Hello and welcome to episode 16 of the pinball studio podcast. I'm your host, Sterling Martin, and today I'm joined by Eric Edwards of Radioactive Pinball Arcade in Aiken, South Carolina. And today we're going to learn his story and how he found this crazy hobby we call pinball. But first off, let's mention the sponsors really quick. Old Town Pinball. Do you need a new or used pinball machine? Just head over to oldtownpinball.com. Also, the electric playground. Time to level up your game room with a new topper. Check out their website, teppinball.com. And last but not least, Spooky Pinball. Order your Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scooby-Doo, or Looney Tunes today. All available at spookypinball.com. Anyway, welcome to the show, Eric. How's it going, my friend? And thank you. I'm very glad to be here. I'm excited. I'm on my way down to Pinball at the Beach in Florida. And, yeah, I was really excited for this opportunity to come in and holler at you. And, man, your place is on point. You go hard. Your merch game is off the charts. You've got your hat on, Pinball Studio. I've got what looks like a huge mouse pad in front of me. Yeah. Pinball Studio on it. We've got posters. You've got everything, man. This is impressive. Well, you're repping the radioactive shirt as well. That's a cool one. Yeah, I got a T-shirt printed. You got like a whole universe. You got like a Disney store at your place, except instead of Disney, it's all in Monster. Yeah, universal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I remember you mentioned you were going out of town next weekend. You aren't by chance going to the media thing for Stern, are you? I had someone ask me about that, but honestly, I've been to the Spooky Factory, and it's awesome. Don't get me wrong. but just for a game launch and especially if it's pokemon pokemon doesn't quite speak to me theme wise so i'm not sure if i would ever go for say that theme no i just saw on like a canada's pinball podcast thing it put out on on facebook a picture of it's a leaked photo oh that's all that yeah it's not real it's not i started looking at that and i was like yellow apron cards no insider connected the speaker panel's wrong i'm like nah there's no way this is real yeah we're definitely in on a pokemon for sure because the license is is oh yeah charts but i know nothing about well that's how i am uh yeah if it was jaws or something when that was coming out and they invited me heck yeah i would be there like that really speaks to me for sure but um for location i think uh pokemon's gonna be a great game yeah unless they unless they um you know do what uh they kind of did with kong I wasn't overly impressed with the LE with Kong just as far as what you'd get compared to the premium. But if they go hard on Pokemon, then we'll probably be in on an LE if we can get our hands on one. Okay. Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, I really enjoy King Kong as a game. But, yeah, I kind of agree. I feel like, especially with the artwork on the cabinet, like being the same as the Pro and the Premium, I'm like, I did like the back glass, but that wasn't enough for me to make that. Yeah, I don't know. That's three grand worth, you know. I mean, to me, I kind of break it down by benefit and say, you know, is that worth it? But with Pokemon, again, I know nothing about it. So it's all going to be whether – but the license excites people. When I tell people Pokemon's coming that aren't in it like we are, when I tell them that, they get excited about it. So that's going to be something we're going to definitely move on. We'll just see what tier it ends up being when they drop it. I heard one person saying it'd be cool if, like, you didn't know which one you were getting. It'd be like opening up a pack of cards. But I think that would also be horrible because people would be like, I didn't want that art package. That would be awful. Could you imagine getting, I don't know, Pokemon. Would you ever get like the dud? Everybody's hoping for the one that's worth a bazillion dollars or whatever. But most people are getting the dud card. So I wouldn't want to risk. Everybody just be buying replacement decals on Pinball Life. They're like, I'm just going to put this art package on it. Yeah, because then you couldn't sell it and it would be a whole thing. what do you think about them uh dropping it kind of later in the year than they ever normally do i think it's fine honestly i was kind of getting tired i they're dropping games so quickly i can't even keep up anymore i used to buy every single stern that came out regardless i was going to buy it whether i was going to keep it forever was a different story but it's just kind of became exhausting for me where i'm just like all right now i'm just going to hold off and like i really got to like the game for me to want to buy it when it's first launching. I'm optimistic about it. I'm hoping that it's their move away from dropping games that are code incomplete. I mean, everybody knows James Bond, Dr. No, and when it came out it was due to licensor difficulties. They were pretty behind on the code and I just remember X-Men when When X-Men was coming out, it was crazy hype for it. Everybody was snatching one up. Oh, they were saying it was the next Godzilla and all this. And then people played it, and there was just nothing there. And then kind of the hype has died down. So I would think from a manufacturer's perspective, it's better to hang on to it until you've got something, rather than see that initial spike and then have it just drop off a cliff. I think Foo Fighters did the same thing, I think. yeah they a lot of them were like that i i would feel like you'd want it strong coming out of the gate so if it's not ready just wait i i don't think anyone's asking for these games to come out as quickly as they're pushing them out yeah yeah well i mean unless you're spooky in which case you know god bless them for what they just pulled off on yeah day one or before day one sell out you know i do like that i only have to worry about it once a year though it's not like every three months i'm like oh do i have to buy another game do i have to buy another game feel the pressure like the next one's like i got it i mean like are you are you sweating being able to get in on the next one no i'm i've got a spooky subscription my man give me inside track on that we were actually uh fortunate enough we we've picked up we've got two beetle juices coming oh cool well it wasn't i mean it wasn't designed like that we bought one new in the box and then we got the opportunity to pick up one. Yeah. Because the one new in the box, we don't know when we're going to get it. Right. But we got the opportunity to say, hey, they're going to summit Texas Pinball Festival, and you can buy one. And so at least with that one, we know when we'll get it. Because the other one could be December. Right. You know, when you start getting into, A, of course, I'm excited about it because I love, you know, I grew up on Beetlejuice and I love it. But, you know, once you're on like kind of a location like we have, then obviously there's a big boost in being the first to market with it. I mean, we picked up the first place you could play Harry Potter was at Southern Fried Gaming, and we picked up one from there. So we were fortunate in being kind of one of the first people out. So people travel to play these games. Right. And I heard on Don's pinball podcast he's going to try to get everybody to be quiet at Pinball at the Beach so they can turn like six games on at a time by saying Beetlejuice or whatever it is. Yeah, I was curious about that whole spooky speak thing at a place like on location or especially a show. Yeah, I don't know how well that's going to work on location for a home user. It'll be super cool. Yeah, I don't know if it'll work at our place, but I don't care. Topper. Fortunately, the topper is really cool looking. Yeah. You know, did you go all out with the ones? Are you getting like the you're getting are you getting the anti reflection glass and the topper? I don't know. Butter Cab. I never – I don't – so I was – this game gets a lot of hate. But one of my favorite games and against all the haters, one of the more popular games at the arcade is Halloween. We have Halloween CE. I love Halloween. Yeah. Everybody does except online. But if I take that game out, people – if I take it out, it means I had a little problem. And one thing I do have to say on a little side note is Spooky is amazing with their customer service. So I tell them this is broken. They say check this, this, this, and here you go. We're going to send you this stuff. And that game has been out of warranty for whatever – I don't even know how many years. Probably like five years now. And they've never asked me to pay a dime. So they really do support. But what I was saying is that game, we bought that brand new in box, which is a kind of fault. Halloween and Scooby-Doo for a while, we don't have an Evil Dead. because we bought the game at full price day one. It was like a day one or day two sellout on that game. And while we waited a year for it, because ours was towards the end of the run, I got to watch people selling their games at thousands of dollars loss in the box long before I can get mine. And I was like, ugh. I got an Evil Dead, and I really regret selling it now. i know uh kelly done at pinball palace told me about i guess yours he's like i think i've got i know somebody that's going to sell one if you want one and it was gone so yeah before i could even be like heck yeah i ended up trading it for a couple of games but uh i so i was probably one of the first people to list their evil dead for sale for one thing i got one of the earliest ones out there so i was like probably the first one to post it up and people were giving me shit about the price I was putting up there. And it wasn't a few months later, people are asking two, three thousand more dollars. And I was asking and I was like, I think I was being pretty fair. Yeah. But anyway, I was like, you know what? I'm not even going to deal with the community. I'm just going to trade this in so I don't have to deal with why is he asking over price? And, you know, I'm like, we'll find one. Yeah, no doubt. You know, we're going to figure out what we're going to do with our Beetlejuice when we get it. Probably, I'll probably just go to the house really good. Or if I'm really lucky, we'll get the one from Texas Pinball Festival. And then if I'm really lucky, the other one will come around that same time, and I could have a launch party with two of them. Oh, that would be awesome, yeah. But otherwise, the other one will probably go to the house. But no, what I originally was getting to was you asked about the butter cabinet and all that. I got that Halloween CE. And for one thing, it came and had a small hole in the box. And I didn't catch it when they delivered it, but there was a nick in the side art on the backbox. And Spooky just sent me out a new decal. No big deal. But with a butter cabinet, that's a big problem. Yeah. See, even my Evil Dead, I love Spooky. Nothing against them. But, man, their boxes are thin compared to a Stern box. And I'm like, can we go a little thicker on the box? Because, like, I got my Evil Dead in, and the box was mangled. and there was a little damage, but it was on the bottom of the cabinet, like the unfinished side. So I was like, it's on the bottom of the game. Like, I'm not too worried about it. I'm not going to cause a ruckus over it. And when I sold the game, they could care less. Like, hey, it's on the bottom of the game. It's not on any of the other ones. I wouldn't care. If I find that game from you, I wouldn't care either. But when I got it in and I saw a hole torn in the box, I'm like, oh, God. God. And I was like, I'm not accepting this unless we're allowed to take it out of the box. Yeah, I've heard I listen to different podcasts and stuff. I try to consume a lot of pinball media. I've listened to the pinball show that he talks about sometimes the hectic stuff of being a distributor. He talks about when they get one that's damaged, they'll send it back to the factory. And who knows how long that would take. Did you see Harry Potter that FedEx was unloading and it wasn't strapped. Yes, I watched that video. That has got to just crush your whole soul right there when that happens. Apparently that guy was like a huge Harry Potter fan too and he was so excited. Yeah, but see, I think that's another one of those things where the dealer, I think that was flipping out. Yeah, I believe so, yeah. And I think they just sent him another game. But typically that game, my understanding of it, it would go back to Jersey Jack and then they would eventually repair it when they got to it and send it back. So, yeah, that could have really sucked. But originally, to go all the way back, the cabinet decals that Spooky is putting out are absolutely just stunning. So butter is not the way for me. And besides, my games are so close together, about like yours. I went out and your pinball setup out here is amazing. I mean, I wish if you live by me, there would be no radioactive pinball arcade. Because I would I mean, really, if Kelly Pinball Palace was was miles from me, there wouldn't be one because I just wanted to play and I had nowhere to do it. That was pretty much me. I was like, I've got to create my own place because there was nowhere to play. You're what, a half hour from Pinball Palace? It's about an hour. Oh, yeah. It's not too bad, but I mean, I want to play multiple times a week. My man, that's all right. That's all right. But I used to always go to the pinball palace when I only had, you know, four to five games. But I had already bought a pinball. How many did I have? I had two or three before I even discovered they existed. I had a friend that came over and he's like, you know, there's a place that has like a hundred of these like an hour away. I'm like, no, I'm not aware of that. So we went out there that weekend and I was like, what? Oh, yeah. That place will blow your mind, man. Yeah, I love Kelly. Kelly's great. I think he had just got Halloween when I went out there for the first time. So that was whenever that was. He did not have, my understanding, he did not have the best of luck with his. No, it didn't last long. My buddy bought it, which I will say that one was cursed. Yeah, that's what he said. Because then my buddy got it. And he was familiar with working on games. He's restored games and all that. And he's like, dude, I cannot keep this game running. But I don't know if they had all the fixes they have for it now. And I really don't even know what the issues were with that game. But he moved it on after like a month. You know, that's the upside of getting ones that are like, for me, so I'm conflicted having a location. I want, you know, send me the first one. If I had known about these pinball at the beach ones, I would have done whatever I had to do to buy one of those day one. But, you know, my Scooby-Doo and my Halloween are both late runs. They're both in the 900s. Yeah. And so it kind of worked out some of the kinks maybe, I think. You know, you learn, you do it and you learn a little bit. And so I feel like I get a better game the later in the run, but I also have a huge advantage as somebody who's in business with that to get the early run. Yeah. But since Spooky's service has been so good to me, I wouldn't be concerned about getting them. Well, the good thing about a show game, too, that's how you play test the hell out of a game. Yes, torture test. And they're going to fix it on site if there's an issue, and they're going to tweak it on site if there's an issue. So I almost feel like you're getting a more bulletproof game. Especially this first one. I mean, because, you know, that gave Evil Dead a huge bump when they, as I recall, when they were starting going to shows, that they were getting a reputation for holding up well during the shows. Yeah. So obviously with this first run at pinball at the beach, they're going to want to replicate that success. And they're going to, like you said, make sure they go over everything with a fine-tooth comb and make sure this sucker's bulletproof. Because they're going to want to keep that reputation going that they're starting to build for sure. Because Halloween, I guess, took a hit. I guess Kelly wasn't the only one who had a little bit of issues with it. But their UC has definitely gotten much better. With Looney Tunes and all that, they were ramping up with the better games. I felt like. And then, yeah, Evil Dead was like a game changer. I'm like, wow, the quality is a lot better than it has been in previous games. But I did have a couple of little things, nothing major, though. They were still refining games when I got mine. I probably got mine like two weeks from now last year. So like there was like pinball at the beach first time people see an Evil Dead. And then I got mine like a few weeks later. So I felt like they were still, you know, I was talking to Luke. He's like, actually, let's remove that rubber and see how it's doing now you know let's put a little thicker piece here so um sometimes it's better to wait just a little bit longer uh to make sure everything gets refined i felt like kelly was having a lot of issues too because he always wants the first one and you're kind of the guinea pig at that point but uh yeah i agree they're going to help you out and they're going to make sure it's fixed they just sometimes might have to find a fix you know yeah well i was saying i was saying that I fault Halloween Scooby-Doo for not, for missing, I've missed two opportunities to pick up an Evil Dead since they went crazy. But again, the same thing with Halloween happened with Scooby. I bought it, paid for it, you know, and then you're waiting a year for it and as you're doing it, you watch the prices fall. So when Evil Dead, I was like, man, because I'm a huge horror movie fan, you know, I love tattoos on my arms, all like horror kind of stuff and I watched the prices fall on Scooby, and then I was like, well, that's all right. We're offering an Evil Dead. And I was like, no, no, we're just going to wait until the price drops in half, and then I'm picking it up. And then I watched the price go up. It was just so good. Like, that game's really fun, too. It just shoots well. That was kind of like Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some of the shots were a little wonky. I felt like you hit those ramps. It's like, well, is that satisfying? But when you're playing Evil Dead, I felt like real flow. Like you're hitting ramps and it's got big, nice, you know, turns and stuff in the ramps where it just felt good when you were hitting stuff. Even before I even knew how to do anything in the game, I'm like, wow, this shoots well. Yeah, well, I got to play one. The only time I've ever played one was at Southern Fried Gaming this year. Yeah. But it was just so much kind of like distraction. And you got people like standing on your ankles behind you ready to play the game. So it's really hard to I couldn't hear it. Yeah. Yeah. The show's not the best place. Yeah. Um, yeah, sometimes I wish they would just roll one in a separate room and be like, oh, you're an arcade or a district. It's like, let's walk in this room and let you play it real quick. Yeah, that would be really nice. I would, I would definitely enjoy that because there's a lot of places you go that, um, cause I mean, we're, we're not right. We're just an arcade when we're, you know, we're pinball fans. We have an arcade because just like you, because I had nowhere to play and I wanted to play, but we go places and you can't hear the game that, that sucks. To me, that's a third of the experience, seeing it, hearing it, and playing it. And when you can't hear it, I just, I don't know, I like the theme immersion. The theme immersion is I'll walk up to a game with a good theme. I keep thinking they need to have headphones on the games it shows. That way, if you want to really experience it, you can put on headphones and hear it. You know, have a setup where you can plug it in or have some disposable cheap headphones or something. Yeah, I agree with that. At our place, we've got 28 or 29 Insider Connected games, and all of those have headphones with volume. Oh, nice. For that reason. Yeah, yeah. Because I know people want to be in here, and I'm one of those people. But also, it eliminates the distractions around you. And when you put those headphones on and you hear it's in a crowded place, and not when you're playing at home, but when you're in a crowded place, all the stuff that you didn't even know you were missing, it's pretty incredible. so yeah i'm pretty excited about if they did that i mean jersey jack's been doing it forever yeah yeah i agree um it was funny when i used to go to the pinball palace a lot more when uh before my collection was as big as it is now i used to always ask kelly or nick be like can i borrow the keys so i can turn the game up you know like so yeah the game i was bad doing that but i think the same thing when i'm going there they're like three people they're like oh sure here yeah like He would have a Munsters LE next to the desk where people were walking in, and I went and played it, and I was like, I couldn't hear it at all. But I was like, I know they turned it down because they're right there, and they're tired of hearing it, and they need to hear people at the counter. So I just look over and I think about it, but I never ask to borrow the keys to turn it up. I put the external volume things on all of my games just so I can bump them up. And if it's too loud, I can just go up to the game and turn it down really quickly, and nobody else has really discovered those, so it's good. Nobody's cranking my games up because they don't even know what that button does. Yeah, well, that's why I can't do it because some kid would come in and blast us all out. But that's the beauty of it. In the Spike 2 system, the stern you can go through and you can set, does this knob control only the headphones or do you want it to control the master volume? So I love that feature. Oh, that's cool. So, yeah, I can have it. The volume is only active if you plug headphones in. And also you can use it to mute the game. So in a place like ours, if I have three games in a row and two people are rocking headphones, then the third person can hear their game better because the other two games aren't making any sound, but all three people are hearing their games really well. So I really like that feature. And most people don't know that we have it, even though I put like these reflector tapes on it and we used to have the graphics running on the screens up there that say don't do it. But still, there's a few people and they listen to it every time on headphones. And other than that, nobody knows. If I was in a tournament, I'd definitely because I want to hear like the call out to shoot this or shoot that. I need anything I can in a tournament. I don't understand how tournament players, they're always they're always rocking headphones, but they're blasting like metal and stuff. Yeah, I can't do that. Well, like I enjoy it. I've done it before, but I'm trying to like be locked into the game and know what's going on with the game. I'm saying like the thing will tell you you've got extra ball lit or something, man. I need that because I'm not good enough to watch the screen while I'm playing. I'm just not that guy. Exactly. Yeah, I need any help I can get. But these tournament players, yeah, they'll come in and they don't give a crap what kind of noise the game's making or what it's telling you to do or what kind of hints and tips and tricks it's giving you. I guess unless you're playing Evil Dead, which I hear the Evil Dead will give you some kind of mode or something, some kind of crazy later. I don't know Evil Dead 2 as well, but there's apparently one of the ladies that turns into a monster is telling you to do wrong things. You know, like shoot this and you don't shoot that. Or if you do that, you don't shoot that. That's hilarious. So I've heard Evil Dead will give you the wrong directions. I don't know how Beetlejuice is going to be because when I was playing the game, I didn't notice at all. But like there's no real custom call outs for the most part, or at least there wasn't back then. Most of it was just pulled from the movie, so you're not going to have shoot the left ramp, per se, like in the call-outs. I didn't get anything about the call-outs, but the movie is good enough for me. I'm excited about that. Oh, when you're playing it, you don't even notice. And there is some recorded stuff. I don't know if Ben Heck did it or who did it because the topper says certain things that you certainly did not say in the movie. So I don't know how they recorded that. There's got to be some voice actors that do Michael Keaton, though. He has a distinct voice. and there's got to be, you know, I can't remember what, there was one another, like, oh, maybe I'm thinking of Toy Story. They had Tom Hanks' brother do it. Okay. And he sounds pretty damn close to Tom Hanks. Or you could always go the opposite end of the spectrum and go to Predator where they have, you know, basically a comic version of Arnold, which is sad. That game's, I haven't heard anything. I've got a buddy that's got it in Jacksonville, and he said he's loving it and uh my buddy retro ralph he just got one and he's enjoying it so i don't know i want to play it i don't know how true it is but it seems to me that just not having arnold killed the game yeah but somebody's smart enough to change those clips out i mean you got the guys doing like the jurassic park and the uh stranger things code and all that with the new videos not saying it's legal but yeah i'm surprised somebody hadn't hadn't dabbled there is some great aftermarket codes out there. We've got one for Deadpool that adds in a user on Pinside P-O-M-C or something does this code and it adds in all the songs from the movies which is really cool. We've got Elvira, we've got the Blood Red Kiss edition and I think it might be the same guy makes a code called the Swinging Titties code and it replaces the message of the day with the video that comes up for Message of the Day with clips from different music videos, and particularly one from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, at the end of the movie She got this Vegas show and she got these tassels it really great People are really digging it Yeah I need to try some of those codes again I had the Jurassic Park one years ago, but it was like when the game first came out, and he had like three different movie clips, and it just was over and over and over. So I went back to the original code. Yeah, we ran the movie code for Jurassic Park for a while, and people were liking it. Because, again, it relates to the movies, and the theme is – I heard one person say one time the theme is what will get you to put in – I think it was Dennis on the pinball show said the theme will get you to put in the first quarter, but the gameplay will get you put in the second. I mean, our place doesn't take quarters, but the concept is still the same. I'd agree with that for the most part. I mean, if I see a theme that speaks to me, I want to go play it. Yeah, we had Jurassic Park code, the aftermarket, the movie code, until the pin cup thing they did last year. They did what they called a pin cup, and they had done some code updates, and it had gotten to the point where I just felt like we were losing too much by having the older code. So we swapped back to the regular, but we've got, I don't know, 10 games or so in there that are running custom code. Cleland does some really good stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, let's jump into your story. Did you play pinball as a kid or is this something that came on later on? I played my first game of pinball four and a half years ago. Wow. Yeah. I always, growing up, we were pretty poor. I mean, you know, mother's a waitress. My dad would do whatever jobs he could do. Right. So when we went in, we had, you know, a set amount of money, two bucks, five bucks. Right. That's it. Yep. my brother and I felt that our best value for them. They keep us playing the longest. You don't want to come out 30 seconds later and your brother's in there an hour or whatever. It was in the video game. I don't remember ever in my life seeing a pinball machine. But in 2020, so just before the whole COVID fun times hit, we met some old friends of ours in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We were having lunch and one of him said uh you know you want to go to this pinball museum of silver ball pinball museum in delray beach florida okay and uh i was like no i mean it's not it's not that i was against pinball he said museum and i was like who wants to go i mean i was like no offense man if that's your thing but yeah yeah i don't want to go look at pinball and he said no no no you go in you pay one time and you play and i was like well heck yeah let's do that and it was just the coolest place, my wife and I just had a really good time there. And, you know, for a guy who didn't want to go when they were ready to go, they're like, all right, guys, you're ready to go. Oh, man, I was not ready to go. And so it was something that we could actually do. And my wife had a blast and I had a blast. And, you know, I'm typically a motorhead. So my my fun time was been, you know, jumping dirt bikes and racing cars and motorcycles and stuff like that. And and but my wife can't do that. She's got some back problems that that make that impossible for her. So we found something that we really like to do that we could do together and we both enjoyed. And so at that point, we started seeking out other places. Somehow she discovered the pinball map and we said we started checking it. And there is just nowhere around where we are. We call the area from Columbia, South Carolina to Atlanta. We called it a pinball desert, and I've heard it called that before because it just didn't exist. But we would go to Asheville. We'd go to Charlotte. We'd go to definitely Kelly's Place Pinball Palace in Brunswick, Georgia. We'd go there and play. That's our favorite place to go because he just has the biggest selection, and, yeah, it's just a really great spot. So that's our favorite spot to go. So we just started seeking all these out, and eventually – my background is an automotive – ASC-certified master automobile technician. Oh, cool. All the certs are expired now because now I haven't done that in a long time, but I specialize in electrical. So anyway, I decided – we had a game room. The biggest room in our house had a pool table in it, and I was like, no, we need to get a pinball machine that we could play. So I went on – I knew nothing about it, and now I know this is the most ridiculous way to buy a game. But I went on eBay, and I found a Freddy Nightmare on Elm Street in Atlanta. And I was like, oh, it's a horror movie, right? So I'm in. And it was like $4,500, which is – now I'm thinking maybe you can get one for it now just out of pure nostalgia. But I think at the time it was actually a ridiculous price now that I know a little bit about it. But it said, you know, fully shopped. Everything's been done. I didn't even know what that meant. I had to Google what is fully shopped even mean. And as I basically said, everything was gone through and all this. And so I was like, heck, yeah, I went down there and bought the game, took it home and found out immediately that it was a huge pile of crap. I was like, I think that's supposed to move. How come the ball doesn't come out of there? You know, how comes it how come it doesn't register when, you know, a ball goes down the middle? How come how come the ball doesn't end? So I had I was like, there's I looked around fixing it. Good luck, buddy. You're on your own. You know, there's nobody there's nobody. There's no pinball in the I'm in the I'm in the Sahara Desert of pinball. So there's nobody to fix it. So I said, well, I'm just going to have to figure it out. And that's actually what did it for me is I got fascinated with how they work. I was like, oh, wait, that, this switch tells the computer to activate this driver board, and this transistor fires this coil, and this coil moves that. So everything's input, output. Everything's input into the CPU and then into the brain. The brain says do this when this is happening. So I just became fascinated with how they work. So I went through the game myself, and I really liked customizing. I found out I really liked making it unique and my own. I was like, I don't like that this game is so dark here in the middle. Again, the play field is black. So I was like, I don't like that it's so dark. I can't really see the ball unless all the lights are on in the room. And I kind of like the vibe of arcades with like that darker light or just neon lights or just the lights of the games. That's kind of my jam right there. So, yeah, I just started adding lighting. And then once I figured out the little circuits and what they can handle and switch it to LED, that way I know I can add more LEDs rather than the excessive power draw from an incandescent bulb. So, yeah, I started customizing. And then let's see, we had Freddy. And then that was in January. And also in January, I said, well, I had like a MAME, which is a multiple arcade. Yeah, one of my friends mentioned that the other day, yeah. Yeah, it's a Raspberry Pi. So it's a little PC, and it had something like 100,000 games on it or something. And you can plug it up to TV. But I was like, now I've got a pinball machine. So I want an arcade cabinet, a video game cabinet that looks legit. So I built – I was like, well, I want to build my own because my first ever job was at a cabinet shop, which I didn't regularly get paid at that job. My boss also enjoyed video poker, especially after we got paid on a job. So – but I did learn a lot about building cabinets. So, yeah, we would go out on a job and then – That's a good skill to have that most pinball people don't have. I don't hear many of them saying, I know how to do cabinet work. Yeah. So, yeah, I would – so what I – so I did design my own. And as I designed it for my height standing and it had to pass through every door in the house. So I put wheels on it because, you know, I like them. I don't like to commit to one particular setup or anything. So I put wheels on it, put shelves on it where I could put a PlayStation two, three and four. And so I had all that tied in and did add my own custom artwork done and printed and the marquee and the control panel overlay in a polycarbonate and all that. So I built my own one of those, which I was pretty excited about. And then in October, so about eight or nine months later, I found my next one, another game that I would love for somebody to remake, the 89 Michael Keaton Batman. Oh, heck yeah. I mean, that's, you know, Data East, I enjoy the game. But if somebody did that again, I'd be all over it. So it was in Kentucky. So it was like a seven-hour drive. Oh, wow. and so but i was down i was so down so i hopped in the truck we rode my wife and i rode seven hours we get there look at this game and it is hot trash i mean there's i swear there's more there's more paint fields seem to be always rough on i've never seen one that wasn't yeah my buddy had one and it was really rough on the play field and the cave was destroyed as well i remember yeah but i enjoyed playing i played once i might have played that one i'm the only one i've ever played but and it played like i like the way it played us i cannot take one i can fix when i go to buy a game i care about the playfield to be honest with you everything else i can adjust with price if nothing else works on it you know we come to a right price and i'll take it but if the playfield is trash i have to walk away because i can't fix that unless there's a brand new play but it has to be available yep so it and and my goodness those are time consuming they did finally make that play field you know is that right yeah so all the way in kentucky and the game is trash and i've i've just got i just got i was like oh my god i cannot believe we drove all this way and i was like man i hate to do it man i've been driven all this way and i i i just can't take this and so he's like oh well i've got i've got more in the back and i was like what and he came in and it was a place like yours nowhere near as hardcore done as yours i mean uh you know uh yours your Yours is impressive. But it goes in there, and it's got a nice little setup. It's got a Rose of Games, and we left with a hook and a Star Wars trilogy. So I was excited about that. I had a hook a long time ago. That was kind of cool. It is. It is. It's got a nice nostalgia. I should probably swap the Robin Williams kind of Translight thing to make it connect a little more with the movie. But I've left it alone. My wife won't. That's another one. I swear the sides of those cabinets are always rough. Was yours rough? No. Oh, really? Okay. Everyone I see, always the side of the cabinets just roached. Yeah, well, I don't know. At least they're not particle board. Yeah. I had some, like, 70s, like, Sagasa. My Spy Hunter is made out of that, like, pressed board or whatever it is. Thank God it's never been wet so it's not all jacked up. Yeah, we've got one. my project now is um we had a guy reach out to us out of the blue and said uh do you want a star wars pinball machine for two hundred dollars which one i was like well that's what i said i was like i told my wife i was like it's a scam don't even i mean like what does he got like a tabletop you know i mean something like like came out of a walmart toy aisle or something right i said i wouldn't even mess with it it's probably a scam and he wrote back he's like no no it's star trek and then he sent a picture and star trek the next generation oh heck for two hundred dollars oh yeah I've heard you're working on that one. Yeah. But anyway, we go out there and this thing's in a, you know, he's got like a car shop with a lean to. So it's just like a cover. Like there's no walls and it's there. So the bottom cabinet is the press board you're talking about. So that was fun to deal with. But that's a fun game to work on. I totally went through mine. It was it was a job to get everything right. And it wasn't as rough as yours. Yeah, no. But, again, the play field was beautiful. That's how mine was, too. Like, there was some rough things on it, but my play field was beautiful. I had to put all new ramps in it and all new plastics and a bunch of stuff like that, though, on mine. This one had bent back legs where he tried to pick it up with a front-end loader but drove forward before it was all the way off the ground. But, yeah, it's all superficial stuff, though. On the inside, it actually was pretty solid. so yeah I just haven't been able to get to it every time I'm like oh I'm going to finish that game something comes up you know we're running as many machines as we are and that I have to prioritize what's on the floor I have to be first I can't have people seeing broke games it's just kind of part of my OCD is I cannot take the games being dirty. What's a bad look if you got like five games that are just projects up front. Absolutely I don't have I can't it It just gets me on a whole other level if I have a game turned off. I cannot have that. It will not be that way. If I have a game turned off in my place, it's because it's too busy for me to pull it out. Yeah, it just happened. Yeah, it just happened. If we can't fix it instantly, then soon as the people kind of get out of that aisle and I have a clear shot at the door, it comes out and something else goes in. I keep spares because I just think it's a bad luck. People seem to remember that. You know, people, when you go into a place and you could have 100 games and if five of them are broken, people like everything's broken. Well, it's like that place in Vegas. All I ever hear is they're like half the games are not even on. Yeah, I'm like, that's not a good one. Well, one of our one of our regulars, Cookie up in up in Aiken, he went there and he said the same thing. He said over half of them were broke. I hope that's not the case, but I haven't heard anything say it was true. And I heard there it would almost be worth going just to hear them like yell at people because that's another thing they have a reputation for. Made it all the way to the other side of the country. No running, no loud voices. No swinging your arms. Like you can't swing your arms, bro. Like there's a sign on the door that says you can't. What has to happen for you to put a sign on the door that says you can't swing your arms? I mean, something bad happened with an arm. I mean, how many arm swinging problems do you have to have before you're like, you know, we're going to stop this arm swing. It's out of control. So, yeah, I don't know. He just needs to put like 30 and up. Yeah, I'm not trying to bash the places. I've never been there. I don't know. But this is what I hear. This is what people tell me. Oh, I've heard the same story from everyone. One of my friends did say he's like, well, there was a bunch of cool stuff I've never seen. Oh, I'm sure. That's cool. I'm sure. I'm going to go to one of those pastime places or something. I think that's what it's called in Ohio or something. It's like 600 games. Yeah, that runs Pinball Expo. Yes. I would love to see that. Yeah, I've heard his spot. It's awesome. He's just got all those rare games you're just not going to see anywhere, a bunch of imported games. So that would be really cool. Well, that's the older games. I don't know, the older oddball games. I don't know. Again, I joined pinball too late. so I'm a modern pinball baby so you know when I I'm you gotta if you got a dune I'm gonna play the crap out of that game because I did get to play like again at Southern Fry with people standing on my ankles I get to play I got to play a game of dune and that was really cool you got Winchester Mystery House you know I'm down but if you got some kind of oh this is they made two of these in France in 1970 yawn I mean it's not my thing More power to people whose it is. And I have a lot of – at the arcade, we try to keep – we want every era of game. We've got electromechanicals all the way back to 1949, all the way up to brand-new stuff. And I keep those running, and if you tell me there's a problem, I will 100% get that thing 100%. But I'm probably not going to play it. If I play it, it's because I'm testing it. I didn't appreciate them for the longest time because obviously I didn't grow up with the classics. I remember like Data East era games and, you know, like Williams WPC games. Yeah. But the longer I got into the hobby and especially playing in tournaments, I guess, because I have a chance on a classic versus Godzilla against some crazy good player. I started liking the classics more and more and just doing restorations on them and stuff. I guess that kind of, you know, made me interested in playing it more. But, yeah, definitely first I was more like I had some data used games. I had like five or six data used games because I figured out how to work on one game. And I was like, I'm only going to buy their stuff. And then I bought a Godzilla when that came out. And then I was like hooked on the new stuff. And I sold all my old stuff. And now I've made like full circle and back to, you know, getting all these old games again. Yeah, I hate doing play. You're talking about these bigs. I hate doing play-filled swaps. I've done it, and I actually have a... I kind of enjoy it. It's like therapeutic to me. But I can do it in like a day. Oh, what? Yeah. How? What magic are you doing? Or what have you done them on? Well, I've got a broach history. I've got one, too. But I did a Phoenix, 1978 Williams Phoenix. And so the game, you look at it, it looks super bare. So I was like, oh, this will be easy. Just don't do the rollovers. Those are a pain. The rollover stars? Yeah, yeah. You got to clear, get all the clear coat out of them. I don't want to do one of those again, but like a taxi. I mean, I had everything over on the other play field and like, probably like six hours. Wow. Well, does it have like the braided ground line? See, I do prep all that ahead of time. So I've got all like new ground wire and stuff. So the first thing I'll do is lay all the grounds down and like put any like through hole socket lamps or whatever. And then I'll just cut everything from the old play field. and then just like literally pick it up and lay it on the other one and then start attaching everything and usually i'll use yopsicles so i already have all those already lined or all the way to go soldered and stuff ready to go and i label everything so before i take anything off of the other play field it's like this wire was for insert 5000 you know this was for this arrow so when i bring it over there's no like what was that for let me look at 500 pictures to try to figure out where that went um and when you're working on it later on in life it's like oh everything's labeled this is so much nicer yeah the way i do it um it not yeah what i like to do the way i do is pretty similar to yours maybe uh less detail but what i do is i take a part off and every time i take a part off like i pull off the slingshot plastic everything i had to take off to take off that slingshot plastic goes into a bag his bags are numbered starting at one the first Okay, so you bag it all. Yeah, and I'm not talking about every single little piece is bagged individually or anything, but if I take off a ramp, and it's too big to go in a bag, I'll put a piece of painter's tape on it, and that'll be like if the ramp is the first thing I take off. I'll put a piece of painter's tape on the ramp that says number one, and all the parts that I took off to get that ramp out are in a bag labeled number one. And I do all that all the way up to whatever, to 40 or so bags is about what you'll end up with. And then when I go to rebuild it and I do take pictures periodically, you got to when you get to the point where like, OK, these there's a post here, an empty hole here from where I took something else out there. I take picture of that. Yeah. And then when I'm done, I want to go to put it back together. I just started, you know, you start to bag 40 and start working your way backwards. And that way you don't because I've done so when I was new with this, you put on something as, oh, crap, this has to go on before that. And you take it off. You know what I mean? That sucks. If you bag it, if you at least denote the order. I try to take pictures in the layers. So, like, if I remove a ramp, now I'm going to take another photo. So, like, I can go through the photos in reverse and be like, all right, this was down before this and this to kind of assemble it. But I'll lay everything out on the floor. I don't bag it, but, like, everything's laid out on the floor with the screws that came from this and that. On the floor? Yeah. You've got a puppy dog. Oh, the dog is gone that day. He's going to screw your day up. Clear your schedule. if you come through one time wagging that tail. I'll have my whole floor just like nothing but all the parts on the game, and I'm just walking back over and putting it on. But that's just my crazy process of how I approach it, I guess. Yeah, I've found trying to work off, for me, I went with the number thing because I found just working off pictures to be too time-consuming. I spend too much zooming in, scrolling back to pictures and stuff like that where I can pick this up. Oh, I've got a plastic with three holes in it, and I've got three screws. You know what I mean? It just is, you know, I just kind of figure it out. For me, that works. Yeah, you got to do whatever works best for you, honestly, for sure. And I usually use all new hardware, so I don't get too crazy with the screws. I just know what lengths need to be used where. What do you just have like a bolt market? Yeah, I'll just buy a bulk like off of Pinball Life, like tons of this. Like, all right, this is what holds Star Post down. This is what holds this down. um especially like the whole bottom of the play field for all like the lights and all that yeah it's all all new screws um and it just looks better like when when you have a new play field and everything's just like nice and shiny i get it i get it and the screws really aren't that expensive you know as far as the big picture yeah i guess but and i rewrap all my coils always because like it just looks cleaner when you lift up a brand new play field like all the coils and you know they'll look new i saw that when i came in you have coils wrapped in the pinball studio you've got your own coil line what are we talking about i just have a sticker printer over there so i just like print out stickers and uh that is insane yeah yeah your merch game is strong you have branded this whole place i love i'm crazy about branding stuff i'm like everything's got to have a label yeah i feel very very inadequate here there uh our march game is well i thought it was okay it looks it looks plenty good i saw the shirt you brought me and your shirt looks pretty awesome too that you're wearing now yeah thanks man but who does all y'all's uh logos do y'all do it yourself we do i design all the logos so everything everything uh i don't print the shirts or anything i know nothing right yeah but uh we got a local place just uh half a mile from where we are if that quarter mile maybe from where we are does the shirts um awesome but yeah i do all the designs i try to um i try to make a new design periodically but oh i'm horrible with it because i get like i i use uh the artist uh Michael Barnard he did like jaws and uh uh rush see what i mean see your pinball your merch game compared to my game but i'm addicted to it like most people i know that have used them used them once and like they made is their logo and then they're they're done with michael yeah like where i'm like constantly like dude we should do a jurassic park one we should do an et one we should do a back to the future one and he loves it because like those are all his favorite movies he's like yeah i'm down man yeah wow but uh yeah i don't know i just have fun with it all the time so i can tell i i'm my goodness but it gets expensive most people just want to buy a design and be done with it yeah i mean i i i can't imagine what i mean like our our shirts and stuff we make basically no money no me either you're surprised how much that stuff costs but and then i end up giving some away for like prizes and stuff and then i'm like well there's all my profit i made for sure but uh i just like seeing people just repping my stuff so that that makes me happy i'll go to a pinball show or something i'm like oh someone's wearing my shirt yeah that makes me happy because you're head to toe in pinball studio and man the coils man the coils blew my mind i think i stole that from Kerry Hardy, I think. I think he did it in a restoration. I was like, oh, I'm rewrapping my coils. I don't know who would notice it, but if I rewrapped all my coils and popped the hood on one of these games and somebody's like, what? I'll have to show you the bottom of one of my games out there when we're done. You've got some beautiful games out there. My goodness, man. Everything out there looks like it's straight out of a museum. Not in that it's old, just in that it looks brand new. Your shoe lanes don't have any wear on how do you avoid that my turn like um oh you mylar them yeah yeah and i'll turn it way down yeah i turn stern uh trough eject power at 176 that's what i found when i go below that i would start getting trough jams yeah um and above that kind of weight like if i start having issues with it kicking out i'll go bump it up just a hair until it starts kicking it back out in the shooter lane but yeah mylar day one for sure i've tried those like plastic protectors, but sometimes it screws up the ball how it feeds. Yeah, we dabbled in those. Actually, very recently, we've put a couple, maybe I bought like a dozen or so from Marco's specialties and put them all in and one or two is just broken from the impact of the ball, but the rest are holding strong. You can't pull them up either. If you forget to pull them up, they just shatter into like a million pieces. Yeah they start 3D printed I guess Yeah I made some of those I know where that I gotta get that file mylar is the way to i mean if yours is looking doing mylar then that probably the way to go i love the cliffy guy stuff but uh every time i ordered stuff from cliffy it's like one year later i finally see my order it's it's too bad because i could man i want to send cliffy just a pile of cash because i love his stuff but you just can't oh i put in a huge order from him one time it was like eight games or something and by the time my order was ready like two of those games i no longer even has but he told me my order was coming up i was like listen i don't even have those two games i have these two games now he's like that's fine i'll just switch it over and so yeah it all worked out i'm too impatient i uh you know i want it now i mean you know what i mean so i was like well but it bites me in the ass because i'm like well i want it now so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna order this i don't want to wait all right an indefinite amount of time so i either do without it i'll keep my out for something else and then the amount of time that has passed i could have ordered from cliffy and gotten it yeah and i'm still there's another company it's like man it's pinball protectors.com or something check that out it's just cliffy's but they're all in stock on the website oh yeah but he doesn't have every game but there's a lot of games and i seem like the games i didn't need are the games that i saw i already had cliffies for i'm like i need them for these games but whatever damn i need to find that um yeah i'll send you that info too for sure i think it's pinball protectors something like that but anyway yeah tell me how how did you finally decide to like go from buying a few games to like i'm gonna open up my own arcade yeah man uh well uh so what happened was um we started we really just started kind of falling into it more and more we went to um myrtle beach there's a there's a mall down there that's got a really cool uh arcade and i can't remember but he's also like it's mainly like a comic book shop and uh but he's got an arcade too and like everything's a quarter it was a lot of fun we bought a bought a tron down there oh nice and um and then uh we found a Metallica Premium, the old style, and obviously not the remastered because this is in 2022. Yeah. So we kept picking up these games, and my preference was actually to pick them up needing a little work because I enjoyed figuring it out. I enjoyed learning more about it. And so along about midway of 2020 or spring of 2022, we said, well, you know, maybe this would be a good side business. You never know about, you know, I work a nine to five job. Well, it's five thirty in the morning to two in the afternoon, but I would call it a nine to five. But you never know when you learn. I learned during covid that if you don't have a backup plan or if you, you know, who knows business for a lot of business got slow and people got fired for laid off and and just a lot of small businesses went out of straight under. So I kind of wanted to have some kind of backup plan. And my wife was running a medical office, a very successful medical office. And she was making a lot of money compared to what I was making, which I was making a fair amount of money. But the stress of the job was really taking a toll on her. She started having some health issues related to basically the stress. And so that was another part of it. So can we get you out of that high stress environment and get you into something that you enjoy doing? And so we had three business ideas and the idea was what we said we're going to do is, well, why don't we we're going to pursue all three at the same time? One is repairing games, other people's game, just going into the professional kind of repair business. One is buying and selling because at the time, you know, pinball prices were way up. And so if you could buy broke, buy low, sell high, you know, money to be made in there. Right. And the other would be an arcade. I said, what we're going to do is we're going to pursue all three ideas at the same time. And doors are going to open for something. Doors are going to close for something. And we did. and so the first thing we did was I had a 27 foot twin engine jet boat so we sold that to try to get a little money to get this off the ground and from there we started buying games and also we learned there too that really good deals could be had if we buy in bulk so we started buying entire collections at a time. I've seen you in the background of some of these auctions too. I'm like, there he is. That was a wrap, man. I've been at auctions at 11 o'clock at night, still loading up, trying to figure out how to play Tetris in the trailer to get so much stuff in there. The back of the truck's full, the trailer's full. But so, yeah, we've we definitely went kind of hog wild for a while. I mean, and I also saw I had a kind of a show car with a 1960 Cadillac with the big, you know, fins on the back and pink Cadillac. And anyway, sold that again to help get this business off the ground because, I mean, we were committed and I can always pick up another one. Right. And again, we just started buying crazy amounts of games and we would go around to all these places. Pinball Palace, wherever it was, whatever location you go to and I talk to the owners and I mentioned Pinball Palace because Kelly was very helpful. he would talk to us about things that people would be like that's kind of private. He would talk to us about expenses and revenue and give us tips and tricks. He was just so helpful. And he had the place that we wanted. So if we ever opened an arcade we want to build it to be what we look for in a place. We figured out what we look for in a place which is clean, functioning games, free play. My wife hardly plays any. We go anywhere that costs money. My wife won't play because she feels like she's not a good enough player to get her money's worth. It almost feels like you're in Vegas. When you play, so on a micro level, when you play pinball at a place that charges a dollar a play, two dollars a play, whatever it is, you almost feel like you're You're at that machine. You're trying to beat the house. If you play for 15 minutes, you're like, woo-hoo, I won. That's awesome. If you lose 30 seconds, you're bummed about it. I mean, if you go through a couple bucks in less than a minute, you're like, wow, that does not make me feel good. And so we decided with our place, we didn't want the ups and downs of that. And you have a quick game. You go, oh, man, that was crazy. And you hit start again or you walk to another one. It doesn't matter. you know you don't have that dip in oh i love the free play arcade layout because yeah i agree i went to some arcades when i was like starting to get in to the whole hobby and i was not that great of a player and one of the arcades we went to that was all coin drop it was like mostly older games no no ball saves or anything so like i i went through like 20 bucks in like you know 45 minutes and I'm like this is expensive you know but now I'm a little bit better player but still like I like the free play thing but the the feeling though when you lose on a much smaller level it's like when you go you play in a tournament and you drive if I were to drive three hours to come to your place because that that's that's what that's what the drive for me to you is well I mean it's obviously just a hair out of the way if I was headed down to pinball the beach but um and I drive all this way and you had some kind of knockout tournament and I play one game and i'm out now i'm gonna be bummed that's why i don't like those formats i'm like i don't want to play in a tournament and just be knocked out instantly i'm all about like group match play like multiple rounds we did we did it one time and it was a couple months ago and yeah it was we tried one of our we tried different stuff yeah that's not gonna get people into the hobby yeah knocked out so quickly yeah but we had people driving from columbia and stuff like that again just play one game and they're like what the hell was that i was yeah we're not gonna do that anymore it can be like that for like state championships too people will drive hours and then they'll play in it and get knocked out like instantly yeah well i mean i i guess i would at least you made it but yeah that's it i'm gonna peg that a little different because you're trying to find who's the best of the best in this short amount of time and then but tournaments like we have and like you have they're about finding out who's who's kind of the better in that group but it's also about just having a good time and states that's they're getting business done you know when When you go to your state finals, you're invited because you're one of the top 24, 25, or whatever it is in the state. And we're here to find out which one of you is the best. So I get it there. But our place, your place, is about having fun. That needs to be first. Yeah. I want everyone to play in the majority of the tournament. You have finals or whatever. But for the most part, you're there for the whole thing. So, yeah, I think it's just a better route. Yeah. Well, so getting back to my little miniature pinball journey, because like I said, it's a short one. Hey, it's a good one so far. I'm enjoying hearing it, man. Yeah, at the end of March of 23, so I was a little side note. I was in Roanoke. I went and checked the Roanoke Pinball Museum out, and I talked to, again, I talked to everybody where I go, and I talk to people that own it, people that run it, and I ask different questions that can help me in the business. I asked them, and they said they were somehow involved with the – I don't want to say it wrong. This is what I remember him saying, so you can't hold me to this or go call this dude out on it. But he said that they were involved with the arts, Center for the Arts for the city. So basically they were subsidized. they had some kind of reduced rent or I don't remember exactly what he said but somehow I was like how can you afford to charge so low or is it profitable at this low or how can you afford to charge so low and he was involved with the city of the arts they basically pick up some kind of perk from doing that so hey I shot my shot I went in front of the city council in Aiken South Carolina where we are and I told them about my idea to do this. I wanted to bring downtown. I was looking for a place. Hopefully the city had owned a couple properties down there and I was trying to get one of them because that was next to no rent, hundreds of dollars a month. So I went up there and told them what I wanted to do and asked for their help. They were supportive, not much help, I don't guess. But that's okay. It's okay. I mean, nobody owes me. I mean, they don't owe me anything. So it's okay. But anyway, so I present my little idea at this city council meeting, and then I went to hop on the elevator to go downstairs. And when the doors opened, there was a guy holding his finger out saying, hang on a second, huffing and puffing. He had run down the stairs to catch me to make sure he was there when the elevator opened. And he was with a local newspaper and wanted to do an article on it. So he came out to the house, and at this point we had 16 pinball machines in our living room and another, I don't know. We had probably 42 or so total games. Wow. So pinball machines, video games, that's about what we had. And he did an article on it and presented basically the idea and saying, you know, let everybody know if they're actually interested in bringing something like this to Aiken. And the response was just overwhelming. At that point, we were like, we have to do this. I mean, because I didn't know. There was no pinball presence in Aiken, so we didn't know. It's hard to read sometimes. I've thought about the same thing, you know, around here. There's some arcades, but the Pinball Palace does well. But some of these other ones I go to, I'm like, oh, man, there's not a whole lot of people here. Well, most of the places, to me also, the only way you can really get by on Coindrop without free play, if you're doing Coindrop, is if your business is a side attraction to your main business. Whether it's your bar, and we don't have a bar. We don't have a restaurant because there's no water plumb to our suite, so we can't have a restaurant. And I don't have a space for it either. But if you have a bar and then your games are off to the side, but it's a side thing. I mean it's to draw people into the bar. And then I think you can get by with coin drop and stuff like that. But yeah, we – all right, so we came out to the house, to this article, and the response was just so overwhelming that we had a building owner downtown Aiken reached out to us and said, we have got the place for you. And we went and checked it out, and I said, you've got to be kidding me. That's incredible. And the rent was very reasonable compared to what some of the people were charging, and the building owners were just so great that we said, yeah, this is it. This is the place. We're going to take this shot. But again, we didn't know. There was no pinball presence in Aiken. So I really, outside of that article and the support, I didn't know if people were actually going to play it. And that's another reason we don't feel we could have – we would have failed on Coindrop is people aren't going to – I don't think. people are going to pay a dollar a play to learn. Or they're going to spend $5 and leave. Yeah, you're not going to be able to learn. I'd rather get whatever it is. Do you do it hourly or daily? We offer an hour. Ours is daily. So you pay $20 and you're good open to close. So on Saturdays, that's $2 an hour. But we started doing an hourly. But when we opened the place, we just wanted, here's the price to come in. Because that's some of the places I've been. that's what it is so i think you would get that twenty dollars a lot more than like like you said if it's coin drop i feel like five dollars ten dollars and people would be leaving where yeah you could have made well if you don't have a supporting business yeah then there's no way for us to even stay in right in business and we have to light we have so many machines now we open the place with 62 games and we've got uh tell them how you count them if you counted like ski ball is three because we have three lanes of skeeball then you get about 130 games but if you counted things that are the same um then and then you get between somewhere in the low 120s um of which 69 are pinball giggity um yeah so i lost my train of thought a lot of going with that but you're good uh yeah i was saying the so the business the building owners um reached out to us and had a place for us. So we were pretty excited about that. And I was like, you know, another thing was I had no, there's no competition. So I was like, how can this business fail? Because there's nothing from Columbia to Atlanta. Is there any other entertainment in the area? Like I'm sure you got like a movie theater or something somewhere. In Aiken, not so much. There's Woodchuckers. Now they're downtown with us as well. It's an axe throwing venue. So that's cool. But outside of that, man, I think that we have Putt-Putt in Aiken. Other than that, we have not much to do drinking. Yeah, you can you can burn brain cells where we have that. That's kind of how it is around here. There's not a whole lot to do. And I think I think a few of those type businesses could survive here. Yeah, well, yeah, we open. Another thing came from the article we also had. I mean, the community was just so supportive when that article came out. We had a guy that was a family friend of our daughter's, and he reached out to us, and he said, you know, I've got a basement full of pinball machines, and my kids are going off to college, and I don't have anything to do with them. So, yeah, he gave us this beautiful 1949 Free Musketeers. Now, it needed some love. He had cut the cord off because he was afraid one of his kids would plug it in and burn the house down, but was able to get that going. And at the beginning, you know, it's not something I would do now, but at the beginning, I mean, we take all the help we can get. And because, like I said, we open with 62 games and man, you want to talk about stressful. It's got to be a ton of work, especially just all the maintenance on everything. That's the thing that you really just aren't. And finding good help. Like not everybody knows how to work on this kind of stuff, even if you wanted to hire out. Yeah, well, that was the thing I was not ready for was the amount of maintenance. Just even then, I think we had 40 something, 42 maybe, around 40 pinball machines that we opened with. And I was not ready just every day. I mean, I'm working eight hours. I'm working eight hours at my regular job, and then I'm working 12 to 17 hours a day, seven days a week for two and a half years. and before we finally started kind of tapering it off. And just you're not ready for all the – to be able to maintain the standards that I believe are the only way for me to have success is to maintain a high standard and build a reputation over time. So I can't have that reputation fall on its face at the beginning. So for me to be able to keep the games clean and functional, I mean, I was working around the clock and just sleep just wasn't happening. I just couldn't do it. but one of the really, really things I talk about making great people in it. We had some people called up and, and normally I would think any video, any operator arcade operator would be like, I know. Thanks for cool. But I'm telling you, I was dying. And we had the Browns, the family of Browns Mark and Cheyenne and Mason and the, and their friend Charles Goodhand, they, they reached out to us and they said, Hey, you know, I know you don't know us. And that's the other thing. You're going to let somebody you don't know just come in your place. But we love pinball. We want to see you guys succeed. We'd love to help if we can. We know machines. I said, oh, thank you, pinball Jesus. So they came in of their own free will for years. It's only in 2025 that we finally, you know, I think we can stand on our own two legs. Um, so you guys don't have to drive from, you know, they drive an hour every Monday and help me, um, from four o'clock in the afternoon until they had to go and mow through games. I mean, clean 18 on a night and, and repair all these. It says Charles is an expert with the, uh, like Williams, like the Adams family, WPC kind of stuff and stuff that I knew nothing about. So having him come in and do that and Mark, too, Mark's really good with the wide variety of the games. And having them come and do that was just a godsend. I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know how the business would have survived, but I don't know how I wouldn't have just dropped dead at some point if it wasn't for them. After every tournament, I do feel like there's at least three games I have to tinker on. But thank God, like some of the people that play in my tournaments are also collectors and have restored games. So they're like, all right, let's knock this out after the tournament. So we'll be working on games till like midnight or whatever. So, you know, the next time everyone shows up, everything's good to go. Have you found that like when your games, once you get a game running well, that you have to keep playing it. You have to get the demons worked out of it. And it just runs like a sewing machine from then on. I mean, that's been our experience. It was like my Grand Slam, that old Rare Valley game I have. it did not work right. The flyaway targets, we adjusted them like a hundred damn times. And I was about to sell it because I was just over it. It'd be like two hours later. All right, you got to readjust them all. But one day we got them set right, and I have not touched that game in like a year now. That's the way to do it, man. If you keep playing it, once you get the kinks worked out, because I feel like I work on. But I have little things, wire break off or something like that, or lamps not lighting, because tournament players will let you know. That's one thing. Like casuals, one lights out on the play field, you'll never hear a thing about it. But a tournament player that doesn't know something's going on in the game because the lamp's not lighting, they'll let you know instantly. That's actually one of my biggest problems at the arcade is having people let us know when something's not right because we have so many games, and I spend most of my time working on them. I don't – if I'm over, usually I'm in the workshop or I'm dealing with issues that I know about. But one of the bigger problems we have is that people will play a game, and I'm guilty of it. I go places, and I feel bad if something messes up. I was like, well, I'm not going to – I mean, a little girl at the counter, she's not – they probably know it's broke. You know what I mean? Right, right. But what I – I have to – I rely on people to tell me, hey, this lights out. I notice this lights out. Now, we've got our group of hardcore players, like Jason Burleson. He won the state championships last year. He stays out of Aiken. And he'll tell me, you know, everything that's wrong with every game. And I love that. I love that. At times, it can be like, ugh, come on, man. Oh, I've got one guy. I'm fixing the last four that – Neil in my group, he'll be writing me notes. He's like, I'm writing down notes. I love it. I'm writing down notes. I love it. That's what I want, man. I wish everybody would tell me because, I mean, I want these games. I want you to think that game is 100% when you leave it. And if you tell me about it, chances are I will fix it within five minutes. I hate going to an arcade, say, a year later, and the same thing is still broken. That drives me nuts. And there's a few of those I see. And I'm just like, it's been a year. I think it's time to fix that one broken thing. Yeah, so that's one thing we're really, really proud of is being able to just have that. We've got more games than we can use. I've actually had to start. We're basically hoarders. so we just buy and buy and buy and then we're like well and we talk ourselves into buying something we're going to sell this and we're going to get the money for it and that'll help you know kind of recoup some of the funds that we spend on that and then we just don't we just don't sell anything until very recently i've i was bad about selling stuff but now i'm kind of finally getting to where like yeah i'll just hold off if there's something i want it matters Huh? When I sell a game, it's a game. I cut off the bottom. Yeah. Like, you know, I've got a firepower. Not that firepower is a bad game. Yeah, yeah. But ours had a rough play field. So I don't like that. I don't like games on the floor that have paint chips out and stuff, unless it's some kind of epic old game that you can't get anywhere else. Yeah. In which case, you know, deal with it. Suck it up, buttercup. But, yeah, I'm selling. We've actually started selling off games just because I was like, I just got frustrated in the workshop. And every time we have one of the last suites we have is broken off half into a party room, half into a workshop. So when we don't have parties, I pull games out in the party room and work on them there. And just moving them back and forth, I was like, I cannot move in here. The garage at home is full. I've got a 30-foot shop. It's full, front to back, side to side, Tetris in there. And then I've got the workshop, and I can't move in here. Yeah, at one point you've got to let some of them go. So pick your favorites and then, you know, oh, you're good. You're good. Pick your favorites and then, yeah, let the rest go. There's plenty of different pinball machines out there. So, yeah, we started kind of cutting away. I wanted to get down below about 90 games or so because, like I said, we can keep 69 is what we've got space for that people can play. But I need a dozen or so spares. That's what I need just because I need to be ready for anything that happens. I want games from every era staged up, ready to go, which I have. Yeah, that's why it was getting kind of exhausting, all these games coming out. I'm like, if 10 games are coming out every year and I want almost all of them, that's filling up your 90 games or whatever you feel comfortable with owning. Yeah, the new games is what's driving me out because the new games drives business more. People are like, we didn't have an Addams Family. I found a minty fresh Adams family nine hours away or something like that or six hours away whatever it was went and got that and people are like oh you got Adams family and they come in and they play it once and then they go back to the Stearns you know go back to the bloop bloops of the Insider Connected so you know we're definitely all over these new games there was I definitely had a goal for a while of having every Insider Connected game but when they switched to dropping three a year and I filled up the whole front suite We have three suites for the arcade. Our building is broken down into suites. We have three suites for just the arcade. And the front suite is other than the video games that are in the center they all Insider Connected I want that to be all Insider Connected So as I was trying to fill that front suite with Insider Connected games I only missing well now three now that Walking Dead is out We didn't go on a Walking Dead because my wife, I'm for Walking Dead. I wanted the old one, but my wife really loves Elton John. She said we cannot have a Walking Dead. Yes, she said we cannot have a Walking Dead until I've got my Elton John. So we've been on the lookout for an Elton John. But anyway, the only other two that I don't have are Beatles and Bond 60th. I want both of those. Yeah, I had an opportunity to pick up a Beatles, but the word on the street was that there was a special deal coming on Beatles, and they had a stock of unsold units, and that there was one company that was going to pick them up for a good price, pick them all up. And then at that point I would get one for, you know, a really good price, brand new in the box. And that deal, I guess, just didn't come together. So I passed on a couple Beatles and I was like, well, my wife doesn't really want a Beatles anyway, but I want one. But I wanted to have my own. I like the layout. And Beatles, I'm not against the music. I'm not a super fan. My dad loved the Beatles. Rolling Stones guy? You have to be one of the other according to folklore. I'm just kind of burned out on it. I liked it when I was younger, but now I'm just like all those radio bands. Like, I don't know. They just, after a while, I've heard it too many times. It's like Led Zeppelin, love Led Zeppelin growing up. And now I'm just like, all right, I've heard that song 5 million times. We got that. We got the, I think we had a pro of Led Zeppelin and it just didn't. Yeah. I don't care for the game. I like the premium. I enjoy it with a electromagnet or what I know. I really like Led Zeppelin too. So what's the kind of music you listen to? You're a techno guy. No, no. Okay. I used to listen to these, people call them jam bands, like Allman Brothers and stuff like that. I really enjoyed it. Actually, Greg Allman lived down the road, so I started working in his studio and stuff. So I kind of got into all of that music and government mule and stuff. But a bunch of bands a lot of people have never even heard of. That's awesome, man. But I do like classic rock, don't get me wrong. Just some of it I've just burned out on it. ACDC, I loved ACDC. I had all the CDs and albums and all that, but now I'm just like, I don't want to hear it anymore. I bought a Back in Black album and listened to it so much that now I over-listen to it. Now when it comes on, I'm like, ugh. Yeah, that's what I feel like with a lot of this music. Maybe I just need to take a break for like 10 years from all of it, and then I'll love it all again. All right, so new pinball machine from Stern. The rumor now is Kiss. Oh, Kiss. I'm sorry, upcoming remaster. Yeah, yeah. That or ACDC. Where are you at? I want neither. What? Yeah. It's just me personally. I'm getting a little tired of the remakes. I'm like, surprise me if something new. Yeah, I don't know. They knocked out of the park with Metallica, though. They did. I don't feel so much with Walking Dead, though. I feel like a lot of people passed on Walking Dead. But me personally, I was just never a massive. I liked the show when it was coming out originally, especially the first few seasons. but I was never a fan of the pinball machine. I'm just not a huge John Borg fan. Nothing against John Borg either. Great guy. But he's probably my least favorite designer at Stern. You're not a plastic ramp guy? I mean, just like I'm trying to think of John Borg games that I really like. Tron. That's about it. Yeah. We met our Tron into a LE. I like Rush. I like Rush. So those two are probably my favorite. Do you like the band? I'm not a super fan I'm not against Rush So I was a dead set against Rush I said we will never have I said we will never have Rush In the arcade because I don't know there's something about I'm probably going to get some hate on this But there's something about the sound Of it I was like man I don't think I can listen to that all day But I like the game though I really do enjoy the game I love Foo Fighters I like Foo Fighters as a band, and I like the game. Yeah, I had to eat the crow on that one, man. I mean, we've pulled it. Just the popularity of the Insider Connected, and people were asking for that rush, and so we got it. And, yeah, no, it's cool. And I've actually learned to, I'm not going to say really like the music, but I tolerate it. It's okay. Yeah. Now that I listen to the pinball machine for a long time. Well, I'm not big into Elton John either, but I love that Elton John game. He's got some bangers. He's got some bangers. I mean, I've seen Elton John in concert. I can't think of one right now, but I'm not a super fan. Yeah, but the game's fun to play, man. It's bright. It's beautiful. It's glittery. You know what I mean? It just sparkles. And I don't know. The light show they did in there is pretty impressive. I'm looking forward to Sonic, or at least that's the big rumor. For some reason, that one, I guess because I never owned a Sega. Well, that's the thing, too. I would much rather have Mario because I was a Nintendo kid. Mario's worth it. I never had a Sega, but my friends had them, so it's kind of nostalgic. it because I remember going over to my friend's house and playing Sonic. But I like it more than Elton John theme-wise. I know Sonic. I don't know. I don't know them. I've never seen the movies. I think it's just from what I'm hearing, it's themed only specifically after the video game. It's got to have a loop. That's the biggest thing with Sonic is going upside down. If they don't have a loop ramp, Like, what are they doing? And that ball better be at a rocket. I mean, you know what I mean? Anything better be hitting Mach 2 on the way around there. Harry Potter. I wouldn't mind having one of those. I love Harry Potter. I'm not a Harry Potter fan like as like the movies. Like I've seen them all like once, maybe twice. But I really like the game. I think the game's awesome. Early movies are good. You know, I mean, they're there for me. Yeah. But the later not so much. But if you have just like one game in your collection, If you can only have one, then Harry Potter is, I think, the way to go because there's so much in it. 96 modes, man. I mean, because you get some games that get very repetitive. Now you can start to get them, too. I noticed Flip N Out Pinball actually has stock of them now. Is that right? Yeah, not a wait list, but they have them in stock now where you can grab them. So maybe I'll get one hopefully in the next year. We'll see. The problem is people just keep making new stuff, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to get this game. just it's on the back burner but then four new games come out that i've gotta have and then i end up never getting the damn game i still want batman 66 but it's like hard for me to like back up and like go get one no they're already hard to find i grew up on that show not that i'm from the 60s or anything but i just remember i remember it on tv all the time yeah when i was younger i watched it too i had to have that we've got a batman 66 and i think that's one be on my short list we you know my wife and i every now and then we we talk about it and not definitely no plans to close the arcade and anything. But we're just out of, you know, just as conversation. We say, you know, if you could have 10 games and we take it home, which would it be? And I'd have a hard time letting Batman go. Oh, yeah, it's a great game. It's definitely on my list. I've got to get that, and I've got to get a Star Trek, Stern Star Trek again. I've owned it twice. It'll be my third time owning it, and I don't know why I sold it the other times. I am not a Star Trek fan whatsoever either. I just love that game. I cannot get my grubby little fingers on one. I've been trying to pick one. I want an LE, though. I've had the Pro twice, and I want an LE. The LE is beautiful. I played Marco's one. He brought it to Southern – no, Comic-Con, Soda City Comic-Con in Columbia, South Carolina, this last year. And that was so cool. I did not know they made it like the – Side arm rails. Yeah, shooting the – Like early expression lights. Yeah, and has – yeah, lasers that go all over the game, and the Enterprise, like, falls down in the front. I was like, I need that, but it was just a little out of my price. They were cheap a few years ago, too, and I'm so sad I didn't get one. You could definitely get the premium for fairly cheap, but the LE is just beautiful. I want the LE. Yeah, and that's where we struggle for some things because everybody's putting out such bangers now. You've got Dune Mystery or Winchester Mystery House. You've got Kong Jaws. Everybody's putting out these bangers. you got well beetlejuice harry potter beetlejuice so that is that ends up being your baseline when you're like well i can get this game for nine grand or so or i can get this uh six-year-old star trek for nine grand right sorry it's hard to compare i know i wanted a ghostbusters le forever and i'm like fourteen thousand dollars but it's ghostbusters yeah it's ghostbusters but my luck is they'll make a new one when I buy that LE. When I finally buy the LE, they'll make a new one. That's my luck, too. That happened to me with Metallica. I paid a primo price for it at COVID times when everything was ridiculous. Those games were going for a lot. I remember that. Yeah, and I put a ton of money in it because I like to mod stuff out and then had to take a huge kick in the ding-ding when I sold that. I remember Stranger Things Pros during COVID. Stranger Things was like a real small run and they just cancelled the game and those were going for $9,000 for a pro now you can't sell one for like $5,500 for a pro when we opened for the first couple years of the arcade the Stranger Things was our most played game another good thing about the Insider Connect is it tracks you can just go online and see all the game things but that's another nice thing about a setup like ours this because people are like people come in and see Mandalorian or Turtles and be like, I don't know how you still have that in there because, you know, we had it at the arcade and it just doesn't make enough shit. But I don't have to worry about whether people play. I don't have to take out Turtles if it doesn't get played a whole bunch because I'm not selling individual games. I don't need every game to earn crazy amounts. I'm selling experience. Yep. And Turtles is a big theme where I think it does draw people. It's just like, will they continue to play it? It might be another story. Yeah, but also as people take it out, and I have it, they'll come to our place and play it. But the experience for us is you come there and we have 30, 20, 28, 29 Insider Connected games. Now, if I pulled out the ones that weren't crushing it, then I have less. But Insider Connected is a huge draw for us. They're really – Oh, yeah. I agree. You see everybody, I mentioned earlier, they go back and they'll play. They'll be, oh, crap, you got Adam's family. I've always wanted to play. And they'll play two games on it and then go up to those sterns. They want the badges and be on the leaderboard and all that. Yeah, you've got to get the blue. I agree. I agree. It's addictive. I'm hoping some other companies come out with it or, you know, a version of it. I was trying to get my buddy. He's, like, big into coding. He's going to be coding my homebrew. and I was like, dude, we've got to come up with a good leaderboard system for these older games, but not like score bit and all that where it just hasn't worked. And he's like, I think I could come up with something, but just like apparently he's got the same concern that Stern had was just storing all the information if you give it to the masses. Well, I know there's something else that's supposed to come out that they're trying to, I think it almost, I hope I'm not wrong about this, like hexapin ball. I think something like that is dropping. I heard Turner is working on one. I hope I'm not wrong about that, but somebody is making a platform or already has it developed and is trying to sell it to manufacturers. I think Turner is just trying to do it for himself. If someone else made it and sold it to manufacturers, because Jersey Jack really needs it. Their games are already beautiful and then they had score a bit, but I don't like score a bit personally. I've never used it. It's confusing. Like Stern's easy. That's what makes it work. We've got a few Jersey Jacks. I don't know if they have it on there or not. I don't know. I don't really know what it is, to be honest with you. Scorebit, exactly. Yeah, it's kind of like – I don't think you have achievements and all that. I think it's more of just a leaderboard. Well, we're running now because people were begging for other – getting their name on the leaderboard. We have two leaderboards for Stern Insider Connected, and you see everybody go over there. We get flooded at the beginning of the month because our leaderboard resets every month, and you see them go over there and play a game, and they walk over and look and see where they're at. So to give that experience to other games, we added iScored. Have you ever heard of that? So it's a leaderboard, and you can go in and add games and stuff like that. Just manually? Yeah, but it's not Insider Connected in that it's not as easy to use. Right. So you have to, I believe, I've never used it, but I believe you take a picture of your score. You have to create an account with iScore and you kind of submit it. Okay. Like that. And then it comes up on a leaderboard. We've got leaderboards in the back. We've got two leaderboards in the back for iScore. For everything, video games, pinball machine, doesn't matter. You put whatever. You put skeeball, I guess. But it's a way to do it. And we do have a few users on that. We're adding users to that. And all this stuff's free. I mean, you don't have to pay for Insider Connected or you don't have to pay for CR. Our idea was you scan a QR code like there's an app. You scan a QR code on the game so there's no camera on the game. So it knows you're on that game. And then you take a picture of the score, and the app is smart enough to read the score through the picture and do all the updating. So you don't have to manually type anything. That's what I think. I'm telling you that platform I'm telling you that I was trying to think of that I think Hexapinball is doing, supposedly, as some kind of – And I heard a podcast with them, and I can't remember if it was Loser Kids or what, but they were on that show and they were talking about their idea, and somehow it does integrate with the display on the back of the game. I think when you buy their kit, you buy the display for the game. Okay. But all iScore stuff on every game has the QR code, so you scan it and it takes you straight to that kind of feature. Okay. Cool. Well, I've got some rapid-fire questions for you. Hit me with it. your favorite pinball machine to date uh i am i am i am awful at that i am i hate that question well i every i saw once a michelin tire commercial and uh the the tire rolls down the line the big michelin guy grabs it and he hugs it and there's like music playing and it's like this moment and he lets it go and he's sad and the next one comes along and he's like oh and he holds it and he loves it that's me whatever the newest one is i'm like this is the greatest game ever but if i had to have only one right now if i could yeah what's one you can't get but you're just dying to have it well oh you mean dying to have it uh evil dead is what i'm dying to have what i have that would be my favorite uh right now is uh probably harry the one i enjoy playing at this moment in time is is probably Harry Potter. I just enjoy it. The theme immersion on it is incredible. The gameplay is fun. I really like it. I like the big screen in the back. I like everything. Oh yeah, it's a great game. Alright, we're going to take a 360. What's your least favorite game? Oh my god. I bought out of a lot of games I bought a lot of games. I'm not saying I bought a lot of games. We bought a lot of like 10 games out of Florida. Another thing that Everybody online was saying it's a scam. We went down there, and it's this rich guy at an elevator, 14 bedrooms, and a movie theater in there. He wants all new games, so he's selling all these. But anyway, he had a godly Monte Carlo, and I don't know what – it's this gambling-looking game. And I don't know why this game angered me. The only other one that's really angered me is Teed Off. Teed Off. Teed off because not that it would normally anger anybody in its existence, but having it in an arcade where people start a game and they may walk off from it, which is something you're not going to have in a coin-op place, but something we have in our place. So we try to go around and end all the games that are started. But that thing says, shoot that ball. And it will say it until it just – until rage sets. It never stops. And it doesn't really matter how low you turn down the game. If you still want people to be able to hear it, you can turn it down to where it's just barely audible to the person playing. Put that game in the back of the arcade, and I can hear it at the front counter. I hear that to the point that it was rage-inspiring. What's a theme from a pinball manufacturer that hasn't been made yet that you're dying for somebody to make? Well, it's actually one of the big rumors is Goonies. I'm all for that. I really want. I would love Goonies. I would love for them to dip back into well, but it didn't qualify for your question. One of my favorite childhood movies was Back to the Future, and I have the Data East Back to the Future. I had that one, too. That was my first game. Yeah, I made a flying DeLorean in the center of it. I ought to show you that sometime. But I'd love for somebody to really do that game justice. And I know they've come out and basically come out and said it. What's the one that did the Dutch pinball? They've come out and basically said it because they said if you didn't get rid of your Alice in Wonderland spot that you would get a first one. I've been hearing for three years now. It's coming out this year. It's coming out this year. Yeah, but that's the thing. Now they're doing Raza. And I'm like, what? Yeah, for real. I don't care about that game. Nobody wants. but uh it took them a decade to build bowski oh i had a buddy that was an early adopter and he waited 10 years oh i would freak out like you know like i'm talking about the struggles of waiting a year to have a spooky game built i don't like waiting like three months sure i mean especially when game when like last year when they dropped bangers of games all the time and you have to what you have because you want oh i want the next thing it's like oh well i've still got this one and so i've got to have this money set aside because you know maybe they maybe they'll call me next month and it turns out 10 years later you've got that dusty crusty cash sitting somewhere aside that you've passed on all kinds of amounts of games well i don't know it just so i'm i was actually a little sad to hear that dutch pinball was doing it just because no i wanted anybody but them to make it honestly i mean i'd love jersey jack to make it stern could make it or speak because you know i don't care jack you know jersey jack did it that thing would be you know it would just be decked out and if stern made it it would just turn code would be awesome jersey jacks would be beautiful spookies would be beautiful but yeah for sure but yeah it's going to be dutch unfortunately all right what's your favorite pinball show that you've visited in the past i have almost no experience with uh pinball show so i've never i'm going to pinball the beach so it's going to be pinball the beach yeah that's it let's hope it's that uh other than that i've only been to Southern Fried Gaming. I'd love to go to Texas Pinball Fest. Oh, man, you've got to go. This year's going to be hopping. It sounds like we're going to get some good games there this year. I want to go so bad. It's just so hard for us to get away. We've got two employees, one of which goes to school. It's hard for us to get away. Oh, I can understand for sure. Because I couldn't go without my wife. She would be like, no freaking way you're leaving this mess with me while you go. Maybe next year skip pinball at the beach because that's another thing like it's been hard also for me to go to pinball at the beach because i'm like dude a month later is texas pinball festival and it's like hard for me to hit two shows up like a month apart well for us pinball the beach was kind of meant to be we got married and on st pete beach which is where pinball the beach was very awesome my wife take any excuse to go to uh st pete in particular but florida was slightly warmer it is a little chilly down there what's up with that i just got back from orlando and it was freezing in orlando have you been to that uh and then a new park oh epic universe no i have not been we went and we went down there um this year i think we didn't make it over there oh okay we went for halloween horror nights oh awesome yeah i do that every year that's a recurring theme in my i'm trying to get a big pinball crew to go this year uh my buddy don garrison he goes every year but we never go the same weekend i'm like all right dom we gotta go together and get a big group and go do the rv r.i.p tour dude i'm in yeah count me in yeah yeah we should definitely do that for sure um i'm down um where do you see radioactive in five years in five years and i will it be here in five years it will be here it's not going anywhere i wonder you know with this the the rabid success of of the place and uh we we have talked i just don't think i can handle it is a second location. We have discussed that and maybe more of a population dense area. I mean, we're in a city of 32,000 and a county of 180,000. It's not a huge population density. We do actually very well. Have you thought about maybe just a larger one location, but go larger somewhere? Oh, well, actually, that's very valid. We've actually talked about maybe building our own place. Okay. Yeah, because I need more space. One critique that people have, and it's valid, is that we don't have – we have a sitting area at the front. But I've seen some places. Nap Arcade just posted someplace a video of a walkthrough of a place in Nashville, Game Galaxy or Game something or another. And they had couches in the middle. And that's a – people want a little – I wanted all that in my spot. And I was like, all right, I'm going to have couches here and all that. And then you start putting it all in there, and you're like, there is no room for this. Well, that's – our games are tight together, kind of like pinball palettes, same thing. But I had a choice between more games or more space in between. And I've got more – I've got tons of games, and I want them all. I want a bigger – I need – I want more games on the floor. And also more games is more people. More people is more revenue. And also just having a bigger offering is – but I would love to have both. I would love to have the square footage to space the games out a little bit, have a seating area, a comfortable area for when big groups come in. They can chill, have a few drinks, and get back to pinball in and out. Or if you're in a tournament and you have kind of a chill, luxury seating area, I'd love to have that. But I have to give up so many games to do it that I think I'm going to cut my own throat with that. Yeah, I can totally agree with you there. Well, that's all I got on my notes. Is there anything else you wanted to cover that we hadn't thought about talking about yet? No, man. We can talk about whatever you want. I don't have any agenda I'm pushing. Just happy to stop in and see you on the way down. We're going to swing. This was perfect. Headed down to Pinwall, the beach, and I'm right off 95. So I'm sure it was right on the drive. Yeah. We're going to drive right down there and hit Pinwall Palace, drop a sneak in on Kelly. Okay, very cool. Yeah, because it's right on 95. You can't not go. Yeah, I've got to get down there. I'm going to try to go to their tournament tomorrow if I can. I think Pinball at the Beach starts at 5 o'clock tomorrow. So, like I said, we can mosey down. I was going to work a whole day, but when this opportunity to come out and hang out with you, I took a half day. So we now have time to, like I said, just wander and meander. That would be awesome. There's a lot of people already down there, too. I already see them on the floor taking videos and pictures, so you might be able to sneak in there tonight and check it out ahead of time. It's probably one of those things you've got to know somebody, and I don't. You know people. I actually don't. I don't do anything. Like I used to be – it was one of the harder things about opening a location because we used to have monthly tournaments at our place just to have people to play with. You know what I mean? And actually it was hard to fill the place, actually. And it's so wild to see – we were doing monthly tournaments to have people come for free, just bring like a dish and everybody kind of grubs down. it's so hard it's so wild to see that when we were doing that we couldn't hardly get people to come and then you fast forward a few years and you got arcade with people lined up at the door when you uh when you open the door so well that's awesome man i'm happy for you um but yeah tell them how to find all all the information about your arcade and how to get a hold of you if they need to well uh our best place to for all kinds of news updates events alerts special is our facebook and Instagram. I know there's a lot of other social media out there. I don't have the time for it. The time of my life. So we also have RadioactivePinballArcade.com. Awesome. Well, go check them out and go play some pinball at Radioactive. Thanks, darling. All right. Thanks for coming on, man. you