I can't. It's the type small, you know. I'm getting kind of old here. This is Josh O. Thank you so much for the question. Are there any pins you've given up on because the maintenance was not worth it? We're about to. and he's asking if Star Trek Next Gen is on this list. Oh, that's funny. Star Trek Next Gen. So that is a game that we purposefully don't own because of the maintenance. You used to own one, correct? I never owned one, but I certainly had plenty of friends that owned one. And we've had an opportunity to buy it, and I really enjoy the game. I think it's fun. But I think it is way too much work that I don't want to be doing that work.
    53:54
    So, yes, Star Trek Next Gen is on the list of games that we actually didn't buy just because of how difficult it is to maintain. um right now galactic tank force is on the uh on on the chopping block because i hopefully they'll be able to resolve these issues in a very timely manner it's going to have to be very timely because as operators we can't afford to have like it just doesn't make sense it's taking up a lot of space and and it's costing us some money it's costing us money but more than money the disappointment of having like a cool game going on and then it just freezing up and you can't finish the game like the feeling is more important than the money and that's not a good feeling aside from that i don't think that we have given up on any specific games because of maintenance. You know, we're well aware of games that are not new games, but all of the Bally Williams era.
    55:08
    Doctor Who was another game that we made the decision that came up in the Discord today. We don't own that game because I don't want to deal with the elevator.
    55:18
    Right. That's kind of a pain in the butt. I've had to deal with that, helping people out with that machine. Right. And I know about how that's going to earn. And so that's not worth it to me to deal with that. Still a cool game, though. Great game. Love watching them play it at Indisc. I love playing it. I'll put some quarters in it when I see it somewhere. I think we've already touched on this, but this question's in the notes. This is from Hooper Triplet on Discord.
    55:48
    How often are you changing balls? and do you clean and then reuse? I'd like to touch on that because I think a lot of people... Okay, first, how often do we change balls? When they start to look scratched up, I don't do it. We do nothing by play count. Everything is by touch, feel, sight, by sensory. And you can tell when you look at the ball and it's scuffed up, it's scratched up, and after a while, that will wear on your play field. I think when he's talking about cleaning them, some people put them in tumblers. Please don't do that. No, that doesn't make sense. Standard pinballs are inexpensive.
    56:33
    If you understand, we were involved in the manufacture of pinballs for a while when we worked at Margo Specialties. And if you understand how these things are made, you do not want to tumble these things. It just wears the ball down even more, you know? Yeah. And so we don't tumble them. We don't clean them. And we just throw them out. I mean, what are balls nowadays? A couple of bucks? Yeah. Get some new ones. Depends on how many you're buying. But yeah, get new balls. It's a very inexpensive way to keep your machine maintained. And we had another question along those same lines about preventative maintenance. I was trying to find it in here. You found it? I didn't see it, so I apologize. I forgot who the person was that asked it But it was an email that came in asking what we do for preventative maintenance because we talked about it in an earlier episode
    57:32
    I mean, obviously, we're cleaning the machines. Also, ABT. ABT, always be tightening. That's the number one thing that we do for preventative maintenance. Take the glass off and top side, bottom side, go through and tighten all of the screws, all of anything. Because any sort of loose vibrating parts is going to be a broken part.
    57:58
    Something's going to pop out on the play field. That's going to be a problem or maybe just whatever it is is going to break. Posts. This happens a lot on things like Newton balls. If they start to come a little bit loose, you're going to shear off that post. You need to keep those very tight. And just regular posts like on the outside of ramps or wherever, keep those tight because they will snap.
    58:23
    Top side, bottom side, tightening. That and keeping the machine clean are the primary things that we do preventative-wise. And with 60 pinball machines on the floor, it's hard to keep that going. We need to start at one end. It's very Golden Gate Bridgy. Start at one end and then just keep doing it. You know what I really like? John Chappell. The best. He helps us out at the arcade. Shout out to John Chappell.
    58:55
    If any listeners see him at the arcade, thank him for keeping all these machines running smoothly. Buy him some chicken fingers. Oh, he loves chicken fingers and fries from Yucca Taproot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know those are fresh fries. They're never frozen. They cut the potato. Cut the potato. And they deep fry them. Those are good.
    59:13
    He takes a Sharpie and dates the coil stops. You've seen that, right? Yes, and that's always something that I had meant to do and just don't. I have a small Sharpie in my bag for that express purpose. Well, you actually tried to do something that was very cool, and I think I didn't keep up with it, so we gave up, and that's all my fault. I'm very sorry. Tell me more about this. So, Rachel, years ago, she bought tiny notepads. Just those little memo pads. Yeah, cheap. You can buy a pack of them at Walgreens or whatever. Yeah, you can buy a dozen for five bucks. Not just Walgreens, Target, probably CVS, right? Staples, Office Max. I bet Costco. Any place that sells school supplies, office supplies, you get these little notepads, and she puts a pin through the spiral part, and she had these in the coin box. So anytime we did a repair, we would jot down the notes. I refuse to do that. Yeah. It's my fault, but it is a great idea. Yeah.
    60:19
    Because then anybody that opens up the machine. So would you suggest that operators do that? I would suggest that you keep. But if they're working with somebody like me, it might be hard. Yeah. But if you have the option of working with people that will use it, it is important, I think, to have that in there. Because sometimes there's, you know, just weird bugs in a game, and you kind of figure out how to solve it. Like it may be, you know, this thing keeps happening, maybe reset this cable, something like that. that the next person that comes along, they can just check the notes and like, oh, easy fix, right? You don't have to resolve the same problems. Especially, again, there are four people that can work on our machines.
    61:08
    We do have a private Discord channel that is just for us to share that information so that everybody is on the same page about what went down and how it was fixed. And it's searchable. It's kind of like a change log for your pinball machines. But I think that's really, really important because there's a lot of stuff that you may forget.
    61:28
    Even if you're the only person working on your machines, the same issue crops up two years later. It's like, well, I know this happened before, but I can't remember how I solved it. So some sort of – and having those little memo pads in the coin box is just a very easy way because it's always there. Some people like to do fancier things with QR codes. There's all kinds of ways that you can do it. But I do recommend that something – I think it's a grand idea. Yeah, it's good for data. Did you have another question there?
    61:55
    I did not have another question. Do you have another question? I don't have another question. Do you want to talk about top five games? Oh, this is a great time to move on to a whole new segment. The Kineticist got in touch with us and a bunch of other podcasters wanting to know our top five games. So I know Jason at the pinball party did his. I listened to that. That was very cool. And we decided to do ours, of course, go along with the theme of the show. These are our top five. These aren't our necessarily... When I think of top five games, I think of what five games would I want at home. Desert Island style. Desert Island. Yep. Record. What records will you never get tired of, right?
    62:48
    June. Okay. So this is the top five games we like operating. Yeah. So this is from an operator's perspective. And it is a mix of high earners, highly enjoyed by people, and games that we've had good luck with not having to do a bunch to fix. So do these need to be in an order, or should we start at the bottom and go to the, like... I think we start with five, right? Okay. Because you want to leave number one as, like, your encore, right? All right. Like, the main event. So these are the openers. Okay. So the opener for me, this is going to be a very weird one. Uh-huh. uh when i say me i mean us right right us we we came up with both of these we did this together i don't recall all of them but we did but we did i think we were driving and i was and i was taking notes yeah um so number five eight ball bally eight ball bally not even eight ball deluxe here's why okay this game earns as much it earns more than most of the bally williams games because it's brutal. We have it on five ball now. When it was on three ball, it was too brutal.
    64:14
    It's brutal, and it was inexpensive. So this game paid for itself in a very short amount of time. It's a great tournament game, and I think it's a fun classic. There's not a lot on there to break, so it's easy to operate. Good. And I think it's a fun game. And this was a game that was a good candidate for the Altec boards. Yes, we did. The ultimate boards. We put all Altec boards in there. And even spending the money on those, this game is still profitable. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is it, 50 cents, 75 cents? 50 cents. 50 cents for five balls? Yeah. Come on. I think that might be why it's so profitable, because other people think the same thing. That is. The other thing we did to it, so when we got it, we swapped out the boards because there were some little bugs that I didn't want to just, we swapped out the boards and we put Yop-sicles in there. Oh, I love Yop-sicles. Those are. Yep. Our friend David Yop. Yeah, our friend David Yop.
    65:21
    They're great. They're tiny, tiny little like one inch by half inch. LED boards. LED individual ones. You can get rid of those problematic ballet lamp sockets, and they're bright, they're beautiful, and they work properly 100% of the time. They have a resistor already on the board, so you don't have to worry about any of the flickering that you might have otherwise. So we also do those to our classic games because that keeps them easy. That takes a little time. That takes a few hours. But 100% worth it. Yes, yes, yes. So that is our number five. That's number five. Are we going to move on to number four? We're going to move on to number four. Wouldn't it be weird if we went two and then four? Nobody would like that, right? Nobody does that. There's probably a reason. What type of numerical systems would you like to use? I don't know. We can go binary. You know, I like being creative. I like to switch it up a little bit. You also like being difficult. Yeah, I do like being difficult. She knows me. All right. Okay, but you know what? Just for argument's sake, let's go on to number four. Okay. And a couple of these could be interchangeable anyway.
    66:36
    Bond 007. The Cornerstone. Oh, I love it. We absolutely love 60th edition, but the price point of that makes it difficult to justify operating, except out of just pure luck. It earns well.
    66:53
    It earns well. But compared to the price tag, yeah. Pro or premium? I like premium. I like the premium also. And especially since, and we found this out from our last podcast with Mike Vinicore, there are some things coming, some updates that will only be available to the premium. Yes. Very cool stuff. Yes. and the reason I chose the reason that we chose this is because this game at first did not necessarily get the player love because they they're at the mercy of the licensors and everybody knows all that story and now this game is really hitting its stride, it is incredibly fun we stayed at the arcade one night ate some gummies and just played, I played Bond I think for like four hours straight. You got some amazing scores. But I just love that game. Before, it was fun whenever we first played it at Expo, and then we went through all of the beginning code for it, and it was fine, that it was good, but now it's like this game is amazing, and people should give it another shot if they fell off earlier, but this game is awesome. It's a lot of fun, And I think it is going to be a long-term favorite, I think. I agree. And there's more good stuff we found out from Mike Vinicore. There's more stuff coming. Yeah. And I think because of the talk we had with him, you have the smart missiles, you have the martini shot, you have all these other things he added to the game. There are cool things in it. The Bond Women multiplier, that whole math. Very, very cool. And that is number four. That is number four. And rightfully so. Yep. Number three, Attack from Mars. Oh, this is, whether it is the original or the remake, this thing earns. Earns. It is a fan favorite. And we've always noticed casuals being attracted to it. It has a little alien guys bouncing around. But I think people remember this game from the 90s. Yeah. Like, people, oh, this is... Oh, Mars Attacks. Yeah. They always... It's always called Mars Attacks. They think it's based on a movie, right.
    69:23
    Yeah, this is a great game and a fantastic number three. It's a great game. It earns well. Everybody loves it. Right. Low maintenance. Yep.
    69:36
    Number two. Okay, here we go. Drum roll. Jurassic. Jurassic Park. Again, this game, it has theme. It has, it's amazing to play. Shots. It's got great shots. It has great code, especially with the, now I can play co-op. Still getting better. Still getting, it's getting more updates.
    70:04
    And it earns, it consistently earns for us. And it's consistently fun and surprisingly low maintenance. We did have the Jeep pop off a few years back. So we replaced that with a little Mario Kart Yoshi.
    70:20
    But aside from that, it's been, again, you've got to keep those Newton balls tight. That will make those last much, much longer. On that and Iron Maiden. Yes. It's the same part number. The same part. So if you own both of those machines, go ahead and get a spare. Get a spare, but keep them tightened. If you keep them tightened, you shouldn't have issues with them breaking.
    70:44
    Yeah, Jurassic Park. It's just a great game. And it doesn't matter whether it's pro or premium. Pro or premium. We have a pro. Fantastic games. But we love the premium also. Yep.
    70:56
    And the number one. Number one, I probably know what this is. I'm sure you know. You and everyone else. It is the Stern Godzilla. That is correct. Boom. The stern Godzilla. Boom, stern Godzilla. Do you know that today, hopefully I can get this podcast. Today's Friday, the November 3rd. Which is Godzilla Day. And if you log in. It is? Yeah. If you log in with your insider connected, you get a special badge. Why is it Godzilla Day? I don't know. Is it like an anniversary or something? I have no idea. Oh, well now I'm going to the arcade. I thought it was going to be a day off. Yeah, I'm going to get my badge. I am addicted to the badges and the ding, ding. We got so many of these Stern Insider Connected badges in Chicago. Yes. Schomburg Expo. That was a lot of fun. We can just call it Chicago. And Tyrium. Yeah. What else did we get? We didn't do Logan this year. We did Logan last year. I love Logan, and I was sad that we didn't get there. I know.
    71:57
    We'll go back next year. Maybe we'll make a special trip. There's a museum show I want to see up there. Oh, really? Maybe we'll just go to Chicago. Well, let's do it. What else did they have? They also had a special badge for actually logging in at the Stern booth, the Marco Specialty Stern booth. Very cool. I love Insider Connected. I love the achievements. I love getting badges. And that's not you being a show. No. No, this is 100% honest. I used to say this well before they sponsored the show. This is a huge thing. It is the way of the future, and I, for one, welcome our Stern Insider overlords. Yeah, give us more. There's a lot of good stuff coming out. Yes. There's some great things that I'm excited to see implemented. So that is our top five of games that we love to operate. Right. Let's run through them one more time. We have five. Yeah, we've got 8-Ball. Four. 007 Bond Cornerstone. Three.
    72:57
    AFM, Attack from Mars. Yeah. Then we have two. Jurassic Park. And then, finally, number one. Godzilla. And number one easily. Yes. So whenever a game comes into the arcade, there is, I can almost always predict about what it's going to do its first month. And then from there, the way that it steadily falls off. And then it eventually plateaus at a number that is maybe, well, that is a certain, like there's math that is consistent across all games. godzilla does not fall into that so godzilla just earns very well all the time we love it i want to hear about other operators is is it because they can't be just us i wouldn't think that it is but please let us know email discord whatever if you're operating a godzilla how you've seen it perform compared to your other games because i like i really want to know how this is And I'm excited for the next Elwynn game because you'll notice that two of the top five are Elwynn games.
    74:09
    When he makes a game, it makes me money. So and it's fun, right? Like we wouldn't be doing any of this if we didn't love it. Yeah, we love it. Right on. Yeah. What a fantastic show. Yes. If I do say so myself. And I know that you will. we are uh after this we uh we're having a tournament we have a tournament every tuesday 6 30 electric bat after the tournament we're heading to austin yeah where i'm gonna go uh train with a yeah he's gonna go work on getting some more gold medals he's gonna train with some world some world champion guys going to train with a b team jiu-jitsu and austin gonna be there for what about four or five days five days i think probably probably find some barbecue yeah i'm hoping that we do you know we have a venom launch party this sunday at 1 p.m oh i totally forgot about that you did what's today today's friday today's friday the third i gotta mention sunday november 5th 1 p.m i'm glad you always keep me in track i'm glad that i don't know where i would be without you you'd be you know i know exactly where you'd be in south carolina but loving it i was loving it there yeah you have a great time wherever you are Okay.
    75:24
    Thank you to our sponsors, Stern, Insider Connected. Thank you. If you wanted to earn, make it a Stern.
    75:31
    Thank you to Marco Specialties, Everything Pinball. Get your pinball parts from Marco Specialties. Love those guys. And last but not least, thank you to Game Room Goodies. That's where we get all our machines from, Aaron at Game Room Goodies. If you want any kind of machine. Great service. Video games, jukeboxes. He could probably find somebody to install a pool in your backyard. I would think so. Aaron knows everybody. These are resourceful people. Yeah, GameRoomGoodies.com. Anything else before we leave? No. See you at the tournaments.
    76:05
    Happy flipping. Go have yourself a flipping good time. Let's do it. Yeah, right on. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Keep the questions coming. Electric Bat Arcade at Gmail. and the discord yep yep okay the bats are out that's out i just hit my head oh did you hear that oh my head on some books i wonder if they could hear that oh no that's no good