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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 21: Triple Combo Is Back, Baby!

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 12m·analyzed·Aug 6, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Triple Drain Ep 21: Hosts debate Toy Story 4's accessibility and family appeal versus competitive depth.

Summary

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 21 is a casual, humorous discussion between hosts Joel, Travis, and Tom covering housekeeping items (podcast censorship debate, gift exchanges), extended commentary on Toy Story 4 pinball's accessibility and family appeal, and Joel's preference for Toy Story over Rush or Guns N' Roses in a hypothetical collection choice. The hosts emphasize Toy Story 4's design as a family-friendly, accessible game despite simpler code compared to alternatives like Godzilla Premium.

Key Claims

  • Toy Story 4 was explicitly designed as a family pin to allow everyone to see and reach wizard mode

    high confidence · Travis: 'they were clear on their marketing and their advertising that this was a family pin, that they wanted everybody to see the whole pin'

  • Godzilla Premium ($9,000) has significantly more mechanical and code content than Toy Story 4

    medium confidence · Joel: 'Godzilla Premium, $9,000. There's a whole lot more in Godzilla than there is in Toy Story, both mechanically and code-wise.'

  • Toy Story 4 has very friendly, easy-to-learn shot layout compared to other recent releases

    high confidence · Joel: 'Every shot in the game, I was able to find quickly... the layout is very friendly. It's very friendly to novice players or even just middle-range players.'

  • Zach Minney reached wizard mode on Toy Story 4 in one game out of ~100 plays with unlimited kickbacks from mystery wheel

    high confidence · Joel describing Zach's stream play: 'he had almost 100 plays on the game in the few weeks that he's had it in his possession. And he's never been there... everything kind of fell into place and he got to the wizard mode'

  • Joel's family (wife and 4-year-old daughter) showed more natural interest in Toy Story 4 than Godzilla or Guns N' Roses

    high confidence · Joel: 'my wife actually played the game. She saw Toy Story, walked up to it on her own... She has not done that with Godzilla. She didn't do it with GNR... my daughter actually wants to play this game'

  • Bo Peep loops is the most grindy task in Toy Story 4 wizard mode requiring wheel spinning to access super loops

    high confidence · Joel: 'The Bo Peep loops is a challenge... you get nothing towards that goal. So you have to get super loops, which is a mystery thing on the wheel... you keep spinning the wheel'

  • Joel previously owned NBA Fastbreak and could consistently reach its wizard mode/ring every stream

    high confidence · Joel: 'I had an NBA Fastbreak, and I got to the point where every single time I streamed it, I could get a ring'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's a family pin, they want people to be able to get deep into the game, to see everything that there is to see... if you play it enough, you're going to get there”

    Travis @ ~27:30 — Articulates the design philosophy behind Toy Story 4's accessibility and early wizard mode availability

  • “This game's already more liked by my wife and daughter than any other game that's ever come through here”

    Joel @ ~24:00 — Demonstrates Toy Story 4's unique family appeal compared to recent competitive-focused releases

  • “Do I think it's a $12,000 game? No. There's a lot more game out there... Godzilla Premium, $9,000. There's a whole lot more in Godzilla”

    Joel @ ~48:00 — Critical pricing assessment comparing Toy Story 4's value proposition to alternatives

  • “I'm screwed. I'm going to get so much crap from Travis and Dennis and other people who I've been defending that the game's too, like, not as easy as they think it is. And here I am, one game.”

    Zach Minney (quoted by Joel) @ ~26:00 — Reveals ongoing community debate about Toy Story 4's difficulty and Zach's defensive position before his stream

  • “Every shot in the game, I was able to find quickly... you're going to feel like you're better at pinball when you play the game because the shots are easy to hit”

    Joel @ ~29:00 — Key insight into Toy Story 4's pedagogical design strength: shot accessibility builds player confidence

Entities

Triple Drain Pinball PodcastorganizationToy Story 4 (pinball)productZach MinneypersonJoelpersonTravispersonTompersonGodzilla Premium (pinball)productGuns N' Roses (pinball)productRush (pinball)productNBA Fastbreak (pinball)

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Ongoing community debate about Toy Story 4's difficulty level; Zach Minney was defending game difficulty before stream contradicted his position

    high · Joel paraphrasing Zach pre-stream: 'I really just think the current portrayal of this game is unfair... A lot of people, podcasters or other streamers, are just saying this game is too easy, the code is too shallow'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bo Peep loops identified as grind-heavy wizard mode task requiring repeated wheel spins to access super loops gate

    high · Joel: 'The Bo Peep loops is a challenge... So you keep spinning the wheel and then Bo Peep loops finally shows up... I was just grinding away at the wheel'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Toy Story 4 explicitly designed as family-accessible game with early wizard mode achievement to maximize player progression visibility

    high · Travis: 'they were clear on their advertising that this was a family pin, that they wanted everybody to see the whole pin. They want people to be able to get deep into the game, to see everything that there is to see.'

  • $

    market_signal: Toy Story 4 narrative emerging as 'family game that bridges gap between casual and enthusiast players' with theme-driven appeal overriding code complexity concerns

    high · Joel: 'theme is something, right... my wife actually played the game... my daughter actually wants to play this game... this game's already more liked by my wife and daughter than any other game'

  • $

    market_signal: Content creator (Zach Minney) appeared defensive about Toy Story 4's accessibility before streaming due to critical commentary from Travis and Dennis about game difficulty

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.398

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. All right, here we go. Episode 21. Travis, you ready?
0:18
Joel, you're so kind. You're so beautiful. People love you. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, that was very kind. Yeah. Hey, snaps for everybody. We're being nice this episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tom, how you doing? You ready?
0:34
Yeah. Tom found his curse button. All right, here we go. We're three guys who like to taunt and ball. So we came up with a crowd for a day. We're Joe and Travis down the taunting ball. It's a call on our cell. Triple Train.
1:04
Triple Train. All right. Well, hello, boys. Yeah, here we go. Episode 21. We're just going to dive right in here. We do have some housekeeping to take care of. So first and foremost, there was quite a discussion on the TPN Discord about censorship and about whether or not podcasts should include cursing. and you know it's an interesting topic um uh i don't know tom do you have any strong feelings on uh on what your thoughts are there oh boy that's yes yeah um i i mean i think what i'm just gonna have to say is we're just gonna have to start the podcast with kind of a disclaimer you know hey um there may be words that are shared in this podcast that little children may not need to hear um for instance we might say the word or or or but i i didn't even know that last one we think tom or you might say you know hi or so what's what's great is tom's editing himself he has a button on his soundboard so he's just having he's just having a good old time over there um so yeah i don't know i mean if you guys feel strongly one way or the other, feel free to write in at triple drain at gmail.com. But at the end of the day, we look at this as kind of poker night. The three of us are just chatting it up. I mean, we, I do almost no editing to these podcasts. And Travis has a cigar every time we do a podcast. So I don't know. So, okay. So first we have working audio for everybody and we have working video. Tom puts his camera right front and center. I got a beautiful shot of his face. Mine's front center. Beautiful shot of his face. Travis, right now, I'm looking at his shoulder blade.
product
Metallica (pinball)product
Deadpool (pinball)product
Dennisperson
Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization
Carl D'Angeloperson
Poor Man's Pinballorganization
Flippin' Outorganization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Toy Story (character IP)product
Cosmos (pinball)product

medium · Joel: 'he's like, I hope tonight's stream kind of shows that the game, there's more here... I would be surprised even if you didn't get there within like two weeks'

  • $

    market_signal: Joel questions $12,000 price point for Toy Story 4, noting Godzilla Premium at $9,000 offers significantly more mechanical/code content

    high · Joel: 'Do I think it's a $12,000 game? No. I mean, there's a lot more game out there... Godzilla Premium, $9,000. There's a whole lot more in Godzilla than there is in Toy Story'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Toy Story 4 differentiated from Rush/GNR/Godzilla through family appeal rather than mechanical/code complexity; theme trumps depth for Joel's collection decision

    high · Joel: 'If you want Toy Story for your kids, your wife, your grandkids, it's Toy Story... If you ask me the same question in three weeks once I've gotten to the wizard mode, that's a unique experience for me'

  • ?

    product_concern: Joel experienced out lane rubber bouncing ball unexpectedly up and out; removed rubber and increased back legs for better angle control

    medium · Joel: 'There was actually a rubber on that post. And the number of times that the ball would go over, hit that rubber, and then bounce up and just straight out in the out lane... took that one rubber off... increased the back legs after I streamed last night'

    • 2:53
    Oh, you are. Straight up shoulder blade. Like, who thinks, oh, I need to set up a webcam for a podcast? Let me put it, not directly to my left, but like to my left and slightly behind me. Well, we talked about this last episode, Joel. Oh, for 20 more dollars? Yeah, I can get a more. You've only given me five, so you only get the shoulder blade right now. Oh, Lord. And the shirt's on, too. And then the other way to fill people in, Tom is drinking a Dye Mountain Dew. So buckle up, everybody. Not only is he drinking a Dye Mountain Dew right now, he informed us that before the podcast, he had a margarita. So, you know, we don't know what's going on with Tom. I was drinking heavy today.
    3:37
    Yeah. Long day, Tom? It was a long day. It was a Thursday, yeah, for sure. There you go. I treated my staff out to lunch today. Oh, that's why it's a long day. It's a long day. Wait, if your lunch margarita is still affecting you in any way. Well, it was like a lunch dinner. Okay. All right. A lunch dinner? Yeah, it was like 2.30, 3 o'clock.
    4:03
    That's a late lunch. Yeah, okay. All right. It's 8.30 now. Is that margarita still with you? No. Oh, okay.
    4:10
    Well, the other thing, some of the feedback we got. Paint fumes. We had a few people that messaged us and were like, dude, I love the banner. I love the banner of this show, but are you guys okay? You know, like, are kind of worried. Like, I think, you know, mom and dad are fighting. They just want to make sure the three of us actually don't have hostility towards each other. I know I have none towards Tom. Tom and I, I think we're good to go. Yep. Travis.
    4:35
    What? All I said was, is I thought one time you were, you know, an asshole. A little delayed. Try it one more time. Asshole.
    4:51
    No, you want to hit the button as you're saying the word. Asshole. Screw it. All right. We're good. It would be best if you're like, because you're an a**hole. You're like a jet ski riding. Ah, it's too good. Too good. All right. Well done, Travis. Since everybody thinks that we hate each other, I sent you guys. Which we do. Oh, yeah. I like you, Tom. It's just Joel. It's like everybody has a problem with Joel. It's because he doesn't play in tournaments. I know. Because that's why most people hate people. It's because they don't play in tournaments. That's true. It's hard to relate. We're supposed to be in the same hobby, but it's almost like we're from two different worlds. There's a division. There's going to be a civil war one day. You're going to have to choose sides, Joel. I feel like it's already brewing.
    5:48
    Well, Travis messaged us, and he goes, hey, I found a really good pinball gift. I'm sending it to both of you guys. So we both have gifts here. We don't know what they are. Mine's wrapped by Amazon. Yeah, so check out this. Here's your ASMR.
    6:03
    There you go. Cardboard box opening. So here we go. I'm opening mine. Can we open it now? This is from Travis, correct? Yes, it's from me. Joel, you're going way faster than Tom. I'll slow down.
    6:18
    I think I know what this is. Yeah. He took a dump in a bag. I think Travis both got each one of us a comfy. It's a comfy. I think we both have an original comfy now. There you go. Mine's blue. Yeah, so is mine. So is mine. Look at that. Oh, Lord. Well, Travis, thank you. Thank you for this. When we go to cleap and together, we have to put these on. Well, no, no, no. Like, if Joel's really thankful for it, he'll put it on now. That's true. Right? Okay. So while we talk. I don't want to stress enough. So I'm going to. No, no, Tom, you're good. You're good, Tom. You're fine. Yeah, yeah. It's Joel. You just want me to put it on. He needs to put his on. Yeah. Everybody's just going to hear crinkling bags and whatnot. All right. It's okay. This is vacuum sealed, but all right. Do we have a Jolie song we could play right now? You know, okay, Jolie. Yeah, so Zach had me on the pinball show, and to be honest, I'm 34 years old. I've never in my life ever had somebody actually say that, like the Jolie song, and apparently it's catching on. That's kind of bizarre. All right, now here's another ASMR zip for you.
    7:33
    That was the hoodie coming off, everybody. What does your shirt say? I'm what? I'm percocising. from Heavyweights? Yeah.
    7:43
    Alright, well, talk to me while I take off my headphones and put this on. Tom, have you ever seen Heavyweights? No. It's such a great movie. Alright, now I've got to put it in my bank of movies to watch. Oh yeah, you've got to watch it. I mean, preferably with a couple of margaritas, but my god, that movie. It's hilarious. Oh, wow. Joel looks like he's ready for a thunderstorm right now alright so it is large I did see Zach on your stream or I guess technically on his stream but he was sweating to death in your house I can't imagine you wearing that right now it's going to be a sweat bot I just wanted to make sure it fit what I will say is it is large There's no denying it is a large hoodie. But to my surprise, it's not crazy long. Now, I am a taller individual. But, man, does it have width. Like, no under... It's like a parachute on you. Yeah, I will definitely bring this to a show. We need a picture with the three of us wearing it. It's up to 5XX. It's okay. Joel, if you get hot, just start flapping it. I got to take it back off. It's already too hot.
    9:00
    Travis. Tom. This is for you. I drank a beer. Okay. Hang on, Joel. Joel, we're doing a bit. Hang on. Three beers. Four beers. Oh, no. Five beers. Six beers. Seven beers. Eight beers. Nine beers. And a bloody beer.
    9:21
    That's Travis right there. Oh, there you go. Sorry, Joel. We're trying to bring you back in to our little triangle. Yeah, you did it. Nailed it. Yeah, I could barely hear that, so I'll have to jack it up.
    9:37
    Travis, thank you for that. To be honest, I'm pretty sure my daughter or definitely my wife is going to probably live in that. So I appreciate that. That is a very kind gesture and a gesture of goodwill. I feel like you're, I don't know, you're opening the arms to a friendship. I've returned a new leaf. Thank you. Those two emails made me realize the error of my ways. Now, if you just find my TPN hat.
    10:03
    So I. One step at a time. Yeah. I gave. Tom was at Texas Pinball Festival, so I gave Tom's hats, which he bought, to Travis saying, hey, you're going to see Tom in like two weeks. Can you take these to him? Yeah, sure. Hasn't happened. That was like, what, six months ago or something at this point? Yeah. I also won a hat on Loser Kid like six months ago, and I have not seen it. Yet I think Travis has. He probably has my hat. You know what? Okay, since we're going to talk about winning things and never seeing them, I think I won something from your stream, Tom, back when I think it was Poor Man's was doing the commentary during the first pin skins.
    10:39
    Oh, did you really? I did. That's all District 82. Never saw anything. And I could have swore I won something from, what was it, from the Avengers Infinity Quest tournament thing, the pin clash from Carl. Carl, if you're listening, I think I thought I won cards or something. I forget. I don't remember if I got those. Did you ever send them your address? I did, I think. Uh-oh. I'm just coming up with stuff in my head. I should just start making up stuff along the way. If you guys are listening, I, yeah. Zach, I was on your flipping out, and I won a new inbox turn, and I still haven't received it.
    11:19
    Shame. All right, so Joel, how did Toy Story 4 go? Because I heard you played with somebody named Zach Minney, right, and is on a stream. And I heard somebody got to the wizard mode on game one. Sure did. Was it you? No, it was not me. So here's the deal. So normally Zach, when he swaps out games, he usually does it like we've done it really weird times. It's always like on his way up to Chicago or back, and it's usually kind of a quick exchange. Well, this time, just based off of what was going on, it was like, hey, I can exchange this later in the evening. And then if it makes sense, I was like, you should stay and stream. He's like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a really good time. So I was very happy that he did that. He actually stayed and streamed the game. And what was funny is before we started the stream, Zach was making some comments. He was like, man, I really just think the current portrayal of this game is unfair. A lot of people, podcasters or other streamers, are just saying this game is too easy, the code is too shallow. He's like, I've been playing the heck out of this game, and I have not gotten anywhere near the wizard mode. So, you know, when your buddy Travis says that it's a piece of cake to get to the wizard mode, like, it makes me feel like a schmuck. Like, why am I not getting there? But he's like, I think the game's challenging. So talking to him, it's like, he's like, I hope tonight's stream kind of shows, you know, that the game, there's more here. And it's not just something that you're going to, you know, Carl D'Angelo loop the thing five times and be bored of it after two hours. So this is all the conversation we had before we started. I had put, like, literally, like, three balls, essentially, on playing the game. Like, just enough to make sure it was level and even. And then we were running late. Like, I had to get everything set up for the stream. So I had put no time on the game at all, and neither had Zach. And so we fired the stream up, and we're like, all right, let's go. You know, he's like, I'll go first, kind of explain a little bit. So we had, like, a normal ball one. I had a normal ball one, like, my first play of the game. then ball two rolls around and everything just fell into place. Like for one, one of the mystery awards on the wheel is it's a endless ball save on the left out lane. So in like endless kickback. So he got that early on. So he probably dreamed it. Unlimited. Yep. So there we go. There's, there's that word, Joel. I knew I'm just trying to be a great friend and just help you find the words that you had. Thank you. I don't want to sound dumb by saying the wrong word. So I really, No, it's okay. You are a very intelligent individual, Joel. You're at least the third most intelligent one in this conversation right now. I'm in the top three. Exactly. Yeah. Perfect. So unlimited kickbacks. So he got that early on. So, I mean, every single time the ball went out the left out lane, boom, you know, ball comes flying back in. And it just – everything kind of fell into place for him. So to get to that wizard mode, there's seven things you have to accomplish. And he did. I mean, in that one ball, he did all the things. And now, to his credit, that game that we played lasted over an hour. So it's not like it just, like, happened in 10 minutes. It's like it was quite a game. And, you know, he blew it up on ball two, and then I went, my ball two lasted, like, a minute and a half. And then it was his ball three, or he had an extra, like, he had a few extra balls. So, I mean, it all worked out for him. And so we checked the credits afterwards. Like, he had almost 100 plays on the game in the few weeks that he's had it in his possession. And he's never been there. So it's just one of those, like, that game was the one out of 100 where everything kind of came together and he got to the wizard mode. So what was funny is when the stream ended, he's like, I'm screwed. He's like, I'm going to get so much crap from Travis and Dennis and other people who I've been defending that the game's too, like, not as easy as they think it is. And here I am, one game. So, yeah, my initial stream of Toy Story, I think I played the game for like four minutes, and Zach blew it up. So, yeah, my initial, initial impression was I didn't get much time on it. But I will say, over the course of the last week, my wife actually played the game. She saw Toy Story, walked up to it on her own, hit the start button, and played the game. I can't. She has not done that with Godzilla. She didn't do it with GNR. She just like. So that, I mean, theme is something, right? and my daughter actually wants to play this game. Like to say, hey, do you want to go play Toy Story? She gets excited. And my daughter's four, and she'll sit on a stool in front of me or beside me, and she does the plunger and just like she likes watching the game. She likes seeing the characters, seeing Forky. So I can tell you right now this game's already more liked by my wife and daughter than any other game that's ever come through here. And I will say I personally am having a good time with it. I'm having a lot of fun. I streamed it last night. The best that I got out of seven things that you have to accomplish, I got five. I got five out of seven on my first stream. The two that I didn't get were the Kaboom Ramps and the Loops. The Bo Peep Loops. I thought it was going to be Forky and Loops. No, Forky. I was killing it. Forky, I was killing it. Forky is actually a really cool task because you have to spell Forky, which kind of happens on its own. But then you hit the left ramp, but then it's a combo. It's left ramp to Kaboom Ramp to Scoop. I mean, it's one shot. Like if you miss any of those, you have to boom, boom, boom, right in a row. And I will say it's very satisfying when you hit those three. I mean, it's kind of a moment. It feels good. But the kaboom ramp is like you just have to hit, I don't know how many, it's like 10 or something. So you just have to keep hitting them. And you get ample opportunities to do it, but it's definitely a shot that you have to get dialed in. And that's something that I know Zach, he knew it. Like he played the game enough. He knew exactly where it was on that flipper. So he rarely missed it when he was given the opportunity to get it. I think I'm maybe at like 50% now, but I've improved even over the streaming it last night. So once you find that shot, I would assume getting your kaboom ramps would be relatively easy. But the Bo Peep loops is a challenge. And the reason it's a challenge is when you're hitting the loops before you get super loops, it's worth nothing. Like you get nothing towards that goal. So you have to get super loops, which is a miss. It's one of the wheel. It's like a mystery thing on the wheel. So basically you get your wheel lit and you look and it's like two times bonus. I don't want that. So you hit the captive ball. You spin again. Tiki, tiki ball, multiple tiki party, multiple. I don't want that. You hit the captive ball again. So you keep spinning the wheel and then Bo Peep loops finally shows up. You're like, awesome. Well, now I have to hit the upper loop to activate it. Well, there's only two ways to feed the upper or three ways to feed the upper loop. You either have to lock a ball and plunge, or you have to hit the pops and hope it comes out on the right, or you have to hit the woody saucer, which will feed it to the upper loop, but the woody saucer is right next to the captive ball. So if you're off that shot at all, you just hit the captive ball and you just spun the wheel again, and you're back in that. So when I played it last night and I got my five out of seven, I was like, okay, Bo Peep loops. So I just felt like I was kind of grinding away at the wheel trying to get to super loops and then finally get it done. So that's the only one that I feel is kind of a grind.
    18:42
    And I don't, I mean, Tom, it doesn't sound like you knew that, but Travis, you've obviously already blown this game up. So that's, you're probably well aware of that. I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
    18:55
    Well, I mean, Joel, you hit the, you kind of hit the nail on the head though with what this game is and what this game is. And we talked about this before and this is pretty much the final time that we need to say it, they were clear on their marketing and their advertising that this was a family pin, that they wanted everybody to see the whole pin. They want people to be able to get deep into the game, to see everything that there is to see. And so naturally, it doesn't really surprise me that that happened on day one with you and Zach, somebody getting to the wizard mode. I mean, I halfway expected it. And that's why I was telling you before that, you know, I would be, I'd be surprised even if you didn't get there within like two weeks. I mean, if you play it enough, you're going to get there. You're going to find it. And that's just the way it was designed to be. So, I mean, there's pros and cons to that. But one of the pros to it is, just like we talked about, regardless of how we feel about Toy Story 4, there's still going to be a lot of people out there that see Toy Story, and that still overrides everything. I mean, I can tell you guys straight up, that overrides everything for my family here. And that's why we still have it. I mean, Monica will not let us let that go. at all. So it's like, it's going to be here for a little while just because of what it is, because it's just the ease of access to it and the fact that it does have some Toy Story elements to it. So they enjoy that. And this is the first time that Monica's even said that she feels like that she has a chance to get to the wizard mode. So it's kind of like happy wife, happy life. I mean, that's pretty much where I'm at with it, but it sounds like you're kind of experiencing the same thing, Joel. It's definitely accessible. And that's something I think what I came to was when Zach drops off a game, normally it takes me time. Like it takes me, I don't know, multiple weeks of streaming it or at least a few weeks of playing it to really find every shot in the game. And that's like Rush. The left orbit through the pops, like that shot, I struggled with that shot for a long time until I finally kind of finally found it and was much more comfortable in it. Normally, most games have at least one or two shots where it really takes me some time in playing and playing and playing to finally find where that shot is on the flipper and feel confident hitting it. I don't really have that problem with Toy Story. Every shot in the game, I was able to find quickly. And so that's where I understand the layout is very friendly. It's very friendly to novice players or even just middle-range players. you're going to feel like you're better at pinball when you play the game because the shots are easy to hit. Left ramp is something that you have to hit a good bit. That left ramp is very kind to people. Now the question is, are you going to put the metal flippers on Toy Story? I have no idea. I don't know. I would consider it just to see, but do I feel like it's – I don't know. We've got to get you there. You talked these flippers up last time like they're on steroids, that you can hit everything on Ninja Turtles. So I need you to put those flippers on. And then just cross everything. I need you to take the outlanes, put them all the way down. Like, let's get the kiddie bumpers just all the way up in the training wheels. We've got to get you there. I think so. I will. What I will say is. Tom, we've got to do it. We've got to get them to a wizard mode. I am determined. You see what this is? This is a rubber. That looks like a roofie. What are you doing there, Joel? So on the, you know how you have the two in lanes on the left side? Yes. There was actually a rubber on that post. And the number of times that the ball would go over, hit that rubber, and then bounce up and just straight out in the out lane, like I was just getting wrecked by this rubber. Were you doing nudging? I would, but I'm just, it was so frustrating last night. What's that? To the point where. Just like you can shake the pin? No, what I just think is crazy is like my dead pool, there are no rubbers on the out lane post. There's none. And like it put a ship that way. And the thing is, if you want to make it easier on yourself, you could add them. But what I found is taking this off was actually way better because the number of times that the ball would kind of like hit that post and then bounce up instead of going down and in lane, it would bounce up and straight out the out lane. It was just like, no. So taking that one rubber off really helped things. And then I ended up, I was, the majority of the time that I'm draining this game, it's left and right, and it's almost always from the slings. So I actually increased the back legs after I streamed last night, just because I want more vertical and less horizontal movement. And we're going to see how that goes. So I'm messing with the game, but I will say, I mean, even just streaming it last night, I had plenty of games that were short, you know, quick games, less than a million points. And then I had a few where I started comboing things together. And Forky is something that is enjoyable.
    23:48
    I like Forky. I think it's a fun combo. I like it. No, it's a fun combo. I'm never going to say Forky is enjoyable, though, Joel.
    23:58
    Well, road trip multi-ball, it's literally four shots. Just hit a drop target and then lock four balls. The Buzz Lightyear multi-ball is going to just keep three balls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four shots, you lock three balls. The Buzz Lightyear multi-ball. The smartest one on the podcast. Top three. Top three, okay. Out of three. So the Buzz Lightyear multiball, if you hit it enough in the pops, you'll just kind of get it. The carousel multiball is the only one that you really actually have to progress towards. Like you have to play two carnival modes and then lock a ball and then do two more carnival modes and then lock a ball and then another carnival mode and then you can start it. Like that actually takes multiple steps to get to. Forky is pretty quick once it's lit. But the super spinners, I mean, it just kind of happens. Like, that's not a grind. Like, it just kind of happens. And then that just leaves the Bo Peep loops in the – So how do you do super spinners? You just hit the spinner. So you hit the spinner on the upper loop, which is the Bo Peep spinner, or you hit the Woody spinner, which is right in front of the saucer. And how do you finish super spinners? I have no idea. Oh, you just hit the spinners. Oh, you just hit them more? Oh, okay. What I've found is almost every time – Number three of three. Well, every time I've ended up collecting it, and it's almost always been in a multi-ball, which makes sense. So it's just top three. Top three. You know, the way you're phrasing it, Travis, sounds kind of mean. I'm just not saying you're being mean. I was going to agree with you there. Yeah. I mean, it's all about your – you know, me and my wife, we talk a lot about the words that we use and the phrasing and the way that information is delivered to each other, our tone. Wait, you and your wife talk about what now?
    25:42
    Words, phrasing, tone. You talk about words and phrasing and tone? Yeah. Oh, is this like when you're screwing up? Is that what we're talking about right now? Oh, yeah. It definitely feels one-sided now that you point it out. It's like, hey, you want this for dinner? And I say, sure. Sure is not nearly as well-received as like, oh, that sounds great. I mean, we can totally take a left turn of this podcast and go away from pinball and just talk about your relationship. I mean, we had mom issues a couple episodes ago.
    26:13
    I don't need that, yeah. So to wrap up Toy Story 4, I will say my overall impression, I'm enjoying the game. If you have a large collection or if, like, I mean, it's hard from a money standpoint. Do I think it's a $12,000 game? No. I mean, there's a lot more game out there. I mean, people are sick of hearing it, but, like, Godzilla Premium, $9,000. There's a whole lot more in Godzilla than there is in Toy Story, both mechanically and code-wise. But if you want Toy Story for your kids, your wife, your grandkids, it's Toy Story. Like, it does that well. It is a fun game. And, I don't know, it can kind of lead us into our next topic. Well, hold on. Quick question, Joel. Yeah. All right. You have to choose. Are you ready? Yep. Okay. Toy Story 4. Yeah. Rush or Guns N' Roses. What are you keeping? Well, I know my answer. My immediate answer was Toy Story, but I know that's going to piss both of you guys off. That's fine. No, no, no. It's fine. I am so proud of you right now, Joel, because you're not sitting on a fence. You actually picked a side. Tom, do we have hand claps for that?
    27:31
    Timing. Oh, thank you. That was seamless. you're a lot better with the curse word button you're on point with that I can't believe you picked this side that blows my mind I thought for sure Tom he was going to answer oh I don't know it was almost leading into that I told you before my collection is heavily influenced by games that I'm going to enjoy that also my friends and family would enjoy you mean like everybody's collection? But not – no, I have definitely met friends that they're like, I don't buy games for other people. I buy them for me. Like that's their view. Well, those are your single friends.
    28:13
    But I get it. I mean, I understand that my friends and family will never be as passionate about pinball as I am. That's not going to happen. But it makes me happy that I had a game that my wife played on her own or that my kids actually want to watch play. And I'm sorry, Rush did not have that, and neither did GNR. Now, I had fun on those games. But I will be very interested if you ask me the same question in three weeks once I've gotten to the wizard mode. That's a unique experience for me. There's only a handful of games that I've gotten to the wizard mode. And, yeah, once you do it one or more times. Wait, hold up. Did you just say you've been to a wizard mode before? Yes, I have. On what game? EUs don't count. NBA Fastbreak. I had an NBA Fastbreak, and I got to the point where every single time I streamed it, I could get a ring. Every time.
    29:02
    Bullshit. I will send you a video Thank you Tom You're welcome Yes I had that game figured out I loved it And it's Yeah once you start But I Like this is This is not I understand this will be hard For you guys to relate to Because you guys can blow up Every game you play But to have a game In your collection Yeah have you ever played Cosmos? My god Where there's always something That you haven't quite achieved But just is like right there, it's motivating. That's what keeps me coming back to it. And if I ever have a game where I just like, okay, I've seen everything in the game, every time I play it, it's somewhat similar, like it's probably not going to last in my collection. So I have no idea. If Toy Story, if I actually do get to the wizard mode more than once before it's gone, I may be completely turned off by the game. I don't know. But for right now, between those three, I would pick Toy Story.
    29:56
    I'm not going to sit here, though, if you want to play that game, like which game has the best code? I'm not going to say Toy Story is the answer. I'm just saying which one would make sense in my collection right now. Tom, he's going to totally change his answer next time we record. Probably. Yeah. Yeah, well, hey, I changed my answer. Like GNR, I know the first time that I talked about GNR, I was head over heels. And as I had that game longer and longer, things changed, and I get it. I mean, that's exactly the same journey that the two of you guys went through when you guys had GNR. What do you call that? Is that like the new in box honeymoon stage? It's called an abusive relationship, Tom.
    30:37
    At first, Joel didn't like the game. And then. GNR? Yeah, the first time you played it. I liked GNR. GNR, I was blown away. No, no, no. You went a whole rant on this podcast.
    30:50
    About what? About GNR, the first time you played it. When you and your brother went to play it, right? Oh, okay. The first time I played it. Tom, abusive relationships. He's totally in denial with what he knew before. That's why we're his friends. We need to have an intervention right now. Oh, my goodness. The first time I played GNR was at an arcade. You couldn't hear it, and I had no idea what I was doing. That's very different than the first time you had it in your house. He's justifying now. That's like a bad first date. First actually, you know. Yeah. All right. I'm clearly not going to make any progress on this one. No, no, no, no, no. It's fine. You didn't like it, and you totally forgot about that. Then you loved it, and you kind of didn't love it. And you're just going back and forth. You just keep teasing this relationship with TNR, and now you're dating another pen with freaking Toy Story. Yeah. He's going to tell you, Tom. Let me tell you. You're going to come back to Rush and you're just going to have to apologize to get Rush back. I know. No, I need to try a premium. I know. It's very interesting in the Discord and the different chats that we have that it is – and this kind of – yeah, to kind of go to the next segment about code, but it's like Stern – I know the three of us come off as Stern fanboys, but, like, they do a whole lot right. So they may not have nearly as flashy of a game as JJP or may not put nearly as much time into, I don't know, the cosmetic side of it or the light show or all the bling and all that. But it's just the one thing Stern crushes is code. And their code is just – Hand-given games out. Yes. They actually deliver games that you buy. And the code is just – it's always good. And that's something that I, what I found is some of these games really are super appealing because of the way they look and your first few experiences. But then you realize the code just isn't there or it's shallow or it's just not exciting or you don't have the moments. And then you kind of fall out of love with it. But I just think Stern is so consistent. And maybe this is a bad transition but we actually had a question here and in our Discord chat and it prompted but it just like what is it about a game code that really makes a game stand out or stay in your collection And I don't think depth is necessarily the right answer, because some people have been really hard on Toy Story 4, saying there's not enough depth in the game, but yet we had somebody in TPN that's like, there's just as much depth in Deadpool as there is in Toy Story. And yet people love Deadpool. So why is that? You know, there are people that Deadpool, they love Deadpool, but it's not in their collection because they could beat it every single time they play it. But yet they still really like Deadpool. So I don't know. I've talked a lot. I talked a lot about Toy Story 4. So Tom, if you want to take this, go for it before Travis just talks out of his butt. I pass. Well, thank you, Tom Graff. I appreciate that.
    34:04
    Well, Joel, you have a Deadpool. Yep. You tell us. What do you like about Deadpool? Well, I don't know. How do I sit on this fence? What do I like about Deadpool? I like the direction. That's the one thing that I really, I personally am a fan of you're in a moment, you know, like when you're in a battle, you know what you need to do. You know I'm in this battle. I need to do this to get out of the battle. And then as soon as you're out of the battle, then you're back to, well, what do I want to do? Do I want to hit shots to this? Do I want to do this? Like, it's like you have to make a decision, but then once you've made that decision, you have a clearly defined path to follow for a while until you beat it or not. And then you get back. And there are other games that are just so open-ended at every moment, it's just like it's hard for me to focus. And then you have other games that are super linear, like you only have one path to go. and if you're playing the same first step of the path every single time you hit start, that kind of gets old because I don't want to see the same top, you know, first 20%, 30% every single time I play the game. So I like some direction. I mean, that is something I am enjoying in Toy Stories. Once you're in carnival mode, you know what you need to do. Oh, Forky's lit right now. I know right now I have to focus on this, or right now I have to focus on that. But that's what I like about Deadpool. I feel like you have a lot of options that you can switch between what battles you want to pick. Like Turtles, one thing I don't like about Turtles is you don't get to pick your episode. You know, when you start the episode, it just gives you one. Now, you do. Unless you're Raphael. What? Unless you're Raphael. No. So Raphael is you don't have to hit your ramps before you start an episode. But the two targets in front of the left ramp, if you hit those targets, you can technically pick your episode. You can change it. You can change your episode. Just like in Stranger Things. Technically, you can change your episode in Stranger Things with the pop bumpers in the back corner. But that's not really controlled.
    35:59
    Or it's not easily controlled. Maybe for you, Joel. But for Deadpool, you get to pick your episode. So it's very much like, I'm sick of playing Sabretooth. Let me focus on this. Or I have these power-ups. Let me focus on that. I like that. I really enjoy that more than just, like, I don't know, rolling the dice and seeing what you get. Yeah, and I mean, that's one of the things, too, when, you know, we were, when everybody was talking about it and comparing Toy Story 4 to Deadpool, it's just kind of like, to me, there's really not any comparison because in Deadpool. Comparing apples to oranges? Well, more like, maybe like an apple to a grape? I don't know. because in Deadpool, right, you have all these other options that you can do to get to the same place. You know, you have your team-ups. You have four different team-ups, right? And you can bring in all four of those if you want to or one or none. You can choose to use whatever mode that you want to or whatever battle that you want to do, right? And then from there, you can choose whether or not you're going to do a little Deadpool multiball or not. Like a lot of people like doing certain stacks on that game, And that's the great thing about Deadpool is you have many different stacks that you can do, and they're all viable. I mean, you could just go disco if you wanted to. I've seen people do disco all day before. I've seen that. I've seen people choose just to do, what is it, the T-Rex mode to where they just do hurry-up collects. I've seen people opt for going for snick shots to try to get to 3X, 5X, whatever, just to blow things up. But you're talking about points. But even if you talk about just working your way through the game, it's not a clearly defined path. Then we can save and work through the game because you still got to play everything. So then you can make choices on how quickly you want to do that. You can bring in Wolverine for double damage, and then you can choose to go Sabretooth and put it into the pops. You know, get it done quick. You can choose to use your booms at different places to make the modes go quicker or just to get you an easier shot sequence. I mean, there's so much that you can do in Deadpool that leads to choice. And that's my big gripe with Toy Story. It doesn't really feel like I have choice. It just feels like I'm playing my seven modes. Can you choose your carnival mode before you start it? No, I can't. It tells you what it's going to be. Yeah, and I think you can basically switch it based on how many tickets you have. I think if you have enough tickets, they'll take it to your top tier. How do you get tickets? Don't quote me on that. Shoot the ramps. Ramps, yeah. Shoot the ramps. But you pointed out before the carnival modes in Toy Story, there's not a defined link of like, oh, this carnival mode is going to give me this perk. So at the end, when you beat a carnival mode, you can do a character collect, and the different characters give you different perks. But it's totally random. So if you're telling yourself like, hey, before I play carnival multiball, I want to have Duke Kaboom because Duke Kaboom is auto restart. So right now you get to keep going. if that's like your goal, you have no control over actually getting him. You might or you might not. You have a little bit. You've got to do some stuff. Like you've got to hit that loop, and that will relight your left end lane.
    39:10
    To collect the Duke of Boom character? Yeah, it will relight it. But I'm saying the character collect. The character collect at the end of completing a mode. Oh, to where you have to do like five in a row? No, when you complete a mode, you get a character. Duke of Boom is one of those characters. Now, this is something I don't know is right. At least last time I played, Duke Caboom was auto-reset. I have no idea if next time I play the game, if I collect the character Duke Caboom, he may not be auto-reset. I don't know.
    39:36
    That's the rare thing of, like, one of the modes is milk jugs or something, where you're throwing a ball. So, like, it's not like milk jugs. Every time you beat it, you get Jesse. That's not a thing. So you could get any character. Right. Characters aren't tied to certain modes. Yeah. And that goes back to one of the things about rules is pattern recognition. And that's what a lot of tournament players rely on. And so that's kind of what threw me off. When I first started playing Toy Stories, I realized that it didn't really seem like anything was tied into each other. To where if I did this, I knew this was going to happen or I was going to get this. I wasn't going to get the sequence that I wanted in order to collect what I needed to advance me further in the game. And so, I mean, I don't know. There might be something there that I just need to pay attention closer, but I find myself on Toy Story just basically choosing to play through the game and then just take what it's giving me at that time rather than setting any one thing up just because it doesn't really seem like that there's a ton to set up because you know you can get, like you talked about this earlier, Joel, you know you can finish your spinners, right? And then you know that you've just got to keep hitting ramps to eventually get enough tickets to start one of your carnival modes on that left ramp. And then you know that you're going to hit the captive ball to spin the wheel and get something started there. So, I mean, really the only time that I find myself doing anything truly strategic on there is just deciding, okay, when am I going to decide it's finally time to rescue Forky? so I usually save that for last because Forky just sucks but other than that I don't know I find myself even playing the carnival stuff I don't really pay attention to what power ups I have and all that I just don't worry about it and that's why I was and I talked about this too on the discord that I was hoping that after beating everything you would get something out of that you know what I mean like some kind of feature some kind of like, I don't know, not like a secret mode, but just anything. And it didn't really seem like anything happened other than the normal way that the game is supposed to operate. Yeah. I mean, Zach beat the wizard mode, which was then you're technically starting over. You have to do all seven things again. Apparently, each one's a little harder. And then you have to get to the wizard mode again to like actually officially beat the game. But when he reset, it just seemed like we're like, OK, it's back to square one. But to me right now, the only thing that I'm seeing when I hit start, the only thing that I'm trying to ask myself is how early do I want to focus on trying to get super loops on the wheel? Because it's interesting when the wheel's lit, it's like, oh, extra ball's lit. Should I take that right now or should I try to spin the wheel again and go for super loops? Always just take the extra ball. I normally always like the extra ball makes way more sense in my world. But like the outlane ball save, that's something where it's like unlimited kickback. Should I take that or should I hit the captain ball? Because super loops, you kind of want to get that as soon as possible because you need to work away. You need to chip away at all 15 of those you have to get. So if you get to ball three and you haven't even started that, it's like, okay, buckle up here. I'm going to have to grind away to see if I can get to this. But it's, I don't know. I still feel like we're somewhat early in the code, but yet the code very much so feels, if they said it's complete, I could understand it being complete. Like, there is a full game there, but yet I am curious to see how they, or if Joe Katz, like, how he potentially changes or adapts this code one way or the other based on feedback. But, hey, if the goal at the end of the day was make a game that's accessible to the general public, they crushed it. It's a game that's easy to shoot, clearly defined objectives, and it's freaking Toy Story. Like, people are going to love this game. Maybe not you two as top 25 players, but there's a lot of people that will.
    43:48
    Top 30 players. There you go. So, I don't know. I'm excited to play it more, but I will say maybe I'm not trying to sound cocky, but I do actually think that the wizard mode is within my reach before Zach swaps it out for another game. and take that as you will as whether or not that's a game worth owning in your collection.
    44:08
    But I would say if you have it in your collection, there's a good chance your friends and family or your kids, they're all probably going to really enjoy it because it's Toy Story, Toy Story 4. What did your daughter say, Travis?
    44:25
    So because I was telling Monica in front of them, I was like, you know, hey, we need to consider selling Toy Story. Let's just go ahead and let's move on to the next game. And then Monica's like, no, I think I want to keep it. And then my daughter spoke up, and she was like, yeah, I want to keep it too. Let's just sell Godzilla.
    44:44
    Yeah, that's what I said. And I was like, holy crap. But, you know, I mean, before everybody freaks out, you know, my daughter's also six and has asked Santa Claus to take her legs away so she can be a mermaid too. So she's not exactly the best judgment on what we should have in our pinball collection. So she takes more after her dad than her mom. That's what I'm hearing.
    45:06
    That's fair. I get it. It's a weird thing. I mean, just being a pinball owner or potential collector, it's a weird, like, I love the games I have, but I feel like I constantly in my head you have this battle of is there a better game? Is there a game that I would potentially enjoy more? Is there a game that my family would potentially enjoy more? Like, what is your perfect collection? What is there? Every Elwynn pin. Every Elwynn pin, yeah. Would you ever, as a collector, will you ever be satisfied with your collection? Because games keep coming. So having that in your head, it's a struggle. I mean, this is what I'm saying about rule set, though. And I know there was a quote that somebody said in our Discord, and they just said, because people argue pinball moments versus rules. I know Zach is huge on moments versus code. You know, it's like I don't care about the code. I don't care about jackpots. I don't care about this or that. All I care about is the moments. All I care about is progression. And there was somebody in our Discord that basically said,
    46:12
    the best code has great moments that reward you with good points. Like make the moments worth a lot of points. and that's what's going to be the most enjoyable. You know, if you just have a moment that's worth nothing, it's going to get old really quick. But they should work hand in hand. And I don't know. Do you guys have any thoughts on that comment?
    46:37
    Tom's thinking I can tell. Tom, what do you think? I don't know. I don't get the whole moments thing. I mean, I get it, but it's just once you see it, it's kind of like, okay, the moment's gone. I want to keep the moments going, you know, and I think some of that's with deeper code, but that's my opinion. Maybe that's, you know, maybe a moment's unique. Like sometimes a moment, obviously like Godzilla, the building going down, that's a moment. Like that's a cool thing. Now I understand you guys have both, you know, dropped that building like 100 plus times. So watching it move probably doesn't mean much to you. Right. one of the greatest moments in pinball is probably the Adams family. When Thing comes out, grabs that ball, takes it, you know.
    47:28
    But to me, it's not a great moment anymore because I've seen it 550 million times. Yeah. You know. So what about – What about – Tom's thing is we need more, Joel. We need more pinball, and it needs to come out. Well, manufacturers, everybody listening, just keep producing pinball. That way Tom can keep having his new moments. That's right. Where the hell is the next turn? Well, hopefully coming. But I think moments now, like light shows, really impact moments. Audio or audio cues really make moments. Even like Avengers, when the Hulk spinners, what is that, Gamma Blast or whatever it's, the Gamma Ray? There you go. Gamma Ray, got it. When that's lit, like the amount of attention and choreography of making that shot, like you need to hit this shot, and then ripping a spinner feels good, but ripping a spinner when that whole sound is building up and you feel timed and pressure and light show, they made that a moment. And if you do it right, it's worth good points. But otherwise, it's just, I mean, you hit the left orbit in that game all the time, and the majority of the time when you hit it, it doesn't feel anything, But that, they made that a moment. So are the best moments audio and visual cues? Or are they some toy that's in the game? Because everybody wants toys. Toys and mechs definitely help. And normally it's helped, like, when you step up to Godzilla, you see that building, you're like, how do I get that to move? Like, how do I see that thing? Or, you know, you see an upper play field, you're like, how do I get to that? I want to see what that does. But I understand once you've seen what it does multiple times, it's not as enjoyable. But I agree. I think the cinematography, the light show, I mean, that's something I really like about JJP Games is I really enjoy the light show. I think they kill it on that. And there's moments even like Tiki Ball or Tiki whatever, Multiball. And it's a virtual pinball. Tiki Party. Tiki Party Multiball. I hate the virtual pinball part. Number three of three. Some of you don't know the exact word. But anyways, I don't like the virtual pinball park. Send in your complaints to tripledrain at gmail.com. I don't enjoy the virtual pinball park. But once you get out of that and you're actually in the multiball, the light show is really cool and you're trying to, like, explode this volcano. Like, they make it kind of a cool experience because the game visually sounds and looks different than it normally does. How do you like the sounds during Tiki Ball? I like it. You like the sounds during Tiki Ball and multiball? Should I not like the sounds? No, I'm just asking you. I think it's a fun, enjoyable experience.
    50:18
    The sounds. Apparently the sounds are garbage. What am I hearing? Apparently now. Travis does not like the sounds. I currently in my head. Because I'm making sure because you're talking about virtual pinball and then playing. No, no, no. The virtual part. The virtual part sucks. We're talking about the sounds right now. No, the virtual part sucks. But as soon as you get your switch hits and it actually starts an actual multiball on the table, Like that, I enjoy. That part I like.
    50:45
    Okay, so you like that? Yeah, you can like whatever you want. You like the multi-ball part. I'm just making sure you understood I was asking you about the sounds to it. Because you were talking about the multi-ball part. No. I'm talking about audio.
    50:59
    Maybe that's what I'm saying. You know, when I was talking back to the Hulk spinner, that moment between the audio cues and the light show make that shot feel different than every other time you shoot that shot. And so in the Tiki Ball, Multi Ball, Tiki Party, Multi Ball, the whole all the light show is like a burning orange and red. And the sounds are different. And it's you're focusing on like it doesn't feel like you're in a carnival anymore. You're you have a volcano that you're fighting. Good. So so we're talking moments. Right. And you're talking visual and lighting, which which I agree with. I mean, they pull you into the game. But like a game like Guns N' Roses, initially you were like, yeah, this is awesome. And then all of a sudden it was like you fell out of love with it.
    51:50
    You know, my thing is, you know, what keeps you coming back to a game? What are the moments that just keep you coming back? Like, see, I think for me it's like trying to get to something, and then it's like, oh, I know I just needed one more shot. Now I'm going to try to go do it again.
    52:12
    Yeah. It's literally games to where the journey is fun to get to the wizard mode. Right. Or a home environment, that's what's fun. And this right here, too. You're a tournament player. Well, yeah. See, Tom, you knew what I was about to say. We're going to dispel a myth right now, Joel Rogan. And here's the myth we're going to dispel. And every tournament player out there, especially every A-level tournament player, is going to get up out of their seats or probably pull their car over and get out and start cheering.
    52:42
    Nice. Thank you, Tom. He was great. Nice. So, of course, in tournaments, all tournament players care about is points. But I promise you, in order to get to a wizard mode, it's not all about points. and a lot of people love getting to wizard modes and you have to actually get through tasks and those tasks have to be fun to do. The sequence that they're in, the stacks that are possible, bringing a multi-ball in, picking what path you want to go to, picking what mode you want to use, picking out different strategies, picking out how to use your extra balls. All of that comes in and generally none of it has anything to do with points. Now, sometimes it does in some instances, but more or less, you just need to finish modes, and you need to progress through the game, and that's the big difference, and that's what a lot of people need to understand, that when you're looking for a game for the home environment, and you're wondering what could last long in your collection, those are the type of games, from a modern standpoint, that can last a long time in your collection. Now, when we're talking about moments in a pen, right, that will keep you coming back for more, Now we're going to get a little bit deeper into it because now we're talking about solid states or EMs to where it has to have something fun in there in order to stay because most of your solid states, they have a very shallow code. They're all very basic. I mean, some of them got nuance to it, no doubt, but at the end of the day, it needs to be fun, and a lot of them just have one or two shots that are just a lot of fun. Like take Paragon, for instance. The fun part in that is tap passing and then going to your inline targets or ripping the spinner. Build that bonus up. Yeah, exactly. Meteor, ripping the spinner. That's fun. Even in a home environment, it can be fun. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing. That's the big difference. So I think a lot of times when we're talking about what fun is today and what's fun for the home environment, and we're talking about from a modern pinball standpoint, the journey to the end has to be fun. and that's something that Elwin has figured out. That's why his, I mean, besides the design and everything, the reason why a lot of high-level players and everybody else praises the code is not just because it's balanced, but it's actually fun to explore the entire code. It's fun to play the whole thing, and that's not a depth thing. That's a breadth thing. I mean, we're talking like this code is super wide because you can choose all kinds of different ways you want to go. And that's why Deadpool is the game right behind you, Joel. That's why a lot of people love the game as well, because you can choose to go through all kinds of different pathways and you can choose different stacks. And for me personally, that's what keeps me coming back to a game more than anything. I would be willing to bypass theme if that element is there. If the layout is fun and the rule set that is with it makes it fun to play, for me that I mean that means a lot and let's face facts these pens they're not cheap so if you're paying out that type of money you want entertainment that's going to last a long time not only that don't do that he doesn't need that Tom don't quit being a you guys have sound boards and you just You've had these for a long time, but well done. Your timing, flawless right there, Travis. Thank you, Joel. I appreciate it, Joel. Thank you. We've said this before. Most pinball collectors, you either run out of money or you run out of space. And, like, for me, it's space. Or sanity. Or sanity, yeah. What game justifies the space in my lineup? And to me, I want to have a game that I can tackle in different ways. I like that about Turtles because I have four different Turtles I can pick from. I also have Half-Shell Challenge. I also can go straight to the final battle. Like, every time I hit start, I can choose different options of how I want to kind of conquer that game. You obviously kind of have that. We've been saying that a lot with Deadpool. Now, what surprises me, though, is, like, TNA, Total Nuclear Annihilation, somehow fits the bill, even though it's, like, the most linear game ever, but yet I still really enjoy it, maybe because it really just gives me two options at any time. Am I focusing on the reactor or the multiball? That's it. That's enough for me to keep coming back. But we were talking about that earlier. Your Tom made the comment, like, I always feel like I'm one shot away from the next step, like that next goal. I can keep climbing up that ladder. And that's what keeps drawing me back. I destroyed four reactors. I know I can do more. I was right there. Or, yeah, I'm on five. If I could light six, I'd get my extra ball. But I understand if I was Escher Lefkoff and I can just, like, every time I touch the game, I can get on nine reactors. What about somebody who's on a high-tier monk level, god-like level, compared to a normal human being? He's not normal. Yeah, what he can do, though, I get it. There are some people, though, that if every time they play DNA they beat it, or they beat it, I don't know, 25% of the time they hit the start button, it may not be as enjoyable.
    57:59
    But, I don't know. There's code. Yes, it's a challenge. but I think one of the things that brought this up is people are criticizing the code in Toy Story they're saying it's shallow but realistically like any game before 1995 had code that's shallower than this that's the way that they meant for the game to be anyways because they want it to be accessible and they want it to be understandable all that, there's nothing in the game if somebody plays it for at least 10 games you're going to know exactly what to do but that in itself though there's pros and cons to that because the con to it if you discover everything early on within the first 25 games now you're playing with borrowed time to where how long are you going to play this and keep enjoying it and that's the difference between some of these other games when you can pick and choose your stacks to do that's what creates longevity even if you know the rules set inside and out because it's almost like playing chess you're choosing different openings Yeah. And that's the big difference. You're choosing different mid-games. But I will say, though, the one thing about the code on Toy Story that I actually really do like, and I wish other coders would kind of adopt this, I do like that after, I think it's three plunges. Yes. It'll just auto-plunge it. So you can't stay up there all day long measuring out a plunge. And I do that all the time, too. But I love that it puts the pressure on that you've got to do this in three plunges, or it's just going to say, yeah, it's just going to say, F you, I'm launching the ball. We're going. Yep. So I would love that because I've always had this idea for a design, and maybe you guys can tell me if this has been done already, but I've always wondered what if you had a game to where you had two separate types of plunges to where maybe you have like a couple plunges that you can do after a skill shot, but if it keeps coming in the sugar lane, guess what? Now that ball's not going to go up top. it's going to all of a sudden just auto-plunge into like a Steve Ritchie, like off stand-up targets and just be totally out of control because you spent so much time trying to measure it up and trying to hit some type of skill shot. Like I always thought something like that would be cool because you automatically have risk-reward right at the start button before you even get the ball out there on the play field. But you're saying the automatic plunge is a dangerous one because obviously like Toy Story is – No, I'm saying like imagine there's like some type of diverter in the shooter lane to where it diverts instead of it going up top or hitting maybe like a saucer or whatever it could be. Imagine instead of the Toy Story one, because if it auto-plunges, you're not out of control. All it's doing is just saying, okay, you're taking too much time. I'm going to auto-plunge this around. It's going to come around to your right flipper. Imagine. If it's hardware, it's going to play out of control. Yeah, imagine there's a diverter, yeah, and it just goes and it just sends the ball completely out of control. To me, that would be cool to have on at the very beginning of a game. It would be cool for a tournament player, but obviously, like, there's plenty of novice people that step up to a pinball machine and have no concept of even how to start. It was a full point in SWAT anyways. They're not measuring up their plunge for a skill shot. Yeah, that's a valid point, yeah. No, I don't know.
    61:15
    I don't know. Do you guys have anything else about code? I mean, we could talk about code forever. I love code. I love rules. Yes. Code is clearly. Joel, I love pinball rules. I know you do. No, Joel. I love pinball rules.
    61:34
    Okay. I know you do. Okay. Good. You understand me then. I understand. See, we're able to communicate, and there's no tone or anything. I don't know what your wife's talking about about you having a tone. I don't either. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. No, I have a lot of respect for the designers out there, the coders out there, because this is what a tough job. What a tough job to use. You have to react to the design you're given, and you have to create a fun and enjoyable experience for such a huge range of players. And the challenge is the moment that you hone in on one, you're going to get ripped apart by the others. I mean, like Avengers, there are people, that game is coded in a way that is probably a tournament player's dream. It's incredible. But yet there's so many people that own that game, they're like, it's too complicated. I have no idea what I'm doing. Where am I supposed to fit the gym? And they get really upset because it's too complicated. or you go the opposite where you give them a very easy spelled out game, and then you get, oh, this code is shallow, and it's, you know, I have no options and blah, blah, blah. It's kind of like what we talked about before about Munsters, too, where a lot of people said, oh, the code's really shallow, shallow this and that. But then if you ask them, okay, what's your strategy on it, a lot of them wouldn't be able to tell you. Yeah. They would just be like, I just know that it's shallow. Like, that's, you know what I mean? And so it's like the reality is it's difficult, the code, to come up with rule sets no matter what. And I don't envy anybody that does that at all because, one, it is so difficult, and, two, because you have idiots like us that will just talk about the code and just try to give our opinions on it. But, I mean, it's just one of those things that it's a crazy-ass job once you think about it. Because imagine if somebody just, like, commented on our jobs, made a podcast about it to talk about, or wrote something on a message board, you know what I mean, or a Facebook post, or an angry Pinstide post. Yeah, and how well are we responding to that feedback that we're getting? We're doing great. Tom's really edited himself this time. Here's how I'm responding to it. F*** you.
    63:42
    I've censored myself really well. I think I've been extraordinarily humble this podcast, and I've been on my aching. Yeah. You're top three, easily. Number two, at least. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, let's transition into something. Tom's number one. Love you, Tom Graff. We all know Tom's. We all know Tom's number one. Tom keeps his show going. Three-legged stool, he knows. Joel, do you remember when we did a podcast without Tom? I tried to get it. We got so much hate mail after that. People were like, we're angry. A lot of it was just writing it to ourselves. We just felt. I know. All right. I know. Well, this is a segment that people have been wanting. They've been like, where's this at? What's going on? And to be honest, it's a good segment. I don't know why we don't do it more. Well, actually, I do because it's work. But here we go. Let's just dive right in.
    64:35
    Welcome to Triple Burger. How can I help you? Yeah, can I get the combo, please? Did you want the single, the double, or the triple? I think I'll have the Triple Combo Yeah Are you done? Yep Pull ahead please Still the best sound thing That we've been given I mean Jason Leibel killed it By the way We plugged his album Last episode I actually got a message There's some people Neon Dale Really enjoyed it Yeah So Neon Dale Yes Thank you Tom Well done So yeah Thanks again Jason For making that But Triple Combo back in Better Than Ever. The reason we don't do it is because it always ends up being a long segment and we always have a conversation of like, should we just make it a separate thing? Or, you know what, if we ever make a video podcast... We're going to make it a Patreon and everybody's going to have to pay us for it. That's what's going to happen. There we go. Yeah, well, if we ever do a video podcast, we'll probably split it down. Only fans, triple combo. Triple combo, right. Okay. So, uh... We took off a piece of clothing as you described it. Yeah, thanks Travis. Every tournament player I play now is going, hey, guess what? I listened to Triple Combo, and then they beat me on the game. It's great.
    65:48
    So we are going to do a Triple Combo. We're actually going to do a Triple Combo on Godzilla. Now, there's plenty of games we haven't done yet, but Godzilla is one that people have requested. So we're just going to dive on in. So if anybody's new to this segment, Triple Combo, we're basically going to break it down into three ways, the three ways you can attack this game. So I'm going to go first. It basically if you had a friend or family member a novice that stepped up to the pin why are you pointing at the camera I pointing at you I getting hyped for hyped for you I getting hyped for you You complain about seeing my shoulder blade and now I like getting you hyped up for this
    66:28
    Typically when he moves his head, he wants attention, right? So I'm trying to give him the attention. No, no, no, no. When I do that, I need to do this. Oh, you'll just say, hey, you're Mr. Rogers. Why are you Mr. Rogers? Mr. Rogers is the name he typed in the chat. Because Mr. Rogers is nice. Oh, okay. He gives out comfy.
    66:49
    I'm always going to love that comfy. He's like the nicest guy in the neighborhood. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. It's true. Oh, that's what it is. I thought it was the nicest guy in the neighborhood.
    66:59
    No. No? No. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Shit. Okay. Edit. Beep it. You're too late, man. Oh. Thank you. Okay. We got it. We nailed it. Yep. So, triple combo. So we're going to break down the game in three ways. So I'm going to go first. It's basically friends or family. Like if a novice stepped up to this game, what do you tell them to do? If you have a friend that's like Joel, this is who it's for. So what do I do? So, okay, so Godzilla for a novice. What is in Godzilla that people can enjoy?
    67:32
    I'm going to talk about the premium just because there's a lot more in the premium for people to enjoy right off the bat. So building, the building mech, that's a cool mech. you can make that fall down. And to do that, you literally just hit up the middle. Technically, you can damage the building by hitting the ramps. But otherwise, all you have to do, you know, your wife steps up to the table or the pinball machine, and she's like, what do I want to see here? Just hit the building. Just literally just keep hitting the building. What you will see is after you hit it enough, it's going to lower. You hit it again, it's going to throw a ball up on top. It's a cool physical ball lock. You hit it again, it throws another one up there. And boom, you hit it one more time, you get Godzilla multiball. So very, very cool, visually appealing thing. Blue Oyster Cult, the song, Godzilla comes on. It's just all around. It's a great moment to experience. And it's very easy to, like, tell somebody what to do.
    68:30
    A few other things that you get to see in that process. When you hit the building, that ball actually comes out the back of the building, whips around to the left, and then the magna grab or the – it isn't magna grab, right? that is that the terminology that is correct yeah yeah the magna grab will grab that ball and kind of then fling it back up the left and it's three what are just what are you saying he's saying you're the third best third bet thank god i just third bet top three top three okay so the magna grab will like whip that ball around and that's something i mean it's that's that's unique to this game that's not in any other game to see the mag i mean people love magnets so to see that ball whip around is really neat and then it also feeds that upper flipper so they have a chance at that upper loop shot which is pretty sick um so that alone just telling them just aim for the building there's a good chance they're going to see the magna grab in the building other things they can do the mecha godzilla target um basically working on that you just keep hitting that so you're going to hit the spinner it's going to fly up um it'll turn you get to see it turn you get to hit the targets you can basically just kind of point them in that direction and just keep hitting that. And when you see his little tummy finally grab the ball, another magnet, pretty cool to see. That's a moment in itself. I mean, that's kind of enough for a novice just to get him going or get him excited to keep playing that game. Otherwise, just tell him, like, pay attention because when they drain, the videos are really funny. I just, to me, they did a really, like, Keith, we've talked about this before, some of his early games, I kind of felt like he didn't really put a ton for the novice player or there wasn't like Avengers there wasn't anything I could like tell a novice player hey do this and it's super exciting but I think he crushed it with Godzilla I think there's a lot there for the novice player not to mention you got the bridge moving um I don't know that's probably enough what I will say is he hasn't finished the code yet and in in his other games he had like many wizard modes or modes that you could just get to by holding in the flippers and getting to like a challenge mode. He did Escape Nublar and then Battle Royale, I think is what it was in Avengers. So if you're listening to this later on, when he does complete the code, get to 1.0, I would guess there will be some sort of challenge mode in there that somebody can play. So the mini wizard modes are in the game already. Correct, but I would be curious if those... Just not the final. Right, correct. I don't know if he'll have, what is it, the Mechagodzilla mode, Terror of Mechagodzilla. I don't know if he'll have those be the challenge modes that you can just warp straight to, essentially, by holding in the flippers, or if he'll have a completely different mode that you'll get to experience. I don't know. Have you ever done the DJ mixer on Godzilla? No, I haven't. It's actually pretty cool.
    71:23
    Just so you can listen to the songs? Well, that and the lights actually move with it, too. They have different light shows and stuff. Okay. You know, maybe, hey, when I get my Godzilla premium, whenever that's going to happen, maybe that's the first thing I'll do. Yeah, just put on, you know, old school orchestra, Godzilla main theme, and just, you know, set that. Just relax. And if you're feeling really hyped, put it on the rock version. Let's go. Okay. Well, that's it. So, triple combo, I've done my part. I get to shut up now. So, we're going to transition from me to wizard mode. So, wizard mode, this is...
    71:57
    Wizard mode? I thought we'd do tournament strategy first. Tournament is the last. Nobody cares about tournament. Oh, he's changed it, Tom. Is it really? Is this going to production mode? I thought it was like casual play to now advanced wizard mode play, and then you do tournament strat last.
    72:13
    No. Fine. Do whichever one of you wants to go next. All right. I'll go with the tournament. All right. We've got to record the segment again, Tom. Just pick it from the top. Everybody, we're going to start over here. Okay, go ahead. Okay. All right. So I'm going to say right off the bat, I'm not going to be able to do this justice. So a cheap hop going out to Carl D'Angelo from IE Pinball. You want to go watch his Dreams of Godzilla. He absolutely murders this game. He explains everything. You're going to want to go watch him after you listen to this. But after saying that, let's go over the tournament strategies. So first of all, you want to hit your rams and start a battle. And you do that by hitting the scoop.
    73:10
    Once you're in your first tier battle, you want to select one of the four. There's Ebra with the spinners. There's Gigan with the rams. Megalodon is kind of like a combo and Travis, are you laughing at me? No, Travis left. Oh, no, he left. Okay. And then... No, I went to go get a Dr. Pepper. Oh, that's what I heard. Yeah, no, it's zero, though. Monica said I got fat, so I'm on a diet.
    73:41
    Well, you know, if you'd stop drinking 10 beers, you know... Is that why your camera hasn't worked for so many episodes? Where was I? You said Gigan, and then you were going through the chair one. Megalodon, but I think you meant Megalon.
    73:57
    Yeah. What's the thing? Whatever his name is. Megalon? It's always good when you correct somebody, Travis, and can't say it yourself.
    74:07
    Joel, you're the worst. Top three. After Dave. What's the other one? Now I'm having a brain fart.
    74:14
    All I know is... Organosaurs? Did you say that one? Oh, my God, no. My favorite one. That's the one you literally play.
    74:23
    All right. End this segment right now. Now, Titanosaurus. Titanosaurus, you're going to hit basically targets and then finish up on the magnet grab. It's like five shots, right? Yeah, five shots. A lot of points. And then as you go through those modes, you can also bring an ally in. And the best ally in a tournament is usually the 2x scoring. But you can also get an add-a-ball for multi-ball or like your left out lane with the Mothra Slave. It's the best.
    75:02
    Between those four tiers, though, is one of those competitively, like, it's Keith. Keith probably made them all even. But is there a, like, do you always go one over the other four? I've been taking Titanosaurus more so, but I would take Abra. It just depends on the game setup. If the spinners are really juicy and spinny, I'll take Abra. But if I hit one of them and it only spins three times, I'm avoiding it. But I think Travis, during his billion-point strategy that he's been giving Dennis Creasel, he's gagging all day. Yeah, I like opening up with Gigan. Okay. Personally. Just because you can stack jet fighters with it early on, too. Sure. Because after you get five, then you light your ally. And plus, if you're on a premium, if you get your first lock lit, that lowers down the building. So you could technically just ramp out the right ramp for your eight shots on Gigan. Right. But that's only on the premium, though. Only on the premium. So if you're on a pro, then you just ski jump over from right to left. Right. That's what I like to do. But I think that says a lot. I mean, it sounds like all four are viable. So it's nice that there isn't a definitive tier. But is the goal when you're doing the tier one battle, is the goal to complete, just complete the mode? Or is there a way to, like, maximize the points when you're in that mode? I think you want to complete your mode because then you can, doesn't that increase your destruction jackpot?
    76:41
    Yeah, that and it also gives you, like, I mean, you get a lot of points from completing a mode, too. I mean, it's all of them. They have finishing blows. So it's worth it to go ahead and finish. There's a time bonus, too, for the faster you do it.
    76:57
    And then moving on from that, you also have your tank multiball, which you have to hit the lit tank targets, I believe, ten times, and then hit the scoop when it's flashing. The tank symbol will flash at the scoop to start that multiball. You have your bridge multiball, which is just basically collecting a number of spinners, or not spinners, switches, and hitting the magnet to progress through the bridge. and then you also have your tesla or your power and that's hitting the three stand-up targets the two in front of the building and the one off to the side of the the right ramp so you just hit each one of those one time or how do you you have to hit them as a set so you have to complete i I think it's two sets to get into the first one. Tesla Strike? Yep.
    78:06
    So all four of those tasks, though, are unique per city. So you can battle one character. You can do tank multiball. You can do bridge multiball. You can do Tesla Strike. And the building, too, right?
    78:21
    Right. Yeah. So you can do all those while within one city. and then you well you can keep doing them and that's a strategy to try to increase your score because you get the carnage bonus and that's all in one because that's that's what i was trying to figure out is from a from a tournament standpoint does it make sense to bounce between cities or does it make sense to just stay in one city the whole time for me i yeah it i guess it depends on how the game's playing, but for me, I would continue through the cities just to get the destruction jackpot up. Although, I guess this was a question, do the tanks and do those multiple... Now I can't talk. Multiply? Yeah, does your multiplier increase for completing the other stuff? I would think so, yeah, within the same city I'm not sure if that carries over or not I need to look deeper into it But I know within the same city It all goes together So the deeper that you get in all your multi-balls It just adds on to the score on your Carnage Or whatever you call it Or annihilation, whatever that's called Whenever you're hitting the shots afterwards Just watch IE pinball And you'll be fine So Travis, when you played it in that tournament the other day and you left my name on the table. What did you do? Did you stay within a city or were you bouncing around? So my general strategy is just to get out of Tokyo immediately. Like I don't want to stay in there. I'm not worried about collecting a large carnage bonus or anything like that. So the big reason why I personally like to start with Gigan early on is because it's at the ramps. So I'm hitting a shot without getting out of control. in Ebra, the reason why I don't like picking that for my first one is because one of the shots you're going to be able to control immediately, which is that left spinner. So your center spinner, you can control the right spinner. You can control also for the most part, but the left one, it just, it sends it, sends it off into the middle of the play field. And then you're kind of having to get back under control. But I like Geigen just because you can stay under control. You can keep hitting a ramp over and over again, and then you can stack it up with your jet fighter, which you hit five of those, you'll light your allies. So something like that. But I'd also say or add in that Gigan's probably the least amount of points out of the four modes. It is, but what you also do, you make progress to your Godzilla multiball because you're hitting a ramp and you're building progress towards that. So my goal is to always just do that first, get it out of the way, and then I get my collect because you can basically do your final shot at the right or left ramp, wherever, and then your destruction jackpot, your very first one, is immediately lit.
    81:19
    And so you can basically just combo it straight in there, and then you're good to go from there. And then if you have an ally lit at that point, as soon as you hit the scoop, you're not only changing cities, but you might end up having a 2X or Mothra or even getting your Adaball ready to go because you might already have Godzilla multiball lit at the building also. So you change cities, and then once you're in a new city, you're immediately trying to get back into a battle?
    81:48
    Yeah, just depending on where I'm at. I mean, I personally like to try to hold off on Godzilla multiball for as long as I can within reason and try to get a tank multiball going or even a bridge attack. Is there anything else? Because if I can do that before my Godzilla multiball, then that means during Godzilla multi-ball I can collect those points just passively during it. So that's a big reason why I like doing that.
    82:15
    What I'm hearing is I don't think there is any definitive, like, one strategy for this game. There really isn't. Yeah. So I'm assuming when you're – So you mean with this code, Joel, that means that you can do different pathways. You have options. That's what makes it fun. I will say when I watch tournament streams, and shout out to Fox Cities because you guys do awesome tournament streams, but there's a lot of times when you step up to certain games, the announcers or the commentators can just kind of say, well, this is what they're going to do. Like they know this is what everybody does on this game. I would assume Godzilla, though, is one of those games where it's like, let's see what they do. Let's see how they're going to attack this or what their goal is at this moment. And it seems like there's no, at least right now, there's no definitive one strategy or way to do it. It just depends on, you know, if I'm player four, how the other players are playing. I might change my strategy mid-game because I only need a certain number of points, so I'm not going to go for dangerous shots.
    83:28
    Yeah, that's a good point. It could be based on setup, too. I mean, whether or not you have a ball save or whether or not the multi-ball is set to hard or hard locks. Like when Travis and I went to in-disc, the outlanes were wide open. There were no rubbers on them. If you basically hit a destruction jackpot, it was almost like death.
    83:48
    Or if you missed the destruction jackpot, it was going right down the left outlane. You didn't have the ball save there. You were done. so there's decisions you have to make based on point values and things like that in a tournament that you don't normally do now i know with um the tier two you have to do two tier one battles right before you can do a tier two that is correct and then when you go tier two one of the tier two is a is a multi-ball is that like does it make sense to always go with that one first just because it safe or no not necessarily i mean i think one or the other or both are are more points than the actual multi-ball but the multi-ball safe because you have to yeah yeah and and more than likely a ball save yeah so interesting well i mean um tournament wise is there any others suggest i mean there's so much to this game i know there's like uh the saucer multiball and there's, I mean, other stuff that you can pursue. Or, I mean, we talked about some of these kind of mini wizard modes, like Terra Mechagodzilla. Like I know on Deadpool, a lot of people are like, the goal is to get to mech suit multiball. That's like the end goal. That's what you want to get to because there's a ton. Is there anything like that in Godzilla? If you can just get to that point, then you know you're going to be in a good spot. I mean, Terra Mecha Godzilla actually can be worth a lot of points If you can hit the, you have to hit the green shots to lock your ball but then there's an instance where you have to hit the red shots and that increases your jackpot value Are you talking about Monster Zero? Yeah, that's right I think the green, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Which one comes first? Which one's earlier on in the game? It depends on which route you go. So if you, well, you have to hit a super jackpot in either the multiballs. So either the Godzilla multiball or the Mechagodzilla multiball. And then you have to get to the, isn't it the fourth power-up is where you get to select? so i believe so i think so so but is that achievable like realistically achievable in a tournament when these pins are brutal yeah is that something you could get to yeah you're talking one super jackpot so i mean could you miss it sure but it's doable so basically how it works Joel is that what Tom's saying is like the Godzilla multiball right there's two trees on your power-ups so the Godzilla multiball if you get a jackpot a super jackpot on that you'll be able to access your level 4 power-up which is monster zero and then the Terra Mecha Godzilla is if you play the Mecha Godzilla multiball and you get a super jackpot on that that's what's cool is that you do and you're not even worrying about points You just worry about your task, and that will open up a different part of the game, which is pretty cool. Well, you've said it before, though, when we've had these conversations of typically when you step up to a pin in a tournament setting, it's like you have kind of like your immediate goals. Like I just want to do this as quickly as possible. But you typically have like a long-term goal. So that's what I'm saying. Like is the long-term goal to get to this Tier 2 battle? Or is the long-term goal to get to one of those wizard modes? Or is the long-term goal just to get to a third city? I mean, do you guys have just like a set path yet? Or you've just got to. My long-term goal is not to drain. Ah. Let me write that down, everybody. Yeah. I like trying to get the monster zero because I, just like I was saying earlier, since I do Gigan, I'm going to start my Godzilla multiball, or at least get it lit a lot earlier than what I will the Mechagodzilla, because you have to hit that spinner anyways to get it at least started, to start making progress towards getting it going. So, I mean, yeah, that's the awesome thing about Godzilla is that you have so many options to choose from, like when to use your heat ray, what multiball to bring in, what ally to use, which pathway you're going to take. I mean, it's just, there's just a lot to do, or whether or not how long you want to stay in the city. I mean, it's insane. Like we've all seen on the Discord, Lord Raymond's posted up like 1.5 million collect or one point, sorry, 1.5 billion collect on a carnage bonus. You know, there's some people that like to do that. There's others that they want to just go for destruction jackpots and get that built up because that can be worth a ton of points as well. So there's just, there's all kinds of different ways to go, to go with it. I've seen some that their strategy, their entire strategy is built around trying to get to a tier two battle to play the King Ghidorah battle to where they, instead of fleeing, they just try to fight as long as they can and basically get like a get all their shots lit for a massive collect, use the heat ray to just spot everything and then cash out. So there's all kinds of strategies. Yeah, so what I'm hearing is people are listening to this if they're on the plane or whatever, they're sitting, they pulled out their notepad and they're like, alright, here's the answer. I'm ready. I'm ready to tackle this game. I'm going to win this tournament. Here's the answer. and they just wrote down a whole bunch of crap. Like, what's the answer to play it all? Another racing everything. Yeah, just do it all and try not to dream. It is really a hard game to, like, you do these three things and you're going to be okay. It just doesn't work that way. No, you could do your three things perfect, and somebody else could just come up and just whoop your ass.
    89:52
    That's just the way this game works. I mean, if you're playing Z-Mac or somebody like that, you're just like, okay, I got to put up a billion no matter what just to have even a chance. So, yeah, there's, I mean, that's what makes this game fun, though, from a tournament standpoint. And that's why I told you guys before that I think this is the most fun I've ever had playing any game in a tournament just because there's so many different pathways to go. And there's a lot of stuff, a lot of nuance to it that we haven't even touched yet. I mean, think about if you bring a 2X into Megalon. Like, my God, the points are just off the chart. If you do something like that and you actually combo it all up to where you don't let that combo go out, then the points just, I mean, it's crazy, Joel. Points just go brr after that.
    90:38
    Well, there's a lot of love for this game. There's a lot of love for this game on many different levels. But I think from a tournament player, I assume you never want to be in a game that puts you in jail, right, where you're like, crap, I missed this, so there's no way I'll be able to catch up. And I just, I think this is one of those games where you always have an option. You always have, there's always got to be some way that you could catch up. I think just as a player in general, it's great if you're never in jail. I mean, just points be damned, at least you can make progress towards other things. You can pivot quickly on Godzilla and still find yourself getting to the same spot that you intended on going. I can't say the same for a lot of other games. Well, maybe that's, maybe we should pivot to Wizard Boat then. I mean, is that, Tom, was there anything else you wanted to know? Yeah, no.
    91:26
    I've said my piece. We gave all the tips and tricks, yeah. So let's pivot. So the third of the triple combo is wizard mode. If you're a completionist, if you have this game at home and you're saying, I want to get all the way to the end, and what is the end? Technically it's Planet X, right? For now it's Planet X, but I'm guessing it's going to be King of the Monsters since there's an insert for it. That's just my guess that there's one final wizard mode that's left. Do you think there'll be another wizard mode after that, kind of like Jurassic Park? If you beat it, the whole thing, that'd be cool.
    92:03
    I'm not sure. I mean, Keith, if you're listening to this, please tell us. We all want to know. What's the plan? Just wait. Just wait until everybody's there. Just tell us all the secrets. Okay, so the wizard mode, Planet X. So what do you technically have to do right now to get to Planet X, and then what do you think you'll have to do to get to King of Monsters? Okay. So just because we haven't done a triple combo in a while, so I'll just preface this, that whenever you do wizard mode hunting, there's basically three principles you need to follow. Oh, I'm not going to write those down. There's three major principles. So Joel needs to write this down because we've got to get his ass finishing Toy Story. Three major principles. First, it's the most obvious one. You want to know what it takes to qualify the wizard mode, right? And so in order to qualify the wizard mode, basically in Godzilla, you've got to play through all four cities.
    92:59
    So that's literally what it is, because then after you play through all four cities, then you'll have Planet X lit at the scoop. So basically you have to get through all four tier one battles and all three tier twos. you have to do the tier 3's or the tier 2's? Yes. You don't necessarily have to defeat every one. You just got to start them. You start in Tokyo. To change cities, you have to battle a creature. You hit your ramp. You hit the scoop. You're battling your creature. We'll come to that though. Let me finish the other two principles and then we'll talk about that first one. Joel. Yeah. Joel. Let me just get that pencil and pad. I'm ready. I'm still ready to write this. What did you say? Joel? Joel. It's a play on Jolene. Okay. How old is that? I don't even know what that reference is. Dolly Parton. Oh, okay. Got it. No wonder. All right. So number two. Number two. This is a big one. Ignore the score unless it's necessary. Ignore the score. So, wait, there's wizard modes that you know of that you have to get a certain score? Well, if you've got to get a certain score in order to finish a mode or in order to get, like, for instance, when you look at, or maybe not even score, like a certain progression, like Guardians has that, to where you've got to actually complete it to get to the final wizard mode, but you could also get halfway to do the secondary wizard mode. Whether or not you start the modes or complete the modes. Got it. Right, right. So, what I'm getting at is that unless it's necessary, don't worry about your score, because then you're not taking unnecessary risk. What he's saying is failure is an option. Right, exactly. So an unnecessary risk on Godzilla, for instance, and Tom alluded to this, would be trying for a destruction jackpot, right? Destruction jackpot doesn't mean anything towards going to wizard mode. All that does is it just guarantees you're going to put a ball horizontal. Yep. And you're just a lot easier just to ignore it if you're wanting to try to get further in the game. Now, if you want to live life on the edge, feel free to take a shot at it. That's where time lives. Exactly. So that's the number two principle. Number three, and this is the biggest one, Joel. Yeah. The biggest one right here. Write this one down. This is the big one. Learn where the extra balls are in the game. That's the most important thing because you want to prolong your game as much as possible.
    95:31
    Very, very important. I will say that's one thing I'm frustrated with your story. I only know of one extra ball right now. but I need to learn the other ones. Also, for tournaments, extra balls on Godzilla are now 50 million points.
    95:45
    Glorious. That's a lot of points. It's really fun doing it when somebody doesn't know it's there, and they're like, where did that come from? So ignore the score. Get as many extra balls as possible, and then learn how to get to the wisdom road. Got it. No, no. No, you learn what it takes to qualify the wizard mode is number one. That's your first step. Second, make sure you ignore the score. Third, learn what the extra balls are. That's the last one. There's nothing after extra balls. I think you just said exactly what I did. Well, no, you put learn what it takes to qualify the wizard mode is number three. No, that's number one, Joel. That's number one. Tom, you following this? Do you have a different order you want to say? I'm just agreeing with Joel. Oh, thank you. Okay. All right, Travis, I'm ready. Because Joel got the fast break wizard mode. I agree with all of our listeners. You bully Joel too much. That's true.
    96:41
    That's fair. That's true. He is percocising, so there you go. Go watch Heavyweights. It's such a good movie. You've got to watch that. So now that we know this, it's very important that we at least know what the extra balls are in Godzilla. So do you guys know what the extra balls are? No. saucer. Okay, so that's one of them. If you can destroy three saucers, which is the pop bumper in the lower right-hand side, so you hit it five times, and then it'll light that saucer again to where you can destroy it. Another way you can spot a hit is if you're in single-wall play, and you hit it through that right spinner, that switch behind there will actually spot a saucer shot. So that's another way. Yep, and then you can also do your shats. Why would that You're saying you hit this right spinner and it dribbles down behind it and it just gives you a hit? Yep, that switch spots it. Oh, that's safe.
    97:40
    Yeah. There you go. That's why I'm giving you this information. That's way safer than actually hitting the pop bumper. Unless you drained on the right outline.
    97:50
    Yeah, then it's not safe. Okay, then the other ways to get extra balls, you've got to conquer two cities. The other way is to destroy 10 jet fighters Or fighter jets Conquer two cities, like actually defeat the bad guy? Yes, actually defeat the bad guy Yes, Joel, do not let him off the hook Does one of the cities give you An extra ball for defeating it? Or is it just two cities?
    98:16
    So it's You conquer two cities I don't know, are you talking about Is there a specific city that gives an extra ball? I'll look it up There might be, I don't know This is just what I have in my notes. I don't know if there's new code that changes the round. Because they have perks now, right? They do. They had perks before, but it's just now finally listed on it. So the other thing that you can do, like I said, destroy ten jet fighters, but you can only destroy five at a time.
    98:44
    So once you destroy your first five, and you can either hit the full collect on the left spinner if you want to or ignore it, whatever you want to do because it's like a hurry up. But in order to start it again, you're going to have to go to the right spinner, hit that switch that we talked about, or it might even just be the right spinner, but then it will relight one of your in-lanes, and you have to go over the in-lane in order to get your jet fighters built up and get them started. I think you've got to do that at least six times. You do one of the in-lanes three times. Boom. You start jets. Jets are going to have super awesome music. There's going to be a few shots lit. You're saying max in one session is five jet fighters. Yes. And then you saying to relight the in starting again you have to go through the right spinner Right spinner And then so then three more in Boom you in jets again Five more jets I think it might be six in You don't have to do both sides. Completing 550 combos gives you an extra ball? So, yes, that was the last one I was going to talk about. So if you collect five. No, you're fine. Tom's on top of this, Joel. You hear Tom? Tom's ready to go. I'm in active listening mode. You are. I am. You're doing great, Joel. You're beautiful. All right. Collect five city combos. So this is important that if you're going to make any progress, know what your city combos are, especially early on in Tokyo, because you start in that city no matter what. And so your city combos, basically, if you don't know what these are, you get three per city. But I think one of them is only for a premium in LE. So I'm guessing the pro just has two under those circumstances. Looks like it. So if you have the premium LE good on you, you're going to have a little bit easier time doing this.
    100:29
    With Tokyo, you want to do center spinner, big loop, and make a side lane or, I guess, the tail whip. City combos? Is this different than the secret combos? Yeah. This was not in it when I had the game. No.
    100:45
    I don't know. Maybe you just weren't doing them. I don't know. City combos. Okay. City combos. Yes. Depending on what city you're in, there's very specific shots And you can hit them at any time There's three specific combos Per city If you're in an LE premium Otherwise there's just two it looks like So you hit these So to get that extra ball you have to do how many combos? Five So three in one city And then two in another So here's what you want to do You're going to start on Tokyo first So if you're on a premium or LE You have a very easy one right out of the gate. It's go center spinner, catch with your left flipper, hit the pop bumper immediately. So that'll give you one. Then another easy one to do, and you want to do this before you light your Godzilla multiball, otherwise you're not going to be able to do it. You've got to hit the right ramp, go through the building, then it'll catch on the magnet, and then you'll do your loop.
    101:42
    So right ramp, building, loop. Got that, Joel? Right ramp? How does it go? It goes through the building. No, you hit the right ramp, then hit the shot through the building, and then hit the destruction jackpot. Then it gets the magnet. The magnet kind of tosses it up the left ramp area, and then, yeah.
    102:03
    Does that make sense? This is – I love combos. It's blowing your mind, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So, ignoring the rules.
    102:13
    Imagine. I'm just stuck at point two of ignoring the score Joel wants to be a tournament player now so after you get through your first city are those combos worth a lot of points by the way I mean they're worth a little bit but it's not something you actively think about when you're in tournament play unless you realize that you have three combos by accident and then it's worth 50 million if you complete two more So they become worth going for. Does it show it anywhere on the screen? Like, do you know how many combos you've had? So, unfortunately, the only way to see it is if you go through the info. Oh, okay.
    102:55
    Or city. And it has, like, a postcard-type thing to where you can see what combo you've done. And it tells you which combos you have left. Now, the secret combos, they don't tell you at all because it's a secret. So they don't tell you. Yeah.
    103:10
    I don't know what all secret combos are. If you want to know where Travis is getting all this information, you need to email us. We're not going to just give it to you. You need to email us, and then I will send it to you. It's not tiltforums.com, is it?
    103:28
    You need to email us. I mean, it probably is. I'm reading off my notes because I'm a psychopath, and I have notes on every single game. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. You know how I try to memorize rule sets? I don't know. You draw pictures. Well, kind of, actually. I use flashcards, and then I write it out. Like spaced repetition to remember it. You're one of a kind, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. So after you get through your first city, I personally like choosing London next. I'm probably right. And I actually like choosing London next, even if I'm playing in a tournament. But for the purposes of going for a wizard mode, a big reason why I do this is because your right ramp, your left ramp to scoop is one of the combos. And you've got to do that anyways in order to light your next battle. So that kind of goes hand in hand. That's an easy stack to do right there. Another thing you can do is if you're on the premium LE is left ramp, then captive ball. So that's the low hanging fruit right there.
    104:37
    Wow. Is that making sense? Yeah. This is really a long triple combo. Well, we knew it was going to be long, Tom. It's Godzilla. This is why we don't do them often, because it's like it ends up being half a podcast. We can play and yell that by making it into a TV and Discord. Well, next time we'll do Toy Story then. We'll do that. All right. So now that we know how to get all the extra balls, that's what you want to do. Okay? So, I mean, well, the other way, we haven't named off the last way to get an extra ball, which is make 12 shots. into Monster Rampage, which is basically you've got to hit the left spinner enough times to start it, and then you have to hit 12 shots. And you have 12 seconds per shot, and that shot will just eventually move from left to right across the play field, starting with the left ramp and eventually go all the way around to the left spinner.
    105:29
    That sounds fun. It's a lot of fun, Joel. All of those things are just extra balls. They're not technically needed to qualify the wizard. No, but they're so important, though, because if you don't have extra balls and you're not trying to prolong your game, basically you're going to have to try to get to wizard mode in three balls, and that's not an easy thing to do. It's doable, but it's a lot more doable if you have more balls to play with. Got it. That's just the way it goes. So the other things to do pretty much is just consider strategic use of your heat ray, because basically you can hit that center spinner, I believe it's 60 times, and then it will light your teal's button to where it will spot a shot. So whenever you're playing Ebra, for instance, if your last shot is on it, well, I say if, it will be, your last shot is on that pop bumper, if you don't feel like hitting that shot, just use the action button. Push and hold the action button. Yep, yep, and then you'll be okay from there. Nice. That's the way that I do it. Another thing you need to do is make sure you're keeping track of your tanks because if you progress to where you get 10 tanks early on, at least on your first multiball, and, of course, it'll be more your second, but if you light your tank multiball, that will take priority over your modes at the scoop. So where you start it and where you, you know, it's at the same shot. So you want to make sure that you get into your mode first before you get your tank multiball lit. So that's very, very important as well. So that's the main thing. And what I like to personally do going after wizard mode as well, Megalon, I much prefer playing that in single ball. And Gigan, I prefer playing that in single ball. But Evra and Titanosaurus, I'll play those in multi-ball.
    107:15
    Interesting, because Titanosaurus is five shots. I feel like I can just snipe those five shots. But the one, was it Megalon? That's the one that's like a roaming shot. It's moving around like crazy. That's where I want the multi-ball. Like, it should give me some help there. But you can also, yeah, you can also, if you play Megalon to where you're just being patient and waiting for him to pop up, then just hit your shot. Or you can even kind of manipulate where he's going. Well, you can kind of manipulate, too, where it's going to end up at while he's underground.
    107:46
    What a game, man. This game. There's a nuance to that. Yeah, it just blew your mind. And we won't even get into that. If you didn't know that that existed, just go play your Godzilla and you'll see what I'm talking about. He doesn't have Godzilla. So you're in the second. Any of the listeners. So, okay, so second city, you're in London.
    108:03
    You're playing, so Gigan's first city, second city, you do somebody. I don't know. You want to know which one I do? It depends where I'm at. If I'm close to a multiball, then I'll take probably Titanosaurus for my second one. Because that's the one, out of all four of the modes, the one that I prefer to play multiball in the most is Titanosaurus, just because you have to hit the stand-up targets. in order to progress through. And then if I do have my heat ray ready, sometimes I will opt to use it on the third target because on that you've got to hit your two targets at the building, but then that third target is there. Yeah, way up there in the corner on that right ramp. So sometimes I'll even use an action button on there. Yeah, we might struggle with the upper flipper.
    108:52
    Well, at the same time, though, it's like that's a big reason why I don't mind using Titanosaurus in that spot. But I am starting to work on trying to do that in single ball. It just depends where my heat ray is at. You know, if my heat ray is ready to go, then I might take it because I know that third shot is easy to do. And then from there, I'm just hitting the mazer cannon and then hitting the captive ball to finish it off. So there's London, right? So you blew through him. And then you get out of London. The next one I like to do is Paris. Because Paris, it's your first combo that's easier to do is like left ramp and spinner. You're on a premium LE. And then the other combo I think is left ramp, right ramp, left spinner. But why do you care about combos at this point? You already have your extra ball. Just in case I don't. I might only have three or four. Okay. So that's why I'm very deliberate with what cities I want to go to just because of that. So you've done one city tier one battle, two cities tier one battle, and now on this city are you focusing on? You've got to start working through tier two. Tier two battles. Yep. And those, I just play them down the line. I don't really worry about it. Maybe this is a dumb question. You only have four cities, so how do you do seven battles?
    110:03
    Because you have four tier ones. Because you've got to go back in the scoop. Because you've got to go in the scoop anyways in order to change cities. Yeah, but when do you do the... I thought you could only do one battle per city. One tier one. Oh. Okay. Is this making sense so far? Yeah. You with me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speak with touch, Sergio.
    110:24
    That was really rude No, no, no I don't want any of our listeners calling Or not calling, and writing Okay, so let's reiterate So you're in it You start in Tokyo, you do your tier one battle You get out of that, you go to your next one You do a tier one battle, you finish that But your tier two's lit, so you hit the scoop You do your first tier two, and now you're going into the third city, tier one battle, tier two battle, and then you end up in your fourth city, tier one battle, your last one, and your last tier two battle. And after you've done all those things, Planet X would be lit, correct?
    111:12
    Correct. See? Oh, my God. I'm right there. I'm all over it. So that's Planet X, but you think there's King of Monsters. So King of the Monsters, there's got to be a lot. What more do you think you would need to do to get to that? This is a guess. We don't know yet. You want me to guess? Yeah. What we'd have to do?
    111:32
    I would probably say maybe it would have to do with collecting jackpots or something like that, or maybe actually finishing all the Tier 1s. Actually finishing? Or do you think you have to play Godzilla multiball, tank multiball, bridge multiball in all four cities? It could be. It could be something nuts. I mean, the thing is, right now, I feel like Planet X is pretty accessible to most players. Most top players, yeah. Well, I think the wizard mode, to me, in my opinion, the wizard modes on right now on Godzilla, they're more accessible than any other wizard mode from any of the other Elwynn games. In my opinion, like even if you take Iron Maiden, you still have to make a pretty good effort to get the cyborg. Not everybody can get there. Two minutes to midnight, you have to play through all the modes. I mean, that takes a little while to do for a lot of people because that game is a little bit more difficult shooter.
    112:33
    So is there any I don't know. Is there any mode? Soul Gym. Soul Gym's great. Soul Gym. I've actually talked to people that have never played that. That blows my mind. That's a moment. That is a moment. I freaking love that mode.
    112:50
    Is there any moment in Godzilla that you time out? That I time out? Yeah. Or like, I mean, we've talked about this before where there's other games. Just some of the animations. I just blow them off. Yeah, but there's other games that we've played, like we said with GNR, where it's like you get to this and you just cradle up and you time it out because it's not worth any points and you're just working towards progression. But is there anything? There's not any one thing in Godzilla that you're just timing out. I mean, you might wait maybe on Rampage. If you don't want to aim after a certain shot, you might wait for that to go around. But that's about the only other time I can think of. Rampage would be the only thing I would think of. What's the end of your extra ball? That's true. There's that creature The smog Creature dude I don't know his name Starts with an H Hedera What's that about?
    113:49
    You want to know about the creature Or you want to know about the creature in the mode I know Carl's big on That's a big There's a lot of points there But I'm assuming it's not needed It's not needed for No, no, no. It's not needed for that, no. But there is pretty big points for it. I've seen it to where I've gotten close to a billion on it, and then I've had other times to where I've gotten five million.
    114:16
    So... Just another level in the game, potentially, for points, which is insane. Yep. No, there's a lot of stuff to do in it, but luckily you don't have to use anything with Hedera for any of the wizard modes or anything like that. It's just one of those, I guess, secondary modes that happens. Yeah, you're building up your, with switches, you're building up the value of each shot. It's insane. All right, well, I think, I mean, we've talked, what, like 45 minutes on this game? To be honest, I mean, this is a game that I am excited to have, like, novice or friends and family play because I think the toys and mechs, at least on the premium, are really entertaining.
    115:01
    I think the buildings up there with the castle in Medieval Madness, I think there are some really cool things of, hey, you're going to want to see this. You're going to want to see what this thing does. So I think this game is – there's a lot of fun to be had from a novice player. But then we just talked – I mean, the tournament strategy is – it kind of is one. You kind of just want to do everything, and depending on how the game's set up, adapt and move and go with it and try to get your points. and then the wizard mode is just absurd. So this is one of those things that kind of comes back to our second topic here of code. You know, congrats to Keith and who is it, Rick Nagel is the code. I mean, the code in this game, I don't know, it's firing on all cylinders. It's really impressive and incredibly well done.
    115:47
    It is number one, I will say. I'll give it a note. Yeah, it's fantastic. So anything else that you guys feel needs added to Triple Combo? The outro music. All right, here we go. Triple Combo.
    116:03
    Yeah. Triple Combo. All right, well, we're running a little long, so we'll fly through this. Real quick thoughts on Insider Connected. I mean, congrats to CERN. They just announced new code for literally every LCD game. I know I have Insider Connected I have the kits in both Turtles and Deadpool I'm a fan I know Tom has expressed other options I also know that Tom's internet sucks and updating his games with Insider Connected is an entirely different story Let me tell the listener something, so I thought my internet was very good and it's not Put this in perspective We're all talking amongst each other, talking about how quickly our codes are downloading on our games. And we're like, yeah, it just takes like 15, 20 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever it could be. Six and a half fucking hours. Oh, you're late. Hit the button. You're late.
    117:06
    No, no, no. There it is. That is worth the swear right there. I don't know what everybody says. Six and a half hours. So Tom sent a speed test, a screenshot of his speed test to us. It was like .5 kiloseconds or something. I asked Tom, I was like, is your internet router a potato? What's happening here? He's like, what are you guys? And we're like 800 megabytes to a gigabyte. Yeah.
    117:37
    Well, we don't have fiber in our area or anything like that. You got all those LEs and you just forgot to pay for internet, apparently. He's got too many mirrored back glasses that are reflecting all the Wi-Fi signal in his basement. That's why his Wi-Fi sucks.
    117:56
    I will say, instead of Wi-Fi, I'm not even going to download anything anymore until I get the better Wi-Fi.
    118:05
    I will say, though, if you're listening to this and you haven't yet done this with your games at home, the home team thing is actually pretty cool. It's incredible. Yeah, it makes it so much more convenient to get your profile on there. So all you've got to do is basically just go into the menu, enter your profile in. I think Stern on their YouTube channel has a quick video showing you how to do it. And it's super simple. Yeah, Rebecca Hinsdale did a fantastic job. There you go. So, yeah, it's super simple. You can load up to eight profiles on there. And then all you do when you step up to your game is just hold your left flipper down for a couple seconds, and then it gives you the option which one you want. Pick which profile you want. Hit the Teolos button. Boom, you're loaded in. Hit start. You're good to go. That's the action button for people that, yeah, Jeff Teolos hates it. But, yes, it's incredible. We love it. And I also think what's cool is it allows you to select your profile. If you have more than one stage, you can select who's going. That's what we just said. It allows you to select who's going 1, 2, or 3, 1, 2, 3, or 4. And then it also. Oh, sorry. I forgot to say that. You're right. Game mode is also there where you can select. So you can go straight to, like, I'm going to competitive mode or I'm playing this mode. So it's just a really simple UI because, yeah, everybody's taking a screenshot of their QR code at this point and fumbling around or forgetting, oh, crap, I'm not logged in yet. Let me do this. It's just almost every, like 99% of the pinball I play is in my house. So the fact that I've logged them in and I'm done, like it's just, it's awesome. I mean, truly, it's so good. We wish it would have been there from day one, but, hey, I'm glad it's there now. so if anybody's holding out for some reason just if you have Insider Connect update your games you're going to enjoy it I'm just waiting for weekly challenges or monthly challenges like a new achievement list or something like that to do not just high scores but like do this or whatever in the game it was kind of weird it was like Mandalorian was just forgotten about and then they just skipped right over it to go to Jurassic Park There was no announcement that, like, who won. Because that little thing that we hinted at last podcast. We hinted at last podcast. It doesn't matter now, but what it was was co-op games worked. So you could play a four-player co-op game and blow it up with 12 balls, a four-player co-op game, and then save your high score. So we had heard one of our friends in the TPN Discord, they just tried it, and boom, number one score. so I think they had I don't know if they allowed that or pulled it or what but I agree it's right now they have Insider Connect you know oh during this event if you play a game at this show you'll get a badge but it would be cool if like hey during this month if you get this achievement you get a badge and it's only available this month like that would be potentially enough of a reason for me to go play it at an arcade just oh there's an extra Deadpool badge and I can't earn it any other way. Like, let me go try to earn it on location to do whatever.
    121:09
    But I'm excited. I mean, maybe we'll just go straight into – What's the end goal for this Insider Connect, Joel? That's what I'm saying. Be all connected, Tom. That's what I'm saying right here. Let's just go right into this.
    121:24
    Tom, Tom. He's got nothing to say. Tom, Tom. He's got nothing to say. Tom, Tom. I was about to say, you better have these sensor buttons ready to go. So, Tom, I know you have some strong opinions about Insider Connected. After the most recent code release of all this new stuff, what are your current views on Insider Connected? Do you feel it's where it needs to be, or what do you want for the future of Insider Connected? So in the future, I would like to see head-to-head competition. But not only that, I'd like to see kind of what they're doing with the heads-up challenges, where they have four females, four males compete for a new-in-box turn. but they do the time modes and they do challenges. I want to see that implemented.
    122:34
    I want to be able to play somebody else and, you know, not just do just a regular game. I want to be able to go, okay, let's do this challenge and let's compete and let's see who can get it the fastest.
    122:50
    Yeah. Yeah, but are you saying like, but not locally, because you probably don't have two games there. You're saying some sort of. It would be nice to do it locally, but it would be cool to do it, you know, via a good Internet connection that I don't have, apparently. Yeah.
    123:10
    Well, I mean, any other feelings of where it's currently at? What are your, you know, just let us know. It's a piece of s**t.
    123:18
    No, just kidding. Yeah, I think it's good. I think the achievements are good. I'm just looking for a little more.
    123:28
    All right. I like the home thing. I mean, I think that's great. As of right now, do you feel like it's worth your – because you've added it to multiple games. I've added it to every game I have. And do you feel like it's – as of right now, is it worth the money? As of right now, I would say no.
    123:46
    As of right now, no. Okay. Well, I can't wait, Tom, for the moment. I think it's great for like shows and locations, but as a, as a home buyer, I mean, I, I want to see a little more coming from it. Yeah. And I, I think that's fair. Any, anything else?
    124:13
    No. I got nothing. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom, not only for that, but also just, you know, being here tonight and, you know, sharing your wonderful face and opinions and thoughts with the two of us. What do you want, Travis? So did Venom show up at Comic-Con or no? No, it wasn't there. We'll see. I mean, hopefully August. Hopefully we'll have an August reveal at some point.
    124:51
    I think they've – I think Zach on TPS or somebody talked about the schedule coming up. And, I mean, there's a big gap in the schedule sometime soon. So they're either going to fill it with more Godzilla or they're going to make something new. Maybe they're going to vault Godzilla. Vault? Yeah, you got the point of vaulting it, yeah. But hopefully soon. I mean, we're kind of – we're at a weird point. You know, there was a lot of Toy Story hype, Toy Story's out. I think a lot of people have already made their mind up on Toy Story, even though they haven't played it. I would still encourage you guys to say give it a shot. But, you know, the hype of even Weird Al is not really being discussed, even though those are coming out. There was new code, like Halloween Ultraman got new code. That's not, I don't feel like that's being discussed too much. There was new Rick and Morty code, Tom. You have Rick and Morty. That was exciting. No, there's no new Rick and Morty code yet. I thought it just came out. No, they just announced it. It was like today. Oh, it was? On Facebook. Yeah. You don't follow Spooky's Facebook page? No. Well, Tom's pumped. Okay, he's ready. He's fired up. I knew there was beta code, but I didn't want to say anything. Yeah. That makes sense. That's good. Texas Canyon is still trickling out. Zach's mentioned that a few times, like waiting on toppers. I don't know. There's a lot kind of – I feel like we're just kind of in a weird, I don't know, weird spot of kind of a – I don't know. Well, seeing how it's possible that the next game might be announced before we do another podcast, what do we want to see? Let's just pretend that it is Venom. Like, we don't know that for sure, but we'll just pretend that it is. We're just going to react to the title. What do we want to see out of it? Do you guys want to see the movie version or the comic book version? 100% comic book. See, that's what I want to see, personally. 100% comic book. I'm fine with Zombie Eddie or somebody else, but comic book. Now number two. Do you guys want to see, let's say it's Brian Eddy, do you guys want to see another fan layout? Or do you want to see something dynamic? Well, dynamic. I don't want a fan layout. And the only reason I say that is I owned a Shadow and I freaking loved it. I want to see a three-flipper or four Brian Eddy game. I know Brian Eddy can design a good three-flipper game. So give me another one of those, please.
    127:13
    Cool. That's all the questions I had. That's how good I am. Two solid questions. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I just, that's, give me good art. Give me something unique. Don't give me another, please don't give me another fan layout. Let's just, let's say it would be a fan layout. Let's just pretend it would be. What would they even put up the middle? I don't know. The problem is Venom, you think of Venom, you think of essentially his head open with his tongue out, kind of like the Kiss sculpt. Oh, crap. Don't give me that. Oh, crap. You just figured it out. I know. Crap. I didn't even think of that. I know. But that's basically what you think of. Oh, yeah. Well, maybe they could do something like maybe the tongue comes out as like a ramp up into the mouth, and that's where your ball walk is. Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones have one where the tongue came out? I thought so. Because of the ramp? I don't know. I don't remember. I just remember Mick on a stick. I just don't want another family out. I just don't want another family out with a bash toy or something. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I kind of want to see something with, I mean, because I played Shadow a few times just this past week too, and that's what I was thinking while playing it. I was just like, you know, this is a lot of fun. Like, don't get me wrong, Stranger Things is fun to play, but it's just thinking about the different types of shots there could be and just being able to send the ball horizontal and being able to find jackpots or loops. I mean, that's just a little time fun. Give me the Shadow Diverters again. Those are so great. The user control. And I'll just, I mean, props to diverters on a ramp, period. I know Rush obviously had one. Toy Story has one. I really like that. You shoot the left ramp, and depending on what's going on, it's going to either feed the left flipper or the right flipper. The game behind you has one. Well, not the game that you have, but the premium has one. Oh, Turtles, yeah. But I just love that. Just the reality is the state-changing mechs. Anything that, depending on where you're at or what's going on, the ball's going to go in a different place, depending on what, like, Godzilla obviously has that with the building. Give me more of those. Give me more state-changing mechs. So I think diverters on ramps are awesome. I think Travis would agree with me not to do the same diverter from Turtles Premium. Yeah, don't do that. My graveyard next to me is still leaking. It's one of the main reasons I have no interest in getting a premium or upgrading to the premium. But I think that's it. I think that's it for our list. We crushed it, guys. Yeah. Well played. We're going to go ahead and do plugs, and that's where, Tom, you can talk about what's coming up here. Yeah, we've got a lot of tournaments coming up at District 82 next week, Wednesday night, Thursday night. And then there's Beat the Clock on Wednesday. There's eight Fair Strikes on Thursday. And then we have the big summer pinball classic at District 82 from Friday to Sunday, there's going to be two certified tournaments with finals. So it's going to be pretty exciting. A lot of fun. We're going to stream it all.
    130:23
    Nice. And I appreciate that you do that. That way we all can watch from afar. Travis, you want to make something up that you can plug? I actually do have something to plug. What? Thank you. Yeah. So hopefully, depending on when this podcast comes out, because we're recording on Thursday, So may miss it. But this Saturday, just in case, on August 6th, I'm playing down in a tournament in Oklahoma City for a critical hit tournament. I'm sure that will be streamed on Twitch at try2tilt underscore pinball. Cool. And then, of course, we got, what, District 82 coming up that Tom's already talked about. And then we'll have New York City the week after that. That will be backhand pinball, I believe. I believe so. Yep. and then yeah I think that's about all I got and then you guys can catch me here on the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast yes and then yeah I have I stream every Wednesday night from 10 to midnight on the Pinball Network so check me out there and then every other Thursday I stream for Flippin' Out on that channel and had a lot of fun so I'll be streaming next Wednesday we'll be doing another chatting stream you can catch all those if you've miss them live, those all go up on YouTube on the Pinball Network. And then next Thursday I'll be streaming some more Toy Story. So maybe that'll be the day I get the Wizard Mode. Maybe not. But, yeah, appreciate everybody that listens to these.
    131:47
    And, yeah, we have some ideas, potentially some art options or logo changes coming up. So, I don't know, buckle up. If there's anything, we've talked about merch or anything. If there's anything that we can do for you as a listener, feel free to email us at tripledrain at gmail.com. but otherwise we're just going to keep sitting here staring at each other and talking about pinball. That's apparently that's what we do best. Yeah. All right. Travis, you got anything? You're good. I think you're good. I'm great. I, like I said, fantastic podcast, firm handshakes all around, did pretty well. I hope those comfies do you guys well. Yeah.
    132:27
    All right. Well, Tom, like always, you got the last words. Good night. Mother.