What's going on everybody? Welcome, Welcome, welcome. This is episode 13 of the Dirty Pool podcast and today I am joined This is a really exciting episode for me. It's funny because I just had Manu on uh what last week, a week and a half ago. uh man who is from the Bay Area and my guest today also used to be from the Bay Area. Uh I introduced to you Kyle Spiterry. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Uh you go by the nomer on Instagram at least as Black Cat Pinball and uh you work at Stern and you were the first person from Stern on the podcast. So welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. Uh so I have a mountain of questions. Uh all sorts of cool stuff. You're just a fascinating individual. I know you have been like hilariously bashing on yourself as not being somebody that is interesting and I thoroughly disagree. Just as a quick shoot into the future here, we're going to be talking about stuff as you working as a motorcycle mechanic. You volunteered at Pacific Pinball Museum. You used to work at Marco Specialties. I mean, look, let's just dive in. When what got you into pinball when you were in the Bay Area? when I was in the Bay Area. So I grew up in the East Bay. Um and uh so like near Oakland, a suburb of Oakland, but I got um I guess like I mean I've always been into pinball, right? I've always been a gamer. I like games. So pinball was always something and right I think this is when pinball historically has also done well, right? It offers something you can't have at home, right? So I had all sorts of video games at home. I could play whatever I wanted. And um you know, so when you go to these places, you go to an arcade or you go to a a laser tag place, a bowling alley, whatever, and it has this other kind of game that you don't get to play very often. It's It's intriguing, right? You want to get in and play it. So like I definitely I've been into pinball since I was a kid, right? But we all got kind of go through the phase or like at least at my age, right? Coming of age in the 2000s, like pinball went away really quick. when um you know Stern was the only manufacturer left and you know the only games you might see on location are like really beat up90s games and rarely like a newer title from Stern. I kind of lost excellent titles like 24 and Big Buck Hunter. Yeah. Right. Exactly. No, it it's like, you know, part of why Williams like their own success was their demise is like in 2005, like the most exciting thing I could find in an arcade was either a Lord of the Rings or a really beat up Theater of Magic, right? Like those games earned so long, they never left locations. Totally. You know, Yeah. but so like I guess like fast forward to more interesting times. Um I started playing pinball at this place called 510 Pizza. Um, and then started going to this place called the Lucky Guju in Oakland and Alamita respectively. And those were, you know, hit uh hopping pinball locations, right? Um, I started attending California Extreme. I started attending um, you told me you've been to California Extreme 30 times. Is that correct? No, not that many times. Okay. I was going to say their 30th is next year, right? But you've hit you've been there a million times since like almost conception, right? No, definitely not since inception, but definitely like I think 2010 or 2011 was the first time I ventured down to go to that show. And I've been to it almost every year since. Um, but you know, I think like the the end of the story, like the genesis of how did I get into pinball is when you meet somebody. you meet somebody else that you want to play pinball with or they start teaching you things and at that point like it was over, right? Uh my my brain got recombobulated and I changed my career course which um you brought it up motorcycles. Um I've always been into motorcycles. I used to ride dirt bikes as a kid and um when I got my first street bike when I was 18, my mom said, "I won't let you have one. You have to move out." So, I showed up with my my motorcycle I had just bought and promptly moved out. Um, you know, so it kind of, you know, well, that's what she said, right? I'm just following the rules. So, I worked at um I used to do a lot of work with BMW motorcycles. So, like I worked for a place in San Francisco that like wrecked old BMW motorcycles and worked on like old '7s beamers and stuff. So, um, yeah, being into games, also being into mechanics, um, they you meld those together. And what is the perfect combination? It's pinball. Yeah. I mean, pinball is essentially just a motorcycle without wheels and with a table and no balls and without handlebars and no horn or no chains or no combustion engine. They're the same thing. Exactly. And the the nice thing is if I screw up working on a pinball game, there's almost zero chance that I will kill somebody. If you working on someone's motorcycle, there's definitely a chance you can kill them, right? So, the stakes are a lot lower. How is your mom okay with you riding dirt bikes, but not okay with you riding street bikes? I feel like they're like equally dangerous, if not more. I mean, you drive in LA. You know what it's like. That's true. But I'm talking about dirt bikes being just as dangerous cuz I mean, there you're catching air. I mean, I've seen people have gnarly injuries from riding just regular mountain bikes down dirt trails. I can't imagine doing it with a motor attached to you, you know? Jeez. Yeah. It's See, but that's the thing is like when you screw up on a mountain bike or a dirt bike, generally it's your fault. When you screw up on a street bike, then some most of the time it's someone else's fault. You know, cell phones or just driving like a jerk. You know, self-driving motorcycles. This is the the what the future needs, right? I I'm I'm being very sarcastic. So, specifically, you work on BMW motorcycles. Let's Let's dive into that for a second. Why Why BMWs out of all of the different motorcycle brands? Long answer or short answer? Both. Um, so I also used to like cars, right? I had a bunch of like neat hot rodded '8s Toyotas when I was like a teenager and younger. And then one day I bought this like super broken, clapped out like 80s BMW car and I thought it was awesome and I loved working on it. So then I also um so a little bit of brand love there, but BMW is kind of famous for their off-road on-road motorcycles. So like like the term now would be an adventure bike. So you kind of like think about a dirt bike crammed together with like a touring bike and you get like what BMW is most famous for. So um I as a motorcyclist, my ideal kind of like motorcycle trip is like really long distance travel. So, one of my best friends and I, we would, you know, ride up to Vancouver for a weekend, leave hella late on a Friday night, get as far as we can stand, camp, and then spend the weekend in Vancouver, you know, ride uh Canada, right? Ride back home, do really long trips out into the Rockies and stuff like that. Um, yeah. So, when you're doing when you're doing like mountain curvy roads, like is that just like that's the vibe? Like that's the moment that you love when you're on a motorcycle doing a road trip. Yeah. Just getting as far away from humans as possible, you know? Like just Yeah. Either find like the most beautiful road or find like a fire service trail, right? There's these big wide roads that are big enough for like logging trucks and like cow fire and stuff to go drive out to like deal with fires, but they make the perfect off-road motorcycle roads to just kind of, you know, cruise out, do a little bit of off-roading, find a nice place to camp if it's state land, stuff like that. So, you you mentioned video games obviously. I have to ask, did your interest in motorcycles start from the game Full Throttle? Road Rash on the Sega Genesis. Oh, Road Rash. That's good, too. It's a little It's a little more violent. I was thinking more like Curvy Curvy Road Adventure and you went straight down to hit him hit him with a chain. Knock him off. Clubs, chains, whatever. Yeah. All right. So, what what's your favorite weapon from Road Rash? I like kicking. Okay. Right. Doesn't it work for Duke Nukem, right? Yeah. The Buddha is incredibly powerful. Um All right. So, you learned to repair EM at Pacific Pinball Museum. Is that is that correct? As a volunteer. So, I started volunteering at the Pacific Pinball Museum and very quickly like became more infatuated with pinball, right? I already owned a game. Uh, give me a timeline. What year was this? I mean, I guess around 2010. Okay. I mean, it doesn't have to be specific. I'm talking ballpark here is 20. It's 2010ish. I started volunteering there and um you know, they had like a fix it night, you know, so you go in and you you they'd feed you pizza and you'd clean the games and the people that were really good would fix the games and stuff like that. Um but you know just I was kind of bored with my job um at that time. So it was really easy to be influenced by something fun and exciting like pinball. And I guess in life I've gotten really lucky by being invaluable at the right time to be like offered a job I guess. So, like very quickly, like I was offered a job at the P Pacific Pinball Museum. And then very quickly after that, I was offered a job to work with Chris Coun, the Pinball Pirate. Um, and he taught me everything I know about pinball. He's forgotten more about pinball than either of us will ever know. Um, but if you guys aren't familiar with the Pacific Pinball Museum, it's a nonprofit in Alama, California, and they have like a collection of over a thousand games. Um, they have a museum you can go into and play like 110, but they're kind of separated by like era, so like, you know, older games, historical things, and then, you know, the more modern stuff, and then they'll have a special exhibit kind of showing a certain interesting thing in pinball history. So, they had a whole um exhibit about the pointy people of Christian Marche and um Jean Kelly, two artists that were really influential in the ' 60s and ' 70s. Um, now I think they're doing an exhibit on women in the pinball um industry and sphere. So, you know, artists and sound designers and stuff like that. So, speaking of, you have that game behind you. We're of course talking about Xenon. That's right. I got to work on Suzanne Ciani Xenon once um through Pinball Pirate. She lives like up in Northern California and uh I got to go service her xenon once. That was really cool. That's really awesome. So she's a legend. She I mean I think that's her only pinball machine that she did. But if you don't know Xenon is that that is the first and probably only I think that I know of pinball machine that has a female sound designer and that was done in the what late 70s early 80s. Um so so back when sound design was not as easy as it is these days. So yeah, easy. I'm sure it is. Yeah. Air quotes easy. Uh so that's amazing. The other thing that I really love about Pacific Pinball Museum is most of their games actually work. Unlike uh the Vegas Pinball Museum, which uh we've talked about on the show before, uh if you ever want to go play a bunch of actual tables that are just tables and not pinball machines, check it out. Stop by in Vegas. Um yeah, the PP is amazing. Yeah, it's it's definitely worth going to. Chris Chris basically gave you the the whole handbook on how to repair EM. I'm guessing solid states, everything. And then I learned a lot about fixing EM from Michael She, the guy that founded the Pacific Pinball Museum, but he was kind of like my artsy like sherpa into pinball, right? like he loved the art and he also loved the history and he really tied me in with like you know the cultural importance of pinball and right like the zeitgeist of like the the art itself being like the zeitgeist or like of the time when those games were made right um and I definitely was in love with the older games like from the get-go when I started volunteering there because you know being a child of the 80s and growing up in the late9s um you got to see the '90s games all the times, but like I had never seen Xenon. I had never seen Viking. I'd never seen a single electro mechanical game, right? So they were really intriguing. Yeah. So I understand that pinball machines, you know, just like films are kind of like a snapshot of the era, right? Because there's so many components that go into a pinball machine. There's artwork, there's the illumination stuff, there's obviously sound and music. I mean, and just how it physically plays also is a reference of kind of what innovations are going on in the physical engineering space as well. So, I that's something that's always been fascinating to me and it's cool how, you know, you can block off games and buy different manufacturers and different eras. So, I I get that. I feel it. Um, all right. So, then you moved on to Marco after this or what was what happened with the transition into Marco Specialties and your your Pint Live series? So um I got offered a job at Marco Pinball doing um basically like product management stuff. Um so Mark Mandeltor when he was still around um he was the founder of Marco incredible awesome generous intelligent person. Um he offered me a job and to move me out to South Carolina which was a huge huge step right being a California boy. Um, sure. But my wife and I went out there and I worked at Marco for around two and a half I think years about 3 years. And right before we moved was right before pandemic times, right? So, um, as soon as we moved to South Carolina, we were like locked down and, you know, couldn't do anything. and Emodo. Um, and I kind of had an idea of, you know, we saw people live streaming, right? I I loved watching Jack uh Jack Deadflip. Um, other people like do like pinball stuff on YouTube. And she was like, "Well, why don't you teach people how to fix pinball games on the internet?" And it's kind of like, "Huh, that sounds stupid. Let's try it." uh which and which you know partly your role at Stern recently has also involved some of that. I mean you have videos of how to repair mechanics for a lot of their games. Did I'm assuming that influence obviously came from that time at Marco. Yeah, I think that's something that Sterns always wanted to do was try to like produce like how-to stuff. I think a lot of people nowadays, maybe it's like Tik Tok brain brain rot or something, like people can't comprehend instructions anymore. They like need to see everything done on a video and that's fine and it's fun and it gives me an outlet to kind of teach people to do stuff, right? I really enjoy doing it as a live stream because we got to take something, right? Something that didn't work. Many of these games that are actually from my collection in my basement were um subjects on the live stream and we take something that's broken and then I would go through all of the experience I have, right? And kind of brain dump that like this is how I would do this. And I was really anxious at first, right? cuz like having an opinion on the internet is very uh opens up a lot of vulnerability, right? Totally. But yeah, I'm laughing just because of how true that is. It's just very Yeah, it's as soon as you start streaming and you open your mouth, you have to double, you know, overthink everything at this point. Um, do you think people like have lost something about learning how to do something on their own by just looking at a video that has it done? Like I feel like part of the learning process involves failure and if you're just watching a video that has the path to success, like what you know? Yeah. I mean, we can get hella philosophical now, but um I mean yeah, I would agree with that. I definitely think, okay, I'll give the short bit of this phil philosophical thing, but like the internet is like the worst and the best thing that's ever happened to humanity. We have all the information we would ever want at our fingertips and the only way that would be useful is if someone wants to learn and to go and find it, right? And yeah, I think but yeah, okay, away from that, yes, I think it's more difficult for people to learn because you kind of have the ability to do things perfectly by being able to go on YouTube and be like, "How do I do this?" And someone who is maybe an expert can teach you how to do something right. So, I can't tell you how many times I have failed um at fixing a pinball game or doing something, failing at anything in life. I I'm a I failed at many things, but yeah, that's the only way you learn, right? Like I remember following instructions isn't learning. It's just executing somebody else's, you know, plan. No, for sure. Yeah, it is. Unless you fail along the way, which is totally fine, but I think yeah, failure is not a bad thing. Failure is just another step along the path, you know. Totally. Elon says that he feels video is just an updated way to learn. And I I think that's true, too. It really is down to the person. I think there's people that watch the video and then also try to figure it out. And then there's people that watch the video just cuz they want the thing to work. They don't care about learning about it. And I mean, yeah. Well, but it's people learn differently, right? So visual learners or um u audiothetic, right? What? Sorry. Audio and kinesthetic I think are the other two forms of learning. Kinesesthetic being the one you're talking about where you actually do it. Yeah, absolutely. You can commit it to memory easier when you actually go through the um the motions, right? Like Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be like a Debbie Downer on like video and YouTube tutorials. I just think it's uh it's just interesting that that's the way things have changed. That's all. No, for sure. Then I'm not picking for that. We're just looking at kind of the interesting uh uh the algorithm has created a certain type of education now, and it just is what it is. YouTube's great and and terrible for that at the same time. Uh, so all right. So you you've reverse engineered a lot of old necks, right? What tell me what's the most fascinating piece of pinball engineering that you've had to deconstruct? Um, zipper flippers. I love zipper flippers. Um, like think about fireball, right? So the little flippers that will um come together and then well can come back apart. I They're so fun. I think 5 million BC has those too, right? Isn't that that's a EM that has multiball on it as well. What a great game. Yeah. I think it was Ted Zale, a BI designer from the ' 60s and early '7s. He was really fond of zipper flippers. Maybe he was the guy that invented them. But, um, yeah, they're hella cool. Um, so what's what's fascinating about the mechanic? I guess there's a solinire that fires or something that ends up pulling them together. If you don't know, zipper flippers have like a they're they're smaller flippers and they zip together to completely keep the ball from going down the center drain. Uh and usually there's a switch or some sort of uh whatever rollover or something that triggers that on the game. Uh but what is what's interesting about the mag just how simple it is? Like pinball engineering has to be simple um because it can't be expensive or difficult, right? I think that's like a constant in pinball engineering. Gen, like relative simplicity, even if the end goal is something well orchestrated and complex, but it's just it's a plate that bolts to the playfield. Then there's a couple studs and some other little plates that the actual imagine like your flipper mechs being mounted to a plate that also pivots and moves. There's one coil that pulls them in to bring them into the in position and then another little coil that will unlatch and allow them to move back out. They're a latch mechanism. They're so cool. That's wild. Pat Pat the weirdo says, "Next turn has zipper flippers confirmed." Yeah. How many zipper flippers are on Pokemon? Um 18. That checks out. Yeah. So uh let's see. So in July, what? like around 2023 or so, you joined the you were officially adorned as the technical support engineer at Stern. Yep. I um I had um a lot of wonderful friendships with people at Stern Pinball that I've known for some time and um through a little bit of trying on my end and a little bit of uh persistence um they offered me a job. Um, and we moved up, my wife and I and all four of our cats moved up to Chicago where we live now. I mean, that's obviously a huge compliment to both your education and knowledge for pinball stuff. The fact that a company like Stern would be like, "Hey, like you should be here. That's got to feel very good inside, I imagine." Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's um no matter how crummy a day is or how crummy a day ends, there's always a uh definite pride and satisfaction of like, you know, being able to call those people, my co-workers, and get in and out of that building. It's pretty fantastic. Amazing. Uh so, what is like when you got that role, what what was the most intimidating part of the first day you walked into the building? feeling like I had to know everything. Um, even though like my favorite mantra forever has been, you know, a real smart person knows where to find information, doesn't necessarily know that information, but it's that, you know, first day of school kind of like I need to, you know, prove that I am smart and worthy. And very quickly I was like, no, no, I don't need to. Yeah, that's that's not necessary. It's about Was there a paddle? Was there like a stern hazing experience? Oh, yeah. I can't talk about it though. I understand. That's the top secret uh stern cult uh entrance Illuminati. And if anybody knows anything about cults, what's don't look at your palms. Um so how your jobs changed from then to now, right? And you are involved in providing tours for the factory. Um, I think a lot of people that are watching may have seen a lot of that from the uh King Kong and Dungeons and Dragons kind of like releases where you were kind of like the the spokesperson for interacting with influencers or what not like that. And I find it really funny because you've talked about how anxious you are and that you don't like to be on camera, but here you are in like an incredibly interactive role with the community. So, let's talk about that. How do how does somebody overcome an anxiety driven kind of like I don't want to be in front of people to that being your kind of day job? So um my first expo at Stern I was recruited to give tours. So I shadowed uh Dwight Sullivan on You mean recruited? Did they point at you and just be like you're doing it? Yeah. Basically, it's like, "Hey, we need you to do this." Like, "Okay." So, I was like, "Dwight, teach me how to give a tour." And, um, Dwight is relatively well known for giving fantastic tours. Um, so I learned from Dwight. I gave those tours. And then one day, I think they asked Dwight to give another group a tour and he was like, "No, have Kyle do it." And um, so I guess it kind of got bestowed upon me. I think they make me or not make me, I'm sorry. They ask me to do those tours when like people come into the factory like pinball people because I am a huge nerd and I will geek out with all of that stuff with those people the same way they're geeking out about it, right? Like I love standing next to the Hannifin press, right? The old got Playfield press and talking about that for like 15 minutes and telling people how cool it is because they like that. So that's the press that's still used that was in one of the recent uh behind the scenes videos, right? Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. It's a really incredible piece of techn uh equipment from like the '60s. Like Gotle I think they bought that when they moved their factory from Chicago out to a suburb um North Lake where they made a bunch of games like in the '7s late '7s till the early 80s. And um when they moved from there in the8s, they sold it to an equipment manufacturer and that is where Gary Stern bought it because he needed equipment to run his own pinball company, Data East. Cool. We're getting see we're getting some insider pinball knowledge somewhat. Uh Alonomous is saying, "Thank you for answering a bunch of his questions on the D&D tour, and he's busting my balls for asking you a bunch of hard questions." Uh all right, fine. An easy one. What is the hardest pinball mech to repair in pinball? Gosh. Um, I'll name a few. Uh, Johnny Mimmonic uh glove. Um, the stupid uh motor for the planet in Judge Dread. Oh god, the dead world mod is like such a night. Yeah. Yep. That one's up there. and the moving playfield thing on Doctor Who. I particularly hate that and I kind of hate the one on NASCAR also, just because I have tried and failed on it 10 million times, but um I know my ways around it now. But those are called the Time Expander is the name of that absolute nightmare of a [] mechanic. Yeah, it's wild. What's that? It's wild. It's also way in the back. like it's in the back of the playfield and you can't tell because I'm sitting down, but I am 6' 8 inches tall and when things on those old games are in the back of the playfield, that means I have to go like, you know, crane in and bend my back to work on them. So, it's a let's see 2010 that would have been. So, did they did they move the power button to the backbox because you were working there and it was easy for you to reach it, I'm guessing? Um, no. The power button is actually there for UL uh compliance. Oh, well there you go. And I'm assuming that's why they moved the power supply there instead of uh in the front front right like it has been for many decades. Well, also because on the Spike system um it uses a switching power supply instead of a transformer. So imagine like a power supply on like your computer or like any other piece of personal electronics. It makes one voltage. Um, and that's much smaller and can be, you know, hid away in the back. Gotcha. To put those five and 12 volts out. You know, I've had the most issues with [] 5V restarts. Let me tell you, you mentioned Judge Dread. Getting Judge Dread not to [] turn off every two seconds when the flippers dip. It has been Anyways, that game's gone now. I digress. Uh, so you're giving people tours now. you got fingered by Gomez and and Dwight being like, "Hey, maybe you didn't get fingered by I don't know that maybe that's the hazing that you were talking about." Anyways, they pointed at you and they were like, "You need to go give tours." Um, I feel like that involving influencers and the community in general has been a large part of what Stern's kind of pushing towards now with obviously Jack being brought on many years ago and and a lot of the videos and stuff that you guys are producing now. Um, have you noticed uh, you know, uh, the community in general responding better to Stern's like kind of like consumer involvement? I mean, I think so. I think it's a really positive move to bring the people who spend their personal time um, you know, talking about our products and the games that we work uh, you know, everyone works really hard to bring to market. you know, reward them with the ability to come see and reward them with I mean, not reward, but like give them the opportunity to come and see, give them the opportunity to come and talk to the people that make the things that they love, right? Like, um, we get to do that at Expo and open up the factory for everyone to come see. But again, um, you know, when people spend their time, their own personal time promoting the gospel that is pinball, like, yeah, come and see our stuff. Like, come and see like the thing that we were really excited to show you about. I think it's fantastic. Um, and it's fun, you know, it's fun to have people come in and be like, "Wo, this is crazy." You know, cuz I go into a pinball factory every day and yeah, sometimes the amazement is lost on me. Um, but when other people express it, it's just like, oh yeah, this is pretty cool. You You mentioned the tours as if they kind of pop up. Do you just have like vagrants walk in off the street asking for like pinball tours or like is it only during like scheduled uh you know uh influencer whatever like showings? Yeah, we don't really do like public tours anymore just cuz it's like there's a it takes a lot of time and effort from people who are working um to give like tours. So you'll have people call up all the time be like, "Hey, I'm in Elgrow Village. Can I have a tour?" It's like, unfortunately, no, we can't do that. Um, so yeah. Um, but you can't just [] constantly have people like walking around the floor of a factory. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, it is a workspace. Yeah, for sure. Um, this I have an interesting question and I'm curious why Stern hasn't pushed more of this and it's nothing we talked about before. Uh, so when I was talking with Chad the Bird, he was speaking about how he's fairly close with the mayor of the city and is trying to help get Chicago to recognize pinball, similar to how like Detroit represents like muscle car culture. And I'm surprised that Chicago hasn't like doubled down on this as a way to develop business internally. I mean, there's a lot of pinball companies in Chicago. There's a lot of a lot of manufacturing occurs there, even though, you know, some of it is overseas or parts that are brought in. So, I'm curious why, you know, Stern's obviously pushed fairly recently to bring a lot of attention to pinball outside of pinball people because pinball people already know about pinball. Why no pressure on Chicago to try to make pinball like that's the the city of pinball? you know, I I don't know and I don't think I could give like the official answer to that, but I imagine that people have tried. Um, and I feel like that is something that should be harped on more, right? Like we have this incredible, we have a, you know, this really interesting museum, the Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago. And, um, you know, it's like, why? They had a moldematic. Do you know what those are? Moldama. Moldatic. What's a mold? Do these really in You know what? Hold on. I'm getting a example. We got a moldama. He's running off to get a moldama. If you're watching this on Spotify with your ear eyeballs, uh I'm going to narrate. He's running away down an incredible line of ems and solid state games. And now he's running back. Now he's sitting down. I'm giving it for the podcast people later. Now he's got a mold of uh Ape. This looks like Congo. No. What is this? So, it's a it's an injection molded like black toy. It says Bush Gardens on it, but the Moldaramas and Moldmatics, it's two different companies, but it's a coin operated like injection molded toy, right? It's this thing. It's under a big glass dome. You put money into it. The thing, you know, goes into action, pushes the injection mold together, injects it full of hot plastic. Um, and then it kicks out a silly little toy like this. But it was something that was like invented in Chicago, right? And they were manufactured here at some point. And they this, sorry, I digress. But the Museum of Science and Industry had a big exhibit on moldas. And when I was in there, the whole time I was thinking, it's like, man, this would be an incredible place to show, you know, like the history of pinball and how pinball is very uniquely Chicago. Is there no pinball in the Museum of Science and Technology? What the [] is that? That's ridiculous. This is what I'm talking about. How the hell does the city of Chicago have an entire facility based on science and engineering and doesn't have one of the nation's like I mean that's the source of pinball. That's so dumb. You guys need to get rid of that mayor. Boom. Out. Get a mayor that actually gives a [] about pinball. [] this guy. Next time I go see Chad the Bird, I think I'll be like, "Hey, go make him an offer. You can't refuse." I don't know. Yeah, exactly. We get some uh like a little bit of the good fellas operation going on. Yeah. Anonymous says put Roger Sharp on it. Exactly. Right. We should tell have him do it again. Save pinball twice. You're not done yet. Roger Sharp. He just came in third in the league that I play in uh this previous weekend. So nice. That's pretty awesome. Roger Sharp just destroying all these uh middle-aged and young folk. It's important, man. These old guys, we got to do stuff, right? Didn't Jim Belceto win uh what was it? Something recently. He run classics division at uh at at some I don't know. Chad, help me out here. Uh anyways, I let me do another reintroduction where where we got a boatload of people. It was Yugpin. Thank you, Roller Coasters. Uh we have a lot of engineers uh on the channel and when I do my midday streams, it's filled with engineers that are sitting there watching pinball instead of doing their job. Uh which is fine. I don't mind having a bunch of random people get paid to watch me play pinball. You love it. Uh but if you are just joining, uh I am here with Kpteri uh of Blackcat Pinball/ Stern and we are talking about why the mayor of Chicago needs to get the [] out. Um so yeah, welcome again. Hello. Kyle is the support and uh what it's with your technical support engineer I guess is your official title, right? That's what the business card says. Yeah, the business card. Uh, but you're just a pinball lover through and through. And we've talked about how you've spent time learning about pinball repair at Pacific Pinball Museum all the way to Marco and now you're at Stern and that's what we're talking about. But we're going to take a we're going to digress real quick. Uh, cuz you made a comment in an interview that I think is so awesome and I want to I want to explore it a little bit. You mentioned that you appreciate, and I quote, survivor games, games that have just seen some [] as opposed to, you know, restored new games. What is it about like the a game that's just been rode hard and let out to pasture that is like appealing? I think it's the nostalgic side of me. Like, I'm a history nerd. I went to school for, you know, history and stuff like that. So, like to me, like when I would get you, you get on an old motorcycle, you get in an old car, you touch an old object, right? Someone dorky like me, I think it's like, man, it's like think of all the other people that use this or experience something with this or did, you know, something, right? Like you you get into a car, like a special car, and it's like, I wonder, you know, who was so excited the first day they brought this thing home, right? and they loved it. They cherished this car and now it's a clapped out, you know, 30-year-old BMW that some 18-year-old just bought. Like that reference back to my story about cars. But right, I think like there's something special about a game because I think like personally like postco times, I think people like went absolutely bonkers over restoring pinball games. Okay, so personal opinions, right? I think it's like to me I would much rather see a game actually restored, right? So you you take what you have and you present it as well as it possibly can be. You're saying no hard top, no reproduction playfield. You're talking about paint that [] and then call it a day kind of. I mean, yeah, kind of. I like look there's like definitely games that do not that need to be restored in a way that is essentially replacing everything. Are you actually restoring something if you're replacing everything? No, you're building something new. Um there's something really charming to me about going and playing a game. You know, you go find the the Attack from Mars that used to be at Free Gold Watch was my old boss's, right? He's owned this game since like 1998, 1999. And he was still operating it and I was taking care of it at Free Gold Watch when I still lived in the Bay Area. And the the scoop, right, the saucer hole was so blown out. It was enormous. But it was just like the greatest playing. 10 spicy burritos level like wide. Absolutely. But there's just something about it. I don't know. Like I I maybe, you know, in playing pinball games at shows are not a way to like judge the actual way they play. People go through the effort of taking them out of their homes, packaging them up, bringing them to a hall, placing them there. But I've been to pinball events all over the country, and you go and play like the world's shiniest Attack from Mars, and it just plays like absolute garbage. And I really really want to go play that beat to crap Attack from Mars at free gold watch that just plays like absolute an absolute dream. I find it more interesting to if you're lucky enough to come upon something that is in a state that can be preserved. Like I would much rather preserve it and enjoy it how it is instead of like everything in the kitchen sink. Um I wish I could show you some of my games to like give you a better example of like what I'm talking about. I'm not saying like if a game is missing half of the paint between the flippers and the slingshots, you know, you're a fool to replace the playfield. It's you're missing you're missing an insert, so you have a third scoop on it that didn't have one before. Yeah. I I don't know. It's It's just there's something to me. A game is only original once, you know, and there's going to be a certain point where it's like there's not a single uh Adams family that hasn't had a new playfield put into it, you know? Like for better or worse, it's just a personal thing. But no, I mean, I think that there's something to that. Michael just said, he says, "I think that's a part of the hobby that gets lost. Games have a lot of history behind them. I bought games and wondered what their lives were for decades before this and who played and enjoyed them." And that's true. I mean, I think that the hobby, the pinball hobby, and people that love pinball, there's like a weird romanticism about it that like I don't think people get if you aren't like really into pinball, right? And you can't help but like I mean I've you know Ace Goi on Tilt is like our closest arcade and you know Shane's got a ton of different games that come through there and for the most part like they they're in amazing condition. They play great. He He works really hard for that. But yeah, there's wear on them in ways where you're just like you can't help but wonder like what was this game's life before this moment kind of thing. And uh I don't know. I've talked about how I think arcades have a responsibility for keeping older games like going because people generally don't collect those kind of games at home. And I say generally because I saw your collection. We did a quick tour and uh you are like my man. You have such an amazing collection of games that aren't just a wall of new Sterns. No offense Stern. Uh but that's great. I mean that it requires uh people like you in order to keep these games going so that they are still playable by somebody. Yeah, I think I guess like I I listen to that discussion. I believe you were talking to Ian about it and I do I guess like I kind of agree and disagree at a certain extent because yes I think it's really important for people to get the context and like see what pinball was um and what it used to be and then enjoy something that's new and see what it has become. I think though like just the financial like burden that like an arcade actually is to an owner potentially, you know, it's like you gota you got to stick with what earns well. There's some people that may be really lucky that don't necessarily need the pinball to pay their bills in certain like arcades or locations or something and they have the luxury of being able to share like whatever they want to share, right? Some Some pinball communities are like I was about to say something I won't say that but there's some pinball communities that maybe that was they may appreciate the older games more as opposed to like only enjoying the newer games right go to a tournament and listen to the size or the disdain that comes from like a some tournament players when they have to play a game from the 80s or something like that. Right. Sure. and they really really want to use their skills on games that are like from the 90s and newer because it takes a different set of skills maybe. I mean they both translate but so like yes I definitely think that like locations have a duty to like kind of show but I don't know I feel like they also need to operate what they make money on you know to make sure that they don't go away. Totally. And I talked to Rachel and Kale about this and you know my statement was never that arcade should only have vintage games and classics. That's definitely not the point. But if they if arcade owners just wanted to make money, they would only have claw machines. I mean those are like they print money. I'm serious. There would be claw machines on card systems and that's it. And you can see this if you look at bowling alleys. I mean there's businesses that have no interest in pinball. They only care about making money. and those game systems are translated into just those types of games. So to a degree like if you have an arcade and you have any pinball machines that that means that you do care about pinball to some degree otherwise you wouldn't have in an arcade. So just a handful of classics. That's it. That's all I that's all I want to see in an in an arcade along with you know Kong and whatnot. It's the same reason. It's like why like I like to gravitate towards like pinball locations that have like a great spread of like oddballs and stuff, right? There's this fun location um here in Chicago pretty close to me called the Chicago Billiards Cafe, but they've got modern games. They've got some '90s games. And then they have a gotly uh Bad Girls. And whenever I go to that place, the only game I put money into is Bad Girls, right? Like it's just it's fun. When am I going to get to see this again? And right, you got to put money in bad girls for sure. I don't know. Like, this one is a hard one to debate because like I will debate either side, but again, like you pointed out, most of the games I have are old and that's just what I like. I'm lucky enough to have all this space, so I don't need to just have like one or two games that are in so insanely deep that I, you know, that's all that I need to entertain me. I love going and playing. I'm going to play Mars Trek for three minutes. Okay, that was fun. Now I'm going to go move to Jungle Queen. I'm going to play that for two minutes and I'm going to move on to, you know, I don't know. No, for sure. And it's not a debate. It's just a it's a it's a curiosity. You know, I love going over to collector's places like yours like with that open their home to tournaments and home, you know, invasion essentially and uh and have like a really eclectic collection of pins. Uh I don't. I have a lot of new pens now. I used to have a bunch of classics and I just wasn't playing them as much and decided to sell them. And you know, I there's a few that I absolutely regret and wish I still had. But, you know, I guess it just depends on whether you're you're playing them for the uh kind of antique nostalgic uh element and their art package that you want to have or if you're playing them for, you know, pinball rule sets and big scores or whatever. I don't know. It really there's no wrong answer for a home collection, but it's arcades that I'm talking about that I feel like that's a place where you can roll in and be like, "Oh, cool. There's a Raven here. I'm gonna play it." You know, the greatest game. The greatest game. Uh, since we're talking about games that are overhyped, and not that that's just as a quick little segue, I want you to check out a shirt here and we're going to have a little chat. Okay. Can you read that? Yeah. Yeah, it says Whitewater. So before you say anything, I agree with you. I think Whitewater is an overhyped game. It's good, but that [] is not like Well, come on. Okay, so this has been taken out of context and in context a few times, but my opinion on White I I love Whitewater. What a fun game. It does everything right. It's got great sounds. Sure. It's got so much fun. But I can't tell you how many times I've had the if you had to go to a desert island and take one pinball game, what would it be? And so many people are like white water. Well, that's because it has water in it so you would be able to survive and drink out of it. Obviously, you could turn it into a raft. I don't know, right? I don't know. All right. So, someone asked earlier in in hearkening to that question what your favorite pin is. So, we'll we'll add let's sorry let's say you've got a solar panel that can put out enough amps and wattage to support a pinball machine of any period of time. What is the pin that you bring to this island? Oh boy. Um, you know, again, this answer changes all the time. Totally. Um, wow. Lots of dead air. Um, that's okay. People skip through these YouTube videos anyways. To be honest, like this is an answer that comes up all the time, but like I really like Deadpool. Oh wow. Like is Deadpool the deepest game ever? No. Is it But it just it shoots so well. I really like the pacing. I think it's fun. I that's the answer I might give right now, but if you asked me another day it might be something totally different. I I don't know. It's tough. So, I have a I have a historical question about Deadpool. Um, and I think a lot of people, especially viewers of my channel, already know this, but to my knowledge, and I'm really curious what the game state was pre and post this. Uh, I'm going to drop the John Trudeau. So, John Trudeau was working on Deadpool uh before he was involved in some heinous stuff and was and left Stern and Gomez took over the game. How much of what is in Deadpool is of the original Trudeau design versus what Gomez turned it into? I think only George can really answer this question, but having seen that other game, I would say 0%. Um, but I'm pretty sure that's the actual answer, but I would say that would be a really good question to ask George if he wanted to embellish. Uh, you talk more about that. I mean, I would love to talk to George. Are you kidding me? I doubt he would want to, but that's okay. I mean, George Gomez is one of my favorite designers. You can see right here I have a Lord of the Rings, even though the back glass is different, but yeah, Gomez is is the top three for me. I just absolutely love the games. So, but I was just curious cuz that's a game that has a lot of colorful history and uh you know, yeah, that's neat to know that it's basically a from scratch iteration of that. George has the ability to like throw a game together like very quickly seemingly and just it it just works. And that's a testament to his talents and a testament to just how he absolutely knows how to go designed like what like four or five pinball machines at this point I think right at Stern. Yeah. No. Yeah. There's a lot of great games under George's belt. Like it's funny like we actually have an NBA Fast Break at work. Um I haven't played it in a long time but man that is one of my favorite George Gomez games. So, I don't think he particularly likes that game too much, but I love Fast Break so much. That's too bad. One of the only games that has a a heads up kind of connectivity uh uh thing going on. People have been saying for a while now that they want to see a Kong and Godzilla connection uh thing. And I feel like as amazing as that would be, it is an unrealistic concept for just the landscape of pinball. Um but still a neat thing to think about the future. Uh while we're on that, let's let's talk about the future. Uh, so Stern's obviously trying to to bring in younger or new people to the pinball hobby. We already kind of talked about that with their gifting the games to certain celebrities and just expanding kind of like the the shape of that. Um, and Insider Connect seems to be I see a lot of people that are younger scanning Insider Connect. Like it seems to be a big hit with the younger generation. Uh, what where do what do you see Insider Connect's future being as a useful tool? Are we going to get metrics, graphs? Is there is there a future for Insider Connect that's more than just achievement hunting for people like me who just don't give a [] about achievements? I just don't I just I could give I don't care. So, I can't answer like total specifics. This is not my that's not my wheelhouse per se, but I think like one thing that a lot of like regular users of IC Insider connected don't see is like when you have a pro account, right? Like an operator's account. Um, one of its like most basic functionalities is to be able to report when a game has an error or a tech alert. Um, that is a really really cool feature. I think that and again I cannot speak to any specifics just because it's not Adam from Rewind was talking about how useful that feature is and being able to like shut a game off and not having to like worry about losing. He likes the fact that the game stays on and looks like it's working even though cuz he hates here he hates having dark spots in the arcade. Uh but yeah. Well, but just being able to see when there's errors, right? Because it's like if I'm working on games over here, but you know, my friend who might work with me and do some pinball things is back in town. It's like, "Hey, Deadpool's saying there's an error with the drop targets. Can you go look at that?" Right? It's like, you already know that it's giving you an error. Um, can you go check and see if it's valid, right? Can you fix it? Or maybe I know what I need to bring to my location that's 30 minutes an hour away. I think that like something that I would really love to see with Insider is like more not social interaction as in like a social media platform or like a chatting thing, but like more like being able let's like okay Jeff's over at my house and we're playing Godzilla and now like hey look I've played against this person. I've played in a multiplayer game with them. It's like what kind of what kind of stats do we have? What's Jeff's best game on Godzilla? Was it at home? Was it at Ace Goi? Like you know like something like that. I think those sorts of things and like expanding on like giving that data to people would be exciting. These are my opinions too. Like this is not like anything I don't work in insider connected. I don't know these are things that Kyle would find interesting. So I just want to like preface the rest like that or sorry say that after that statement. But those sorts of things I think are neat. I think that there's a lot of possibility and I'm excited to see where it continues going. Um, but man, I really want to see like like more benefits to the operators like that. Um, I I talk to people on route all the time and they tell me how much they love knowing what the game is saying, right? As opposed to people texting him and saying, you know, hey, this is going wrong or this is going wrong. Having the game actually give you an error. You know what I mean, right? Also, you're, you know, you don't know if the person that is seeing as something wrong on the game is understanding what really might be wrong with it and is giving you misinformation. I mean, not that you're not going to go there and dig into it anyways. Um, yeah, we were talking I forgot Jesus Christ, I don't remember when this was. This was quite a while ago cuz I was talking about what Insider Connect could be used for in a positive way. And I've been critical about the potential of DLC monetization on Stern's hit hit list. Not getting into that. Uh, as a player, I would absolutely pay a small amount a month to have stats that tell me like, am I draining more out the right lane or the left out lane on a particular game? Is my score this month like higher or lower on average for how many games I've played? Like, I think there's a world of statistic reporting that would be fascinating to people that really like to know how they're playing their games. Especially for people that have a smaller collection and are playing one or two games like a whole lot. They want to know if they're improving. Like that's valuable feedback for a player. Yeah. Absolutely. I I love I love data, right? I'm I'm a big nerd like that. So like that information I think it would be fantastic. Um I can't I can't speak to like monetization like I think as like like a gamer, right? So this is Kyle as like a gamer, not Kyle like as a Stern employee, but like I don't mind DLC's. I I guess like as a gamer like microtransactions kind of bother me in certain respects like unless a game does it well. Um expansion packs are amazing. I mean let's use Witcher as an example, right? Like all the Witcher expansions are substantial content drops and something that's worth paying for. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like when you get more content for something like it's it's incredible. Like I think like again I'm sorry I keep saying this is Kyle as a person not as a Stern employee like you know when we think about something that has been very set in stone like pinball for so long um like thinking about something like that being added is it's like it's change right it's it's different so you know as humans generally like change is a little bit like oo I don't know about that um but it's when the DLC is predatory and I think that people know what and when a certain type of uh charging people becomes predatory and that the response to that is negative. So yeah, like the Skyrim horse armor. The horse armor is an excellent example. Yeah. Right. I mean, it just Bethesda lost Bethesda lost a lot of respect for people in the community. And I think that Stern needs to be smart about that because pinball is a much smaller community than video games. You know, I think the thing for people to take away, like when you're thinking about discussions like this, you have to remember that everybody that works at Stern Pinball loves pinball and they love the things that we love the things that we make, right? Like no matter what you read on pinside or how uh people might think that you know it's like oh this. It's like everyone there loves pinball and we love what we do and we want to make the best thing we can for people that interact with it and play them and buy them and you know and it's not just Stern. We've been talking about this uh with Pinball Brothers. I mean like Predator is getting like reamed in the ass on Pinside and nobody's even played the game yet, right? It's just it's a lot of hate about not having movie assets and things like that. And something that I've like been trying to be a proponent and preach for is for people to be less toxic about pinball because of the reasons you just mentioned, right? Like everyone that works at Stern is a person. People have feelings and they're not trying to make a product that's here to hurt your feelings. And to be enraged at at things that are just not a personal attack on you just because they didn't check a certain box for you sucks. And I can't imagine being in a position like that where you put your [] everything you got into a game to try to make it great and then it just gets poo pooed on for silly reasons. Don't Don't be a bad pinball person. Just don't. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's the same reason I choose not to interact like online very much like on forums or like in Facebook discussions is because I feel like when you're not actually talking to a person face to face, there's like there can be meanness. I think that's a little more prevalent than if we were having a face tof face discussion, right? I don't know. I I get excited when new pinball gets released. Like I want to see all the new pinball. I love pinball, right? It's like if I didn't love pinball, I would not be working in the pinball industry for as long as I have. So, on that, we'll segue away from from Stern's potential future of Insider Connect. Uh, for people that are talking and interested about pinball repair, right? There's a lot of people that are fascinated about pinball machines, how they work, especially now that the hobby is like seems to be coming back in a certain in certain niches. We talked about Southern California having a much larger pinball uh presence now after, you know, certain things occurred and the hobby became a little less popular. Um, what would you say? What's your advice for how to get into pinball repair? You had mentioned you volunteered at Pacific. How does someone even begin to do that? I guess you have to be lucky. I mean, I lived in a major metro, so I had a lot of opportunity like that. But I mean also like owning my first game. I needed to learn how to fix it, right? Like that's one of the ways I learned was by I have this thing I need I want to fix it. How do I do it? I found, you know, RGP, the old uh Google groups and I had help from people online. I met people that taught me how to do things and help me by teaching. It's like I hate to say it because it's like pinball now is a expensive thing to get into. If you want to own your own games, it can be there's a big financial hurdle sometimes, but like if you want to learn to fix a game, if you want to learn how they work, just buy something. Buy something that like is acceptable. Like it's like, "Yes, I like this theme, the art. I like this art. It's cool. It's broken. I want to learn to fix it." Hold on. Let's back up. What do you define as an acceptable pinball machine? I can't wait for this. I don't know. Like, look, it's like if I'm out there and I'm like, don't just buy the first thing that you find because it's a good deal, right? Like, just because you can't afford to buy an 8 a $6,000 Theater of Magic. Don't go settle for a B rogo or something that's like terrible just because it's cheap. I don't know. Like, I feel like you're targeting me because I got a Road Kings as my first pinball machine. Oh, that thing's great. Road Kings is awesome. Yes. I I don't I think it's like the like the unfortunate reality is like the easiest way to do it without having a big community to engage in perhaps is you have to own your own and you have to get ready to fail and make mistakes like we spoke about um at the beginning of this uh talk. But, you know, otherwise, um, maybe you have an arcade, um, and you can go in there and say, "Hey, you know, I'd like to learn. Is there any possibility for me to learn how to clean the games or learn how they work? Can you help me?" Right? It takes a lot of effort and energy and time to try and teach someone. So, Right. That's exactly what I was going to say. I feel like that's the biggest hurdle. Someone's like, "Man, it's going to take forever to teach you this. I don't have the time because I'm already operating on a thin margin because I am an arcade." Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. Like that that is a reality. So it's like again just like making yourself useful and um being at the right place at the right time, you might get lucky. But I think like I guess like as I keep talking and I keep thinking um like it all comes back to trying to engage in a community that maybe exists in your town. Maybe there's a collector that has a lot of games and maybe before maybe they do a fix it thing or maybe you can offer it's like I'd love to come over and learn. Can we clean your games? Can you teach me how you take care of them? Right. It's all about finding a community, you know? I think that's the best first step. Be likable and get into a community of people. I think you kind of nailed it on the head too about cleaning games cuz man that's like invaluable and you don't really have to worry about risking anything except maybe breaking glass by putting it down wrong. I mean I would love if somebody came in and clean my game so I didn't have to. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Someone want to come and help me? I've got a lot of things to clean. But it's like but that's where you have to start, right? It's like you you have to start somewhere. And it it makes sense, right? You learn to clean. You clean a game. Hey, this rubber is broken. Can you show me how to change this rubber out? Oh, okay. Yeah, we need this tool so we can get this ramp off and let's do this. Here's a best practice. This is how we do it. Oh, hey, you know, I took the ramp off and man, this post is really loose. How do we fix this loose post? Right? And you you start to learn more. Even though you're doing like the simplest thing, there's opportunities for you to keep learning more and more and more and more until you're being locked in a room fixing circuit boards and being like rolled bottles of water sometimes like um so that's an excellent segue to my next question and then I have a bonus round of quick ones. Uh so do you have other hats that you wear at Stern other than the tech support? Is there because I know that you personally helped me with a service issue with one of my games and which is how we started connecting. Uh I I'm curious how like granular Stern is with the okay this is your job it's the only thing you're doing it or how much of it is people helping to fill in positions that are are fluctuating. I mean it's I think the thing to remember is like at the end of the day Stern is actually a relatively small company so a lot of people do wear a lot of hats. Um I do tech support. I have been I have been sent to uh media days where publications come in and we show off a new game and I have to talk with a journalist. Um, last year I went to San Diego Comic-Con and did media presentations on Godzilla 70th and John Wick. Um, uh, sometimes uh, I mean sometimes I'll do things in the lab. Uh, take this game apart and clean it and put it back together and uh, you know, do that, make it as good as possible. Um, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot and a lot and a lot of things that we get to do. um or I get to do, which is fun. Um I helped one time Keith came to me and said, "Help me put a uh King Kong whitewood, tear the whitewood down and put it on this arted playfield for me or with me." Right. And we we built a the first arted playfield King Kong Pro out of a whitewood because he wanted help, right? So it's like there's Yeah, there's a lot of people do a lot of things. It's a really really It's fun when things get communal that way. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I would say that the best working environments have that vibe to it instead of like a I don't know, cubicle that you sit in and just do your job. Uh, roller coasters, I got you. Roller Coasters is a huge fan of the channel and is an obsess. He's in school for engineering and he's asking if you guys do internships, so I have to ask for him. Personally, I don't know if we do internships, but what I would suggest you do is um I mean, you could send uh you know, whatever information you have to info@ sternpinball.com and it can be forwarded to the correct people. Um uh but yeah, I I would I would absolutely suggest doing that. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott, I don't know. Um the uh Yeah. And what is the lab? The lab is like um the workshop. So the lab is kind of like where um things get tested and prototypes get put together, stuff like that. It's the shop basically. The shop. All right. Bonus round. Quick questions. You ready? Yeah. Favorite Playfield toy you've ever serviced? Favorite? Oh jeez. Um thinking. Um, it's called a lightning round, man. Come on. Jaws fin. Jaws fin target. Okay, that's cool. That's cool. All right. One machine everybody loves but you hate that isn't white water. Uh uh. Do people like no good gophers? Because I really don't like no good gophers. I think some people either like the ramp thing is cool but and I mean I like circus tear. People like that game. I don't like it. Okay. That's my least favorite John Papadiuk 2. Man, we're like video game kindred spirits. All right. Most favorite tool in your toolkit for servicing pinball machines. Ooh. Um, I'm going to give a broad answer. Magnetic nut drivers with a hollow shaft. Super useful. Nice. That's very specific. Uh, Roller Coaster says Totan is overrated. That's funny you say that, man. That's Carl's least favorite uh John Papadiuk game as well. Uh, which is crazy. I don't know what's going on there. I I think you can separate like I to me like with some of those games you have to separate it from like tournament player like like and hate versus like what is the experience because the choreography in Tales of the Arabian Knights is amazing no matter how much like tournament players may have disdain for the way or how you're supposed to play it like you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Totally it does. And I have a I have an interesting thought question for you. This is you as a pinball lover unrelated to uh Stern, right? Something that I'm frustrated about, right? And Keith Owen has set the standard for games that are in so insanely deep that they're like 45 hour long minute journeys. They're [] tournament games for a lot of like people, you know, but then you have games like, you know, Denise's like TNA, right, where it's just like Fast and Furious and you're out of it in like 5 or 10 minutes. I feel like there's a trend in pinball right now to try to make games that are incredibly long playing because of the success of Keith's games and other games like that. But is there do you think like are we done with games that are just like short quick interesting concepts? Is that only a homebrew thing now or or is that just where the market is? No. So, okay, to answer that question, but I have a another thing to bring up. No, I don't think so because uh go play John Wick. I love Oh, I hate John Wick. I've played it. I love John Wick. I love the playfield of John Wick so much because it is mean. And I really like a game that fights back in the same reason why I love TNA, which is I have over there off camera. It's one of my favorite games ever because the machine fights back and I feel like John Wick does that. so incredibly well. I have a feeling and I kind of have a theory and it's probably true, but you also have to think like, you know, now that a massive majority of all pinball games, not just like what Stern Pinball makes, but every pinball manufacturer makes, most of them go into homes, they don't go into an arcade. I feel like the experience of pinball has it it changed and had to adapt to its new environment. There was a thing that's very true. That's an excellent statement. When I was working at a um with Chris Coun, the pinball pirate, we were a repair place, but we sold games to Stern Dealer, JJP dealer, and we sold refurbished games. But, you know, you have people that come in and be like, "I want a Captain Fantastic or I want a Black Knight." Uh, because that's the game I had in my student union when I was in college, right? And it's like you kind of have to like creatively tell those people, "No, you actually do not want that game because you are going to buy that game and you are going to get so incredibly good at it and so incredibly bored of it because there's not much skin in the game. Those games were absolutely designed to be played a quarter at a time. um not consistently on free play until you get absolutely bored of it. Um Brian Eddie has kind of circumvented that with the concept of being able to come back to your play where it's saved like with D and D and you know Venom to a certain degree. And I think that those are really interesting concepts that personally I do enjoy because it gives a player like me who's not like absolutely excellent an opportunity to see the end of a game. And also something I enjoy about Dn D um is is there's something like that I've talked to people about and I know that you have um criticisms of D and D and I like listening to them, but I certainly have talked about D and D a lot. That's very true. The indie offers like a different way for people to play pinball as well. If you a lot of owners and people that I talk to about that game, they play it, they have played it just to see and interact with the story as opposed to see it and interacting to like get a good score. Sure. For the record, my complaints about Dn D have never been about its mode progression and uh kind of safe state stuff. I think that's a necessary evolution of pinball for people that aren't good and do want to be able to experience a wizard mode and not have to just use it as a challenge mode or something for the record. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think it's it's an interesting experiment and I think it's neat how it's been implemented. I like that. Um but yeah, just like I I kind of like the different way to play the game, I guess, is what I'm saying. I mean, same kind of like TNA also has something similar if you take it down to it. Am I playing the game to like destroy all the reactors as many as I can? Or am I actually trying to like am I am I playing for score? Am I going to try to manipulate it to get the biggest score? I don't know. Which is great. I like that a game that is short and quick like that has options as well cuz usually you have to have a game with tons and things to do long playing in order to have those options. So for those to be available on a play field that's much simpler, I appreciate that. Let's reel it back though. I still want to talk about John Wick. I'm not done with Wick yet because I hear you. My collection is is brutal games. Almost all the games that I have are very hard because I think home owning homeowner games should be difficult. They should challenge you, right? Um, you know, like I've Ghostbusters is a good example of a game that's brutal. People generally don't like it because of of things that are uh unfairly difficult. And to your point with John Wick, you like a game that fights back. In In my opinion, I think a design philosophy should be that the player should have an opportunity to fight back against the fighting back. And I think that John Wick's rejection shots are just they don't provide that. And I like the way that the playfield's laid out. I think that the, you know, they fixed the scoring. The criticism that I would give, other than the fact that it fights back too quick and you don't have an opportunity, is that with the recent updates, it seems like the solution is to just increase ball save time. And that happened again on D&D. And I don't those are band-aids. Those aren't solutions to to design. I don't want to call them problems, but like it's a quick fix for something that's a little bit deeper in my opinion. Sure. Yeah. I think that I mean that's 100% valid. Um I think it's like you know I think the the joke and what it 100% comes back to though is there is a a person in pinball land named Steve Richie. And if you told any of this him if you told him any of this, he would say play better. I'm just kidding. No, I I do I agree. I there's there's things that I definitely agree with you there. And I think but I think that's also the fun thing about pinball, right? Is like when you blow like a newbie's mind and you blow their mind that like pinball actually has rules, right? And you're not just flailing and doing things, every game plays so different. Um, there's like there's like, you know, there's people that like I only like Steve Richie games. I only like Pat Lawler games, you know? It's like there's always that fight, right, between those two guys. I like the flow or I really like sniping and stuff like that where it's like, I don't know, there's a game for everyone, right? That's kind of the fun thing about pinball is that there is a game for everyone. we all have totally different likes and dislikes when it comes to like how a game plays and how it's set up. Um, and there's a lot of games out there, right? So, yeah, that's kind of like another funny thing I see when people are like they don't like a new game that's released and they haven't played it and they, you know, kind of trash talk it online and it's like if you don't like it, don't don't play that one. Just play another one. There's a lot of other just shut the [] up if you don't like a game and you haven't played it yet. Like don't spread that information. Like you can't like who the hell talks [] about something that they haven't touched. It's just wild to me. Uh so I do want to remind chat please fire away. This is an opportunity. The one of the reasons that we do this live is for questions. Alan Anonymous has put an absolute banger of a question here and I'm going to read this. This is fantastic. Alanmus said by the way anonymous is like one of the OG streamers. He's like an an old-timer for streaming. Uh, so he says with stern game modes that are held behind insider in exclusivity. So he's talking about, for example, the Jaws 8-bit mode, he's talking 30 years from now. Oh man, stop talking. I got to keep scrolling up now. 30 years from now, if you ever have a chance that STM isn't around, the game mode's now lost, right? So he's talking about the idea that, you know, you look at kind of games now, the content is forever, right? But now we're we're locking it behind a piece of technology that may not function in the future and is now dependent on people for reverse engineering it or something in order for it to be usable past our generation. And you know, I would like to hope that games like whatever Deadpool behind you. I'm just using as example. I know you've got uh Frankenstein, King Kong next to you, that those games are going to be played in 50 60 years, you know? I mean, I have a Lord of the Rings that's not incredibly old, you know, but my Twilight Zone is a is a is fairly old and still kicking, but all the stuff that is involved in that game is fully accessible no matter what. No hacks or anything to get to it through some sort of weird technology issue. Look, I don't think that I think that this issue doesn't this issue is not just something about pinball though, right? Because when I look at my Steam library of hundreds and hundreds of pieces of software that I own. Yeah. Through a service of Steam, right? So what if next week uh Valve declares for bankruptcy they are dissolved and everyone is fired and the servers are shut down. Where are my games? Yeah, I I totally hear what you're saying and I I think that's an interesting thing to ponder in a way. But do you know what I mean? Like No, I do. The example for video games is perfect. Think about games that have DRM in it, right? The only reason a lot of games from the like mid90s, uh, Arma's a good example, right? So, Arma has this uh uh feature where if the game is identified as pirated, it gets progressively harder without you knowing it. And without that being known, right? So, there was a rip of this game from back when I was much younger where the game just gets ridiculously hard and you don't know, right? So, it takes the community to reverse engineer these games and kind of break that DRM in order for it to exist in a format where it is accessible. We could also talk about um the Witcher companies uh what they bought GOG, right? So GOG is a kind of archivist company that provides software that doesn't have DRM or any of that [] in it and is also trying to withhold the legacy of of DOSs and CGA, VGA games, all that [] This is harder to do with pinball because a pinball machine is itself a physical object, right? But it is also now a piece of software. Yes. And that that's an interesting thing to bring into that discussion, right, of um buying is owning the whole save the save this game um thing that was happening like in the EU, etc. I it's an interesting thought. Um I guess like I don't want to think about it because uh Stern Pinball's never going to go out of business because uh you know, pinball is beloved and we're just going to keep making games until the sun crashes into the earth. I don't know. All praise. you know um but I yeah I think but it is it is a really really interesting it is an it is a interesting discussion to have in this era of gaming whether that is video gaming um in our instance of like physical um gaming and combined with software right um you know times are changing and you know it's just that's just the way things are now I don't own physical data sets of any video game that I've played for the last 20 years, maybe. I mean, 15 years, I don't know. It's movie movies are like this, too. Now, you don't buy movies. You buy the uh right to own a digital version of it that can be removed at any time. A bunch of PlayStation owners had a bunch of their content ripped when games suddenly servers shut down. I mean, there's all sorts of issues with the world. Yeah. S3 has a really great question, too. He says, "Kyle, would you ever be able to do a Stern School deep dive on Spike 2 like the presentation you did with Chris uh a month or so ago? one more structured and edited with clearer audio I think would be really helpful for a lot of people uh to understand how to debug spike 2 systems. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd love to do that and that's something that I can bring up to the marketing people um when we talk about doing another um tech school thing. I um I actually uh just got sent up to here here another hat, right? I just got sent up to Toronto um to go to Player One Amusements, our big Canadian distributor. They're fantastic people. Um, but I gave all of their route texts um throughout the entirety of the province. Um, a a seminar on Spike 2 and how it works and things that you should know about operating a Spike 2 game and stuff like that. I would love to do that. Um, here's the thing though is like I am not an engineer. I am not like super high level. I can't explain things in a super super detailed level. But I think it's like what people have told me over the years from streaming and talking about tech stuff is they like it that I can explain it in a simple way and not in the like super heavy way. So like I'd be happy to consider that. Um I'd love to do it. So I'm even actually thinking about bringing up streaming again. Um this basement is pretty dark, but I would love to do more tech streams um on my free time. So I Lights Lights are great. and the tube lights. I highly recommend these ones. Um the uh who's who what legend over there pushed through the idea of getting an actual like map of the game for switches and other things with the new UI that came into uh Spike 2. So that's something that like I know that like companywide they've wanted to do since we introduced the LCD screen with um Batman or Aerosmith, whichever the first Spike 2 game was. Um but the person the the legend he is actually a legend is Mark Panacho. Um he pushed that through and did almost the entirety. Um well I won't say almost the entirety. He did so much of the work and was like the orchestrator for that whole program. Um Mark Panacho um is a name you might not know but Mark Ponacho has worked on so many games you love. He was the main coder for fish tales. He designed all the rules in that game. He did a lot of rule design and programming on late8s Williams games. He's worked at He started working at Williams I think in 1986 1985. He interviewed Dwight Sullivan and gave him his job. Um Mark Panacho is an awesome awesome smart amazing person. That's one personal thank you to Mark for doing that because it is making operators and owner homeowners around the [] globe uh you know not pull their hair out wondering where the hell XYZ number switch is. I know MXV did a lot of help with Mark. Um I was lucky enough to be asked to kind of help him or like give him some suggestions here and there. I mean then all of the game teams right for all the games that it's been implemented in has also done a ton of work right uh to get those things up to date. It's a lot and a lot of I'm surprised to not see that in the 1.0 version of Jaws. Is there any timeline? I realize that this isn't your job, but is there an idea on when it might be coming for some other games that are pretty are fan favorites currently? I don't know. I don't I can't tell you anything specific, but I mean the company line is that it will be implemented in every single LCD game eventually. Um I think the Jaws stuff was mostly to like just get all that content finalized. Um, you know, Rick is working on um King Kong. He's working on New Game. He just like, you know, he just pushed the last of Jaws through. So, I'm sure it's uh it's coming through soon. So, cool. Uh S says he'd like to see Kyler Jack pull stuff out from the Stern archives and document more of the history of past. I mean, that would be amazing, but as a business, I just feel like that's a lot of effort to to do. they would need to have like a actual community. Uh I mean I guess Jack could potentially do that. By the way, this is an un unstructured plug, but tomorrow or the day after is Comic- Con. And if you don't know already know, Jack is going to be streaming down there and should absolutely be watched. I'm super looking forward to it personally. But uh yeah, if you didn't know that, you should. And now you do. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great to see Jack streaming again. I'm super excited. um he has invited me to come and stream with him and I am absolutely going to do that. It's going to be a lot of fun. But to be honest, like that's actually a really fantastic idea. I would love to we should do that. Um Keith has a torpedo alley that was in the office for a while and we moved it out. We have a um laser. The only game Ian owns by the way. Sorry, what? Which what? Torpedo Alley is the only game that Ian owns from Nudge Mag. Oh, because he's in a man of impeccable taste. Except actually he's not. I take that back. Yeah, I know he isn't. Ian does not like Bone Busters. And that is a Ray Tanzer masterpiece. One of the best games of all time. Um, we're probably going to fight about it at Expo, but it will end in a big hug. So, everybody loves hugs. No, going back to that though, I would love to talk more and show some of those early games. It's It's a really interesting bit of history and time and you know telling the story of Data East and Sega. It's It's that's a really really un less documented right kind of pinball history bit. So and pinball history is important man. History shapes what the future of games is. So um all right one well I'm going to ask this roller coasters question and I I think we should probably wrap it up a little bit. We're almost at two hours. Thank you again for dedicating so much of your evening to this. I super appreciate it, Kyle. I'll go for another two hours. I just need to go get another beer. That's all. Same. If somebody's watching that may potentially be in the house, don't you dare bring me a pickle beer. I hope somebody's listening. Uh, so Roller Coaster is asking, "How do you how does Stern, not you, how does Stern feel about mods?" Uh, and he's referring to Pin Monk. I mean, I can't help but also drop Davey, who's been on the stream before, and Rob from the Electric Playground, who is coming to be on the stream soon with his topper for uh Alice in Wonderland. If you if anybody watching is curious about that, there's a little quick self-plug for myself. But yeah, what is Stern's position on modding? Technically, like the manual says like modifying your game voids the warranty. In practice, uh, I'm not going to not warranty parts for you because you put a really incredible, you know, like neon Godzilla building on your Godzilla or something like that. So, I think that's where I'll leave the thing about Stern. I think personally I'll say like there's and I I don't have a lot of experience because I really don't mod my games much, but like there are definitely some mods that are create some are created more less janky than others. Um ones that don't like involve tons of like alligator clips and hooking them to like sockets where they might slip and short out and official outlets for it so you don't have potentially hanging clips around your game. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's like that's where I would say that like there's definitely like better ways to do some of them. But what I what I will say is it is so incredibly cool how much work a lot of people do putting time into like making these really cool pinball mods. I mean like all these crazy sculpts and like like I said that really neat Godzilla building that's all lit up and like holy moly. Like it's like that is I I want to know what some of those people's day jobs are because it's amazing that they spend time doing this for pinball cuz they could be making a lot more money doing things elsewhere. Well, it's Davey's full full-time job now. So that's crazy. That's awesome. I I hear both sides of it. I mean, one nice thing about every game being the same is that troubleshooting it as from a support standpoint is identical from game to game. So, as soon as you start putting variables into it that now make it like, well, maybe something is pulling on your 12volt power and making everything not function and that's why a nodeboard isn't booting up or whatever, like I could see how that would be an issue from a customer support standpoint, but uh yeah, I mean, it can be mods can be awesome. Yes, agreed. I have the world's only unmoded Twilight Zone back there. There's There's no gumballs in the gumball machine. I feel like you're I feel like you're targeting me right now and I'm mad about it. No, I'm not. So, I actually I got that Twilight Zone from uh this guy called Rick Stetta. Do you know who Rick Stetta is? I do not. Rick Stetta is a he's a Bay Area guy, but he is a old school tournament player. Um really, really, really famous for like these elaborate kicks he would do when he would like slap save pinball games and stuff. So, he was like he was a guy that um competed a lot in the like early 90s and stuff, right? Yeah. But I bought that game from Rick. He won it at a tournament a bazillion years ago and uh Yeah, that's awesome. We're talking about pinball machines that have history. There you go. That machine has a story assigned to it, you know. Yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to go to answer your question. Yes, that is a King Kong inside of a Stranger Things uh cabinet with a Guardians of the Galaxy Ellie lockdown bar. Um, thank you for the raid, Grownup. Welcome. We're talking to Kyle from [] Stern. We're just about to wrap up, but uh please I I recommend anybody who is joining in now uh to check out the first half of this where we talk about where you came from, your entire journey up until Stern, and then the second half where we talk about a lot of Stern related stuff. It's been I've I'm having a blast. It's silly stuff. I didn't kill Stranger Things. Stranger Things is just right here. Oh, that's kind of not killing. There's the Foo Fighters over there and the Jaws over there and a couple other playfields. Amazing. Uh, all right. So, I do have a I guess a question that is somewhat Stern related. I realize that some of the games that aren't really responsible for Stern, but Stern has been making a lot of remakes, right? And there's been remasters of games from the past. If Stern was to venture outside of games that Stern doesn't own from the past, out of these three games, I'm just wondering which one you think would be the best remake that Stern could make. Okay. Raven H man, that is the question of the ages. Um, I'm really going to have to go with Raven because I think that's a game that never got its time in the sun, you know. I would agree. So, are you saying on the record that there is a chance that Stern Pinball might remake Raven? I can't confirm or deny. No, I'm just kidding. I'll take that as a yes. Oh, sorry. Wait. Oh, you said Raven. Oh, no, no, no. We're redoing Raven. Sorry. No, I'm just kidding. R A Y-VN. Uh Um Okay. Yeah, I have to do that, man. That's just the thing I got to do for some reason. I love that game. Uh, all right. Thank you so much, everybody. Uh, oh, Manu's here. What's up, Manu? Uh, he's he's on the YouTube side, though. He's not on the Twitch side. He's hiding in his personal account. What's up? All right. I want to I want to thank everybody. if this is the last chance, if you got a question that you want to fire off, uh yeah, this is I've been looking forward to having somebody from Stern and you're just like perfect cuz the channel is about engineers. Like I mean I'm not an engineer personally. I'm just a dumb pinball clown that does sound design. But uh a lot of the people that watch my channel are engineers and I this has been a fascinating kind of journey down what that path is for you and people that are interested in potentially going down a similar path. uh you know, thanks. Thank you. No, it's an honor. It's this is fun. I like doing this kind of stuff even though I was scared to do so. It's I like uh I like Look, it's like I've spent so long doing it. I want to spend the rest of my life just procilitizing pinball, right? Like telling people why it's awesome and how like you should go and give it a shot. Go and enjoy it. There's so many different ways to enjoy pinball. So, you know, I like dorking out about it. So, anytime you can call me next week and say, "Hey, do you want to fill two hours talking about pinball again?" And I would say, "Absolutely." Amazing. Well, be be careful. I may take you up on that. Was the experiences as scary as you thought it would be? It was only scary in my head. I knew it actually wouldn't be scary. So, no. Was I general? Just generally scary. Was my caress general for you? Well, we'll see. you promised me a few after we end the actual stream. So that's true. Um I see I guess like Stern isn't an invite only company. There's a lot of people that got hired at Stern. Um, I think the reality of it is you have to remember that Stern is a small company and you know it's you you the people that are get hired you know you have to be able to to fill a role fill a niche right so being able to offer something um is important I mean like any job right it's not this is not a unique thing at Stern Pinball but you know it is a it's you have to remember pinball is a really small industry And even though I work for a company that is, you know, very big in the pinball space, it's still a very small company. To To our point earlier where we talked about toxicity, I think a lot of people that are mad at like mega corporations, right, in general, which is totally valid, uh, a lot of that criticism filters down to like pinball companies cuz just people are just tired of taking [] from companies in general. And your point about Stern is a small company. Most pinball companies are tiny. And yeah, to hold them to the same like criticism as like Amazon and [] like that is just a little bit. Just remember that a company that is making pinball machines is is small and made of real people. Yeah. Not drones. And we all have feelings and we all love what we do, right? But it's like what I would suggest to everyone here, it's like not to pitch like I don't know stern things but like you should come to Pinball Expo if you can afford to travel. If you can come to Chicago, come to Pinball Expo. It's really really fun. Um you get to meet us. Um and people that are more interesting than me like game designers and software people. Um you get to actually meet and talk to these people that have interests that aren't just pinball. You know, maybe you'll have something in common with someone else. Um I'll be at Expo. I'm very much looking forward to it. It's my first time. Awesome. Yeah, we'll have we'll definitely be linking up, but you'll just let me know of your travel plans because maybe if you come early, I could give you a a little tour or we could go out to a drink or something, you know, but I do enjoy the drink. I also enjoy delicious beers. The drink. So, let's say ask if Stern's ever considered remaking an old classic. We just talked about that. They're remaking Raven. Raven big game. No, I mean kind of technically. I mean, the Beatles um Sea witch. That's true. Loosely based on sea witch, right? So loosely. I'm sorry. Did you say loosely? Well, I mean, but you talk to George and George will tell you that there's not a single stake or post in that game that's in the same spot that it's in in Sea Witch. He tweets. Okay. But being 2 mm off doesn't count, George. Well, but but go play Beatles and go play Sea Witch and see how crazy different they shoot. Like honestly, you know, but um roller coaster is Black Knight. I guess that's true. Black Knight is the playfield is very similar. There's moments in it that hearken back to the originals. That is true. Um yeah, I mean, yeah, those classic games are fun, but you have to remember just because it's simple and from the 80s doesn't necessarily mean it would be a cheap game at the end of the day, right? There's still a lot of development that has to go in to actually get a game like that into production. So, 100% true. Yeah. All right. Amazing. Uh thank you everybody. Uh, please stick around because as we do, we try to find some channel that has very low viewership and raid them just to be awesome because getting raided by a [] ton of people uh makes you feel good when you're a streamer and we need more streamers. So, let's go find somebody. Uh, I said it a billion times already, but thank you, Kyle. Thank you again. Uh, and stick around so we can chitchat. And, uh, yeah, I hope you've enjoyed this. Please stand and uh, come check out uh, all the other podcasts we have going on. I have a [] ton of photos from my journeys of California Extreme on my Instagram going up. I'm working on a video that is kind of more of an artistic exploration of California Extreme through like my kind of thing. It's a very me thing. And uh that should be up in the next day or two. So yeah, I'm sure I will be posting about it. And if you see it, think about watching it. Maybe you can spot yourself. If you went to California Extreme, I shot a lot of footage there. In fact, California Extreme asked me if I was recording upskirt shots on my tripod and I had to ask them, "What are you talking about?" Strangest encounter ever. Anyways, uh thanks for watching everybody.