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Episode 3 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 25m·analyzed·Oct 6, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Electric Bat Cast Ep3: Arcade ops discussion, earnings reports, and payment system analysis.

Summary

Electric Bat Arcade (Tempe, Arizona) hosts Cale and Rachel discussing arcade operations, payment systems, and tournament results. The episode covers sponsor announcements, earnings reports showing Godzilla as top earner with Stranger Things and Venom close behind, and an in-depth comparison of token/quarter systems versus card-swipe systems for arcade payment processing, including financial analysis and operational trade-offs.

Key Claims

  • Godzilla is the top-earning game at Electric Bat Arcade by approximately 15% above second place

    high confidence · Rachel's earnings report on Electric Bat machines for current month

  • Venom entered the arcade approximately 10 days ago and is already the third highest-earning game

    high confidence · Rachel provides specific earnings data and timeline for Venom placement in arcade

  • Card-swipe system installation costs approximately $53,000 for ~80 machines at a single location

    high confidence · Cale provides detailed quotes from card system companies for Electric Bat Tempe location

  • Electric Bat spends $12,000-$16,000 annually on tokens, with tokens costing approximately $0.16 each to purchase

    high confidence · Rachel provides specific spending figures and token cost breakdown

  • Monthly licensing fees for card-swipe systems range from $350-$450 at Electric Bat's location

    high confidence · Cale cites quotes from multiple card system companies

  • Stern is rerunning Stranger Things Pro and Premium production due to game's strong earnings performance

    high confidence · Rachel mentions Stern decided to rerun Stranger Things machines and that Electric Bat ordered a premium

  • A card-swipe operator experienced monthly fees that increased to approximately 25% of revenue

    medium confidence · Cale references a friend's experience with escalating fees in card-swipe contracts, with fees starting low and increasing significantly

  • Stranger Things was code-updated by Stern to improve gameplay after community feedback

    medium confidence · Rachel mentions 'industry folks talking about how they could change the rules' and 'Stern did it. They made it a better game'

Notable Quotes

  • “It is and was right... but we always heard about what a good earner it is. And lo and behold this thing prints money.”

    Cale @ ~23:30 — Confirms Stranger Things' strong earning performance despite not being contemporary pop culture

  • “We're somewhere between $12,000 and $16,000 a year... but those are tokens. We don't give out tokens. So if you buy a token from the token machine, that token cost me about $0.16 to purchase.”

    Rachel @ ~42:00 — Clarifies token economics—recurring cost offset by reuse of physical tokens

  • “$53,000. That's money compared to the $3,000 that we spent.”

    Cale @ ~32:30 — Highlights massive cost differential between card-swipe and token/quarter systems

  • “He will never, ever do it again simply because when all the dust settled... the fees kept going up to the point where they were almost at like 25%.”

    Cale @ ~54:00 — Illustrates hidden cost risks and contract escalation in card-swipe systems

  • “Everyone I've talked to at the electric bat and you know it's over a hundred... tournament players they prefer tokens tokens and quarters they complain about card systems”

    Rachel @ ~57:00 — Indicates player preference for simple token/quarter systems at competitive venues

  • “We want that 80s and 90s feel... 70s feel... 60s feel. Wow. I'm getting crazy.”

    Cale and Rachel @ ~59:30 — Expresses design philosophy prioritizing analog/retro aesthetic alignment with payment systems

Entities

Electric Bat ArcadeorganizationCalepersonRachelpersonGame Room GoodiescompanyMarco SpecialtiescompanyLit Pinball BarorganizationGodzillagame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Card-swipe payment system contracts contain escalating fee structures and hidden clauses; operator experienced fees increasing to ~25% of revenue after initial low rate period

    medium · Cale describing friend's experience: 'the fees kept going up to the point where they were almost at like 25%... the initial deal was only like for a few months... And then it went up.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament players at Electric Bat (100+ players surveyed) overwhelmingly prefer token/quarter payment systems over card-swipe systems

    high · Rachel: 'Everyone I've talked to at the electric bat and you know it's over a hundred... tournament players they prefer tokens tokens and quarters they complain about card systems'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Electric Bat Arcade intentionally maintains analog/token-based payment system to preserve retro arcade aesthetic and player experience aligned with vintage pinball era

    high · Cale: 'We want that 80s and 90s feel... 70s feel... 60s feel... We want to run it in a way that... if I'm going to an arcade, that's how I want to be treated.'

  • $

    market_signal: Stranger Things pinball maintains strong earnings despite being outside current cultural zeitgeist; game mechanics/rules quality matter more than IP recency for location earnings

    medium · Rachel: 'Stranger Things hasn't been in popular... Nobody's really watching... but as a game it's got... people that play that game every single day are not people that watch that show... but the game is so popular'

  • $

    market_signal: Venom pinball achieving #3 earnings rank within 10 days of installation; rapid adoption indicating strong new game bump and player interest

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.256

0:00
okay kind of getting situated here hit record then test out the mic all right you you know oh shit hold up i like to get rid of all this stuff you know what i'm saying because we are the people there we go we are the people all right here we are this is uh you're gonna have to excuse me i didn't prepare for this episode what episodes did you prepare for well the first one which is the 0.9 i uh i did a little this is the one that doesn't count yeah right okay good welcome to the this is the electric Batcast. This is our podcast. Podcast hosted by the people that own and run Electric Bat Arcade. That's me, Rachel. That's you in Tempe, Arizona. Yeah, thank you for joining me. I'm Cale. This is Rachel.
1:12
Let's get right into it. Okay. What an exciting time, huh? Yeah. I'm going to have to have a little water. I appreciate you getting me this water.
1:25
Yeah. Good. No filter? You don't have a filter. Yeah. So, we got some sponsors. Yes. And we have some interesting news from Game Room Goodies. Yeah. Game Room Goodies is sponsoring us. They sell pinball machines, accessories, jukeboxes, air hockey. What else do they have? Oh, the basketball games. Basketball. If you want to put a hoop in or whatever it's called in your living room. That thing's so cool. If we had the room, we would definitely have one of those because I know our players would love to play some basketball. They have all kind of great stuff. And thank you so much for the sponsorship. They're running a special. Yeah. I heard about this. This is a good deal. Yep. And I have details on it right here. So if you mention electric bat and you're ordering a pinball machine and you live in Arizona, you have to be local for this. This isn't a shipping deal. Okay. You get a discount. So you would get on pros, I believe you get $67.50. Is that right? Yep. And a premium, what do they charge you for premium? $92.50. All right. So you mention electric bat when you call Game Room Goodies and you get some discounts. Now, this is for like approximately now time, right? You can't be listening to this 10 years in the future and say, I live in Arizona. Give me a pinball machine at half off or wherever we are. But you save a few hundred bucks. Yeah. So if you're in Arizona, if you want to order a pinball machine, call Aaron, Game Room Goodies, gameroomgoodies.com. And mention you listen to the back cast and he's going to knock some cash off. he's also probably going to deliver. You're going to get to meet Aaron or some of his crew. The crew's great. Yep. Yeah, we hang out with those guys in the warehouse. They'll come set it up at your house. They're doing all kinds of good stuff.
Stranger Things
game
Venomgame
Bond 60thgame
Scooby-Doogame
Stern Pinballcompany
Spooky Pinballcompany
Embedcompany
Gary Sternperson
Maxperson
Project Pinballorganization
Hellhounds of Libraevent

high · Rachel: 'We put it in ten days ago. Man, what a cool game... People are enjoying it. People are leveling up.'

  • ?

    announcement: Stern Pinball rerunning Stranger Things Pro and Premium production in response to strong earnings performance; UV kit upgrade available

    high · Rachel: 'the game is so popular, Stern decided to rerun it. They're rerunning the pros and the premiums. And we ordered a premium and a UV kit.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Scooby-Doo Spooky pinball required significant repairs/fixes by venue operators before achieving strong earnings performance

    medium · Cale: 'Good job, Spooky. Good job, us. We got the game working. It was us fixing stuff, but people enjoy it. If on their next release, they could maybe get past all of these technical problems...'

    • 3:26
    Cool. I really appreciate them doing that for us. That's a lot of fun. Yeah. And us, I mean, the community. Yeah. The Arizona pinball community. That's super cool. Also, Marco Specialties is the sponsor. Marco Specialties, everything pinball. If you need any kind of pinball parts, accessories. Also, you know something cool they do? And I thought about this today when somebody from Dixon Flannel called about fixing a machine. They wanted a tech. And we just, well, we happen to know pretty much all the techs in Arizona. So we could send somebody his way. But if you live anywhere in the nation, call Game Room Goodies. You can do that too. But call Marco's Specialties because they have a database of pinball techs. and you call their customer service and tell them you need a little help with the machine, and they can hook you up. If you are a tech, get on their database. Call up Marco Specialties and get on that thing, and they will hook it up. They're trying to keep all these games running. We've got to. I love that stuff. Yeah, we've got to do it. Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to Lit Pinball Bar. today's their last day and in the in the old location oh i didn't want to scare you lit pinball ball what a cool uh pinball bar they always have some great machines there we've been we haven't met those guys but we chat with them on social media all the time what a great group uh october 5th is the last day at the old location they're moving to a cool new location we need to go visit them okay and and max who is uh i believe is one of their techs oh he's he's talking about coming down here. Oh, come down, Max. We'd love to hang out. Well, he's going to play in a tournament. We'll hand you some tools. Yep. Yeah, we'll get him to work.
    5:16
    And then Ty is going to give him a tattoo. You're kidding me. Yeah, no, no. They were chatting about it. There were two new electric bat tattoos in the last week or two. Isn't that crazy? All these people getting electric bat tattoos. They're great. We love that. Thank you. This community is awesome. And, you know, they said if Max, Max is going to play in a tournament. He's going to come play in like a Tuesday tournament. If he doesn't win, they said he can't come back. But this is our win because then we get another tech.
    5:48
    Yeah. So Max is going to come work for us. Our crew is going to fight hard, but Max is a really good player. Okay. Yeah.
    5:55
    Shout out to those folks. We'll update you. Yeah. You really put him on the spot. So that's all I have, I guess. You've got to perform. That's the episode. See you later. I have more notes here on the phone, on the old device. Man, you... I flip-flop. You know, I want to get like an iPad, you know, so I have like a big thing to look at. But it's the same information. It's bigger.
    6:17
    This is like... This is one louder? Yeah. Why don't you just make the 10 louder? You know what? I think it's your turn to lead the podcast because it's time for the earnings report. Oh, earnings report. Everybody loves the earnings report. Okay, so... So we're into a brand new month. You can't look over here because I want to make you guess. Oh, actually, I can't read that. Yeah, it's small type. Yeah. Okay. So this is Rachel, and she's going to do the earnings report. The earnings report is all about what's earning on the street, specifically the bat, but I think it works across the board. Yeah, what's earning at the bat? What's your guess for number one?
    6:58
    Okay, so Venom came halfway through. Correct. so that that's not even oh it could be okay i'm not going to give you any clues you have to i am going to say that did anything else come in yeah but it just came in two days ago yeah that's we'll talk about that in a bit um i'm gonna say it's godzilla you are correct number one godzilla for almost every month ever since it came out is number one. And it's, again, number one by a pretty good margin, by about 15% above number two. What do you think number two is?
    7:41
    Stranger Things. That is also correct. Wow. Stranger Things was the cash game of the month, so it had a little bit more play than it might normally. And you know what's funny about Stranger Things? We slept on Stranger Things for a while when Stranger Things was released the code wasn't really all there the first time we played it was at the Project Pinball booth at InDisc we paid $2 to play it we each played one time hold up, we had a little I think we're back on we're having some technical difficulties Okay, well, we're back. Sorry about that. Actually, something, I think, landed on our lens there and kind of, but through the magic of post-production, we're right back.
    8:40
    Okay, so we were talking about Stranger Things. Yes, we paid $2 to play it. Paid $2 to play it because, for a good cause. For a good cause. Happy to do it. And they do, I don't know if they still do this, but it was a high score tournament. You pay two bucks, you get the high score, and they put your name on the whiteboard, and at the end you win something, like a T-shirt and some other cool stuff from Project Pinball.
    9:01
    So we played it. We weren't into it. Well, a lot of folks weren't into it. There were some industry folks talking about how they could change the rules to make it a better game, and I'll be damned, Stern did it. They made it a better game. They made it a really good game. but we always heard about what a good earner it is it is and was right um because we didn't get it for a while we just got it recently um but i remember when when gary stern came to the arcade no stranger things he said why don't you have stranger things don't you know that's the top earner i don't know i don't know okay well we finally did it and wow lo and behold this thing prints money. It does. And what's interesting to me about that is that Stranger Things hasn't been in popular... Did you see the most recent Stranger Things? No. Nobody's really watching. I don't even know if it's still a show.
    9:59
    It's not... It's not in the zeitgeist in general, but as a game it's got... I think it is, though. I think we're... We are the outliers. I watched the first season and thought, man, it was amazing. It really takes you back. Yeah, I loved season one. I watched and loved. Season two, I watched and enjoyed.
    10:21
    I think there were some more seasons. I didn't watch anything after that. Yeah, I think there were like four or five now. Anyway, yeah, fun show. All the kids are like adults now and having a good time and doing other things. Even still, the people that we know that play that game every single day are not people that watch that show. I guarantee you that Dana from the bar has never seen an episode of Stranger Things. And he loves it. And he plays it obsessively. He plays it more than anybody.
    10:49
    Yeah, and the game is so popular, Stern decided to rerun it. They're rerunning the pros and the premiums. And we ordered a UV kit. Yeah, we ordered a premium and a UV kit. So the UV, man, that is a must. The UV kit looks so freaking cool. and we love the projector and all that stuff the electric bat just happens to be dim enough to where the projector looks good it looks it looks great in there you can really it pops but the the rumor is and i don't know stern hasn't said anything excuse me the the rumor is that there's going to be a better projector because you know they were using what 2017 2018 technology back then right so it would make sense right a little bit brighter either way the thing is is awesome the thing that i thought was a computer when i looked under yeah yeah yeah we were uh we talked about when did we talk we talked about that on like a pinball party podcast it's a computer the first the first time we opened the hood of stranger things it is a premium has a projector rachel's uh messing around and she looks under the lock bar uh no the uh the apron and she's like kale you have to come see this they put a computer under the apron and i looked at it And I was like, that's the projector. But it does. It's just a steel, like unfinished metal box. It looks like an old, like solid state driver, like a little. Yeah. That was good times. Yeah. So that's number two. Stranger Things is number two. We have somebody else's Stranger Things premium in there now. And we're going to be swapping it out with our Stranger Things premium when it comes in, in about six weeks, I believe. Wow. Number three. Do you have a guess? I am going to say Scooby-Doo. Venom. No kidding. So Venom, we put in about two weeks ago.
    12:38
    Maybe less than that. Let me get this straight. We've had Venom for two weeks, and it's already number three? Yeah. Unbelievable. And, of course, it's getting the new game bump. Everyone wants to come and play it.
    12:51
    I don't think it's even been in there for two weeks. I think we put it in ten days ago. Man, what a cool game. Yeah. So people are enjoying it. People are leveling up. We have several people who have unlocked everything. You and I have unlocked what? What have you unlocked? Nothing. I need to actually get to the arcade today and try it. I want to unlock, I like Wolverine. I want to unlock just anything. Okay. And I don't know if one character is better than the other. I'm sure they have different attributes, but I'm a big Wolverine fan. I want to do that. Your dad was in that movie. My dad was in Wolverine, the movie. He was the chauffeur. Oh, no. When Logan was a chauffeur and he pulled up to a club, and I guess it's supposed to be Las Vegas. I don't know where it is.
    13:39
    It was actually shot in New Orleans. And my dad was the door guy. So it's like a bachelorette party. He opens the door for the girls and lets them into the club. That's cool. He was doing a lot of movie stuff back then. Runs in the family. He's been in some other movies, too. Oh, yes, it does. Yes, sir-ee, Bob. All right. The theatrics. That's why I'm doing this program here.
    14:06
    Okay, so one, two, three. Godzilla, Stranger Things, Venom. Number four, Scooby-Doo. So you were close. There's the Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo is that. Still earning well.
    14:17
    Earning quite well. It's been working. Working. That is. Unbelievable. You know what? I'm going to give accolades when I see that they are due.
    14:28
    D-O-O? Yeah. Look at that. Good job, Spooky. Good job, us. We got the game working. It was us fixing stuff, but people enjoy it.
    14:44
    If on their next release, they could maybe get past all of these technical problems, people enjoy these themes. Yeah. And the game just looks freaking cool. It looks great. They did a good job with the art and design. And then number five, again, is Bond 60th. Still people are loving. Unbelievable. And then last time we had a question about which games, these are the top earners by dollar, but we had some people that wanted to know, I think it was Gutter Girl, wanted to know which was by plays by plays yeah still this this is the same doesn't change it changes down at the bottom there's some flip-flopping but none of the top earners um are are affected okay so there's your top played games as well thank you so much for the update you're welcome that was really good and informative i even enjoyed i didn't know what they were a little bit behind the accounting scene i like i like this i like to stay blind and then uh okay moving right along all right what's next we are you've been doing some research you have talked to a couple of different companies yeah gotten some quotes yeah uh you you you dug into the world of card swipe systems would you call them that because they're not all swipe anymore you did just tap tap swipe swipe all so right now this is this is a big part of the show here this is this is like a big deal we're going to get into the pros and cons of running an arcade or any location with a token machine tokens and quarters um straight quarter or just straight quarter and then the pros and cons of using a card system, which is like something you would see at Dave and Buster's or amusement park or the mall, right? Yeah, those places. Yeah, so kick it off. You talked to some companies. I talked to some companies. You ran the numbers. I ran a lot of numbers. Okay, so right off the bat. So what we use is a combination of tokens. I like how you did that right off the bat. Oh. You didn't mean to do that? It's embedded. Yeah. That's the name of one of the swipe systems. Is it really? Yeah. Okay. Embed, I think, is what it's called. Whoa. Yeah.
    17:28
    So we use tokens and quarters. We use mechs that will accept either a token or a quarter. Okay. So if you purchase a Stern machine, it comes with mechs. It comes with quarter mechs. Quarter mechs. So on every machine that we buy or put in the arcade, we swap out the mechs and the locks.
    17:52
    And those mechs that take both quarters and a certain size token cost us about $35 per machine to do that. For two mechs? Yeah, right. Done. Out the door. So for our arcade, it's about like $3,000 for the Tempe location. We'll just talk only about the Tempe location to make everything easier. For these card systems, to install the card systems and the kiosks, they actually both worked out to about $53,000.
    18:33
    Wow. That's out-of-pocket cost. And what does that include? So that includes two kiosks, which is where you go and you get your card, you put the money on your card. You run your credit card, or can you put cash in them? Yes. Okay.
    18:50
    So it's for those kiosks and for all of the swiping systems on the machines and someone to do that labor. Okay. So that's your initial cost. you have so so i guess somebody needs to fly in or if you're local yeah you could you probably get game room goodies to here's the thing me and you i'm sure could do this we yeah we wouldn't i don't know if we'd want to i don't yeah um it's a lot of work to go through every machine and you do destroy your if you if you have an old game old you know classic ballets those don't it doesn't fit on the coin door as is. You have to drill some extra holes. There is some talk that you can maybe remove everything where the money normally goes in and put some washers and finagle that. Oh, wow. But what they recommend is that you drill through the door or replace your coin door. But as you know, those coin doors aren't all, they're not all the same size. Sure. So you can't just, you don't just go to Target and get a coin door. For sure. So with a modern game, let's say Stern, would the card reader go where the cash, the bill acceptor is? I think there's different ways of doing it. But you wouldn't have to destroy anything on the machine, or maybe, I don't know. I think you do have to, you've got to drill out some things and move some things around. I do know that people we know that have installed that do swap out the entire coin door. Okay, to make it easier. Yeah. Okay, but on a classic machine, this is where it's, I guess, sort of a thumbs down for some folks because you're destroying a classic coin door. If you ever want to resell this machine, you're going to have to find a replacement. Right. Or switch away from a swipe system because, for whatever reason, it didn't work out. Okay. So, $53,000. That's money compared to the $3,000 that we spent. Just so people get an idea, that's two kiosks and how many machines? That's for about 80 machines. Okay. Approximately 80. Do you have a price Let say somebody just has 20 machines Do you have a price per machine for that card reader The actual reader itself is about And then get somebody. But guess what? It's not just like a flat, you know, there's tiers for all of those things. But if you were going to do it yourself, or let's say like we did do it, and we put it on 80 machines, and then as time goes on, we obviously are acquiring more machines and we need to add more. that hardware is $200. Okay.
    21:48
    And all of this works on Wi-Fi? It works on, yeah, it works on, but I think it's like a closed signal between the kiosk. It's not just like the arcade Wi-Fi. It's got its own, like an ATM does, has like a dedicated. Sure. But now if your Wi-Fi goes down, do your card readers work or not work? So I haven't gotten a very clear, I've heard two things. I've heard that, yes, they do, and how could they? I think maybe your kiosks are hardwired, and then the Wi-Fi between the kiosk and the games is what keeps that going. Like an ad hoc network or something. Which is what I would assume. So if your Internet goes down, I don't see how it could work, right? Because this is all Internet. But maybe it does. Maybe there's some kind of like it holds it in a queue until like the end of the night, and it does like a batch. I don't know. That's further into this. We do have we know two arcades locally that use these type of systems. I don't think they're the same type. But one of them, people have problems swiping their cards sometimes when the Wi-Fi is not going well. Yeah. And the other one works all the time. So I guess those are two different brands. I don't know. I guess you'd have to do your due diligence and find out what you're getting there. But let's get back to the nuts and bolts of this. Okay. So you're spending almost $60,000. We're at a difference between the quarters and tokens route and the swipe system of about $50,000. We actually have some token machines that we got.
    23:26
    We didn't buy them brand new. So if you had to include two brand new token machines, that would probably bring the price difference down to about $40,000. but they also send you all this like information about how much more money you're going to make like they get real salesy yeah it's very salesy very very salesy about i'm going to make 38 more money by using this card system and part of that is and they'll tell you on the phone because you can adjust pricing you know whenever you go to those swipe places and it's like 7.2 credits to play a game sure and you have no idea how much a credit is worth and then also you can only buy them in increments of like 42 so that way like you always end up having less credits than what you can use on any game in the building right but when you have total control of something like this the the cool thing is that you can have happy hour pricing right that is a cool that's the one really strong benefit that i see with this is that we could do something on say wednesday nights or whatever a slow time is for you, we could make it less expensive. Right. Also, you can remotely load people's cards. Let's say you win a tournament. We're going to throw $20 worth of credits on your card. That's a cool thing. Yeah. But here's something that I think about about happy hour pricing. If you're lowering your pricing, once again, you're still having to pay that same amount in rent, in repairs, in parts, all of those things that cost us money on the back end.
    25:06
    You're hoping that brings more people in to recover that. You're hoping that brings in more. Yeah. I mean, that's the idea. That's how the math works. But then at some point, you also get people that would normally come in whenever they feel like it, and then they decide, oh, well, I'm just going to come in during half price time. Wow. You've really thought about this. This is what I do in my sleep is run numbers. Well, think about like, yeah, everybody does this. It's kind of like the arcades that give away tokens on a certain day because it's their slow day. And then everybody's like, well, why go there any other time? Right. Let's go there when they're giving away tokens. They're giving away tokens and you have access to all of the games because nobody's there at that time. So, and people will ask us a follow-up question as well. If you're going to spend like, okay, here's the $50,000 that you have to spend. We didn't even talk about the monthly fees. There's licensing fees on top of that. Oh, I want to get into that. Yeah. So those range, it looks like for our location, it would be either $350 or $450 a month just to pay them for the privilege of using a swipe system. On top of that, there are also credit card fees. Right now, we're cash only. We don't – we're cash only.
    26:20
    With a token machine. Right. But our token machines don't take card. If you need money, go to the ATM.
    26:31
    So by the time you look at all of those fees that start adding up, it's a significant expense. And people will ask us, well, how much are you spending in tokens every year?
    26:44
    Do you know how much money we spend on tokens every year? I don't. I can guess. Tell me what your guess is. I'm going to say $15,000. That's a very good guess. We're somewhere between $12,000 and $16,000 a year. But those are tokens. We don't give out tokens. So if you buy a token from the token machine, that token cost me about $0.16 to purchase. Okay. So we're not – that money is – So as soon as you sell them – They're paid for. Yeah. Right. But you want to get a lot of uses out of them. Yes, you certainly do. Because if they take it, yeah, you want them to use it over and over again. That's what you would like. That's how it works. However, that money is not money that's lost is my point. Right. So there we are between the tokens, the swipe cards. Sure. And then finally quarters. People are like, why don't you just go straight quarter? Why do you spend the $15,000 a year on bringing the tokens in?
    27:50
    Well, if we had a token machine full of quarters and machines full of quarters, you sometimes get people with crowbars that see like, you know, it makes you much more of a target. But then also your, let's say you need to do laundry that weekend. Oh, well, I know. I'll go to the bat and put in a 20 and I'll play some games. But then I'll take $10 in quarters home. And then me and you are spending all of our time going to the bank, getting bags full of quarters to fill up the quarter machine. And you're not selling quarters. You're giving, you're changing, you're turning a piece of cloth into a hard piece of metal, flat metal thing. Right, right. But it's worth the same. It's worth the same. Yes. Now, on the card systems versus tokens and quarters, I would think a big advantage to the card system is maintenance. Oh, that part seems dreamy. Yeah. Right? So the card system, you don't have to empty your buckets. No coin jams. Right. There's no sorting quarters out of tokens. We spend a lot of time. We spend a lot of time doing that. A lot of good quality time. We get to look at each other and make crack jokes. Yeah. It's great. It's a good joke time. Get a little drink, a little soda, right? Have a good time. Have a good time in the back. Listen to some podcasts. We like some old Art Bell. That's one of our favorites. It's a good time, but it is time that you have to spend. And if you don't have the luxury of doing it with your favorite person, then it's time that you could be doing other things. And we know we have a few friends around the country who actually have like full time jobs and they just operate machines in a single location.
    29:45
    The card system works out for them because they don't have time to deal with coin jams, deal with token machines, all that good stuff. One thing you might want to watch out for if you are thinking about going the card swiper out is read the fine print. We have a friend who runs a very successful arcade, and a local bar asked him to put some machines in their location. He put just a handful of machines, and he's like, you know, I don't have enough time to run this arcade in this second location. So he went the card swiper out. and he said he will never, ever do it again simply because when all the dust settled and he had everything set up and he's looking at the bills, you're getting like this monthly bill from this company, and lots of times there are multiple companies. Because you have your credit card processor. Exactly. You have the swipe system.
    30:50
    Right. And so he noticed the fees kept going up to the point where they were almost at like 25%. Wow. And he called him and it was like, well, what's going on here? It's like, oh, well, the deal you signed, I mean, you signed all this paperwork. There was, you know, like this tiny print and you signed all this paperwork. And the initial deal was only like for a few months. Oh. And then it went up. And he's already signed a contract. He can't get out of it. But he said, never again.
    31:24
    This is the racket of the BMI. You signed up for 10 free tapes or 10 cent tapes. Certainly, but so many businesses do this. This isn't unheard of. I think it just goes to say, really go over. If you're going to get in bed with a company that's taking a cut. You're going to get in bed with embed. Oh, is it really called embed? That's one of them. Okay.
    31:50
    Just go over the fine print. Absolutely. I would even say, if you have an attorney, man, maybe have them take a look at it. And see, that's just not what I like to do. I like having an arcade where, you know what? I bought these mechs. I put them in my machines, and this is how they work. And I know what's going in. I know what's coming out. And it's very simple. And it's very simple for people who come and play at the arcade. Right. They know that one token is equivalent to one quarter. And you put it in, and you play, and you know that's what it costs. For sure. Because I want to run it in a way that, like, if I'm going to an arcade, that's how I want to be treated. I don't want to pay the 7.2 credits. Right. It's always weird, right? Because you'll have, like, two credits left on the card and two credits don't equal 50 cents. And you're trying to figure out, you know, what's going on there. and everyone I've talked to at the electric bat and you know it's over a hundred you know tournament players they prefer tokens and quarters they complain about card systems but there are pros and cons to all of it totally see what works out for your location I mean it's an analog thing right people are coming to play an analog sport we call it sports a game right right so let's keep it an analog experience We want that 80s and 90s feel. That's my feel. 70s feel. 60s feel. Wow. I'm getting crazy.
    33:18
    Is that it for that? Did we cover everything? I think we covered everything. If I missed something, you can send us an email. Let us know. Join the Discord. I did something new. I don't think I mentioned this on the last podcast. If you go to our website, electricbatarcade.com, there is now a podcast tab. In that tab, it's not pretty. It was just quick and dirty, just some text and some links. But there are links to everywhere you can listen to or watch the podcast. Plus, there's a link to the Discord so you can get in there. We've been getting all kinds of messages from folks in other countries. That's been fun. It's been really cool. Seeing what the pinball scene is like in New Zealand and wherever.
    34:01
    Hellhounds of Libra. Oh, Roland's tournament. That was last weekend. This was last Sunday, right? That was so much fun. It's a cool pinball tournament. And I have to let everyone know that you did beat me. Oh, I totally forgot about that. No, you didn't. There's no way. Oh, I got in the finals. You did. I can't believe I got in the finals. You did. That was amazing. So the finals were amazing race. But what was the body, the meat and potatoes? The qualifying. That was just match play? Max match play. So it's head to head against a bunch of different people. That is fun. And I prefer max match play to the flip frenzy because there's not a queue and you're not rushed to do anything. You can still run to the bar and grab a drink if you need to. Going to the bathroom. It's always nice to be able to go to the bathroom and not feel like you're screwing someone over. Like what if there's a line for the bathroom? Yeah. So max match play, way better than flip frenzy. so how many what was it rounds or 16 rounds 16 rounds of match max play max match play it's called max max max match play and then and then the top 16 players i think we did top 16 went into finals A. Yeah, there was an A division finals and then the four after that, assuming that they weren't highly ranked in the IFPA because there was a cut off.
    35:35
    There was a B division. And Andrew won that one. Congratulations, Andrew. Yeah, and then so A division finals was Amazing Race. This was interesting. I thought this was amazing.
    35:51
    That's why it's called amazing race i was it is it's called amazing race um i i can speak on this because i was in it i was in the finals right did it just go off it just did a weird thing but it's a weird thing okay well we can fix all that in post um what's what's interesting is um i i was the last person right to get into the finals yes okay so in the amazing race that means i was the first one to set a score on a machine yes the score to beat right so so the way this works and correct me if i'm wrong there's there is a list of machines everybody's going to play well if you get past the first game right there's a list right because the goal of this final this actually was a semi finals, I guess, was to narrow the field down to the final four. So there was 12 machines that the 16 people would compete on to see who could get through all of those. So since I was at the bottom of the list, I was number 16, I was the first to play the first game, which was Meteor. Yep. And what I do is the first person to play sets the score for that machine. if anybody and everybody else needs to get above that score right and the person out of the out of these 16 folks the person with the lowest score gets kicked out that's right they're eliminated right which was it was tense for me right because i i had a i had a crappy score it wasn't your best game on meteor it was so i i set the bar low very low i had a crappy score of meteor and i had to sit there on a stool while 15 other people played and tried to beat my score. And one by one, they almost all beat your score. I survived. Yes. And so then you have 15 people move on to play the next game. Is that correct? But it's going on. As soon as somebody beats your score, they move on to the next game. Right. So not everybody is waiting.
    37:57
    It's constantly moving along. Yes. This was a ton of fun, and I hope Roland did this tournament. He ran it, yeah. And I hope he does it again, because what a cool concept. One of the things that I loved about it is that even though I didn't make the finals, after you all were done, I went around and pretended, because the scores were posted. The scores to beat were posted. So I just, you know, coined up the machine, played one game. If I beat the lowest score, I moved along. And I figured out that had I been playing in finals with absolutely nothing at stake, because it was just for fun, but I ended up about fifth or sixth. I don't remember which. Very cool. That's fun. Yeah. So stick around. Yeah. If you don't qualify, you can just see like, eh. Virtually beat everybody. Yeah. It's real easy whenever there's no stress because you're not actually in the finals. The Hellhounds of Libra tournament. I like how he themes these tournaments. Yeah, I do too. Roland does some good stuff. Yeah. Good deal. Thanks, Roland. And who won that tournament?
    39:08
    Was it Ben Clement? Oh, it was. Yeah. Ben from Tucson. The Tucson. Shout out to Ben and the Tucson pinball folks. You know, we need to make a road trip. When your parents get back from overseas, you know, because they live, they won't have a place to stay. Yeah, right. We should go play a tournament with those boys. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll come down and visit. The Tucson Pinball Club.
    39:34
    Is that what they call themselves? I don't think so. They call them something. Yeah. I think it's just Tucson Pinball. Yeah. Shout out to Tucson Pinball. You guys are great. We love it when you join us. Yeah. In the Valley. It's a little warmer here. Yeah. It is a little bit warmer. we have a new game at the back we have a new game coming not not venom venom's new but that's not what we're going to talk about we got an even newer we have an even newer game did it show it showed up tuesday surprise tuesday so uh aaron at game room goodies called us we got a text message galactic tank force is here and we were like holy crap because we really didn't think this was going to happen. We thought we weren't even going to get it at all.
    40:21
    We've heard people who have played it. We've heard mixed reviews. We've heard a lot of complaining about it. Some of our players had played it at some of our players who we really trust their opinions had played it at conventions and were not excited about it. We were like, man. And but, you know, we are. Let's see. Let's see what happens. We're very palms up. And we're like, let's get in the truck and go pick this thing up. So thank you to Aaron for making this happen. He actually had to pull some strings because this machine was supposed to go on the on the on tour. Yeah. Right. It was supposed to be a show. It was supposed to be on the show circuit. And he was able to secure it for us. And we opened it up. First thing. Holy crap. This thing is beautiful. Yeah. Frenchie made a beautiful machine. This is before we plugged it in. We're like looking at it and we're like, we were blown away. Before even that, though, let's talk about just getting the legs on this thing.
    41:23
    This is the heaviest machine I have ever felt in my life. I didn't even know they made plywood that thick. We've unboxed Jersey Jacks. We've unboxed System 80s. We did not box them. I have unboxed over 60 Stern pinball machines in one night, which almost killed my back. Yeah. We're still paying for that. This is the heaviest damn machine.
    41:54
    It's built like a tank. It is. So the plywood is like inch and a quarter. Right on. So it is heavy. Hey, good. Yeah. This thing is rock solid. Punch it. nothing's gonna happen so uh we set it up i needed help i had to actually get the dolly out the uh the engine lift to lift it up to put the legs on it usually i can just like lift it up and hold it on my hip uh we i was like no i'm not doing that to this uh we set it up and like this is before we plugged it in we're like man this thing is super beautiful uh franchi is an amazing artist, one of the top pinball artists out there. And then we plug it in Oh my God Now we have what called the deluxe Which is the lowest tier that got produced. Right. So I think there's a standard which is actually below what we have. I think they called that the classic, but I don't think they ever actually made it. Okay, the classic. So we have the deluxe. It does not look like a tank. I know everyone's seen the one that looks like a tank. The LEs or whatever they call that. Right. That's the LE. The collector's edition maybe. And then above the LE is the collector's edition, which comes with like a lunch box and some other good stuff. Ours does not look like a tank, which I like the way ours looks. Yeah, it looks cool. It doesn't look so foolish.
    43:24
    I was trying to spin that more positively, but yes, it looks. It looks like a pinball machine and Franchi's art is amazing. This thing looks cool. But, like, my favorite part about it, well, one of my favorite parts is on the back box, there's, like, this ledge below the trans light. I assume it's a trans light. I don't think it's a back glass. Anyway. Yeah, I would assume so. And it's got, like, these green LEDs that shoot down. Like, it makes it look like you've got a console that you're controlling. Oh, yes. The surround around the display. Right. Man, that looks cool. Yes. It has this weird green light, and it fits the whole campy theme.
    44:04
    And the whole story, everything's like really fun and funny. But, okay, so back to the lights. We plug this thing in, and man, this is, we thought Toy Story was bright. We thought Godfather was bright. Those don't even, they don't hold a candle.
    44:22
    Well, you really ought it this morning. this machine has what's almost like pin stadium lighting yeah on these rails and it's kind of cool because it's not set into the the sides like the stern expression lighting or um or or i guess like pin stadium lighting they're on they're on these like risers on these how would you explain it? Like these brackets that move with the whole play field. Anyhow, man, these things are bright. The light show is incredible.
    45:01
    So then we start playing it. No air balls. I was about to say, I think they fixed They did fix it. Everybody was complaining about all these issues.
    45:13
    So before this, we had only seen still photos. And I was really worried because part of the rules, you have to destroy this tank, which is right in the middle, right in front of your flippers. Right. And I was like, oh, I mean, you're going to get drainos every time. That's not the case. No. And I guess the way the target, the stand-ups are kind of concave. You can safely hit that tank shot. Yeah. And we're getting zero air balls. Yeah.
    45:42
    It's beautiful. So it's, you and I, I mean, we couldn't help but be influenced, I would say, by all of the feedback that we had heard over the last almost year.
    45:55
    Last, I thought it was fun. I thought it was very fun. And I just kept waiting, like, well, where's all the parts people were complaining about? Right. It's fun. They seem to have fixed them. I think they fixed whatever the issues were. they that's why it took so long to get back they went back to the factory and said you know what it's not acceptable that we have all of these air balls and all of this other all this other stuff and also we're going to make it the brightest thing you've ever seen in your life put sunscreen on if you want to play this game but not bright like i don't want to play it like bright like wow this is a show it's an attraction and and like when we first started uh putting a few jersey jacks in in the arcade and i talked about how man this really it makes you want to it's so bright and definitely even the casuals are like oh i need to you know they're that's this glowing thing in the corner yeah you're like a mosquito like a mosquito do you mean a moth or a mosquito yeah it works yeah so you put this thing in the tournament day one yes nobody has played this machine yeah it's in the tournament it was in a couple of rounds um and everybody had a great time yeah no problems with it and and the whole thing uh below the flippers where if you could just like a little skill shot there that saves your ball i don't it's it's interesting yeah if you if you drain the ball underneath your flippers not down the middle but underneath the actual flipper there's a rollover switch there um and if you hit that switch while it's illuminated you get your ball back and i believe you collect bonus we still don't have a ton of experience on this yeah we were letting other people play it we're going today right today we will have i want to i want to play it some more man we were going to work today but now it's looking like venom and uh galactic tank yeah we're gonna play some games um i am pleasantly surprised very very like relieved a little bit i mean i wasn't super you know because everybody wants to experience it so So it wasn't. Yeah. Yes. Very pleasantly surprised. Fun. Cool. Beautiful. This is a Nordman game. Is that correct? It is Nordman. Great job. Yeah. Great job, Nordman. Great job, American. Great job, Franchi. Yeah. This is a very cool machine, and we're glad we have it.
    48:23
    It will be exciting to see how it earns. Yeah. Because it's almost, we got it almost at the beginning. Almost at the beginning of the month. Yeah. So let's see between, send us your votes. What do you think we'll do better, Galactic Tank Force or Venom for the month of October? Because those are both brand new games. This is sort of like the Foo Fighters Godfather fight. Oh, yeah. Good point. So what do you think is going to happen?
    48:48
    We'll take bets. Yeah. Good deal. And we noticed the serial number. We have number 69, right, which was funny. Is it not 69? We actually don't have number 69. Which one is it? We have 63. 63? But 6 and 3 add up to 9. So they've only built like 63 of these? I wonder if that's just 63 of the deluxe. Either way, that's not that many. Not that many. Yeah. This is kind of a rare machine. This is going to be like the rare gem of the pinball world. Like 20 years from now, like, oh, the Galactic Tank Force.
    49:24
    Like we have some Spectrum. We have Spectrum. We have other games that the production was in. Extremely rare. The hundreds, right? Extremely. This is way more rare than that. Right. But hopefully some people get a chance to play it and see that they've redeemed themselves on that airball issue and those other things. And the game will start showing up. And I think kudos to them for actually backing up where I think we know some pinball companies that would go, hey, let's just make it. Right. Yeah, let's roll the hot glue. Yeah. Oh, screw it. Yeah. It's all screwed up. Let's just produce it and send it out there. Send it out. Good job, American and Nordman. American and Nordman and Franchi and whoever else worked on this thing. David Fix and all those boys. Like an entire lighting department. Had to be like the power company. You guys impressed us. We're excited to play this thing some more.
    50:23
    All right. We are moving right along. We're going to get into the mailbag. This is a great section. Mailbag. We take questions and requests from friends and family all over the world. Friends and family. Also people we don't know yet. Yeah. They can send them to us at electricbatarcade at gmail.com. Yeah, or the Discord. There's a whole channel in the Discord for Batcast. If you join the Discord, there's a channel called Batcast, and we chat about the podcast. Yeah. Right? Send your questions. And we have a general chat where you just chat about anything. We talk about bananas and what have you. We have a home gaming channel.
    51:06
    A tournament director's channel. That's cool. Yeah. That's a lot of fun. Get into some nuts and bolts of running a tournament, and it's cool to see what's going on there. The first piece of mail from our mailbag.
    51:20
    If people actually wanted to write us a letter, can they do that? Yeah, they could send it to the Electric Bat Arcade. Our address is on the website. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, send us a letter. I would love to open something up. Yeah, we'll open it on the air. Surprise. Right. We don't know what it is. It might be obscene. We're still going to open it.
    51:37
    Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. Arcade Carl. That's not a request for obscene. No, no, no. Yeah, don't send us anything screwed up.
    51:49
    Arcade Carl. I think he's in Australia. Do you know about this? Arcade Carl. He's my mate in Australia. He said, I really wish we had an arcade like yours here, which is Australia.
    52:05
    However, pinball in Australia is bullshit expensive. Crikey. Wanted to let you know just how much they are. He's talking about the pinball machines. I think you would find prices interesting. And he sent us a link to his local distributor, pinball. Okay.
    52:26
    And somewhere in here, you – I thought you had the pricing in here. So I don't know. I don't remember what it is in Australian dollars. Right. But I do know that on that website, they're paying for a pro. They're paying about $7,700 American dollars, the equivalent. USD. The U.S. American dollar reduce, $7,700, compared to ours. Ours is about $6,800 to $7,000. So it's about $1,000, which is not uncommon. I mean, all these machines are built in the States. Right.
    53:06
    It costs an insane amount of money to ship things to Australia. So do they get a better deal on Haggis? Isn't Haggis an Australian company? I don't know what they get if they do it, because they don't have to ship it over here. But this is common. I remember when, you know, at Marco, when we were selling parts overseas, you know, you had to deal with customs, shipping costs. Right. I mean, stuff, even in Canada, they get taxed hard. And that sucks. Yeah. We feel your pain, Carl. But to make it up to you, you can fly out here and hang out with us. and you can play these machines for American quarters or buy some tokens. Cale's going to pay your tournament entry fee. You make the flight. He's going to spot you the dollar. I'll spot you the – I'll pay for the machines too. It's like five bucks, right? Yeah. Isn't that a great thing about a pinball tournament? Yes. Tuesday night. Really, if you come to a Tuesday night with a $20 bill. Oh, then that's enough for both of us. Right. But you're going to spend about five bucks playing games, and that leaves the rest for the wonderful food we have at Yucca Taproom and then some beverages. Beverages. A couple. Or dollars for stall ball. Oh, that's great. You know, Michael, Michael Bauer is super into that. After every tournament, if he's there, he gets a stall ball tournament going on. And last, it's two bucks, two dollar stall ball, and they had 20 people in it. Man, that was a huge line. I was fixing something. I just saw this long line going around the arcade. So Matt won it. Creamer Dreamer. He won it. Skater Matt. Yeah, Skater Matt. And he got 40 bucks. That's so cool. But everybody's excited. Stallball's great. Stallball's really fun. Stallball. We'll talk about Stallball later and tell people how to play on that thing. Like on another episode. Because we have to move right along. We have a lot of mailbag stuff going on. Let's go. Let's move. Moving right along. Ah, here we go.
    55:17
    This is from Scott Solomon. Okay. It came through the email. Pin buying advice, please. Oh. Thanks for the great episode. You're very welcome, Scott. We enjoyed doing it. It's a lot of fun. Very happy to see you keeping the pinball party spirit alive. Pinball party spirit's still there, though. Jason, just yesterday, Jason released a new episode. Go check it out. search pinball party he's not on the the pinball network anymore so just search pinball party podcast on spotify or whatever you listen to your podcast on he had a real cool episode about creativity and pinball he was talking about uh them re-releasing uh uh stranger things yeah and talking about all that good stuff um and it's short yeah he had a nice little short episode it's a good listen it's all for your commute for your commute check it out pinball party podcast it's still there having a good time it's not on like a regular schedule he says he's gonna do it when whenever he feels like it that's how you should do it yeah that's how we do it that's how we do we feel like it right now yeah so that's why we're doing it we're here we're doing a podcast because we feel like it if we didn't feel like it we'd be doing something else yeah right we'd be playing uh galactic tank force and venom we're kind of known for doing whatever we feel like sometimes for better or worse yep yep old scott scott scott's question i was hoping you could help with some advice on the next pin to add to my collection i've been playing in more tournaments and really enjoying the experience but i found that while i can do well on modern games i tend to be terrible on older games so i got i always tell you know what i'm gonna go with this i always tell people to do this i'm not sure why you're even like posing this to me because i know that you're going to answer this question. I'm particularly bad at early solid states. What games do you suggest to add that would give me a good opportunity to practice? Thank you, Scott S. is for Scott Solomon.
    57:18
    I currently have Godzilla, Jurassic Park, Aerosmith, and World Cop Soccer, if that helps. What a cool collection. I love dog soccer. Dog soccer. We have all of those games. Godzilla, Jurassic Park, and Aerosmith. They're all cool. I think we might have a dog sucker on the way. Oh, that's a little secret. Oh.
    57:40
    Is it a secret? Well, it's also not confirmed. It's not confirmed. But I love, it would be the first Papa Duke game in the bat. And I've been wanting a Papa Duke game forever.
    57:53
    Yeah. You wouldn't let me get one, right? That's basically true. Yeah. Because you think Circus Voltaire is ugly. Yes. you don't mind what's the magic box one I think you mean Tales of the Arabian Nights no the chick with the tiger and the magic in the box Theater of Magic it's kind of like a one trick pony for tournaments right it's fine it's fun Tales of Arabian Nights you love but a nice one is going to cost you like $20,000 I think it's fine I think it's beautiful I love the I like little things that shoot up. Yeah, that capture the ball. Yeah. He came up with some crazy stuff.
    58:36
    So, Scott, and I tell everybody this, and this is great if you want to get good at tournaments. I think you have to have a modern stern because, I mean, what tournament is not going to have the latest stern? Yeah, they're so good. Right, and they're so much fun. A lot of replayability. Just get a damn Godzilla, right? Yeah, let's cut to the chase. Buy Godzilla. Get something fast with ramps, and that's most of the time is going to be a modern stern. And then the second game you should have in your collection is a classic Bally or Gottlieb. And what you're saying is since he has four games, he's already waited for too long, because this should be game number two in the collection. It should be number two. If it's not the first one, because money sometimes dictates that you're going to get an older game first. For sure. I agree and when you say a Gottlieb I think you're talking about a Gottlieb System 1 my favorite one of that era is Joker Poker I think that is if anybody is going to have any game well that's my favorite Gottlieb I'll just say that that's an amazing game and as far as like Classic Bally's geez all of them yeah right Matahari Nitro Ground Shaker Frontier if you can find one yeah Some of them are going to be spendy. Viking. They're great.
    59:59
    Some of the less expensive ones. Not a Spectrum, even though that is a classic Bally. That's a weird game. Don't get the gimmicky games. Knight Rider.
    60:10
    Those are all really fun games because they help you time your shots. He may even be talking about System 11, some of that era, too. which I think that's another era that you should have in your collection. Like, get a diner. Oh, yeah. A diner or an F-14, something.
    60:32
    I think it's good to have all of the eras represented, maybe not electromechanical, only because the parts is different. Right. They're heavy. And they're heavy, and they're not as fun, in my opinion. Beautiful. I think it's great to have all of those eras represented if you have room for five games make three of them not modern sterns sure throw in a creature get a WPC game get a System 11 game get a classic Bally game and then have your two favorite modern sterns and that'll cover almost anything you're going to see in a tournament unless they throw in a hoops yeah that's a whole other thing. But don't you think it's fun, just depending on whatever mood you're in. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a ballet. Sometimes I'm in, you want to have a game for every mood.
    61:32
    Yeah, that's a good advice. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for the question, Scott S. And thank you for listening and we appreciate you being a part of this. This is for the people. We don't do this for us. This is for the people so they can get some enjoyment out of this.
    61:55
    See behind the curtain. I feel like we're all part of a big pinball gang. Yes. Don't you feel that way? A big pinball gang. Yeah. I do feel that way. Next question is from Discord. Alright. Love the Discord. You're really, the Discord's popping off. I love it. We have almost like 200 people in there chatting about pinball, having a fun time. We also talk about video games we have a home gaming channel and there's all kinds of things all kind of good stuff we have doug pdx on the discord happy monday he he sent this on monday it wasn't too long ago you guys are great oh i like where this is going okay tell me more that was it oh no i'm just kidding oh that would have been good though huh wouldn't that be funny if that's all he said and then he ghosted us yeah sayonara suckers thank you doug enjoyed you on the pinball party And don't forget, the pinball party hasn't gone anywhere. Go listen to Jason, man. He's having a good time updating the podcast there.
    62:54
    Enjoyed you on the pinball party. Very happy you guys kept going with your own podcast. I'm a new operator. Just set up my first four machines a week ago. Cool. My question is, how do you handle noise and volume settings on machines? Have you tried using acoustic foam inside the machine to dampen unwanted flipper and bumper noise? I've heard of people doing that. Really? Yeah, people that live in apartments. I've heard of that. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Many of these pens have great soundtracks, but it seems like a hopeless battle trying to increase the sound volume, only to have it drowned out by the machine noise when more people are playing. Also curious if you have hard floors at the bat or if you use commercial carpet. Thanks for the question, Doug. Carpet would be gross at the bat. We have hard floors. We have concrete. Yeah, so that's that. And we do not put sound dampening foam inside the cabinets I heard of people doing that years and years ago I don know if they still do but Marco Specialties sells it Are you talking about like egg crate shape Like the stuff we ordered from Marco years ago We've got a box of it.
    64:10
    And we use that at one of our locations. Excuse me. On the ceiling. We did. But what we have found, we haven't had an issue with players complaining, but sometimes bar staff, especially we. In the morning. The electric bat in Tempe is open at 6 a.m. And the machines are all on a timer. When they fire up and all the attract sounds come on, it could annoy some patrons and bar staff.
    64:49
    We have run into that. In our second location, we solved it by adding sound dampening foam to the ceiling where the machines are. That has helped out a huge amount. Yeah. So it depends on your setup. If you have a dedicated room, then I would put some acoustic maybe on the ceiling, whatever would be appropriate for you. But in the game itself, we don't. And it really matters, like, if you're in the front part of a restaurant versus the front part of a loud bar, those are two very different needs. Turn it up so you can hear the games, and then if everybody's playing all at once and you have to listen a little bit harder, then you have to listen a little bit harder. Just find that balance. You know, bring some friends down and everybody get on there and see what feels best. But also, I would maybe experiment with the foam inside. Do it on one of the machines because that's going to cut down on the boominess. Yeah. You know, that's going to tighten the base a little bit so it's not, you know, spreading all these mid-tones all over the arcade. It's going to tighten things up a little bit. Maybe try it on one. Yeah. And let us know. Yeah. okay there we go and that was that was that was from my boy doug congratulations on starting operating that's cool yeah love i really love that uh because it is so important and you know and i thought about this when we started doing this and it's sort of like operator centric this it is really important to get these things on the machine to keep this keep this alive we We don't want to see it go away again. And, you know, find old machines, get them running, put them out there, you know, make a little money with it. But most importantly, let people play them because we've seen this. This is truly how you grow this industry, how you grow the sport. Have people play the machines. I can't tell you how many of our players became owners after playing the machines at the electric bat. They end up buying them. They put them at their homes. And some are even talking about starting to operate them. Yeah. You know? It's fun. It's a lot of fun. And, you know, we all want to keep this fun alive.
    67:09
    Gunner Ghoul. Ah. He always... I got a little sip of my unfiltered water here. I wish you had a filter.
    67:17
    I'll tell you what. Filter. It's good for the water. It's bad for me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't be that fun with the filter.
    67:28
    Questions. the bat being a college town for both tempe and flag has to be an upside was that strategic is there such a thing as the perfect location i think there is such a thing as a perfect location but we we really we're not it we didn't have a choice so uh the folks that aren't familiar with tempe asu is in tempe we're not close to asu uh well we're not would you call it close we're not close like the we're three miles away right i think about three miles away but like we're not so if you've heard of mill avenue which sometimes people we are technically right off mill avenue but we are much further south so it's not um that's not what yeah that we're not we don't Long story short, we don't see much bump from college folks at either place. Nope. The Flagstaff location is 21 and over all the time. And when you're in college, like, there's a whole lot of 18 to 20 and a half that you're in college. You can't even come and play in our arcade up there. And from what we've seen with the college scene, they're looking for a different kind of bar and club. Yeah, really pinball is not what is in your head when you're at that time of your life. So, nope, didn't benefit us. Now, what about in Flagstaff? What school is there? NAU. Northern Arizona University, another big state school. I don't know if we get a huge bump from that or not. We don't. Yeah. We're not a college bar. There you go. There's your answer. There are college bars. Now I know. Yeah, in Flagstaff, and we're not a – we're more of an industry bar in Flagstaff. And so, no. Cool. He's got another question. Oh. Got to go. Mm-hmm. Is there a strategy to machine placement in the location? Better to have big earners front and center or in the back? there is I don't know if we figured out the science to it but there is I mean it's just like any place like the Gap or the supermarket there's things that are placed in strategic locations yes and we sometimes for us we mix them around more often to make it so that it's less packed on tournament nights we try and spread out the games that are going to be in certain rounds so that way everybody isn't in a particular area for a single round. Right. We do, you know, move games around from time to time and see what happens. Sure. But now if it's a new release like Venom or when Keith Elwin releases a game, you could hide that in a corner. Yeah. It doesn't matter. I could put it behind a door. People are going to find it and play it. You could put it in the bathroom. Yeah. Do you remember?
    70:30
    No. Didn't you? Was it ZapCon? Yes. You guys put a machine in the bathroom? We did. When you're waiting, because there's long lines. We put a strikes and spares in the bathroom. Yeah, people can play the game. That was smart. Yeah. It was the men's bathroom, but I had to go in and fix it. Sure. It's a good time. Now, I can tell you, there's no exact science to this with the pinball arcade, arcade in general. But I will tell you this. When we opened Venom, we were like, we wanted this on an end cap. Yes. Because it looked cool. Same with Galactic Tank Force. Same. I was about to say, same with... When we opened up Galactic Tank Force, we were like, we have to put this on an end cap. Yeah, you need to see that. Where people can see the cabinet art. And not only the cabinet art, the advantage to putting it on an end cap is somebody else can really watch you. Yeah, you can stand next to... We do try and put new games on the end. So that way you can stand around and learn how to play it. You know, one of the things that the swipe system sent me in that how I'm going to increase my revenues by 38%, it was talking about game placement and game density, and it alluded to the Walmart model.
    71:43
    I have a feeling these guys are working with the big box arcades. I know that they are. Do you call them that now? Yeah. Like your Dave and Buster's. Yeah. And what else is out there? There's a few. Pins Mechanical. That's one. We played at a Pins Mechanical. Was that a card system? I don't even remember. It was a long time ago. And that's a chain of a very, very cool arcade, and they have duck pin bowling and all that. I can't remember. Actually, we weren't paying. The company was. Oh, yeah, that's right. Maybe that's why I don't remember. We were there with Marco Specialties. Yeah, there's like main event. All those, there's all kinds of big box, I think you should call them, big box arcades. Okay. And they all need a swipe system because that would be way too much labor. Oh, could you imagine? I would quit. Well, also because you're employing like 15-year-olds and- 13 tons of tokens. Yeah. Man, could you imagine? I used to go to showbiz when I was a kid. Same. Man, the behind the scenes of that and I bet that was insane. And you have to keep the little, the robots running, all that good stuff. I heard lots of good stories about that.
    72:50
    This is still gutter ghoul. Okay. You ready for this one? Sure am. It's a repair question. ooh this is you'll love this one okay what are the ones repairs you never want to see oh it's stuff that board stuff right board stuff smoke yeah stuff i don't want to see is something on a board that's a hard board that you can't replace um yeah i don't want to see that and i don't want to see metal that has sheared because that's going to require some welding if you're lucky our toughest repairs are you know board issues which i don't get too much into this is your forte yeah uh you know you're having to get out a meter and figure out which transistors blown and then you know luckily it's uh what do they call it through whole components which we can repair yes um when you modern machines have surface mounted components chips and all that good stuff and transistors that's a little bit harder to repair you have to or even if you do repair it yeah i'm probably not going to be repairing any service mount issues those that's beyond my um tools what the second part of this what steps can operators go through to minimize these issues um first thing uh what everybody should do and especially if you're if you're shopping for a pinball machine this is like number one remove the batteries yes boom absolutely remove make the battery take them off board right and if you're gonna i don't know what machine you're gonna buy but look in there see if you it's real obvious you're gonna see something with like three double a's um hopefully they're not leaking a lot of times they leak the acid gets on the board destroys the board then you have to rerun the traces uh get a either uh why do we have balloons on our that's what i don't know did you see that before i saw some weird thumbs up things and it just shot balloons all over the screen that was weird all right that's another if the people are going to see that or not that's another thing we're going to have to fix in post that was weird um so uh what steps can operators go through to minimize these issues you're having the board issues or what have you take take the batteries off of the board and um either look into nvram i know that's a solution uh just google nvram or i think our friend rob makes that stuff um or just uh mount the batteries somewhere else take them off of the board and run wires up to where they did exist. Which you can buy those from Marco or Battery Packs. The other serious issue is metal, like you were saying, metal shearing, welds failing. Unless you have a welding machine, there's not a whole lot you can do when welds on a mechanism break.
    76:02
    So get to know your local welder. Yeah. there's if you find a local welder somewhere I mean you can probably get stuff welded for like 30 or 40 bucks because I mean these are tiny things there's a lot of disassembly involved usually if you have to weld something that usually means you need to take off a bunch of components so it's always that's not the most fun thing to fix and the stuff you can do to prevent that not necessarily the welds breaking some of that is just totally out of your control just make sure everything is tight all the time. We go through machines every week. We don't go through every machine every week, but always be tightening.
    76:43
    Tighten the screws. Tighten your max just because if there's some play in there, then something is going to break. If everything is nice and tight, then there's less stress on the components. Take one day, lift the play field, tighten up everything on the bottom side, shut it. Everything on the top side. I like to break it up. So the next day, do all your top sides. See, I like to do it one time with the glass off. Yeah. I do things a little bit differently. That's true. You're your own individual.
    77:15
    Yeah. I am. This is from Pinball Conspiracy. I like that. That should be a podcast. Yeah. Pinball Conspiracies.
    77:24
    Aliens. Are they in our machines? Pinball Conspiracy. The folks that left that little exclamation point. Oh, yeah.
    77:31
    Yeah. So we're going to see this. A mystery pinball company. We're going to see it at Expo. We'll see what goes on with that. Okay, so this is from Pinball Conspiracy. This is via the email, electricbadarcade at gmail.com, right? Yep. Electricbadarcade at gmail.
    77:51
    Can't remember what digital level you guys recommended back on the pinball party. This is easy. Go to electricbadarcade.com. Click on the Tools tab. and there you'll see the link where you can go to Amazon and buy that thing. I think it's made by Klein. You like their tools. I do. I like Klein. Klein's good stuff.
    78:16
    Also, what is the best way to calibrate? Our location has a somewhat warped floor. I've never seen a plumb floor. They're all screwed up.
    78:30
    Leveling. I look around and ask myself, how do I know if anything around here is truly flat to begin with? Yeah, this is a big issue. And you don't really worry about the floor. The floor being unlevel, guess what? They're all going to be unlevel. So put your level on the play field and get it level left to right and just whatever that works out to on the floor. And we have some places in some parts of the bat where the floor is significantly unlevel. So we have rubber cups on those games because if you slide those around, it will get out of level very quickly. So that can be a solution for you, too, if you have kind of the rolling floors. No floor is 100% level, but also no machine. I mean, it's just there's so much going on. Even in a brand-new machine, you can, you know, we have a very accurate digital level. You can bring it to the front of the machine. It's completely, you know, it's at 0.0. Move it back a little, it's, you know, 0.2. You move it back a little bit more.
    79:42
    So no machine is going to be, like, dead, crazy level. You just get as close as possible. And is he the one that mentioned carpet?
    79:52
    I don't know. Somebody mentioned carpet. Oh, the other guy. Yeah, earlier. Carpet is very unlevel because you have the, what is this stuff? The pile. The pile, the padding underneath, the foam padding. And even on commercial carpet, it's all kind of just because. Some parts are more compressed. Some parts, especially from having a 250-pound machine on top of them. Sure. So you'll move the machine, level it. Oh, it's perfect. Somebody slides it over and it goes back into the little divot. Yeah. And now it's now it's unlevel again, according to where you have it set. I know folks.
    80:33
    It's funny. Kyle, Kyle Spateri at Stern. I asked him what level he used because he's been operating machines for a long time. He doesn't use a level. He sets up a machine and plays it. If it feels good, there you go. I think that's a very common old school operator. Right. Thing to do. Or some people roll a ball down the middle. Roll a ball down it. So it's never going to be dead on. I don't think any machine is going to be dead on level. But you can get it within 0.1, 0.2 degrees if you would like to. The other cool thing about that digital level is that you can see, is my machine set up at 6, 6.5, 7 degrees. The pitch is, it's a fun thing to know. But when we're leveling machines, we start out, the front leg levelers, we screw them all the way in. And then we just kind of eyeball the back ones to get them kind of even. But, you know, especially on the modern machines, I guess any machine, we have to have them kind of fast at the back because we're playing tournaments in them. But we kind of eyeball the back leg levelers. And then we start using a level to get to where we are. To refine it. Yeah, to get to a point that we like. And then we make sure, at least the front leg levelers, we add another nut to keep people from adjusting it themselves. Because some people will jack up the front legs to make the game more flat, decrease the pitch. I think they think they can hit things easier like that. So we crank those down to keep that from happening. That's a little tip you guys might want to deal with. Thank you so much. Pinball Conspiracy. I like the name there.
    82:27
    The next question is from Colin, and it's about marketing. Oh, that's a whole other episode. Okay, that's a whole other thing. It's a marketing episode. I wasn't even supposed to read that far. That's right. Yeah. It's here in my notes. Okay. So marketing episode. We still have one of those coming up. Send some more marketing questions our way.
    82:50
    ElectricBatArcade at Gmail. That'll be the next one. That'll be interesting because we can talk about the mystery pinball company.
    82:56
    What do we think about their marketing? Yay or nay? Is it working? Yeah. Are people talking about it? Are people excited?
    83:04
    We'll find out at Expo in a couple of weeks. Okay. Yeah. That'll be a lot of fun. So send us specifically your marketing questions. Yeah. Thank you all for joining us. This has been another outrageous, absolutely fantastic episode of the Electric Batcast in the Electric Bat Library. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Room Goodies. Mention us to Game Room Goodies, and they'll knock a few hundred dollars off your game. Yeah, if you're local. If you're local. You have to be in Arizona. Is it all Arizona, or is it just the Valley? I'm not sure. It's local to Arizona. Local to Arizona. Give them a call. Mention us. Mention you heard about this ad on this podcast, and they're going to hook you up. They're going to give you a little discount. Really appreciate Aaron and Fred and all the crew at Game Room Goodies for all the help. And thank you, as always, to Marco's Specialties. Everything pinball. If you need any pinball parts, call those folks up. They have the best customer service in the industry. If you're looking for the weirdest parts, they will help you find it. If they don't have it, they'll help you find it. We used to do that all the time. Yeah. We'd research somewhere else. We'd find stuff on eBay and be like, here, we don't have this, but here you go. They're all about keeping these machines running, keeping the dream alive. Thank you for all the hard work. And we can't wait to join you guys at Expo in Chicago where they're teaming up with Stern again. We're going to have the big Stern Marco booth. It's going to be a great party. Come out. Hang out with us. We're all going to be there, the whole crew. Who do we have? I think Marco might even come. the marco oh i've been talking to him trying to trying to get him out there he's so busy he doesn't have a lot of time to travel but i'm again you know we hang out with the moto kyle and paul and all the gang there hopefully what about what if steve could come pinball steve that would be great pinball jesus that'd be great anyway thank you guys for sponsoring the show we really appreciate we appreciate what all you guys are doing to keep pinball alive we are about to head to the arcade yeah play a little venom and uh galactic tank force yeah i'm gonna beat you we'll see you guys next time the bats are out see ya