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Episode 77 – Darth Balls

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·held·Feb 8, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Tim Sexton joins Stern as software engineer; industry news roundup covers game announcements and code updates.

Summary

The Slam Tilt Podcast announces that Tim Sexton (known as 'Tim Balls' in the community) has been hired by Stern Pinball as a software engineer, starting immediately. The hosts discuss news from This Week in Pinball including American Pinball acquiring the Oktoberfest trademark, Spooky Pinball's Alice Cooper license, AC/AC/DC (Pro Vault Edition) details, and intense praise for Total Nuclear Annihilation game. The episode also covers code updates, competitive tournament dynamics, and community gossip.

Key Claims

  • Tim Sexton has been hired by Stern Pinball as a software engineer, starting Monday

    high confidence · Ron Hallett (host) states this will be announced by Stern tomorrow (Tuesday), sourced from Zach Sharpe

  • Stern internally called for more programmers due to code situation concerns mentioned on Pinside

    medium confidence · Greg Pavarelli (guest) states 'Stern is concerned about the code situation' and there was an edict to hire more software developers

  • American Pinball has acquired the rights/trademark to the term 'Oktoberfest'

    medium confidence · Ron Hallett cites This Week in Pinball, notes this doesn't necessarily mean an Oktoberfest pinball game will be made

  • AC/AC/DC (Pro Vault Edition) has removed the drummer from the playfield due to his criminal history

    high confidence · Ron Hallett discusses the drummer who 'attempted to hire someone to kill somebody' and was dropped from the project

  • Spooky Pinball's Total Nuclear Annihilation has sold more units than any previous Spooky game

    medium confidence · Greg Pavarelli states 'they've already at least committed to sell more of these than Spooky has in any of their other games'

  • No one has yet completed the final reactor explosion in Total Nuclear Annihilation; Bowen was closest

    high confidence · Greg Pavarelli cites direct conversation with Scott Denise (Spooky designer)

  • Stern is coming out with three games per year and remastering classic titles

    medium confidence · Greg Pavarelli praises Stern for 'coming out with three games a year and then bringing back a game that everybody loves'

  • Jersey Jack Pinball's Pirates of the Caribbean game will feature extremely complex rulesets with thousands of choices

    medium confidence · Head to Head A A Pinball Podcast interview with Eric M. (designer) discussed the extensive rule complexity

Notable Quotes

  • “Tim Sexton has accepted and is now working at Stern as a software engineer. He started today, this Monday.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ early in episode — Major announcement of significant personnel move in the industry

  • “I gotta hand it to Stern, hiring Keith, hiring Zach, hiring Tim. I think getting some really strong players is the best thing for pinball.”

    Greg Pavarelli @ post-announcement — Commentary on Stern's strategy to hire top competitive players as designers/developers

  • “I was so stoked for Tim and I'm super happy for him and he deserves it. I promised myself I wouldn't get all teary eyed on this but you know I'm gonna miss the guy.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ post-announcement — Emotional reaction to Tim's departure from the competitive scene

  • “Stern is concerned about the code situation... there was an edict from inside the company to get more programmers. Tim's name came up from within the company.”

    Greg Pavarelli @ mid-discussion — Insider perspective on Stern's internal decision-making around code quality

  • “They have a huge hit on their hands with total nuclear annihilation. I think that's increasingly apparent.”

    Greg Pavarelli @ TNA discussion — Industry sentiment on Spooky's commercial success with TNA

  • “In the beginning looking at the playfield and the price I was skeptical... but watching the videos I am intrigued, I'm hungry to play it... I have shifted.”

    Greg Pavarelli @ TNA discussion — Sentiment shift on Total Nuclear Annihilation from skeptical to enthusiastic

  • “I haven't got to play it as much as I would like, but it's certainly an improvement. I like that you can continue modes and the mode values have more shots.”

    Greg Pavarelli @ code update discussion — Positive feedback on Batman 66 code updates

  • “I now have no issues with the remastered sound. After putting it on my stereo system and cranking that Karl stream, listening to that, got no problems with it.”

Entities

Tim SextonpersonGreg Pavarelliperson[name withheld pending review]personBruce NightingalepersonKeith ElwinpersonStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyAmerican Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Tim Sexton, elite competitive player and top 100 IFPA-ranked player, hired by Stern Pinball as software engineer, indicating Stern's strategy to recruit championship-level players into design/development roles

    high · Ron Hallett announces 'Tim Sexton has accepted and is now working at Stern as a software engineer. He started today, this Monday.' Confirmed via Zach Sharp advance notification. Greg Pavarelli contextualizes as part of broader Stern strategy alongside Keith Elwin and Zach Sharp hires.

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern Pinball's internal assessment that code quality is a concern; company issued internal edict to hire additional software engineers/programmers to address backlog

    medium · Greg Pavarelli states 'Stern is concerned about the code situation' and 'there was an edict from inside the company to get more programmers.' Notes Tim Sexton was recruited specifically via internal recommendation.

  • ?

    code_update: Batman 66 receiving frequent code updates with improved mode structure, shot values, and continued mode options; community perceives positive trajectory

    high · Greg Pavarelli: 'Is it me or do they seem to be coming out very frequently now? I think they're finally really knocking them out. I haven't got to play it as much as I would like, but it's certainly an improvement.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Pinball executing strategy to release 3 new original games per year alongside annual classic game remasters/vault editions, diversifying product pipeline

    high · Greg Pavarelli: 'The fact that Stern is doing these vaults and these repros is awesome because they're coming out with three games a year and then bringing back a game that everybody loves.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.317

0:00
See this, butt head! What a happy coincidence. We were just rapping about the need to recruit new members for our men's group. Would you like to join us? Uh, no. Come on guys, it's a really super way to express your masculinity in a nurturing all-male environment. With no women around, we're free to be ourselves without fear of seeming sexist or offensive. And we let off some steam to avoid channeling our male anger towards women into greed, destructiveness, or other male problem areas. And that's important, especially today as we men wrestle with our manhood. Beaver thruffles with his manhood. Yeah, I usually win.
0:52
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam-Killed Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host Ron Hallett, here with my co-host Bruce Nightingale.
1:04
What a great Super Bowl! What a great Super Bowl. I would like to personally congratulate the New England Patriots on their great effort. Now let's move on. Notice how we didn't mention the winner there.
1:17
No, because we don't mention winners. It's your Godzilla movies. Oh no. Come on, Godzilla. Yes. I'll leave that up to you then. Godzilla. Yep, definitely Godzilla. Okay. People are probably wondering like, what does that have to do with anything? You mentioned it once and then you mentioned it at the end and you never talk about the movie at all. We do it once in a while. Once in a while. It's our thing. And plus we talk about it like during the music. We'll do, we'll throw in some music and some clips, you know, clips but like our comments about it. Mm-hmm. But we're not alone this week. No. We have a returning guest, Mr. Greg Pavarelli, who is now in the top 100. What's up guys? Thanks for having me back, despite my lack of knowledge of lethal weapon movies. Well, that's a gift for everybody. I don't think it's a much popular genre of movie. If I recall, the last time I was here we were on Bond, which I have seen them all. That's a good boy. There you go. That's a great thing. But Greg is part of the New York City scene. You know, the best city on earth. A land far, far away from beautiful Rochester. But I will be visiting. Yes, you will. And we'll get to that and other things. But we have a reason why Greg is on. I live my life without reasons usually. We're reasonless. Maybe Bruce will tell me what the reason is. Oh my god. We had special news, remember? We had a scoop. Oh, we're doing that. Okay. We're doing it right off the bat. We're doing it right off the bat. All right. Well, yes, we have breaking news.

Spooky Pinball third game will not be announced for Texas Pinball Festival

medium confidence · Greg Pavarelli notes 'the third game is not going to be announced for Texas' and they'll have to wait to hear about Queen

  • Greg Pavarelli is now ranked in the IFPA 100

    high confidence · Ron Hallett introduces Greg as 'now in the top 100' and Greg later mentions being ranked 98th

    • Greg Pavarelli @ TNA sound discussion — 180-degree opinion reversal on Total Nuclear Annihilation's remastered audio

  • “99% of the leaks are from outside Stern... licensors will just post on their site Stern Pinball as the licensee and oh, okay.”

    Greg Pavarelli @ game leak discussion — Commentary on how game announcements typically leak to the industry

  • “Tim Sexton went for his interview the tickets he had were from LaGuardia to Chicago... he rented it through IBM... rented it drove down to LaGuardia because it was cheaper than paying for parking there.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ late in episode — Anecdote about Tim Sexton's efficient travel planning for Stern interview

    • Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Scott Deniseperson
    Eric Meunierperson
    Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
    AC/DC (Pro Vault Edition)game
    Pirates of the Caribbeangame
    Batman 66game
    Guardians of the Galaxygame
    Zach Sharpeperson
    Karl DeAngeloperson
    Bowenperson
    Pinsideorganization
    This Week in Pinballorganization
    Twippies Awardsevent
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    $

    market_signal: Total Nuclear Annihilation experiencing exceptionally strong commercial demand; exceeded sales of any previous Spooky Pinball title despite higher price point

    medium · Greg Pavarelli: 'they've already at least committed to sell more of these than Spooky has in any of their other games.' Also: Initial skepticism about price/playfield has shifted to enthusiastic demand after gameplay videos and streaming.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community sentiment on Total Nuclear Annihilation reversed from skeptical (re: price/value ratio) to highly enthusiastic after gameplay exposure and high-quality streaming content

    high · Greg Pavarelli: 'In the beginning looking at the playfield and the price I was skeptical... watching the videos I am intrigued, I'm hungry to play it... I have shifted.' Also: '180 flip' on remastered audio quality after hearing on quality streaming with home theater system.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jersey Jack Pinball's Pirates of the Caribbean intentionally designed with extreme rules complexity (thousands of choices) intended to be perfectly balanced to prevent meta-dominant strategies

    medium · Head to Head Pinball Podcast interview with designer Eric M. discussed attempting to avoid Game of Thrones model where one/two houses dominated; Pirates will feature unlimited rule choice with mandatory character lock in multiplayer for balance.

  • ?

    venue_signal: Multiple NYC competitive players investing effort to bring Total Nuclear Annihilation into New York City venues; operators tracking game success for routing decisions

    medium · Greg Pavarelli: 'I tried to convince the owner of Sunshine and Al, the guy that owns a lot of the games in New York City, to both buy one. I'm hoping we get at least one because it looks awesome.'

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern Pinball official Guardians of the Galaxy toppers now available through authorized retailers; appears to be standard character topper without interactive features

    high · Announcement notes 'Guardians of the Galaxy official toppers are now available from Stern Retailers.' Ron notes it's 'just like the one from four months ago' and 'just the character is like in black silhouette' without lighting features.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Greg Pavarelli elevated to IFPA Top 100 ranking (98th at time of recording); indicates strong tournament performance across upstate New York and NYC competitive scenes

    high · Ron Hallett: 'We have a returning guest, Mr. Greg Pavarelli, who is now in the top 100.' Greg later states 'I'm ranked 98th' and notes he earned 14 WPPR points at Buffalo pre-tournament.

  • ?

    leak_detection: Industry game announcements typically leak via licensing partners/IP holders posting Stern as licensee on their websites before official Stern announcement; only ~1% of leaks originate internally from Stern

    medium · Greg Pavarelli: '99% of the leaks are from outside Stern... licensors will just post like on their site Stern Pinball as the licensee.' Notes Jersey Jack Pirates of the Caribbean details leaked via Fender (manufacturer of cabinet parts).

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Spooky Pinball Total Nuclear Annihilation approaching completion of final difficulty tier; no player has yet successfully blown all 9 reactors; Bowen was closest competitor

    high · Greg Pavarelli: 'when I was chatting with [Scott Denise] directly, has anyone done it? And he said no. Bowen was the closest the other day.' Notes if Karl DeAngelo completes it, he'll be first.

  • ?

    announcement: American Pinball has acquired or secured trademark rights to the term 'Oktoberfest'; does not confirm planned Oktoberfest pinball game

    medium · Ron Hallett cites This Week in Pinball: 'American Pinball. They bought the rights to the term Oktoberfest. That doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be an Oktoberfest pinball, but they just grabbed it.'

    • 3:24
    Yes, and we're going to get to that right now. Hold on. I just got an email from Tim. Who? Tim Sexton. Come on, Tim. Oh, God. What's he want? You don't talk to us anymore, man. He's too good for us. Yeah, he's all secretive and stuff. Okay. He sent me an email with an mp3 on it. Uh oh. And it says, play this during the show. Uh oh, so it's like, whoa. Okay. Oh my. So, alright. What do you think? Just play it now. Get it out of the way. Yeah, let me, let's get it out of the way. Let's get the Tim Balls thing out of the way. Alright, hold on. I'm gonna mute myself so you can hear Tim Balls at his best. At his best. Hopefully you can all hear it. Here we go.
    4:12
    You're fulfilling your destiny, Tim Porrs. Become my apprentice. Learn to use the dark side of the ball. I will do whatever you act. Good. So she helped me save Pinball's life. I can't live without her. To achieve death is the power of the one who has achieved. But if we work together, I know we can discover the secret. I pledge myself. To your teachings. Good. Good.
    5:25
    The force is strong with you. A powerful software engineer you will become. Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth... Vals. Thank you, my master.
    6:06
    I just want to know if Tim is Vader, who's Palpatine? I think that is maybe his new boss. Yeah, he's Darth Balls now. And this leads us into our big announcement. Space Balls! Sorry. No, Space Balls is not coming out. So, our news is, and this is going to be announced by Stern tomorrow, we're recording on Monday. So if if Zach Sharp was not correct and this is not being announced tomorrow then I'm gonna have to cut all this and I'll be really pissed. He's pretty punctual. He is pretty punctual. But Tim Sexton has accepted and is now working at Stern as a software engineer. You may know them as programmers, however you want to call it. He started today, this Monday. So, what do you guys think? Pretty exciting opportunity, I would think. I couldn't be happier for the guy and as someone that loves Stern, I know that he's going to do great. I think it's going to be great for all pinball players. Good, good, good, excellent, excellent.
    7:18
    He will actually make the rules better because he is very deep and he likes to pick apart rules. I cannot wait. Yeah, I mean, I gotta hand it to Stern, hiring Keith, hiring Zach, hiring Tim. I think getting some really strong players is the best thing for pinball. Working for them is gonna only help everybody. Totally agree. So congratulations, Mr. Tim Balls. Yeah. Yeah. Nice work, Timmy.
    7:45
    Unfortunately, we will miss you. Unfortunately, yes. The unfortunate part is he can no longer be on the podcast without... Well, he has to get approval. Yes. He's had the worst kept secret ever for the last couple of weeks, but he hasn't been able to say anything or appear on the podcast. So now we have Pinballs 2.0, Greg Pavarelli, Bigger, Better, Faster, Drunker, and slightly less WAPA points. I am excited for the opportunity. It's big shoes to fill, but I will gladly be here, guys. Excellent. We'll bring the bourbon. Oh, yes. And by the way, Bruce, more buttons. More buttons? Yep. Tim wants to put more buttons. We're gonna add two buttons. Oh, fuck. It's gonna be like track and field. You're gonna love it. Oh, fuck. Am I the only one that's like imagining Tim facing Kenobi one day? The circle is now complete. When I left I was but the learner, now I am the master. Only a master evil, Dark Balls. You said balls. I just want to say on behalf of Stern, I know contrary to what you may hear on Pinside, Stern is concerned about the code situation. Yes. And there was an edict from inside the company to get more programmers. They called them software developers. And Tim's name came up from within the company. So they actually called him. I wonder how that call was. Hello, this is Jerry Stern. I wonder if you'd like to join our company? You have my number already. Call me back.
    9:36
    That's true. So yeah, he got to go. And I can't say everything, obviously, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor presidential candidate a Nikola Nikola consul general L diywre chociaż pasーツ before tv1 interview's and and he had to do the group interview worry cat growth season so it's really hard to get a job there yeah mean they take the preceding statistics and he was a retired of ideas which i think that's what they're looking for testament please not have a shortage of his ideas yeah and you know I he was obviously one of the help to this most pertinent players competing right now and the fact that you re works in this field You know he's going to carry that passion into the heart of Stern every day. You know what sucks, Bruce? We now, we have someone, and I still consider him part of the SLAM crew, I don't care, that's like as close, as inside as you can possibly be, and we still won't know anything. Yep.
    10:30
    But he did ask me for my inside source, and I said, I ain't telling you. Wow. Already Monday, he already knows every game now. All the conjecture, all the guessing, he knows what all the games are going to be. Well, come on, guys, you know how this works. You have to avoid temptation. You can't even bear to ask such questions. I've never asked that about him. No. And honestly, 99% of the leaks are from outside Stern. I know. And like even, what was it, the Jersey Jack, the Pirates, wasn't it like the fender that made the plier? Yes. Leaked it and that was it, you know, so and they're usually like licensors will just post like on their site Stern Pinball as the licensee and like oh, oh, okay. Yeah. You know, I take these things with a grain of salt anyways. When I hear rumors, I don't ever really commit to them. You know, if you want to see the new game go to Expo. Or Texas. Yeah, I'll be in Texas, guys. Wow, everyone's going to Texas this year. My schedule is busy. I will be a busy, busy boy on the Stern Pro Circuit. My fiancé might not be too happy about my ongoing bills with flying, but I am excited. Oh boy, don't get her too angry. Don't have an ex-fiancé. Not bad. I think she said I can't get married to her until I qualify for Papa, so... You can qualify for Papa D anytime. Ooh! Wow! Actually, they won't let me play. Jesus. So, congratulations, Tim Balls, Tim Sexton. Yes, Timmy. No, now it's Darth Balls. He's graduated. Darth Balls. So, our listeners, when you're out there playing a new Stern game, and if you see TSX in the high score table, that will be Timmy. The only thing I ask, Tim, is a secret flipper code for us. Yeah, they can't do that. It might be tricky. They don't do that sort of thing. They still do flipper codes, right? For one person. Eh, you'd be surprised. Next time you guys hang out with Jason, let him show you some stuff on NextGen. It's cool. I like the one that shows all of Steve Ritchie's games up to that point. Ritchie's the best. Yeah, he's, he's, oh god, can you imagine him? Hey, Tim Balls, program this for me now! Make it better. I want another button. My two buttons! I was so stoked for Tim and I'm super happy for him and he deserves it. I promised myself I wouldn't get all teary eyed on this but you know I'm gonna miss the guy I kind of feel like we came up together we started competing at the same time, have run tournaments together, have been close friends and I'm glad that we get to visit him in Chicago you know I'm going to Expo, I'm going to the circuit so at least get to have some slumber parties there. Oh my! I'm getting teary eyed. You might get both. Luckily in all major competitions I've beaten Tim. Woah. Really? Wow. You have to consult the player card for that one. I took him out in two times, two direct times. In the Connecticut State Championship I took him out in another one two times and we've really faced head to head in a tournament. I beat them both. The top 28 people I've played against the most, I've got winning records against most The names that I don't, Bowden, Zen, Timmy, Levy, and Balberto. Not bad company to be losing to. Nope. Timmy definitely lays waste on the local scene over here, so that might be the one thing I don't miss about him. Bye! Have fun in Chicago with the other guys. The ones. Yeah, good luck beating those guys. So, what do we got next on the schedule here? Going to news? Let's go to news. Piece of news. Piece of news. All the news that's fit to print. So let me go over to This Week in Pinball. Hi Jeff. That's all we use. That's what everyone uses. Hi Jeff. So let's see. This Week in Porn. Oh shoot, I got the wrong website. Traveling with interesting people. Damn, wrong one again. This Week in Photo. God, I'm hitting the wrong ones. This Week in Porn. No. Alright. This is why you guys brought me on. Oh, the porn expert, Craig Pavarelli. I dabble. I've been in several features, Ron. Luckily, my porn company, you know, is still doing very well. And what company is that? Think around my video. If it ain't swanky, it ain't my video. God. Up in the class level as always. We have American Pinball. They bought the rights to the term Oktoberfest. Oh, I saw that. Yeah. That doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be an Oktoberfest pinball, but they just grabbed it. Gary Stern is famous for beer and pinball. Yup. Beer and pinball. So, we got Charlie Emery of Spooky Pinball, who was interviewed on that podcast, the guy who made fun of us. Uh, yeah. You guys, you made fun of you guys? Yeah. Yeah, some pinball profile. Some wacky Canadian up there. Yeah. All these foreign, uh, podcasters are going off a little bit now on us. That's another good friend I'll be seeing this weekend. Hi. Hi, Jeff DeOvis. You made fun of me. Time for another pinball profile. Upstate edition. Yes. So, he interviewed, yeah, Charlie from Spooky Pinball. They were talking about Alice Cooper. Uh, the other thing I found interesting, they were talking about other licenses. Yeah. When I heard things like Friday the 13th, Godzilla, Godzilla would be awesome. I already like the first version of Godzilla, honestly. Well, that's not really Godzilla. See, that's American Godzilla, that doesn't count. Oh, you want Japanese Godzilla? I want Toho Godzilla. Alright. I want all the cool, like, Mechagodzilla, they could have them all on the, like, inserts for them all, it'd be awesome. They could, like, Iron Man, you collect all the different monsters or something, I don't know. That would be cool. And there was a Houdini, I think we talked about this last week, Houdini pinball review. I'm looking forward to that one because we're going to showcase it at Sunshine League. And that's going to be in Texas also, I believe. Ooh, I heard that game's tough. Tight shots. It is tight, especially on the right shot there, the one that leads to the lock. It's very, very narrow. Personally, as frustrating as that could be for a casual player, at the end of the day, Today, forcing yourself to get the timing down and find shots is challenging and fun in its own way and it makes you better. We also have the first picks, actual picks, because they were just using stock photos last time, of Lucy came out. Interesting looking at the playfield. The only real changes are the drummer that tried to hire someone to kill somebody is not there anymore, obviously. And the insert, the huge, hell clear insert is now actually removable. So now there's like a black border around it so you can take it out. I'm excited to see ACDC around more. It's a great game. The fact that Stern is doing these vaults and these repros is awesome because they're coming out with three games a year and then bringing back a game that everybody loves. It's just, you know, the more of those titles you see around the better. Yes, I see they changed the spacing a little bit too because then they removed the drummer. And then the plastics are a little different also. That was one dumb drummer. I didn't even hear about that. You said he has criminal charges? Oh yeah, yeah. Well, he attempted to hire someone to kill somebody. I think the person he attempted to hire was actually undercover. Somehow he got off. Somehow. But it's still... Then he got in trouble for something else and they just dropped him. Those well-known Australians. Cut ties. Goodbye. You had the best gig ever and you blew it twice. He blew it in the 80s. It made me think, like, what if you wanted to not lose to someone in a tournament and you didn't put on a hit on them per se, but you just got someone to distract them enough that they had to leave? Is that the Tanya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan thing? Yeah. Just take out their knee, waaaaah. You smash their hand. Waaaaah. You just smash their hand. Someone should have done that to Tadman. It's happening. There you go. Yes. He can grab it and say, what? Oh god, more deeproot. I'm sick of deeproot already. I am just so sick of it. The five days of deeproot. No. No, I'm not going into the five days of deeproot. We're getting deeprooted already. Deeprooted. Highway, it looks like the third game is not going to be announced for Texas. Really? So we're going to have to wait a little longer to hear about Queen. And now the first two titles are actually the reversible playfield titles in Alien and, um, what was the first one called? Why am I blanking? And I'm blanking too, it's a bet. Full Throttle. Full Throttle, yeah, so those are the two that you could flip over if you own both. You could replace the playfield, yeah. Right, and they're not going to continue that model of the entire same cabinet, are they? They have not said yet. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a conventional sized game, the next one. Yeah, I didn't really play much Alien. It was at Buffalo the last time I was at the Billiards Place and Pocketeer, but it wasn't working. But I do really like Full Throttle. I don't know how everybody else feels about it, but you know, for me it's enjoyable. I don't dislike it. Yeah, sometimes you get those four ball multiballs when you stack and it gets really fun. The Yeah, I, I, honestly, I found a shot better than Alien. Yeah. Probably gonna get hate mailed for that, but. I agree, it does shoot better than Alien. Yeah, I thought it shot better. I try to be open-minded with games, but, you know, my opinions are what they are. Shots aren't good, shots aren't good. We had an interview with Eric, and I'm just gonna say M. Eric M., the designer of Pirates of the Caribbean, I was interviewed on that other podcast that makes fun of us, insults us, and rips us off. Ooh, scandalous. I'm not even sure which one you're talking about. The Head to Head Pinball Podcast. Yes, they do. You gonna go into that, Bruce? How do they rip us off? No. Well, they just, they have a new segment called, uh, Slam, I think it's called Slam the Top 100, where they go, they pick a game out of the Top 100 from, I guess, Pinside, and they go head to head against each other. Hmm, that sounds familiar. That sounds very familiar. Wow. Oh well. Fail. You know. Yeah. Just feel flattered boys. Yes, I feel flattered. I feel flattered. And they had a very in-depth interview with Eric and when they got into the rules section, man, I just lost. Yeah, I'm a rules guy and having that many choices confuses me. I'm just, when they started really getting deep into the rules, I just started zoning out. I'll sit you down, I'll explain Star Wars to you in detail in five minutes, but I don't know about five billion choices. What do you think, Bruce? Too complicated? Or just not complicated enough for you? Not compl- as long as there's, they, if they get rid of the button, it'll be a perfect game. You know what I think, Phil? If you give people thousands and thousands of choices, they're still gonna find the two that are the strongest and keep doing them. Yes, of course, just like they do with the... So then you're just wasting coding time. Ah, supposedly they're not. They're gonna... everything's gonna be evened out. Yeah, okay. It's the anti... it's the anti-Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones. They bring that up over and over where you pick like one of two different houses and that's it. Nope, not on this one. It's all gonna be super balanced. The anti-Game of Thrones. Yeah, so people don't pick one or two or three houses, you know, to keep on going. I'm already upset. Well, we are getting one of Pioneers though, so I'll be playing it plenty. The mutants will be on it. Nice. Yeah, it's supposed to be more balanced, and if you're playing a multiplayer game, you can't pick the same character. Yeah, that part I do like. So player one might have an advantage. Yes, exactly. Interesting. Let's see what else we got here. Oh, there was new code for Batman 66. Is it me or do they seem to be coming out very frequently now? Yeah, I think they're finally, they're really knocking them out, I think. Which is good. I haven't got to play it as much as I would like, but it's certainly an improvement. I like that you can continue modes and the mode values have more shots, not just as much about multiball. And I've seen that there's some ways to really make it exponential, which is cool. And then we have Guardians of the Galaxy official toppers are now available from Stern Retailers. Is it a Groot? Is it a Groot topper? Let's see. It says click here for pictures. Let's see what it looks like. No, it's just like the one from four months ago. Yeah, I hope it lights up or something. It's just the character is like in black silhouette. I'm confident that Timmy and crew are going to really progress that game because I think it's got a good platform to be awesome and I like what I see from it so far. They just need to get us to do something other than group and then it's going to have a fun playfield. I really enjoy the layout enough that I think it has a lot of potential. We're assuming Tim's going to be on the Guardians team. He may not. He might just go right for number one. Could be the next game. Well, he did mention the one in that little clippy sign if you noticed. You did, I did. You caught on to that. Yeah, the one. Yes, I did. And the one emailed me. Oh? Okay. He asked me, what days do we record? Hmm. Lost the info. Yes, so maybe we'll get the one on. I'll put it this way. At this current moment, I'm ranked 98th, and by the time this releases, I won't be anymore. Oh my. I'm in the 400s again. Congratulations... Oh. Is that better? Good. Have you gone up? I'm sliding, I'm sliding. I'm sliding, okay, I'm congratulating you. How many points did you get for the pre-tournament at Buffalo that you crushed us all at, Bruce? 14. Well, that's not bad. Nope, not bad at all. I was very happy with it for an upstate. That was pretty good besides going forward. I gotta say, a lot of my New York City brethren and sisters were skeptical of going all that distance to just play in a, you know, two days with a pinball, but I really enjoyed Game On Land. They had great games and they did a good job. The Buffalo guys really did good. Yes, they did. Congrats to Nick and Kevin. They did, and Jamie does a great job keeping those games up to snuff. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get the $7 in credits I have on that pay system to somebody else. When you get back, when you come back. Because they'll probably have that system probably, I bet you, at the BPSO. Oh yeah, that's right. The BPSO? Buffalo Pinball Summer Open. Oh! Let me say, I am flying to Buffalo from now on. I'm driving to Rochester this weekend, but flying to Buffalo is worth it. Well, you can get direct flights, so... Yeah, that's the easy thing. Yeah, I don't know about Rochester. What's your closest... We have direct flights to JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, so easy. Yeah, I'd never step foot in Newark, so... Ooh, wow. Sometimes it's cheaper. I used to fly to New York City to go in through Newark. I used to sometimes go into Islip. Well here a good airport story When Tim went for his interview the tickets he had were from LaGuardia to Chicago So he rented a vehicle through IBM you know his employer at the time Ooh scandalous Well no he paid for it but he rented it through whatever He rented it drove down to LaGuardia one rental because it was cheaper than paying for parking there Wow. So. Oh my. Yeah. Oh my. So that's it for news, really. I don't have much more. Hey, what about the other new game? Isn't there one missing? Is there one missing? This is a game that's been written totally nuclear. That's been out forever. But everybody's talking about it right now. Yeah, everyone is talking about it. They have a huge hit on their hands with total nuclear annihilation. I think that's coming, it's increasingly apparent. I think they've already at least committed to sell more of these than Spooky has in any of their other games. Good for them and good for Scott. Very much so. I was just casually in the other day and seeing what I could do like to get some Translates signed if and when I get my hands on some if we ever have one in New York City I'd love to do a launch. I uh, I, in the first one to admit, looking at the playfield and the price I was skeptical in the beginning. It looked like it was way too expensive for what we were getting and watching the videos I am intrigued, I'm hungry to play it, it looks awesome, it looks fun. I have shifted and tried to convince the owner of Sunshine and Al, the guy that owns a lot of the games in New York City, to both buy one. I'm hoping we get at least one because it looks awesome. It is awesome. I've played it. And I'll give a shout out to Karl DeAngelo, one of our former guests at IEPinball. Go to twitch.tv slash IEPinball and you can watch. He will be streaming Total Nuclear Annihilation. Um, almost every day it seems, until he blows up reactor number nine. And that would be the first to do it because I asked Scott directly the other day when I was chatting with him, has anyone done it? And he said no. Bowen was the closest the other day. So if Karl gets there, he will be the first. And the stream is the quality you would expect. Oh my god. The best quality ever. I'm a fan of the video, I'm a fan of the sound, so honestly what I did, I played the stream on my home theater system and cranked up the volume. Now I want a TNA. The one time I got to work in the commentary booth on Karl's stuff was Nationals in Vegas. What was that, two years ago? And it was just a treat. I mean, he had the easy click to bring up the players' rankings, best tournament history, faces, pictures. You could do the little squiggly lines like you're Madden. And this was back before everybody else was doing that stuff. And quality is just outstanding. The camera rig is perfect. And I will say I'll do a 180 on this. I now have no issues with the remastered sound. Oh, so you did a 180 flip. I did a 180 flip. After putting it on my uh, my stereo system and cranking that Karl stream, listening to that, got no problems with it. There's so many cool tunes on that game, it's ridiculous. I agree. So what's the, what's the rules on that? I haven't, I've watched it and I think I understand. Okay, here you go. Here are the rules. Ready? This is the greatest rule set ever. This is why I love it. Basically, what it is, is there's three targets that are composed of grid, grid of nine inserts. So you got to complete the grid. Once you complete the grid, the reactor is ready. You hit the scoop, turns the reactor on, you go up to that top area and just hit stuff. And it will bring... To a hundred? To a hundred. It will bring your reactor critical, which will then light one of a few, depending on where you are, random shots. It increases. Like the first reactor will just be one random shot. Then as it gets harder, it will be two, three, four. And you have to hit them all... Pop them from the right. Yeah. You have to hit them to blow up the reactor. And the only other thing really is the multiball, which is you block two balls and you hit the Drop target, releases three of them, and then you try to do the other stuff, usually. But there is jackpots, which is the same shot. You just hit it, set jackpot, double jackpot, triple jackpot, and then a super jackpot. From what I gather, the multiball, you want to use it to short every action. Yes, and they do the old school rule where everything is, if you have two balls in a play, it's double. Three balls in a play, triple. Oh, the reaction value. If you get a super jackpot, you get an add a ball, so you get 4x. So you get 4x the reactor value. Plus the reactor value can be built up with that upper section by hitting the 1, 2, 3 targets, which I did not realize. The thing about the multiball that seemed cool too was you get these long ball saves and the lock mechanism is hittable from both a backhand and a forehand and it's a really cool mechanism. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi.
    31:59
    Tilt Cam. Tilt Cam was active. Yeah. I love Tilt Cam. Oh, the Tilt Bob is on camera? Yep. So when he gets a warning, he can look back like, is it still going? Okay, stop, now I can go. That's a whole other depth of like, analyzation, because it's like, wait, what did my slap save do to the Tilt Bob? What did my nudge do to the Tilt Bob? Like, that's deep. Yep. So let's see. What do we want to do next, Bruce? Totally annihilate. Nucleally. Welcome to the Nulleיא Show here on Nulle polevern intuitive electronicsНе dá né não, não dá nem. On this very goodN a I
    32:54
    do All is fair when it comes to theена. This is pin side level stupidity. Yes. I don't... Okay. Here's the deal. Let's give a background here. The Twippy Awards. Remember the Twippy Awards, Bruce? Oh, yeah. I remember that. Remember what you said about the Twippy Awards, how you really wanted to win? No. Actually, no. You didn't say that at all. What did you say? I said, don't vote for us. Hmm. Yeah. And then I would like, oh, really, Bruce? Come on. Don't you want people to vote for us? I don't like popularity contests. And then, and then, what, who did I say I voted for when I was on the Head to Head podcast? Who did I say I voted for, for top podcast? Head. Yeah, Head to Head. I did. Yeah. I said all the stuff. Just, just, just setting that, that background there. Okay. I said that. Okay, okay, got that background. Okay. Very humble, very humble. Okay. Now, the winner of this year's Quippy Award was Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. When have you ever mentioned this podcast on the air before? I mentioned it in episode three. You did? Yes, I did. One time when I said he congratulated us on having a new podcast. That is the only time we have ever said that. So we really were dicks then? Yes. We were dicks, admittedly. We didn't mention it. Nope. We thought it would be a funny little bit, because that's what we do. It's all about fun and comedy. I have nothing personal against Chris, Mr. Kaneda. To be, for full disclosure, I was one of probably his earliest listeners. When he first started doing podcasts, I found him very entertaining. I especially loved his interview episodes. His interview episodes were excellent. I highly recommend any of his interviews. But he would also have episodes where he would basically just personally attack people, Usually pin side people. That was like, okay. And then he would have other podcasts where he would just go batshit crazy. To the point where like, is this dude okay? Does he need help? That's kind of when I stopped listening. I was invited to play as Magic Girl once. Oh? Did, really? Did you? Yeah. Never followed up. Ugh, fail. He made fun of my league once, holding it over him. So, just on behalf of myself, I will personally congratulate Kaneda for winning the 2017 Twippy Award for Best Podcast. Because that is the gold standard of all pinball podcasts. Okay, there's Bruce being a dick, but uh, Bruce is always a dick. But uh, seriously, go check him out. You can decide for yourself. But we found out that, man, he's got some really loyal listeners. Really loyal listeners. And we're waiting him out. Uh, because we got a letter, we got a letter, yeah, we got an email.
    36:18
    And from, from, and a Facebook post, but we'll do it, we'll do it, the email is a little less graphic here. No, I want the full one. Well, no, we'll, we'll, I'll do the Facebook one. But first. NC-17, baby. Yeah, but first, he sent us an email. And we're not going to say his name. He's now a former, former listener, I guess. Yes. God, yes. So, I just heard your twippies recap, and you failed to mention the winner of the best podcast of 2017, which was Kaneda. Instead, you make light of it. If you had won, you would have certainly mentioned it. I can't believe you guys would do that. I have removed your feed from all my devices and will not listen again. I thought you had... Pause, pause, pause. Okay. Yes! Okay, go ahead, continue. I thought you had more class than what you showed. I'm like school on Sunday. Okay, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, what clip do we usually start out the show with? I don't fucking beat you with a butthead. Beat you with a butthead. I mean, they are the very definitions of class. If you guys had class, you would not have asked me to replace Tim. We wouldn't have had Tim if we had class. Oooh. Come on, he calls himself Tim Boss. You're like classy, pretty classy. Twice in one month. I like that. And he obviously didn't feel sending the email was enough. So he felt the need to be more public and posted on our Facebook, which he went off a little bit more. Now I'm going to read this in the voice of Hank Hill. You're so good at this. Because what the hell? All right. Or it could be Tom Anderson if you're thinking Beavis and Butthead. So you guys get all butthurt about the Twippies and can't even mention the winner for podcast of the year? That shows your character, and I can't support your podcast or any social media you produce. I have unsubscribed to your podcast on all my devices, and it's a shame. I thought you had more self-respect. I'll tell you what. I added the I'll tell you what at the end, but... Holy fuck. It's like... wow. I mean, you might as well just close up shop now, right? I know, we're down now to 38 listeners because we lost another one. Literally, you... because they don't mention another podcast, you literally get... I mean, this guy was pissed. You get pissed to the point where it's like, I am unsubscribing from you. And, oh, wait a sec. Other podcasts also did the same thing, which I'm not calling out, not saying anything, but other podcasts did the same thing. So, guess what? In my words, go fuck off, as Bruce would say. So, if you see me at a show, Mr. Unsubscriber, please don't hit me. It was Bruce that said that. I kept saying that. Come try to hit me. I'll laugh. Yeah, he will. Bruce is a pretty strong guy. You should see him deadlift the cheetah out of my car. It's quite impressive. Pinball machines, especially that age, get him all excited. It gets him the extra strength. You got it. And I'll tell you what, Bruce, to continue on this rant, if you will. Oh, let's go, Forbes, baby. Let's go home. I was going to check out the new iTunes, the new stat stuff that they've put in. Oh, yes. Yeah, which really is quite useless because it only works if they're using Apple devices and the newest version, so it shows you almost nothing. But while I was in there, because usually when I don't go to our iTunes site, I don't We're going to look at our reviews. You do more than I do. I have months. And I noticed we have 17 reviews, right? Oh boy, here we go. And like... Drum roll. Yeah. 14 of them are positive and 3 of them are negative. Good. And the thing I find funny is they're 5 stars. So it's a total of 5 stars you can get, right? And like for the ones that liked us, it's like 13 of them were 5 stars and one of them was 4 stars. We're gonna start with the first of the three people who didn't like us. The ones who gave us the pins. Exactly. So, literally, we are either really good or we are the worst podcast ever made. Fuck yeah. You're the Uber Drivers of Pinball Podcast. We are. No, we're Lyft. We're worse. But it's like, do people understand the star system? No, they don't. I mean, one was like, you're boring as fuck. That was the original one. That was like the first one we had. And you know, honestly, I won't... We were. The second one was just like, you know, they talk about the same stuff every week. Like, well, it's kind of a weekly podcast and it's pinball. It's kind of tough to talk about completely different things. But whatever. The third one was a tournament hater. So those are talk about his tournaments. Boy, I think another person who goes to tournaments and talked about it on another podcast, which I do like, the Eclectic Gamers Podcast, Steve Bowden was on there, hi Steve, formal bonus. He mentioned the funny joke about nobody wants to listen to tournaments. Guess what? A lot of our people who listen to us like it. So, and we try to mix it up. empirical evidence would show that tournaments are gaining popularity no they're not no no IFPA is smaller than ever they're shrinking pinberg only sells out in 17 minutes now only 17 minutes how about the 24 hour tournament that sells out in two minutes yeah I'm literally sweating that one because I'm sick to my stomach thinking I might not get in but yes but that means nothing come on because who wants to talk about tournaments People are going about, why are they bashing listeners? We're not bashing listeners, just because these people aren't listeners anymore. But it's like, if you're going to hate us, one star, I mean literally one star is something you give to like, literally the worst podcast. Like if you could barely hear what we were saying or the worst audio quality and the content was complete shit, I could see that. This is why I just don't read any of the stuff, because it's just the stupidity of it. It's like crazy. 99% of our listeners get what we do and enjoy what we do. Yeah. You know what they say gentlemen? Bad publicity is still good publicity. And the way I look at it is this, guess what? You can't please anyone, so guess what? Don't try. The truth is, the truth is, is like all things aside, obviously all three of us would be happy for Kaneda. He's a nice enough guy. No qualms with him personally. I have no qualms with him. I've never met the gentleman of my life. Congratulations on winning. Yeah. Do you want to think it's the best podcast? No. But people have voted. Are we going to be back next week? Not closing up shop over that evening? No, we're not. Oh, no. We just go for it. We add coal to the boiler. I was worried. Make more steam. Coal to the boiler and you can't please, I think you said you can't please anyone before instead of everyone. I'll have to listen to that back, but that could be another Bruce-ism. Remember, you can't please anyone. You can't please anyone. This is from Tim Leonard. Hi guys. Hi Tim. Long time listener and proud first time contributor to the STP mail ball bag. As a former, unfortunately, well he wants it back, World Poker Tour owner and still big fan of the game, I wanted to respond to your questioning the need or value of shooting the drop targets while playing it. Yeah! Here we go. He's going to tell us. I suppose that in a tournament situation, the risk of losing ball control would prevent the typical player from purposely shooting for any of the 16 drop targets the vast majority of the time. However, if you're playing World Poker Tour in a less competitive environment or looking to experience its full gameplay and deep code features, then having the ability to pick off specific drop targets in order to complete the center playfield five-card poker hand inserts ladder is a joy. Not only is it a blast to do, but it also rewards you with Poker Hands Multiball. It completes one of the required elements to qualify for the vaunted World Poker Tour World Championship achievement. Knocking down drop targets is also essential to scoring big points on the Know Your Outs and Chip in a Chair Poker Corner modes. Well, what do you know? Yeah, I mean, I kind of love that email because I do shoot the drop targets on those modes in certain situations, But we used to have a little bit of a side bet game that we would play at my buddy's house, Steve Marsh. He owned a very nice World Poker Tour in his apartment in Manhattan. And we would have side bets for who could get the most of those hands in the middle from the drop targets. And the way to do it would be kind of go for like a baseball shot. You want to ricochet right, center, left. And the recovery and the accuracy on those ricochets was key and it was super fun and a really good way to play the game for fun. And I couldn't agree with this email more.
    45:32
    Finally, my buddies and I used to enjoy playing a fun variation of a World Poker Tour in which the sole objective was to complete more poker hands than your opponent. And gunning down drop targets effectively was critical to winning this.
    45:45
    I was fortunate to purchase a nice World Poker Tour game a few years ago from friend of the show, Raymond Davidson himself. Hi, Raymond. Ooh, World Champion World Poker Tour. And I regret eventually having to sell it, as not only does it have a typically deep Keith Johnson rule set, but I love the theme and World Poker Tour does a great job of integrating it into challenging multi-optional gameplay. Best Tim Leonard. Thanks Tim, that was a great letter. Thank you. That was very well written. I thought that was a Steph letter for a second. Yeah, I share his experience. Yes, World Poker Tour rocks, but we do have one at the bar now, and you both know it. Is it in the main tournament this weekend? It will be. It is one of the 20 games. It's a Darth Balls. It's a Darth Balls World Poker Tour. Oh, you have Timmy's. Grrrr. Uh, what's his name, uh, Ryan bought it. And, uh, he let me use it at the bar, so. So I, I actually have the luxury of saying I played your World Poker Tour before you did, because Timmy got it from Al. It was at Pioneer's bar. I played home matches there. We have another email. This one's from Scott. Because Scott has to correct you. I love this. I don't know. It doesn't seem right. Now, Bruce, you said that on Quicksilver, well, say what you said, what the issue was. Once you get all the Quicksilver letters you get, and you take the drop targets down one more time, you get $75,000 in bonus.
    47:12
    And I thought that if you get multipliers, it multiplies that $75,000. Use your fluency, Geekily Uno and Steady But according to Scott, do you mean the extra bonus 75K in the center? That's never multiplied, just like nine balls extra bonus isn't. Well we need to fix that, then. Yeah. I do agree with that. It needs to be fixed. Scott, get on it. You have a Quicksilver at the bar? I do have Quicksilver at the bar, it's from Runt & Run. Good for you, man, I know I can count on you, Bruce. And it has the enhanced rom set. It does. The enhanced rom set. What does that do? Uh, it, what does it do again? What did we do? It kills all the multipliers. It resets the multipliers, yep, that's right. Oh, so it doesn't carry over, so ball one has less weight. Yes. And it's better for a tournament. Mm-hmm. And also, uh, different sounds for spinners and non-spinners. What is that one? Uh, it's, it's flopped them. Because the, the nice deep hum sound, like, like on Stargazer when you light the spinner and hit it, on Quicksilver, that's the default spinner sound. And when you light the spinner and hit it, you get like more of a regular spinner sound, I would call it. I just thought that was ass backwards. I think my favorite thing about Quicksilver, it obviously is a brutal game at times, but also very fun and skill intensive. I remember playing it specifically at three major tournaments, Papa Classics, PPO, and MAGFest one year. And I recall playing each and every single time differently to get a good score. And that's the virtue of a great game, when you have to play it differently based on the way it's set up. The way it's set up, and there are different ways to score on it. You could shat on certain ones, you should rip the spinners on others, you shoot the targets and try to go for the hole. You know, there's all kinds of ways to play that game. It's great. I'm more than willing to buy you out on it, Bruce, if you ever want. No, no, I guess. I had to get it out of my house. I was getting way too addicted to it. That's why I had it. I told you, you gotta get out of here. Gotta get out of here before it's too late. And you're making money on it too now. Oh, I am? Cool. You're 50% of my . I keep forgetting. Let's get down to the mail ball bag, then I have a special announcement to make about this weekend's tournament. Ooh, okay. So, we have... the pinball princess. Yay! Wow, Bruce. Weekly dose of nightfall. That is the title of the thing. That is what it is. Alright. Dear Ron and Bruce, I would like to say that I, for one, enjoy the previous episode of the podcast. If the content you're producing is jumping the shark or diving under it, then by all means continue to leap over any copies of Baywatch that you come across, or dive under pool sharks, or whatever the hell it is you're doing. I find all of your episodes entertaining, but it's been a while since I laughed as hard as I did the last episode. SAC's assessment of games are razor sharp, concise strikes of judgment that rain absolute mayhem down upon any semblance of order in pinball opinion. And watching or hearing the fallout from those unexpected strikes is hysterical. The immediate and unabashed shows of disdain for beloved classics like Creature from the Black Lagoon and High Speed, in addition to possibly generating some hate mail, were thought-provoking as trying to wrap your head around someone hating a loved game that requires some unorthodox thinking. The jarring nature of these opinions can be distracting, though, too. I had to play a stern Spider-Man shortly after listening to the first half of the podcast, And I would not be surprised if my poor score was partly due to the fact that I still had Zach's unceremonious Spider-Man Sucks introduction ringing in my head, making me laugh all over again. Given how Zach actually speaks, I'm not sure if adding the exclamation point was the right call. For Stop West's side tournament, I have a few guesses as to what the side tournament game could be, Stars. Ooh, she, no, she picked, this is perfect, guys, this is what I want to talk about. So this is the perfect thing. Obvious choice with the current lineup, I think, would be Stargazer since the game is a big draw and the copy at the Silver Ball Saloon plays like a dream. I look forward to getting to play it one way or another in March. There is another game, though, I would love to see as the side tournament. Actually, I would love to see the game, period. I think it would be a great addition to the bar, but it's not like I'm biased towards any particular old Stern or anything. There's no way anyone knows which four-flippered, oceanic 1980 Stern I'm talking about here. Whether this game is there or not, I look forward to seeing which games we'll be playing at Stop West. I will refrain from asking my usual newbie tech questions from last episode. Amazingly, I managed to follow along during the entirety of the repair segment. However, there were a few jokes that went completely over my head. Again, wishing half the field luck in the Upstate Finals, Player 31915, and PS, shout out to Player 164.
    51:58
    And Player 164 is... Robert Byers. So that empties out the mail ball bag. So what was going to be your wonderful announcement? What is the... Now luckily, I am not running the side tournament this weekend. There is a side tournament at the Silver Ball Saloon during the Upstate Finals for all 16 players in the Upstate Finals and anybody else who wants to come and watch and play. It's for a good cause, or great cause as far. Project Pinball, I am going to donate the whole coin drop and Howard's donating half of the entry fee to Project Pinball and the other half will go to the winners of the prize pool for the first and second place. Hopefully they have good morals and donated the Project Pinball also. I know if I win any money I'll donate it. Same with me I already donating the coin drop but I feel like it should go all to Pinball Brothers The game And we will be using this game also in the tournament But it cannot be double dipped. And the game... Stars. You heard it, baby. Fast and brutal, baby. That's more like it. Fast and brutal. Prepare for some stars paying. You know that stars generates money. It does, and I'm gonna pull it out. And Papa Classics? Oh boy. Oh yeah. So I'll be pulling it out of the main lineup, putting it on the side so it's easier for people to pull it out. You said pull it out. Don't stop it. We're supposed to be mature. I know nothing about pulling out, honestly. Oh boy. What is he? He's bored. Come on, we read a letter. I read a thing as Hank Hill. I know. How classy are we? Do we want to do face-off or do we want to do repairs? Repairs. Before we move on, quick question to both of you and I don't mind what the answer is. In a high score tournament on stars, are you going for stars bonus or are you going for rip the spinner? It depends on the rule set too, what the setting is on the... If you complete like originally... That's too. I mean the safe way is the bonus. We're going to, you know, alley pass and get the 2x at least and do that. The spinner strategy, see this is why I actually enabled the 100k shot on mine. I assumed Bruce's was turned off. Mine will have one. One special per game? No, one special per ball. Per ball, okay. So 100k per ball because it gives you a chance. The chance that someone's way behind is kind of more dangerous, but it would give you a shot to make some of that back. I feel, I think it's better for, you know, a multiplayer situation to have that on. I'm sure Scott will send hate mail. Yes, he will. My strategy, actually, lately has been not doing the right spinner. Mine's been the left spinner. Ooh. What? Oh my. Listen. Listen. Yeah, I'm listening. Take the two drop targets down on one bank. Lights it, you take the other drop target down on the other bank, you then light that one spinner for 1k per spin. Yeah, but you can't hit it as hard, and it's way harder to hit. Oh, you can. You can. Well, if you're Bruce, you can. But if you're me, you can't. Yep. And if you missed it, and you hit a drop target, you get your double bonus anyway. Yeah, that makes sense. I like strategies that take advantage of your misses. I definitely appreciate that. I'll give mine and it would be that if the special is set to once per ball, I would only hunt the special once I was already at three or four and I wouldn't get too cute otherwise. But in match play, if I'm trying to get a first or second place, I'm shatting and shooting for double bonus. But if I'm going for a high score, I might start thinking about ripping spinners and going for the special. I agree. So your side tournament's gonna be top four scores out of qualifying move on to a final? Yep, and then the top two take the money. So I will be there. I will say that I'll probably go for special and qualifying, and then once we get to the final four, if I'm lucky enough to make it, if I play well, I'll probably go for shatting and double bonus. Yep, so anyone can come and play that during the tournament. Yeah, you don't have to be in the tournament. You don't have to be in the tournament. You can come and play and donate. We'd love to see that. And a hint to everyone, we're going to have some newscasts hopefully coming there and taking pictures and... Media coverage? Media coverage! I've learned from the best, Mr. Kevin Manning. Stern Army location. Is the Silver Wall Saloon a Stern Army location? It is a Stern Army location. Oh my, we're going to have to take a Stern Army affiliated picture together. Yes, and I'm going to have to hopefully get our dog tags soon. I'm coming up with my teammate, Balberto Santana. Yes you are. He's qualified. Is it weird if we touch the paper cut out of Tim? You can touch it all you want. That's really weird. That's why I asked. Touch me, touch me, I wanna feel your body. Oh, just no, no. Um, repairs. Oh, I got a whole shitload. I got to work on the cheetah finally. I love cheetah. Who doesn't love cheetah? If we're at Rock Fantasy and one of the old games is cheetah, you know that's what I'm thinking. Mm-hmm. So, first, the simpler stuff, well, it turned out to not be simple. The sheet of back glass had like the vendor sticker on it, so getting that off and getting all the glue off, that was actually easy, but then the playfield glass had like tape on it, and man, that did not want to come off. I had to Google on it, scrape it. Man, it was pain in the ass getting that off. That was just the start. Got the head off the cabinet, replaced the power cord, so now we're grounded. That's a good thing. Boo! Oh, bite me. Just vacuumed out the inside of the cabinets. Pretty good shape. I glued the one part that was separating in the back of the, uh, the pedestal. What else did I do? Oh, I replaced the cabinet switches and had something happen that I've never had happen before. I'm replacing the second one. I have it in place and I'm kind of adjusting the feel of the flipper button. There's another good reason to have leaf switches because you can make the flipper buttons feel exactly the way you want them. That's one of the things I like. So I'm fooling around with that and I'm swapping the button over and over and the friggin' switch contact falls off. I'm a brand new switch, yep. Never had that before. Like, I'm hitting it and it just, boop, fell right off. Like, son of a bitch. Now, I hadn't soldered it in yet, that was the positive thing, but that was annoying. I can imagine. Then I went to work on the playfield. I rebuilt one of the three banks. And then I took a look at the friggin' light plate. The grid of 12 lights that sits in front of the one target bank. And as expected, my plate is pretty much wasted. Like every socket turns. Mm-hmm. So none of the lights are gonna work right. So what is a person to do? Get rid of the whole thing and make, just put a, just put angle ones in there. You can't really, it's just not enough room. I know, the metal, I know wood is not enough room. However, I was thinking, you know, this grid looks a lot like the big game grid. It does. So, I still have the big green, you know, the ones I took out when I replaced the, when I replaced the lighting plates with the new PCB ones. So I take it out, I still have them. I fit it and guess what? It lines up. Hallelujah. So I'm not going to use that to replace what I did. I put an order in for more of the PCBs. And I'm going to use that to do nine of them. And then the other three I'm going to use regular sockets. There you go. And it's going to be an extremely tight fit, but I believe I can get it in there. And I got to run... You said tight. I said tight. You can do it!
    61:15
    I'm a veteran of this, having a nine ball. This is basically a smaller version of the same Mac. One of the targets was sheared off and still inside. I ended up, I had a spare target that I must have, I don't know where I got it from, but when I put it in, it was shorter than the other targets. So it had to be one of the repros. Huh. It's one of those pinball resource repros that's a little bit shorter. So I can't have that. So I had to replace it. Now when you say shorter, you mean like visually shorter like from the outside? Yeah, the target is actually shorter. Like when the target is all set. You have to look closely or is it? Nope. If you put all the targets down, one target is like an eighth of an inch shorter than the other one. Oh, yeah, that's not good. No, because it's not flush with the playfield so you can get hot, you know, wear there. And it just... This is straight, Bob. Yeah, and that's another reason, like, you can get brand new 1-5 targets, but they're gonna be shorter, so you're gonna have to use a shim to make them sit up more, and they're a harder plastic and they brick more. And for me, playability is more important than the visual awesomeness. Lookability. Yeah, so it's gonna look like ass, but it's gonna play like a dream. Most important thing possible. Uh-huh? Bricks anger me. I hate bricks. So, let's see, I think that's it for me. How's the dragon fist coming along, Bruce? Uh, well I worked on it with Zach this week. Went over his house and worked on it. We did some light sockets. The flippers are a little weird on that thing. When I'm trying to hit the right spin, the cock spinner, as we like to call it. That's only on mine. I'll have to find one and replace it and beat your spins. When you're hitting the spinner shot, it seems like the flipper dies a little bit. Everything's replaced on it except for the coil, so the only thing I can think of is maybe it's got a burn spot in the inside of the coil, so I'm going to be replacing that coil. Got Tim's World Poker Tour, and it only took two days until it majorly broke. Whoa. Yeah. Did you know Timmy sent you a lemon? Nope, didn't send me a lemon because it's not his anymore. Ryan bought it from Tim and two days later when on location the whole right ramp blew apart. The welds broke, which is a common issue. That's workable though. I pulled it out. I had it fixed the next day and re-welded back up and put it back in the machine and that works. And then one of the drop targets kept on doing like three or four excuse me, three or four resets when it was trying to reset this to one bank. And unfortunately Stern The Wally Winka Show, Knapp Arcade, Bally Williams, Straight Down the Middle, Bally Williams, The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. When you boot up an old Stern in the SB300 soundboards, which is the last version of soundboards, it chimes seven times. It goes bing, bing, bing, bing, all the way up to seven, showing the flashes on the CPU. Well, when I started turning on the machine, it would just have a nice in the background while it was trying to do the chimes. And when it booted up finally, the whole soundboard's going, So, luckily I had to go grab the soundboard out of the nine ball and replace it, and now I have to go order some stuff from Weebly. I gotta order a couple of CPU boards and the soundboard. Think maybe just recap it will fix it? Already done. Didn't do anything. Bummer. Yeah, so repairing the board's like 80 bucks, or a brand new one from Weebly is 130. And since I already have to order Weebly for two CPU boards, I'm going for the whole monty and just go for it all. The whole monty? Oh my. So I'll use my, right now a Stargazer has an Altec CPU board in it, so I'll take that one out, order one for a Stargazer, then Ron can give me the good Ron for a Stargazer. I'll use that Weebly instead. And then I'll put my Altec into Future Spot, which is coming up. And then, uh, what else do I have for repairs? Uh, coin jams, that kind of stuff. Uh, other than that, everything's been running pretty smooth. Props to you both for maintaining your games as well as you do, and also having the dedication to getting ROMs on the older games that you love so much to play even better for all of us. Luckily, Scott is the man for that. Yeah, thanks Scott. Scott C. Bravo, Chad. Scott C. Even though we've said his last name before, I like Scott C. better. Yeah. It's the man of the... International man of mystery. And wrong. Oh my. I know you guys are gonna laugh at me for even bringing up Buck Rogers, but I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to learn how to fix games, but the thing hasn't had an issue with it yet. No matter how much I play it, nothing breaks. But you heard it here first, folks. If you'd like to buy my Buck Rogers, you can private message me about it. Yes. Or you can message us and we will forward it to Mr. Greg Pavarelli. It's a system one, right? It is a boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. They never break. Plays perfectly. I have one bad, well not bad, but I told you guys what I sold tonight, well I told Ron. Centaur has left the building. Oh my. I will say that as much as I love Centaur, it has always been a burden in my side as a tournament player. I don't know what it is about it, it's difficult to be consistent on it, especially when they take the rubbers out of the outlanes I don't blame the outlanes so that you can't bump it back, which feels like it's the design of the game, but it makes sense that tournament directors take it out and I don't blame them for it. But it's just, it can be so brutal that even though I enjoy the game in casual play, as someone that competes more than I play casually, it's a game that's frustrating. I agree. But I just wasn't enjoying it, it was at the house, you know? It's the first game that gave you instructions. It was. Challenge the orb feature, the guardian feature, chamber feature, orb feature. Shout out to one of your listeners, Ray Day. He actually showed me a cool strat at the IFPA World Championships last year where he was shooting the captive ball thing on the left intentionally over and over again and racking up really good points for it. And I don't think I had ever seen someone do that in competition, but it works if you can do it. It depends on the game, yes, but it does work. It also works if you're accurate, as Raymond Davidson says. Yeah, rayday's not bad at pinball either. He's okay, you know, I'll give him props, you know. I love Raymond, you know that. And right now I'm watching some guy play Total Nuclear Annihilation in 4K. You should go in the chat and say, like, are you gonna sell this one if you get to Reactor 9? Yeah, exactly. Because Iron Man's got do or die multiball, And it's like, boom, he sold it immediately. It's like, so you just, because, well, not just getting to reactor nine, he wants to blow up reactor nine. So just getting to it is not enough. No matter how much I play Iron Man, I pride myself when I get a do or die, let alone trying for do or die multiball. It's not an easy feat by any means. That game's awesome. And I'm super stoked to see that vault come back. But I feel like Total Nuclear Annihilation is probably another one of those where like, setting your goal that high is probably going to be frustrating for a while. He's playing. He's really intense, so I'm going to see what he says. From a modern game perspective, the fact that it's got an older layout, I love the fact that you can short plunge to your own benefit. If you can live catch it and backhand a lock shot, you can get a safe chance at multiball and then take advantage of that over and over again. That's totally my style of safe, controlled play, efficiency, smart strategies. The So let's say hi to Karl. Hi Karl. Hello. We're watching right now. He's at 2.8. Kevin Danesi's there. I assume he's related. Yes. Well, Kevin and Scott Danesi are watching the stream. Now, the weird thing is I cannot get used to Karl. He's so skinny now. Yeah, I mean... Not a bad thing. Oh, yeah. I think that's the Karl. He really lost a lot of weight. Yeah, he looks incredible. Oh, my. Oh, so let's see. Oh, the reactor is critical. Critical. So you said Ron, you said once you get it going, you get it back up top, get it to 100, then the reactor is critical, and that's where the big points are. But if you're in multiball, three times is available for the reactor. Yes. Or four times if you got a super and you have the add-a-ball for four balls, which is a new thing in the code. That's the other thing, Karl is running the beta code. And that's why, probably one of the reasons Scott Danesi is watching all his streams, because he is taking note of anything that happens. I'm sure he's probably looking at it saying, oh, sure he's great. That touches on the point that we made before about, like, companies watching great players play. It's so smart for Stern to have Keith and Zach, two of the best ever, bringing in somebody like Tim, having Lyman. You want people working for you that are able to actually figure this stuff out, and that's awesome. Well, they want good players. Why do they have Tim there? A number, Bruce Keppler, David Ped clouds, razor clicked, and Nick Dorsey, casual elbow, George primitive with black chips, Michael Stileman, go民, rehbersens Mitter-ley Hartstock Aye Aye Aye A sniper. Good game than i doubt, the Gall스터 Huge Bruce kept bitching about it. We have split up Bally and Williams and just coincidentally happened to get Bally and Williams as our two manufacturers. So, let's look at the lineup. Ron has Williams, so he gets to choose from Demolition Man, The Flintstones, and Roadshow. While Bruce gets to go with Popeye, Corvette, The Shadow, and World Cup Soccer. So, since I won last time, I have to go first? Yeah. Because I have the disadvantage. Yes. Alright, so I'm the judge here, gentlemen? You are the judge. See, we're trying to convince you what is the better game. Okay, and I'm going based off of your input or my experience as well? Both, but, you know, like if we sell it really well. Like, to make you believe Popeye is the greatest game ever. Yes. If you get the Oscar. But not the Twippy. Not the Twippy. We'll get butt hurt if we don't get it. Yeah, we'll get butt hurt and you know, a gold standard will not be. You guys know how I feel about being butt hurt. Oh my. Alright, let's see. Hmm, what to pick first?
    72:54
    I'm gonna pick... Francesco... favorite game. The Flintstones. Oh man, his actual favorite game was amongst them, but I love it. The actual favorite game was amongst them, but I love that you went with that one. Yes, the Flintstones, a Williams classic from the classic 90s era of Williams. I just kind of repeat myself there. Innovative playfield, fun shots. It has bowling in it. Who doesn't like bowling? It has the actual cast members from the show, well, at least Rick Moranis is in it. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I'm running out of material, really. I yield the floor. We're going for it. The Shadow. Excellent game. Excellent designer. With the rules. Brian Eaddy did both, which he knocked out of the park with. Off a great movie. Shadow rocks. I know a lot of people say, oh, the Shadow movie sucks. I actually love The Shadow. But you have all the goodness of Williams. You have great shots. You have great toys. The Magnet, through to drop target, to lock it into the sanctum, totally ingenious, one of the greatest moves you see, cabinet artwork with the gun, that gun, when you grab that gun it feels truly like a real gun, the upper playfield to defeat Khan, great rules with multiballs with the Khan multiball, a lot of hidden secrets with Peking Duck and the The Mongol and good video mode with dodging the Purbas. Great game overall, good rule set. If you can get the seven-way combo, more power to you. You can't beat this one. Great dots, great sound. I yield the floor. Oh, one more thing. It's got freaking, what's his name from, what's his name from? Tim Curry. Can't even beat that. I have, in addition to the face-off, I think a new part of it we should do. Rebuttal period. We sell the games, and now I'm going to bring up negative stuff about your game, and you bring up negative stuff about my game. Okay. The shadow is a maintenance nightmare. The pluribus are always broken, and that playfield almost always, the little kicker almost always gets broken, gets stuck, doesn't work. There you go, I yield the floor. That's all I can come up with. Okay, so, mine is, I don't want to play a kid's game with an inferior artwork of Rick Moranis and freaking Rosie O'Donnell on the freaking backglass. No thank you very much. No way. Wait, let me ask you guys a question. Is this the only one competition between the two of you as a face-off, or are there going to be more? Oh, we've done, we've done. No, I mean, is there more tonight, or is this just... Oh yeah, well, there's three games. So it's gonna be the best out of three. But I gotta say, this is a hard one. And I'm gonna get into why. The Flintstones, I haven't had that much time on it, but I thoroughly enjoy it. The shots are fun. There's something that rings true every time I hit that shot. I could just hear Levy screaming, Bronto, baby! It just makes me wanna crush that game. It starts modes, and the super jackpot's really challenging. It is a fun game, it's a good theme. There's parts of it that make me wanna play it even more. But the shadow at the same time has depth. You can play it all kinds of ways. You can go for KV combo, which is basically the Picard maneuver over and over again. You could go for the upper playfield and keep crushing that. You can combo ramps. You can go for the modes and get to the final battle. It's such a good game that it's hard for me to pick against it and on this one, only because there's such tournament playability and fun playability, I'm gonna go with the shadow.
    77:20
    Yes! Okay. But it was tight. That was tight. That was a good matchup. My specific thing that I love about Shadow is it's one of the only games you're allowed to player control trap a ball by using the diverter. If you trap a ball in the right diverter, you're allowed to keep it stuck there while you play.
    77:37
    Didn't I know that? Yep. All right, Bruce. Pulling out all the big guns. We're going with World Cup Soccer. Ooh. Oh, that's a lot of Roko's actual favorite game. It is truly his actual favorite game. And Ron Hallett's one of his favorite games. Yeah, it's up there. It's up there. It's really up there. Ramps galore. Total flow game. Good rules because John Popadiuk wasn't involved with the rules. It's a Larry DeMar gem. So we're good with that. Cool toys with the... and great sound effects from your NBA all-star, NBA jam guy. GOOOOOOAAAAL! And great wizard mode. Hard shots also with the final draw shot. That can be a real pain in the ass. Get good strong clippers on it. You can do anything with that game. It's not the deepest game in the world, but it is a good deep game and a great tournament game. People can go multiple ways with how to do it. Most people, of course, go for, you know, just getting the multiball, take out, you know, and try to get to Germany. That's one way of doing it. You can do other ways. We've seen Tim destroy it at the first Buffalo Pinball Summer Open. He did a great job. Great game, great dots, good artwork. I yield the floor. My game is probably the flowiest widebody ever made and that is Demolition Man You got the incredibly awesome movie Demolition Man which gets an incredibly awesome pinball game with like some of the most flow ever. It was almost like a flow contest, like how much flow can I put in this game? You have four different multiballs. You have perhaps the greatest jackpot callout ever and I mean you can't beat that. You have the claw. You have the modes, basically the different modes to get through to get to demolition time. Then you also have, you get through all the multiballs, you can get the final super jackpot shot. It's one of the most fun games to play. A home ROM recommended for all the cool R-rated callouts from the movie. And again, has custom speech from Sly Stallone himself back when they actually could afford to get the stars to do voices.
    80:19
    Just an all-time classic. Great tournament game. I give you Demolition Man. It would be a great tournament game if they didn't have to change the rules on it when it first came out. This is a rebuttal, correct? Yes, this is my rebuttal. With the claw, you have to screw around with the claw to make it, or disable the claw in a weak tournament game. Weak, I will say. It has great flow, I will give you that. I like the game a lot, but it's no World Cup Soccer. World Cup Soccer, you have a right ramp that no reasonable person shoots for, well maybe Bruce does, but most people do not shoot for it. It's just kind of a useless ramp really. You have the magnet which is utterly useless. Maybe once in every hundred times I'll ever save a ball. One of the most useless uses of an extra button and magnet ever in a game. That's about all I got. Well, this is another one that's truly, sincerely difficult for me to choose from and you guys have come up with some really good matchups so far. Jim Al Dah, I find myself I love loving both games and it boils down to the fact for me that I play both a very specific way. World Cup Soccer, I like to go for multiball and that multiball shot is so frustrating. I don't think I've ever hated a shot more in my entire life than the multiball start on World Cup Soccer. I don't think that's a problem. It's a good thing in a lot of ways, getting frustrated trying to start the most important part of the game. netflix,
    83:11
    I'm going to be talking about the Demoman's Wizard mode, which is a super jackpot, which is unique and you actually get double bonus if you do that for your combos. I never do. I like to control the flippers. But it's cool to see someone like Adam Becker, one of the best players in the world, who does actually use the claws in competition. I agree that Demoman's Wizard modes are really fun and hard to chase. And the fact that you can hit the super jackpot by hitting shots in combination, using the secret or shooting it up the middle, side hole, left ramp, right ramp. It's just, it's too fun a game to not pick it. I'm going Ron, I'm going Demoman, we're going to game three! Woohoo! Nice fail too, I didn't even bring up the controllers. I should have brought that up as a positive. I love Demoman, I like World Cup Soccer, but it was close anyways. For my third game, well we know what it is, I only have one choice, Roadshow! If you liked Funhaus, get ready for Roadshow because two heads are truly better than one. See what I did there? It's a wide body super pin that has literally everything. It has more habit trails than you've ever seen. It might actually compete with Demoman for the most habit trails. It has awesome ramps. It's got the great hitting the ball through the pop-up or ramp shot. www.willywonka.com I give you Roadshow. Oh, and it's awesome linear rule set that forces you to play the entire game because that's how people love to play pinball. Okay, so I was ready to pull out Popeye to you, you know, to you, you know, so we're going Corvette, baby. Beautiful game, great flow, Gomez shots. This is the true flow game. And if you're Karna, it's even the icing on the cake.
    85:31
    Functional ZR1 engine in the left hand side, three flippers, game's got great shots, tight but great shots. Drag strip on the right hand side, which is really cool, you get to play, you get to use the flippers while not trying to cradle a ball. If you got strong flippers on this game, this game will truly rock your world. The Love the game. Love the theme. I'm a big car guy, so it's even better for me. Great artwork on the sides. You get to have all the cars. Great dots. Boom. Two heads are not... Rebuttal? Well, you were about to say two heads are not better than one, but I'll finish that for you. You got it. My rebuttal is, just like you said, the little drag strip thing is, it was a game that was supposed to be a wide body that they had to shrink to narrow, regular size, so everything is too tight. Two of the shots are too tight. That drag thing is just, you just race cars and you hit buttons. It doesn't really add much to the game at all. The shots are just, it was designed to be a wide body originally, and they had to change it to cross cut, and you get Corvette. Now, your game is the worst lawler game ever made. Hands down, terrible game. You want to talk about, you just talked about the greatest flow wide body game. This is the worst flow wide body game. And country music as your multiball song, oh my gosh, shoot me in the freaking head right then and there. I'm done. To those with more accuracy, it does have a little flow, just to let you know. Not really, I've owned two and it, ugh, I couldn't get rid of them fast enough. I'll start off with my positives and negatives on each. I like both of these games a lot. I do play them whenever they're around and Corvette is a theme that I enjoy. I don't think that the theme brings that much to the table just for being a racing game, but I I'm a fan of the game but I like Corvette as an idea and I love that game for a number of reasons. You can skillshot and continue to build your skillshot value including every single locked ball. So throughout the game you can build that up and I remember winning a rounded pinbird because of going for that specific strap. There's a super skillshot that you can do like some button code for but I don't see the purpose in it. I tend to go all multiball but there's also those valuable modes on the right ramp. It's a tight shot. I agree with Ron that those race modes are a little bit too easy. It's almost like one of those too easy video modes. It's just like a gimme. But the game has a lot to it and it brings a lot to the table. I enjoy shooting the loop, which is a tight shot. And in multiball, when you create a loop, you have a choice between setting it back up to the motor and using the left flipper, whether you're staging or not, or maybe just trapping on the right and shooting the right orbit and setting it back up top, whichever you're more comfortable with. There's definitely some diversity and it's a fun game. You can get some big scores. There's a bunch of multiballs and some cool modes. I do like it. There's that kickback that you can light which is valuable and you just have to make sure that the upper flipper is strong enough. If the upper flipper isn't strong enough, you're fucked. Roadshow brings me back to playing it for the first time in my teammate Arthur's apartment and then having seen it in a couple important matches in Pinball New York City in the random places in Brooklyn and whatnot. It's a fun game. There's a lot of depth to it. You can go for bonus multiplier and there is flow to it. I agree somewhat with Ron. Shooting those ramps in sequence matters. The game is a fun game. It's not easy. They're tight. It doesn't feel like that much of a flow game in general. The faces and the heads aren't as creepy as Rudy from Funhaus, but they are a little bit creepy. So that might be some consequence. There are cool factors like there's a secret button if you hit the left orbit, which is usually the lock shot. If you don't flip with the upper flipper, it'll hit a button that will progress your mode, which is cool. Peter Awesomely gimmicky hat dirty hooves I'm not sure if you're just a fan of the game, even if the music isn't something I usually tend to. It's really tough for me. It's down to the wire. Remind me, guys, am I voting for my favorite or for what I think is the best game? For who made the best case for their game. Or, yourself also. Don't forget, it's both. It might be Lawler's worst game, but I'm still gonna go with Lawler, I'm going with Ron, I'm going with Red and Ted's Roadshow. Roadshow!
    90:32
    Flawler's the man! That game sucks! That is the worst game! I still like Roadshow. Corvette's great too, but I find myself taking advantage of Corvette in competition. People that don't understand the skillshot trick lose to me every time because I just get progressive skillshots and they don't know how to match those points. And that's a flaw of that game and that's why I'm picking Roadshow.
    90:54
    Another victory! Subtitles by the Amara.org community Alright, drum roll please. The year that my own New York Mets won the World Series. 86. 1986. Okay. So that's gonna be, we got Williams, Williams, Bally, Gottlieb. So now in random.org you gotta put Gottlieb, which is Premier, Williams, and Bally. Okay. And then you don't tell us what they are. There should be three. The top one, you just tell us the first one. I'll get to pick either pass or go. So I'm going to put in Gottlieb? Gottlieb, Williams, and Bally. Okay, that's what I'm typing in. And then I enter that. Yep. It's a randomize, correct? Yep. Okay. So I have a one, two, three, and I will tell you what they are. You get to tell me the first one. I'm going to tell you the first one only. The Valley. Oof. Oh boy. This is a hard one. Because then I'm down to a 50-50 of Gottlieb or Williams. Do I take the valley and run? You got Strange Science, right? No, I don't even get... I don't even... you don't even get Strange Science in this one. 86 you get Special Force. Oh, you do get train science. That's not bad. And you get Cybernaut. And Black Belt. Yeah, God. And Motor Dome. Oh, that cost me a bird. I'm going to take Bally. I have to. Wow. Take him, Bally. What's the second game? It was Williams. So I get high speed is what you're telling me? Ooh! No you're not. Yeah I do. High speed's 86. Oh it is 86. I absolutely wouldn't win this one. Is that the first game that had multiball? No. And you get high speed and what else do you get? Oh I'm sorry, that's not the first game that had multiball. That was the first game that had jackpot. Correct. High speed...is there Street Williams there? Road Kings. Oh yeah. I don't think there's Street out. Oh, come on! Oh, pinball. Oh, you're gonna crush me on this one. Oh, yeah, okay. Here we go. Yeah, you should have never taken Bally. Well, the problem was, if I didn't take Bally... You didn't know what the next one was gonna be? Yeah. It could have been the next one, and then... Then you would have had what? I would have had, uh, Raven, Genesis, which is not bad, Gold Wing, and Hollywood Heat. Oh, Tim eliminated me from the tournament once on his Hollywood Heat knowledge. So that would have been bad. That would have been bad. I think Keith Elwin's gonna be mad at me because I lost. Well, wait, doesn't that mean that Keith will be mad at me? Yeah, probably. I'd say blame Greg. I'll take the blame. You know, World Cup Stocker was probably an unpopular decision to make, but I really, I really feel strongly about that, my man. So Ron, did you see our polls up? Yeah, that's our poll for the Which Artwork is Better? No Fear or Stern Star Wars Pro? You know where we're at right now? Way more people picked Star Wars than I thought would pick Star Wars. Wow, really? Yes. It's 66 to 34 percent. Star Wars? No. No Fear is still one of them. Okay, yeah. People aren't that crazy. It's a gimme, right? I mean, Star Wars is just, like, printed. So, the game is printed. Well, I dunno, it's painted, kind of. It's pretty bad, but I was surprised how close it is so far. With two days to go, it's... Yeah, I am surprised. Very surprised. Are you guys on the side of the Star Wars thing that you guys hate it, or I actually enjoyed the game? Art aside... It sucks moose balls. I don't hate it like Bruce does. Oh, God. I played Vax again and I just wanna bang myself on the fucking head every time. This is coming from me. Don't get distracted by the multipliers everybody. Leave them on the big three. Left ramps, two inner orbits, there's no need to move them from there. On occasion, if you've got either an L1 position or two double traps, and you can get cute with moving the multipliers in a multiball, by all means, get crispy with it, move your multipliers around. But when I'm playing that game, I don't even think about the button. I hit my shots, and I execute. And that's the more important thing. See Bruce, you don't even need to hit the button. I just still hate the game. I don't like the shots. But I still don't like the shots. I don't think it plays like a Steve Ritchie game. No, it plays like a Steve Ritchie game. I disagree there. It definitely plays like a Steve Ritchie game. It's fast, it's got flow. Yep. Unless you try to hit that Death Star shot then forget about your flow. Shoot better! Aim better loser! You know what, the pro, the star, the Death Star shot on the pro is easy on the backhand. On the LE it's almost impossible. So that being said, it changes things a little bit when you're transferring the ball over to the right more often. But you know what, at MAGFest, and I actually think at one other one that I've played, I don't remember which one, there are LEs that you can backhand the shot. Yeah, it's very hard though. So that was face off. I think we are ready for the home stretch here. Are we ready for the full Monty? Ready for the full Monty. There's some upcoming events. Yes, there is. This weekend, the Upstate Championship. We'll speed bow to make it two in a row. Best of five, double elimination at the Silver Ball Saloon. Doors open at 12. We start at 1 o'clock prompt. And feel free to come by and play in the charity tournament. Yes, please. And don't forget, Greg, you're playing, you're going for the upset. You're trying to take out the number two seed.
    97:27
    Well, can we honestly say that it'll be an upset if I beat Eric? Oooh! Wow, those are fighting words. Russell's got muscle. Yes, he does. I take Eric very seriously. I was joking with him, and I'm looking forward to playing with him. And he humbly admitted that he was annoyed that he had to play me, and I said, Don't worry, you've played those games more than me. I haven't been to Bruce's house in quite some time. And either way, I'm very happy that you guys have a loser's bracket because it makes the experience a little bit less nerve-wracking than a normal state championship where it's just like every second is the deciding factor. Exactly. I face off Brian Estes. So it's going to be a very good matchup. Flyin' Brian Estes. Yep. What's your name, Bruce? Three? I am seven. Seven. Okay. And I'm playing Anthony. Yep, you're playing Anthony. Okay, Lambos. He's up and coming player. Yes he is. Steve is playing Dave Chui. Howard goes against Jeff. Nick has the hardest match, I think, in the first round. He's going against Alberto. Oh, yeah. Nobody wants to play Alberto first. No, not that first round. And then Andy Cushman against Ian. Very good round, very good chance also. Ian's great from Canada and Zach showed me that he's really, really up and coming. Yep, Zach is really good. He's going against Jason. So those are your first rounders.
    98:55
    And our backup is JT Harrison. Who may or may not show up on time for the 20 minutes of the other. Yeah, that's always true. And then also, on the same day, is the Sweet Talker Tournament. Yes. Chuck Webster's Place. Oh, I haven't been there yet. Oh, yeah, you got to check out Chuck Webster's Place. He's a good guy. I really love hanging out with the Sanctum crew at the 24 Hour Battle. Those bonding moments as we go through the excruciating pain of sleep deprivation and pinball. Yes, excellent. It's almost as bonding as sharing the commentary booth with Bruce. Yes, almost. Oh, my. And we will be streaming. If somebody wants to come in and do broadcasting the first round and the second round actually, you'll be able to join and do some broadcasting. Who are you talking to, Bruce? You know, as soon as I'm eliminated, what I want to do. Anybody? Oh yeah, that's what I'll be doing also. But anybody, if they want to come in. Because we'll all be playing the first two rounds at least. So best of five in the winners and best of five in the losers? Yes. Okay. Guaranteed at least six games. I like that. Guaranteed. So, uh, are we done? Yeah, I don't have any, I have no more rants. You sure? I'm sure. Do you have anything? We don't want to do, we don't want to do like a Tim rant? I already did. That was earlier. Yeah, that was his Tim rant. That was my Tim rant. Well, everybody should tune in for the Upstate Championships because it tends to be a very A very high level competition, lots of great players. And that will be on the Slam Tilt Podcast. Don't you also have like a bowling game too? I do, I have the ball bowler, yes. And Pantino has told me that the food is quite excellent. I try to make it fun and exciting for everyone. We also have a free foosball table downstairs. You look like the kind of guy who likes foosball. And we got darts and everything else. So we got darts, and we got Big Buck Hunter, and we got Galaga, and all the other fun stuff that everyone needs. And we get to pay some bills. And we get to pay some bills! Ah, first show of the night. Second. No, really. The Silver Ball Saloon, www.silverballsaloon.com, check us out on Facebook. This weekend we have the tournament. Next Sunday we have the Stern Army matchup. So come out for that. What's your format? What's your format for your Stern Army? We do match play four player. Okay, cool. And is that like six rounds, seven rounds? Usually six or seven depends how many players we get. That's awesome. And we get them to give away the free stuff and we also give away extra stuff also there. We give away, last time we gave away tickets to a movie theater and this time we'll be giving away two tickets to the Rochester Americans. So it's our local hockey team, our AHL hockey team. So it's very cool. We give away not just pinball stuff, we give away regular usual stuff also. So also we have www.pinballlister.com. Come check us out. We'll be at Allentown this year.
    102:07
    Ooh, circuit tournament in Allentown. Yep. Corey Hulse, fresh off the pinball profile. Yes he is. And then we have Pinball Star for your Chicago Gaming, Jersey Jack, Spooky Pinball Machines. And American Pinball. And then we also have Flippin' Fidelity with Mike Pupo. He sells our Stern games up here and we also have him for the Flippin' Fidelity sound system. Best sound system you can get for your pinball machine. Check those guys out. We get nothing from them. Now you can do the podcasts. Be sure to listen to all the other wonderful podcasts out there. Including Kaneda! Including Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. And this Flippin' Pinball Podcast, which I said right this week. fotoTV.com
    103:24
    I'll plug it. I think it's the New York City Pinball Podcast or something like that. While we're plugging stuff, everybody should come to the New York City Pinball Championships, right? Yes, that's... we should just bring that up right now. The New York City Pinball Championships, which will be in May. Yes. 17th through 18th at the Skyline Hotel. Never beef, babe. Never beef. Maybe it's 18th through 20th. Man, I'm... Yeah, it'll be the 18th through the 20th. Yes, sorry. Well, the pre-tournament is at Modern Pinball, hosted by yours truly, alongside Alberto and Bowden and Zen. How do you have a pre-tournament? Because that in itself is a tournament. Well, it's like the, you know, you're coming to the... Yeah, I mean, it's... alright, so whenever you go to Pinburgh or Poppa or any of the big players, there's a pre-tournament, and the whole point is, is everybody's traveling to this, everybody should also come to this. I just love the terminology. It's like a preheated oven. A oven only has two states. Heated or unheated. There is no such thing as preheated. But I digress. If you guys send us correspondence, we can be reached at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com. Our Twitch channel, just search for slamtiltpodcast. We will be streaming the Upstate New York Championships. All these guys are going to be at the 2017 Upstate New York Championship. Oh my! Which is weird because it says 2017. It's technically the 2017 Upstate New York Championships even though it was played in 2018. Our YouTube channel, just go to YouTube and search for Slamto Podcast. We will be there. This has been Episode 77, Lethal Weapon 4. I'd like to thank Greg once again for coming on with us. Thanks for having me guys. Looking forward to working with you. Thank you Greg. You are now the new Tim Balls. The new Tim Balls. Okay. Bigger, faster, stronger, drunker. Stronger. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Robert Byers.
    105:39
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