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Stranger Things Pinball 1.0 code release with the Devs!

Dead Flip·video·2h 33m·analyzed·Nov 30, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Stranger Things Pinball 1.0 release stream with devs showcasing drawings system and code updates.

Summary

Jack Danger streams a live playthrough of Stranger Things Pinball 1.0 code release with developer Mike Vinacore (MXV) and designer Brian Eddy present in chat. The stream showcases major 1.0 additions including the drawings system (earned via completed modes, used in wizard mode scoring and end-of-ball bonus), a new MXV-named skill shot, Demodog mode drawing rewards, an extra ball at 11 drawings, and various polish/bug fixes. Discussion covers code balancing philosophy, the collaborative three-person design team (Brian Eddy, Lonnie Ropp, Mike Vinacore), and how community feedback post-release shapes game improvements.

Key Claims

  • Stranger Things Pinball 1.0 is now released with drawings system as the primary new feature

    high confidence · Jack and Mike discussing live during stream; drawings added to factor into wizard mode scoring and end-of-ball bonus

  • Mike Vinacore was one-third of the design team alongside Brian Eddy and Lonnie Ropp for Stranger Things

    high confidence · Mike Vinacore directly states: 'this was a three-man design team with Lonnie, Brian, and myself. So the three of us as a collaboration did all the game rules.'

  • Multiball contribution to bonus was reduced significantly in 1.0 because it was contributing too highly before

    high confidence · Mike: 'before, you know, people were just playing multiball all the time. It was contributing way too highly. So now it's in your best interest to play and finish the modes and get as many drawings as you can heading towards the wizard modes.'

  • MXV skill shot is the hardest skill shot Mike has ever designed

    high confidence · Mike states: 'It's the hardest skill shot I've come up with yet. That I've concocted over the years.'

  • Lonnie Ropp was the lead programmer on Stranger Things with support from Brett Rubin and Wason

    high confidence · Jack: 'Lonnie was the lead programmer on this one. We also had some support help from a few folks like Brett Rubin and Wason, and those were the two that helped out the most.'

  • Community feedback post-release is essential to shaping games into quality products, as exemplified by Walking Dead's transformation

    high confidence · Jack discusses how Walking Dead improved dramatically post-launch due to community input, demonstrating the value of post-release code updates

  • Mike Vinacore spent 10 years as a console video game designer before returning to pinball

    high confidence · Mike: 'I was a console video game designer for 10 years before I came back to pinball and it was grueling.'

  • On Premium/LE versions, you can get triple super jackpots in TK multiball for up to 3 drawings; Pro version limited to double super (2 drawings max)

Notable Quotes

  • “this was a three-man design team with Lonnie, Brian, and myself. So the three of us as a collaboration did all the game rules.”

    Mike Vinacore@ 7:06 — Clarifies the collaborative design structure for Stranger Things; MXV had equal creative input alongside legendary designer Brian Eddy and programmer Lonnie Ropp

  • “the modes are where all your points are, especially now, because we've toned down considerably the multiball's contribution to your bonus.”

    Mike Vinacore@ 14:14 — Explains major 1.0 rebalancing philosophy: shifts focus from multiball farming to mode completion and drawing collection

  • “It's the hardest skill shot I've come up with yet. That I've concocted over the years.”

    Mike Vinacore@ 13:20 — Establishes the new MXV skill shot as a significant design achievement; difficulty is intentional and represents peak execution difficulty

  • “If Walking Dead shipped with the code that it had... where it is now is amazing. It is incredible how you can listen to what the community has to say and fix things and adapt things to make things better.”

    Jack Danger@ 28:10 — Articulates Stern's philosophy on post-release code updates and community feedback as essential to game quality; positions Stranger Things in this iterative tradition

  • “I'm not really paying attention to what I'm doing. ... because I do so much of my testing with just the glass off and the ball in my hand, I've probably gotten worse.”

    Mike Vinacore@ 18:16 — Humorous admission of how QA/testing workflow (hands-on debugging) differs from actual competitive play; reveals insider testing methodology

Entities

Mike VinacorepersonBrian EddypersonLonnie RopppersonJack DangerpersonStranger Things PinballgameStern PinballcompanyBrett Rubinperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern hosting live developer stream for code release with designers/programmers present for community Q&A and giveaways; demonstrates direct developer-community interaction

    high · Jack Danger streams live with Mike Vinacore and Brian Eddy in chat; announces Demogorgon sculpture giveaways with trivia questions

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern's approach emphasizes that games ship 'damn near finished' rather than fully finished, with community feedback as essential ingredient for ongoing improvement; positions post-release updates as feature, not bug-fix

    high · Jack Danger: 'that's because input from people that own these games and play these games helps shape them into amazing pinball machines'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Multiball was overpowered in earlier versions, dominating scoring strategy; 1.0 deliberately reduces multiball bonus contribution to shift focus to mode completion and drawing collection

    high · Mike Vinacore: 'before, you know, people were just playing multiball all the time. It was contributing way too highly. So now it's in your best interest to play and finish the modes and get as many drawings as you can'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Three-person collaborative design team (Eddy, Ropp, Vinacore) with clearly defined roles: Eddy on rules design, Ropp on programming/presentation, Vinacore on broader design/testing/rules contribution

    high · Mike Vinacore: 'this was a three-man design team with Lonnie, Brian, and myself. So the three of us as a collaboration did all the game rules' and discussion of their complementary strengths

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.459

0:00
Stranger Things Those are the words to the Stranger Things song. In case anyone was curious or wondering.
0:25
Ooh girl, I'm out of here. I had to turn off TTS for tonight. Internet, I hope you're okay with that.
0:48
What's TTS, Jack? That's text to speak. We're live, by the way. Yeah, I know. You can't do it going live. I can't see you, though. I can't see the – oh, here we go. Yeah. To click watch now. So the Internet can hear you, too, just so you know. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was just going to put me in there, but – No, right now they're seeing a screen of a white room with a pinball machine. With the white flippers? Yeah. Okay, then I'm in the right place. It's been a while since I've done one of these with you. It's been a long-ass time. Yeah, I used to do every one that you did when we have a game to do, and now it's been, this was the first one. No, I did the turtle. Didn't we do a turtles one?
1:36
Yes. Yeah, that was the last one I did with you. And it was like the whole team was there or something. Yeah. What's up, Internet? You can see on screen I'm here, and then I have a very small Mike Vinicore with me on the screen as well. Hey, don't mess up my COVID hair, Chad. Yeah, sorry. I got you, bro. I got you.

high confidence · Mike: 'if you get a double or a triple super jackpot in TK multiball the time you collect a drawing you can get two or three drawings' and 'On a Pro version, because you can't get a triple super, you can only get a double, you can only get two drawings maximum in TK multiball.'

  • “three of us are really proud of the way this game turned out here, especially now in its finished state of 1.0”

    Mike Vinacore@ 28:22 — Developer confidence in 1.0 release quality; signals satisfaction with the collaborative design outcome

  • “pinball because that was my first exposure to it when I was a really young child... my first love of any game was pinball”

    Mike Vinacore@ 24:18 — Personal motivation for returning to pinball after console game design burnout; illustrates emotional connection driving career decisions in the industry

  • “He's like the terminator of pinball... he can live catch it to sleep... he's got a targeting computer in his brain”

    Jack Danger (about Keith)@ 32:10 — Humorous acknowledgment of elite player skill levels; references specific player (Keith) known for exceptional live catch ability

    • Wason
    person
    Paulperson
    Walking Dead Pinballgame
    Keithperson
    Deadfliporganization
    Netflixcompany

    personnel_signal: Brian Eddy returned to pinball after 20-year hiatus in video games to design Stranger Things; represented as major coup/deal for Stern; worked closely with Mike Vinacore in 'most closely I've worked with Brian' dynamic

    medium · Mike Vinacore: 'this is the most closely I've worked with Brian on something in my career... I was probably seriously like I was legitimately super excited when we were told Brian was coming to work with us'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Premium/LE versions of Stranger Things can achieve triple super jackpots in TK multiball (3 drawings max) vs Pro limited to double super (2 drawings max), creating feature differentiation between tiers

    high · Mike Vinacore: 'if you get a double or a triple super jackpot in TK multiball... On a Pro version, because you can't get a triple super, you can only get a double, you can only get two drawings maximum'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stranger Things 1.0 introduces drawings system as core gameplay mechanic tied to mode completion, wizard mode scoring, and end-of-ball bonus; represents significant design addition post-launch

    high · Mike Vinacore: 'if you finish a mode successfully, so you make all the shots in it and complete it, you'll get a drawing. And then these drawings are used... they factor into your end of the ball bonus and then they also will influence the points in the three wizard modes'

  • ?

    product_concern: 1.0 update involves substantial bug fixes ('squashed a lot of nagging outstanding bugs. Some of them were kind of obscure and hard to find') and score balancing, indicating ongoing refinement

    high · Mike Vinacore: 'We also polished up the game a lot. We squashed a lot of nagging outstanding bugs... There have been some score balancing on this one for sure, especially in regards to the multiball.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Jack Danger emphasizes Walking Dead as example of game that was poorly received at launch but transformed into excellent product through post-release updates, positioning Stranger Things in lineage of improved games

    high · Jack: 'I wasn't a fan of that game when it first came out, but where it is now is amazing. It is incredible how you can listen to what the community has to say and fix things and adapt things to make things better.'

    • 2:01
    Flawless Tater Salad, how's it going? We're going to have Vinicore on Zoom here with us for the entire broadcast, or for most of it anyway. And we're also going to have, I believe Brian said he was going to be in chat. Brian, any? Yeah, Brian will be in the chat for sure. Yeah.
    2:17
    I don't have a lot of freedom to like, oh, what the hell am I grabbing here? If you want to, if you need to, like, ping Brian to, like, get his attention for any questions or stuff, hopefully he's going to be, whatever, doesn't matter.
    2:38
    Jay Pavlarn. What's up? His username will probably have his name and Stern in it. I can't remember how we set him up the last time we did something where we were in a chat. But if he uses that same account, there he is. He's BRE underscore Stern. Hey Brian. What's up Brian? Good to see you. Mar dude.
    2:57
    Um, so if you have any questions for the team, um, I'll do my best to read them out. Uh, Vinacore here can also see chat and can communicate with us. And Brian is in chat. If you have any, um, any specific questions for him, uh, is, I don't think Lonnie's going to be here. No, Lonnie wasn't able to join us. He had a prior commitment. Okay. Muffler, this is a perfect opportunity to load the new code while you're watching us, because then you won't get impatient watching the status bar go by. There you go. And I, unprecedented, ladies and gentlemen, have already put the game in place and installed the new code. Good man, Jack. I'm proud of you.
    3:43
    Usually the first hour is me going, oh, what game am I going to play? And then I'm updating the code. It's pretty good. Diamond badge, so he stands out. Oh, I should give him VIP. You're right.
    3:53
    It's almost as if we planned this, Jack. You were so prepared. I'm doing it. How do I? I wish there was an easier way to make them a VIP without having to type in their whole name.
    4:09
    VIP. And then BRE underscore. So, Mike, how have you been? I've been good. I'm not logged in because I figured I would just answer things vocally as I see them. As long as you can read chat, you're fine. Oh, yeah, I can read it totally fine. I've been good. You know, the weather is pretty lousy these days, which means the one escape you got from quarantine was going outside, and now I can't go outside anymore. But, you know, I got enough entertainment here in the house to keep me busy for about ten lifetimes. We've seen all the games and all the music, so I can't complain. Heck, yeah. You look like half of yourself. It is insane. I am half myself. Yeah.
    5:02
    Congratulations. It's wild. Thank you. So the summer of exercise paid off, you know, like no traveling, no concerts, no working in an office. So I just spent all that time walking and biking, and then I dropped 45 pounds in March. Dang, dude. I wish I did something with all that time. I just drank and ate a bunch of Taco Bell.
    5:29
    A question for the Internet. Can you hear Mike okay? Does he sound all right? He sounds great to me. Mike's supply of In-N-Out got cut off, and now he looks this way.
    5:42
    True. Uh-oh. Mike froze. Hopefully he didn't click something. Uh-oh. Mike, we lost you, buddy. Uh-oh.
    5:59
    You there, Mike? Oh, there you are. Yeah, it says my internet connection's unstable. Let me step upstairs for a second to make sure my family's not tying up on my internet. Sounds good. I'll be right back. All right, brother. Mike was frozen in time. Green screen. It's the future, Internet. Man, it's wild. So, folks, we are at 1.0 code for Netflix and Stern Pinball's Stranger Things, designed by Brian Eddy, coded by Lonnie Ropp.
    6:36
    Mike Vinacore, I still don't know what to say Mike Vinacore does anymore. You know, so I'm going to let him introduce what influence he had over this game. Mike, what the hell did you do on Stranger Things? So, firstly, I was one-third of the design team on this one. So, on other games, I've had various input as far as game rules. And this one, I had a lot. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Okay. Something happened, but you're good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I had, you know, it was like a, you know, this was a three-man design team with Lonnie, Brian, and myself. So the three of us as a collaboration did all the game rules.
    7:16
    Sorry, you're doing great. Aside from that, you know, I oversee all of our software testing. I'm in charge of all of our software updates. I run our field test program. When we're not in a pandemic, they send me to the various shows that Marco does, the pinball shows, the enthusiast type shows to represent the company. And I do probably a half dozen other things I can't even think of off the top of my head. I wear a lot of hats, and every few weeks or every month or two, I get another hat.
    7:47
    Why aren't you wearing a hat right now, bro? I should be, but I thought it would mess up the video. Hey, you look great. You look great. Yeah, so that's what Mike does. Mike, he's like a jack of all trades. You're all over the place, man. This is true. Keeps it interesting. This is huge. We're at 1.0 for Stranger Things.
    8:08
    I was looking at the readme file, and I'm seeing something about drawings now that maybe I didn't see before. Yeah, so we just added those in 1.0. So when you play modes, and there's a couple other ways to earn them as well, but the meat and potatoes of earning drawings is the chapter modes. If you finish a mode successfully, so you make all the shots in it and complete it, you'll get a drawing. And then these drawings are used. they factor into your end of the ball bonus and then they also will influence the points in the three wizard modes, the three last ones the two season ones and the final showdown you can get one drawing per chapter mode plus the demo dog modes, I'll have them as well, and a couple other places, you can get one from mystery you can get one one time you can earn them in TK multiball and And then, you know, there's a couple sprinkled around hidden there, too. Awesome. Well, that's great.
    9:10
    My friend Paul worked on the artwork for the machine. Oh, that's awesome. Hey, Paul. So, Internet, we've got two different layouts tonight. We'll probably bounce between them. We've got our standard layout here that we typically go with when we're doing stuff. We've got chat down below. And then we've got the lower view, which it looks like I hit my camera, but we're good. It's a better shot of the screen back there. But something else that's fun to point out is throughout the evening tonight, we're going to be giving away these guys, Demi Gorgon sculpts. You know that bastard behind that wall that you've got to bash in the face and put a ball in his mouth? Well, we've got some of these to give away. So periodically through the night, I'm going to be having you all type something in chat, and then I'm going to be taking your information, giving it to Stern so they can send one out to you, because I suck at sending stuff out to people. So I'm great at giving stuff away, man. I'm terrible at making sure people get it. I don't even have one of those things. Really? You guys are going to be lucky, yeah. I don't even know why I have this. I don't know why it's here. I've had this for, like, months. Yeah, I don't know. I think Roper brought it over to show me something and then left it. There you go. It's yours now. Yeah, baby. Well, it's soon to be the internets. I want to win a Badger. Okay, I shouldn't have said that out loud. All right. Well, I say we just jump in unless there's anything you'd like to cover. Welcome aboard, Jim.
    10:49
    Mike, is there anything in particular you'd like to say about this before we get going? There isn't. But, Jack, if you could do my skill shot in the game, like, I'll owe you a prize. Oh, there's an MXV skill shot. There's an MXV skill shot that we added for 1.0, and it's really difficult, but it can be done. Okay.
    11:07
    Well, let's make some magic happen here. How do you do it? All right, so I'll tell you because we put it in the readme, so this one you don't have to discover. You have to plunge and hit the lit roving drop target. Okay. And then it has to land in the saucer on the lap. Oh, frick. Okay. So, and if you do that, you get the MXV Super Skill Shot. All right. Let's see what we can do here. All right. Let's switch over to this. Get the lower shot. Oh, yeah. I'm going to hit start, ladies and gentlemen. You let me know if the game is too loud, if I'm too loud. We did a brief soundtrack, but obviously nothing makes sense until we are live. So, Jekko, thank you so much for that sub.
    11:50
    All right, can you all hear the game? I sure can. Mike cannot, so he's going to have to play a little guessing game. I know the sounds quite well. I've worked on this thing for the past year. Hell yeah. Mike can do it? All right. So, Mike, is there a specific letter I want to shoot for, for the skill set? When I did it on mine, I think I bounced it off of the second from the right, you know, so you're starting at the right. Okay. Yeah.
    12:20
    No, the end. Oh, you've got to be delicate with that, too. Yeah. So if you hit the drop target just right, one of them, I think it was the end, then it can bounce into the softening. Okay. So I'm going to try that again. Can I do that on any ball? Any ball, yeah. All right. Let's try that again.
    12:42
    But you have a finite amount of time, so you can't, like, cheat and catch it on your flipper and then stuff it in there. Like, it'll run out. It'll time out before you can do it. It's got to happen. It's timed out to happen off of the ricochet. Okay. We got this.
    12:57
    Deadflip, turn down the game so we can hear Mike. Got it. All right. I'm going to get this right here. Three, two, snap.
    13:08
    Mike, this is impossible. Wait a second. Oh, damn. All right. Never mind. Cool. So, Chad. It could be done, but it is really, really hard. It's the hardest skill shot I've come up with yet.
    13:25
    That I've concocted over the years. Yeah. I'm going to turn the game down just a little bit more here. All right, there we go. Mike, are there any Easter eggs in the game?
    13:34
    You know what? I'm not sure what, if any, that Lonnie might have hidden in there, but if there are, they're for you to discover. Lonnie was the gentleman who programmed this. Yeah, Sunday was the lead programmer on this one. We also had some support help from a few folks like Brett Rubin, Wason, and those were the two that helped out the most.
    13:58
    Good old Wason. All right, let's make some magic happen. So of significance, starting this game, is there anything that has changed drastically, or is it still like I'm just trying to start a mode and rip through it? Well, the modes are where all your points are, especially now, because we've toned down considerably the multiball's contribution to your bonus. Okay. So before, you know, people were just playing multiball all the time. It was contributing way too highly. So now it's in your best interest to play and finish the modes and get as many drawings as you can heading towards the wizard modes. Yeah.
    14:41
    All right, so I'm going to try to start, light my multiball here, and then work on that left ramp. It still has the shoot the, what is it, the, what is the name of this shot? The extra ball shot. Oh, yeah, the left inner loop. That shot will spot you towards the first shot towards starting one of the first two modes, and then that goes away. So it's a helper there for the first two modes to get the modes lit faster. Gotcha. I feel like it always wants to, like, I feel like it chooses the left ramp.
    15:17
    I forget if it goes from left to right or if it tries to help you what you have the most or some combination of. Yeah. Internet, are you able to see the TK lock in the front-facing camera? Probably.
    15:31
    Eh, the screen's in the way. That's all right. so how is bonus calculated now since it's been changed it's this crazy convoluted math that I don't understand but the typical way of like switch closes and stuff like in every game plus like however many drawings you have is given to you every ball and then some of the other things like multi ball does have a contribution at the end when it's showing you the different circles and your bonus, it's showing you where those points are coming from. Got it. So, like, Demogorgons, Demodogs, those also contribute to your bonus.
    16:12
    Some things are persistent from ball to ball. Some things reset every ball. Like, the switch count is per ball. Okay. But your drawing count is cumulative throughout the game.
    16:22
    Let's get some drawings. Now, are the drawings literally that? Are they, like, cute little drawings of things? It shows a video. You collect a number of drawings, but the video is the same that we see every time you get one. All right. Well, let's start a... My biggest thing right now is I don't know if I checked if the game was level before we went live.
    16:48
    But I think we're good. It's being a little rude to me, but we're good. Okay. We're going to bring multivol into a mode. now is there a drawing for playing tk well yeah yeah so you get one chance throughout the game you know you can collect it once throughout the game so it doesn't matter when you do it but for getting a super jackpot in tk multiball you get a drawing however if you get a double or a triple super jackpot in tk multiball the time you collect a drawing you can get two or three drawing. Two or three? Yeah, but you can only get a drawing in one 2K multiball. So once you collect it, whether it's a single, double, or triple, that's it for the rest of that game. Yep. Got it.
    17:36
    Got it, got it. Alright, well let's go for plus one drawing. Oh! There you go, you got one. There's a furious... And we added an extra ball so if you did 11 drawings, you get an extra ball. Yo, more extra balls, please. Yeah, so we... That one will happen, you know, obviously deeper into the game, which is when you're going to need the multi-ball to kind of get you over the next big hurdle of trying to get towards the final wizard mode. So that's why we added another extra ball with the drawings. Take it.
    18:04
    I'm missing all my shots. I'm amazing at pinball. Mike, you're not here to blow this game up for me. I'm not, but you know what? You'd think my skills would have gotten better over this pandemic, but because I do so much of my testing with just the glass off and the ball in my hand, I've probably gotten worse.
    18:24
    Oh, no. Yeah, people would expect me to be a better pinball player because I play every day, but I'm not really paying attention to what I'm doing.
    18:34
    All right, so we finished a mode. We finished a multiball. We've got two drawings on our plate now. Those two drawings will be something that help us out in the bonus, as Mike pointed out. um come on baby is there anything new with the demogorgons or anything um no those I believe we have not we haven't changed those because we had finished those up a couple of revisions ago to the point that we were quite happy with them you do though you can earn drawings in each demodog mode you can earn a drawing if you complete it oh the demodog modes have drawings in them the demogorgon modes do not because they're pretty lucrative as it is. Yeah. Are you familiar with the TV show, the cartoon Fairly Oddparents? I've never even heard of it. Okay. And my reference of what I was going to say means nothing to you.
    19:29
    Yeah, for folks asking, pinball machines are typically programmed at Stern in C++. So if you want to be a programmer for pinball machines, and you know said language, email mike.vinacore I don't do any of the hiring when it comes to programming oh man in the old days we're talking like the Williams era of pinball machines they used to program the games in assembler assembly language and the video games as well up until the games went 3D yeah that's wild All right, get up there. Is there, what other big changes are there? Any changes to, like, total isolation, which we're quickly approaching? No, we didn't change those either, because, like I said, we were happy, and those were pretty much polished up the way we liked them.
    20:30
    Dope. All right, we got a demo dog attack. Yeah, so now if you finish this demo dog mode, you'll get a drawing. So to finish this one, you actually have to spell Demo Dog before the time runs out. Yep. By hitting the various targets. Fun to do. Yeah.
    20:46
    This is a good mode to have a multi-ball going in because then, you know, the work gets kind of half done for you. The ball's flying around the play field. It'll pick off the harder-to-hit targets. The tricky ones are the ones that are in the inside, behind the drops when the drops are up. True. I find that the leftmost D and the G are the hardest ones for me because they're really hard to hit. Yeah, the D and the G, like, those are multi-ball usually aids you in that because when the balls start bouncing off each other, they'll eventually hit them. How the hell would I hit that G on purpose? Ooh, we got a drawing.
    21:22
    Nice, you did it. All right, we got to hit the G. I got an idea. We're going to ricochet it off of nothing. Never mind, that didn't work.
    21:31
    Demo dog. Well, that's cool. So it actually, I'll tell you, I usually avoid demo dogs because shooting those things, it scares the crap out of me. And now, that's why I like to bring a multi-ball into it, especially now with the new drawing rule attached to it because I want as many drawings as possible when I get to those wizard modes.
    21:54
    I like it. I took half a semester of assembler in college. Oh, yikes. I remember making very simple games in Visual Basic back in the day, ladies and gentlemen. Visual Basic.
    22:10
    I'm 84 years old, by the way. That would make me 184, Jack. Damn straight, old man. I think that would make Brian 185, because he's just a little bit older than me. We're very close. Oh, man.
    22:33
    Internet, what else do you got? What else do you got? He's 40. I'm not freaking 40, Internet. Calm down. The real power of the drawing is for the three wizard modes. Oh, we played three balls already. Warm up. Who's the last one to sub? Jekko? This is for you, buddy.
    22:47
    J-E-C-C. Something that's been driving me nuts on initial boards lately. It's not every game. But when I finally hit enter, this does not suffer from the problem. Okay, it's better justified. Sometimes the names are left justified still. Okay. And it looks weird.
    23:07
    Give me a list of what those games are. Yeah. I'll run it up. I'll pass the grievances to the proper authorities. Also, if we're nitpicking, I don't think people have ten initials. I'm just saying. Do you call it to answer your question? What would you tell somebody who would want to get into working in the industry?
    23:30
    Be prepared to work a lot of long hours regularly, depending on what part of the industry you get in. We work very hard and we work, we're known for having to work long hours regularly here in pinball,
    23:45
    but console video games is probably a hundred times worse, which I used to do I was a console video game designer for 10 years before I came back to pinball and it was grueling that was a young man's game where he got, hey I'm young, I'm single I don't have a family to go home to yet so I got nothing but time I may as well work that was animation for me and why I got out of it because I was working 27 hour days yeah, it burned me out big time so I'm glad to be out of that thing Plus, you know, my first love of any game was pinball because that was my first exposure to it when I was a really young child.
    24:28
    I'm never going to get this FN MXV skill shot. It's just going to happen one day. Bust out the Demogorgon. So, could you go over a little bit more of, like, what happened on the readme? I know there were some tweaks. There were some photographs. Yeah, the biggest thing we added was the drawings. Because we got, in version 9.9, we got the last Missy mode in, which was the final showdown.
    25:02
    Wizard mode. So the drawings was the biggest thing on our plate to still add on our initial to-do list. So that's the biggest part of this update. We also polished up the game a lot. We squashed a lot of nagging outstanding bugs. Some of them were kind of obscure and hard to find. There have been some score balancing on this one for sure, especially in regards to the multiball. I think Lonnie added some more sounds and some more speech. I noticed when I played the final showdown the day we released it, so it would be yesterday, I noticed some sound calls I hadn't heard in there before, especially some speech. He had some more speech in there, I believe.
    25:47
    Dude, the upside down. The skill shot got added, obviously. Oh, yeah. Really got some important thing.
    25:55
    Sorry, go for it, go for it, go for it. Yeah, my skill shot was the most important thing. You really need anything else? Yeah, right.
    26:02
    Lonnie, get to it, buddy. Let's go. Screw these bugs. He got it in there. He's like, Mike, should I pick these bugs? I'm like, no, put it in my skill shot. please. Add more bugs. The people need it.
    26:18
    Alright, let's see if we can get the double. You said getting a, oh wait, I can shoot up the ramp for a bigger super. Yeah, so if super is lit, lock will also be lit on the left ramp, and then you can lock one or two balls in there for either a double or triple super draft ball.
    26:35
    Alright, so we got three drawings from that. Whoa! So you got the triple and super. Yeah, let's go. Yeah, that's hard to do. I do the double a lot, but I always tend to drain a ball before I end up getting a triple.
    26:48
    Triple, double. All right, three drawings. Sounds good to me. So you've now maximized your ability to get drawings. You only get one collection and a TK multiball. Oh, that's right, and you get three balls. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So on a pro, because you can't get a triple super, you can only get a double, you can only get two drawings maximum in TK Multiball.
    27:12
    Still no dead flip flipper code. Yeah, you know, I don't deserve them on all of them. We'll get there.
    27:20
    Get up there. It doesn't make you feel any better, Jack. I've never had a flipper code. You've topped me on that one. Hey, there you go, Internet.
    27:31
    Oh, pass. That's insane. Unique. Thank you for the biddies. Yeah, score balancing is huge. And a good reason...
    27:43
    A lot of people will complain. They're like, why don't games just come with finished code? Well, that's because input from people that own these games and play these games helps shape them into amazing pinball machines.
    27:55
    So even if it ships with damn near finished code... I'll give an example. If Walking Dead shipped with the code that it had, not to talk crap on our own games, I wasn't a fan of that game when it first came out, but where it is now is amazing. It is incredible how you can listen to what the community has to say and fix things and adapt things to make things better. This game has come such a long way. I love it.
    28:22
    Yeah, the three of us are really proud of the way this game turned out here, especially now in its finished state of 1.0. and you know Brian and I have known each other for a very long time like most of my career so I always really enjoy being able to work with him so closely on a project this is the most closely I've worked with Brian on something in my career in the two places we've been together and then this is my fourth game working with Lonnie and I really enjoy working with him because he and I have a really great collaborative relationship when it comes to doing games I think we complement each other's strengths really well and it's always a real treat for me to do a game with him yeah Lonnie's awesome and his eye for detail when it comes to the presentation of the games how the visuals work with the light shows and the sounds it's just like he's unequaled in that aspect like he just makes the most beautiful presentations in his games agreed oh there you go Brian's giving you a little thanks Brian I was probably seriously like I was legitimately super excited when we were told Brian was coming to work with us I wanted Brian to come back to pinball since he left pinball to go to video when we were at Midway Games so this was a big deal for him to come back wait wasn't there something about dart oh you can get a drawing from dart now too yeah if you evolve dart to fully grown Yeah. Then you get a drawing from that, too. And he's full grown. All right, let's stay up in these tops. Yeah, there you go. Evolve, baby.
    30:07
    Dart evolved. I like when, if I'm playing the quarter hunt mode, I love to just keep shooting the pop bumper, because not only are you building quarter hunt, but you're building dart at the same time, so you could get, you know, you're drawing from two things at once almost, if you get some good pop bumper sessions up there. Love it.
    30:26
    All right. And if you couple that with a multi-ball, quarter hunt can be a huge points fest. Stay alive.
    30:37
    All right. I do love that we have a new upside down, so it wasn't just the drops over and over. Yeah, we have two varieties, and it switches off. So you've got one that's drops, and you've got one that's shots.
    30:51
    Yeah, I dig the shots for sure. I can neither confirm nor deny that statement. Wait, what? All right.
    30:58
    I need an extra ball. Let's burn it back a little bit. Burn it back, and I believe if I'm seeing correctly, if you play one more mode, you will also get an extra ball for that. Oh, three completed? Yeah, if you get one at three completed, you get one for the 11 burn it back loops, and then there's some deeper in the game. You get one at six modes, too. And then one for draw rings.
    31:25
    Yeah. And then there's a mystery extra ball. You know, it's pretty rare, but you could get one for mystery possibly. There's our extra ball. That was a nice catch, by the way. Thank you, my dude.
    31:38
    I learned it from you, Mike. If it was a drop catch, I would think that could be true, but the live catches I struggle with. Drop catch was my specialty.
    31:51
    My mind is still blown when I successfully live catch a ball. I've gotten better at it over the last year or two but I still don't have the confidence level in a live catch versus my confidence level for drop catches yeah I feel that and then you know if I play games with Keith he can do that thing he can live catch it to sleep you know yeah he's got a targeting computer in his brain yeah you're the freaking robot bro he is he's like the terminator of pinball
    32:24
    Oh, you said quarter hunt was good in the pops. Yeah, because quarter hunt, every switch closure, it's like a frenzy. Just scoring you points. And so you throw the ball in the pops during quarter hunt or balls if you're in a multi-ball. Not only are you getting a bunch of points in quarter hunt, but you are also growing darts. So you could really go to town trying to accomplish two drawings at a time. That's huge.
    32:49
    Double dipping. That's impossible. Gemma dog attack. Oh, no. Doug Gemma dog. Oh, so you got extra ball, then. Hell, yeah.
    33:06
    And I'm going to need it. And mystery. Nice. Oh, that was a dirty drop. Okay. We've got a Demogorgon lit, but it's the multiball one, so we're going to save it for that mode. You just moan into your ear really quick, Mike. Sorry about that. Sorry. I've got the volume at a comfortable level, so it did not feel like shouting.
    33:31
    Oh, frick. Peter Seller would like to know how you're doing the giveaways today. Yeah, I'm going to be doing the giveaway right after this game.
    33:41
    And then we're just going to feast it out throughout the evening. Okay? Okay. How are we going to do it? Do you want to do, like, Brian and I come up with some trivia questions, if we can come up with something in our head quickly? Or do you want to just, I'll let you figure out how to give it away, Jack. Hey, that's fine. You know what? Honestly, whatever takes more computer crap off of my plate, if you want to come up with something and you see an answer and you want to ask them for their details, let's freaking go. All right, Internet, after Jack finishes this game, I got a trivia question, and the first person to answer correctly will get the first giveaway. And no Googling, people. You have to answer without looking anything up. It's the Internet. You think they're going to Google? Hey, I'm going on the honor system here. That's why I'm not asking the question until it's time to do the giveaway. That's fair.
    34:36
    Internet, I'm not death-thieving at the moment, so just relax. All right, we got another extra ball, so that's going to be longer for the giveaway. Death saving is cheating, by the way. Is it, though?
    34:51
    Well, I thought... You said that with a wink. I have a self-proclaimed death save rule. If I'm playing on a location and I paid money for my game to play it, then it's okay. If I'm playing for free or if I'm playing in my house, it's absolutely forbidden. There you go. And also, it's obviously forbidden in tournaments. Oh, yes. That's a big no-no in tournaments. All right, so we're not going to get any drawings from this multiball because we have already collected the max, or we've already got our drawing period from it. Does AFG still exist? I've forgotten all about that. Lycos.
    35:31
    Can you, let's say I play a TK and I don't get a super jackpot, am I still eligible for that drawing in another? Yes. Okay. Yeah. You're eligible for it until you get a drawing or drawing in TK Multiball. So if you blow it one or ten times, you can still get it until you actually collect a drawing in there. Okay. Triple jackpot.
    35:55
    Triple super? Double super. Boo. No, Caesar Dog. I'm going to be asking a question in the form of a question. You just have to answer in the form of the answer.
    36:12
    All right. Stay alive. Tapping up. All right. We've got one more shot for mode. Whew. That right ran. And I, our best friends.
    36:25
    All right. Here we go. Press transfer and put the ball up right into the Demodog post exactly where I wanted it.
    36:37
    Too bad those posts don't score. Yeah, please. I always wanted to have posts that score, so that way I could have a high scoreboard that was called Postmaster General. What was that? The first Rolling Stones pinball machine had one. Does it? Yeah, it has. Oh, yeah, the valley one, right? Yeah, so it had that little horseshoe thing, and right in the middle was just a post with a rubber on it. That's right. But it was treated just like a slingshot, like in a spoon. I forgot about that. I didn't even know I did that until the last time I saw that game, which was probably about a year and a half ago at a show. Oh, damn.
    37:15
    I've actually never played it, but I just love digging through IPDB and looking at weird stuff like that.
    37:22
    All right, last ball of Internet, and then Mike's going to ask you what your social security number is, and you have to answer correctly. Yes, in the chat. In the chat, please. Probably.
    37:33
    Oh, my gosh. Oh, and I need a credit card number to go with that. That's coming back. Here, you can have that one back.
    37:41
    Ask Jack if the door is locked. No! I should probably check to see if my door is locked. We don't want these creepy old Polish dudes walking in here thinking this is a casino.
    37:56
    There it is. Okay, so now that we're in our last mode, We're going to play our second Demi Gorgon, which is a multi-ball to help finish this. Bear from South Carolina, what's up? Your wife and I play this game every night? That's awesome.
    38:14
    Beepity beep beep Add time Sounds good to me Mike, did you do any voice work on this game? No, nobody wants to hear my voice in a game. I've never been asked to do voice work. Okay, that's fair. okay I would love I would do it but I don't think that I'd be very good at doing voice work to be honest it's monotonous as hell they're like it was a good read but can you do it like 12 more times with different inflection everywhere I tend to talk real fast especially if I get excited about something sure so I don't think that you know I'd be very well suited for that. Which is why I've never been offended that I haven't been asked in my career to do voice work. All right. Who's the last person to sub? Bambi, this is for you, bud. And here's a quick little GC.
    39:18
    We did reset the scores, but it's still, you know, whatever. Bambi. We're just going to do Bambi. All right. So Mike has a question for you, Internet, and I'm going to show you what you're playing for. Okay? Now, I think Mike is Googling. No, I'm not, but give me one minute because I'm consulting with my lead here, Brian, on our first question. Thank you so much. He had one and I had one. So, oh, Internet. On a technical side of things, just so you know, the Playfield camera that we have where it's like shooting forward, we use a GoPro Hero 8. Right now, GoPro Hero 8 cannot output live 60 FPS. Yes, that's why we can get it looking beautiful, but the frame rate is stuck at 30. So they need to come out with like a firmware update for that or something. But here's what you're going to be playing for. All right, I have a question. You got it? Yeah. All right, so Internet, what was the first pinball machine that Brian Eddy programmed in full?
    40:22
    In full? Yes. Ooh. The first? Hmm. Is Jack's audio behind the video? No. You're behind the video. Are they going to know it? So far, nobody's got it. There we go. Tater Salad wins. It was Pool Sharks.
    40:49
    So, here's what's funny. We have a Pool Sharks here. Yeah. And, like, we brought that up a lot. we have a pool of sharks here who designed that game um brian could you answer that in the chat because i just don't remember off the top of my head who designed the play field on that one rigged rigged i totally cheated what so tater salad gets the first prize there tony kramer he said yeah all right i never met i never met tony kramer i don't think he was still there when i came into the company because that would have been about five or so years later after Pool Sharks, maybe six. He sadly died during the production? Oh, frick. That's why I never met him then. That'll do it. That's a bummer.
    41:40
    Pool Sharks, man. Yeah. So Brian did do some work on other games, but the first full game he programmed at Williams was Pool Sharks. That's a cool game. I remember I used to play it when I was running the test program over there. One of the locations I had to stop at had a pool sharks, and I would always play a couple games on it when I would go visit over there. I'm going to slide your face over on screen here a little bit. Okay.
    42:08
    There we go. Yeah, there we go. Looking good, Mike, looking good. Beautiful. Yo, Vic, thank you, buddy. All right. let's get back into this. So let's pull this up. So, Mike, what is your – I know you do a lot of testing, so you might not even remember this because, honestly, I can't remember my own. But, like, what's your highest score on this game?
    42:35
    It's somewhere in the low one billions, I think, if I'm playing with the glass on. Okay. You've probably gotten way higher than me. Like I said, I've spent most of my time playing this thing with the glass off throughout the course of development, especially lately. So, but yeah, it's in the low one billion. Nice. But, you know, now the scoring's changed, so I really need to start playing with the glass on again so I can get some new high scores, because those would be invalid at this point, you know, because the bonus was so much higher for multi-balls. Totally. Evil Bong, what he means by playing with the glass on is Mike has one of these games, and he's testing it constantly, and it would be the biggest pain in the butt to have to pull the glass off every time something doesn't work or you need to test a switch 100 times or, you know. Yeah, like if I needed to play through the whole game, you know, obviously I can't guarantee I could do that with the glass on and play like normal folks, you know, like if I was on a location or whatever. So I just keep the glass off usually when we're developing games so I can just trigger things with my hand or just roll the ball with my hand into the shots. to get through the game. Every time we release a new code update, the last thing I do is play through the entire game to make sure nothing's broken, nothing crashes. To do that with the glass on, I could go weeks and not finish the game, depending on how well I'm playing that week. I'm right there with you. Do you have one of those fancy balls welded to a long piece of metal, Chester? I had one. I think Lonnie swiped mine. Because apparently those are, like, unobtainium. Really? Like, no, I, when I was at, what was I doing? We were watching, like, some testing going on at Stern, and we couldn't find one for the life of us for, like, a video we were shooting.
    44:35
    I mean, normal folk are like civilians, you know, like people that don't work, that aren't developing the game. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense of normal folk. the common folk yeah and to refer to him as commoners he kind of disrespects all the civilians would that suffice alright that mode is toast I had the ball and the stick and I think I gave it to Lonnie because he needed it more than I did for where he was the game was in relation to his desk so So they had to make those, like, you know, one by one in the machine shop, I think. So they didn't do that many. I haven't seen you at Stern. I think I saw you once during this whole pandemic. Yeah, I only go there to get if I have to pick up some equipment or drop something off. Like, I'm there to pick up play fields, or if I need something else, I'll run in there. But it's pretty rare. Like, all of us in product development are still working from home throughout this whole pandemic. So my office, you know, I repurposed part of my basement game room to be my office. So right now it's a disaster area because I've got more games than space because I had to bring home, you know, some work dev cabinets. Yeah, your work office is definitely doing double duty right now. Oh, yeah. You know, I went in there and I didn't even recognize it. It looked like a tornado hit.
    46:09
    They just like completely commandeered it. And they're like, let's just put all this junk in here. There's parts everywhere, there's games everywhere I think they're testing parts in there Yeah, there's testing things in there Like, I don't even recognize this place anymore Like, I don't feel like it's mine anymore I'm sure we'll get it back I'm not mad I mean, they're smart to use it But the people that do have to work in the building You know, have at it It would just be collecting dust otherwise Until I come back This last update kicks ass Yes, it does, there Yes, it does. English.
    46:46
    All right. There's all the lines. From South Carolina, thank you for the compliment. We're very proud of this update. We're proud of all of them, but this one in particular.
    46:56
    The drawings was something that I've been really looking forward to us implementing, like, throughout most of the projects.
    47:02
    It had to wait until the end just on how we chose to implement the different features. That's a good question. And so you do get a drawing for completing a mode, but on a mode like this, do you get an extra drawing for doing all the shots in order or anything? You don't right now, but that's not to say that maybe that could come in the future. Nice. I can't make any promises or guarantees, but it's something that we have discussed. Nice. That much I can say. Yeah, rewarding that accuracy would be pretty nice. I am shooting the ball in the Demogorgon so freaking much, ladies and gentlemen. There you go. How am I doing this? So good.
    47:45
    Eat it. All right. So we are in Demogorgon mode. Shooting the Gorgon. We got an upside down. Is it still a mystery what starts upside down? yeah okay the the whole purpose of it was you never know when the upside down would you know creep into your life just like that would happen to will in the show perfect um if you put it in competition mode however it is the same for everyone as far as like when it would you know the criteria for how it appears so oh nice so um you could use it in a tournament and it's not going to become an unfair advantage or disadvantage. Everybody will get it at the same rate. Cool.
    48:40
    And DemoDogs does timeout. Okay, we're going to give these pups a minute to settle down and walk away. You miss out on your drawing if you just let it timeout. Wait, but can I get it again? Oh, you got it once ready? No, it's once per DemoDog mode you can get a drawing. Oh, okay. Okay. Tater Salad, by the way, send your information to, DM your information to me, and I'll just forward it to whoever needs to have it.
    49:09
    After this game, I've got a second trivia question, and then hopefully Brian will chime in with a trivia question soon as well. Sounds good to me. Mike, how long are you interested in hanging out tonight on stream? How long do you normally do this? I figured it was probably about two hours that you run these things, right? Or how long do you normally go? Two hours is fine. Yeah, I'm good for the whole thing. Okay. In my head, I had blocked out two hours, because that's what I assumed that this thing would probably be. Nice. We usually stream for about three-plus hours, but you're welcome to hang out. You can leave whenever you're ready. Well, at some point, I've got to still ride my bike, because I need my daily exercise. I can always move my laptop into the next room. I mean, you guys, I can, if you guys don't mind me, like, panting, you know, being so blown up from being out of breath. Mike is the owner that they love heavy breathing into microphones. That's true. In fact, I believe that they're, I've heard the stories of websites of just such things. Uh-huh. Anyway, I can always take you guys on the bike trainer with me. Me too. And still answer your questions.
    50:17
    Completely out of breath. I love it. Yeah, yeah, totally out of breath. He is lit. Mystery is lit. Did you... So what is the frequency of the bullshit mode? Is it just completely random? It's totally random. Okay.
    50:38
    Because it is exciting when you're in a multiball and you have bullshit running. Oh, man. That's the best time.
    50:45
    So good. Also, like, I've heard that mode more than probably anybody at this point, And it still makes me laugh every time I get it, especially doing a multiball when you're getting it to say the word bullshit so often. Yeah, and I love all the variances of the word bullshit. Yeah, that was Lonnie's doing the variances. I thought it was brilliant when he played it for me. I just laughed my ass off. I thought it was so funny.
    51:13
    Spinner value. All right, let's shoot this shot. All right, well, ball are we on? You have your question lined up, Mike? You're ready to go? I do, yeah. Heck yeah. Oh, that would have been the MXB. That was just a touch too... Touch too... Pocket hole shot. I don't know what our deal was with David Harbour, but... So I don't know if he got a machine or not. Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah. I think he did.
    51:51
    the cue from the Impractical Jokers has been showing off his entire collection on his show lately. Oh, yeah? I saw, like, a picture online of him showing off a couple of the games, a couple of his screen games. Every episode now is him sitting in front of, like, three or four Stern pinball machines.
    52:11
    Oh, there you go. David Harbour does have a machine. Oh, he does? Heck yeah. Yeah, Brian confirmed it. If I didn't give a crap about pinball, just as like a normal person.
    52:24
    If my voice was in something like this, 100% I would want one. Just for the... Like this is a trophy, you know? This giant light-up trophy that has my voice in it.
    52:37
    Oh yeah, if I did voiceover work, for sure I would want a game. Like for that very reason. It's like here's something I did that's pretty special.
    52:48
    I started double scoring. Imagine I don't hit this last shot and finish the mode. Oh, I'm going to be so upset.
    52:56
    Did I stutter? I told you everything. I wish I had a machine. I have a UV kit. Wait, what? You have a UV kit without a... I'm sorry? Hey, you got to start somewhere. You start with the UV kit, and then you get the game next. There's nothing wrong with that. You can work your way up, dude. Yeah.
    53:17
    It's like when CDs, you know, were new. when that format was just, I had like four CDs before I ever had a CD player. That's amazing.
    53:28
    I would go over to my friend's house. His dad was like the first person I ever knew that had a CD player. And then, so I brought over there like a cassette tape to tape the CD that I bought. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Yeah.
    53:44
    Hey, here's a trivia question. What was the first CD I ever bought, Internet? I'll give you a hint, it was a punk rock band and at the time the CD did not have a vinyl or a cassette version of it those didn't come for a few years later if somebody can answer that they get a prize was it Sloppy Seconds? it was not the Sex Pistols but 80's punk rock is the biggest clue I'll give you clean alright so we gotta oh there you go Brian wins the prize wait I didn't guess it was the best bet Brian and Eddie get you on Demi Gorgon Brian probably has a whole basement full of them no doubt so now Brian you Brian, now that you won a prize, you have to re-gift it to somebody. So think of a question to put in the chat for somebody to answer. Extra ball.
    54:54
    Mystery. And a ball. I don't want to keep you. We have a wizard mode ready to go. Total isolation. Double flip. Yeah, I didn't get sick with the COVID and lose the weight, But I did lose it during the COVID pandemic, yeah.
    55:16
    Right before COVID, I got real sick, and then not with that. And it kind of woke me up of, like, I need to drop some weight. So when spring hit, I started walking multiple miles every day, like 7 to 10 miles a day, every day. That's wild. And then I bought a new bike, bicycle, and I started bike riding, too. and then I cut down the amount of food I ate in a day and quit drinking soda. So all those things combined, I dropped 45 pounds since the beginning of March. Jeez, dude. And I'm in better shape now than I have been in over a decade, and I physically feel better than I have in ages.
    55:55
    That's awesome. Yeah. Congratulations, man. I feel better than getting healthy, bro. I mean, don't get me wrong. When I'm back on the road, those In-N-Out burgers and the Waffle House because they're still going to be frequented daily by me. But now I'll burn off a lot of those calories by probably also frequenting those hotel gyms to get on the treadmill or an elliptical or something like that, you know? Yeah, bud. So now before, I would just eat and then just sit and just grow, and now I burn off a lot of the calories I eat. Yeah, so now I burn off the calories, so it's more of a balance. Like, I'm at a very comfortable weight for me now. I feel great. So as long as I can maintain where I am now, like, I'll be very happy. That's great, dude. Congratulations. Thank you very much. And I never would have thought in a million years I would ever have dropped any weight, let alone as much as I did.
    56:48
    I was very blown away on this game that the magnet was able to sit there and hold a ball for like an entire game, but then I realized you guys were using a rare earth magnet. Yeah, it's not a powered magnet, so there's no heat whatsoever. Yeah, that's amazing. That was Brian's bit of genius there coming up with that one.
    57:07
    Because, you know, he wanted to have the magnetic hall lock, but it's like, how do we hold it there and not have it overheat? Yeah. And it was pretty brilliant what he came up with there, him and the mechanical engineers.
    57:24
    Who was the lead M.E. on this game? It was Rob. Well, we had two. but they share duties but Rob I think was would be considered more of the lead oh nice good old Rob who has the most amazing looking beard right now you know what when I see it the first couple times I saw him on a zoom meeting I didn't even realize who it was like because I hadn't seen him in so long I'm like who's this guy with the epic beard and it was Rob it's beautiful yeah oh man internet I'm just now realizing that I have chat on this screen and I didn't mean to leave it on there, so hopefully it's not too distracting.
    58:04
    Oh, I noticed that, too. I thought that was intentional. Jack, your GoPro camera of the play field, you know, where we can see the projector and everything, it looks fantastic. Oh, awesome. Yeah, it's just running at half frames just from GoPros. The new GoPros have, like, an output problem right now. Oh, wow. But still, to have the overhead and that angled shot, it's a nice variety. I really feel like I could see everything. Yeah, thanks. The framing of it with an image on the left and right for the masking came from some good friends of mine who stream out of France. But we've tried this lower angle before, but usually where the image is on the sides, you're just seeing wires and wall and crap like that. Oh, yeah. What you guys did with the images is perfect. It's perfect. Crop it in.
    58:59
    Dang. So what's, is there anything you think that's still on the docket for this game? Or are you thinking like you got everything in 1.0, like all the modes are in, all the, everything's good? Yeah, we have all the, everything we had planned, the three of us, to go into this game, you know, the goal was to get it all in for 1.0. So there's nothing missing as far as game features go for what we had planned and the scope of our project.
    59:32
    I remember I finally got to Final Showdown like a few code updates ago, and I was over the moon. I was like, hell yeah, and I shot the shot to start it, and then it played a video, and it was like, there you go. And I was like, wait a second, it wasn't in. Oh, it wasn't in yet. That was in version 9.9 was where we first introduced Final Showdown. Yeah. Oh, my God. Have you played it since the 9.9 release? I don't know if you got there when we released that last code update. I don't think I've gotten to Final Showdown. I think like two shots away. I think, what was I missing? I was missing something. Maybe it was like a demo dog or something. I don't know what it was.
    60:14
    It's really fun, and it's a seven-part wizard mode, so there's seven stages to it. Holy frick. Alright, Internet, after this game, Mike's got a question for a Demi Gorgon head. I do, yeah.
    60:30
    A Demi Gorgon head. Okay, this game's going to go a lot faster than I thought. Cool drink, cool drink.
    60:40
    Got it. Here, you can have that one back. You can have that one back. Folks, if you have any questions for the designer, Brian Eddy, he is currently in chat. His name is BRE. He's got BRE underscore Stern underscore pinball. He's got a little diamond next to his name. If you have any questions for him. Same gentleman that designed Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, The Shadow.
    61:11
    Programmed a lot of pinball machines in his time. Jack will get your info. Oh. Yeah. Pocket. Send a DM to Jack with your information, and then he'll pass it on to us at Stern to send you out whatever we're sending for your prize.
    61:31
    A Demi-Gorgon. Now, I'll say I'm limited on how many Demi-Gorgons I'm allowed to give away, but I'm sure if we give one or two extra, I'm not going to get castrated.
    61:43
    I think you, at the very least, you could have the one I have here at the studio. Oh, there you go then. I've put my fingers all over the thing, so you're going to have to clean it, but it's ready for you.
    61:58
    Yeah, I definitely do not want to pull the one out of my game here in my home office. I need it, you know, otherwise my game would be incomplete. Oh, damn, can you, what is it, is the game still playable if you remove the sculpt off of there? Is it like a creepy robotic red mouth? it's uh well there's a metal fixture underneath there so yeah you could still play it but it would be even harder to get the shot into the hole because you know the the shape of the demogorgon's open mouth kind of influences the ball to roll in there you're right you know so you'd have to be way more exact without that sculpt on there true but i think when brian and i did a presentation of the Making of Stranger Things. We did a virtual one for the CAX show. Oh, yeah. I believe Brian had pictures of one of the early Whitewoods where we just had the metal on it. I don't remember if it has a sculpt yet or not. Or maybe it could have had a 3D-printed temporary one. I forget.
    63:00
    Dude, 3D printing is so wild. Hit the shot, Lamal. Oh, my God. Hit the shot, you ding-dong. I saw a link to a little article online where somebody figured out how to 3D print custom records for the old Fisher-Price turntables. What? Yeah, like those Fisher-Price record players. And I have one of those original ones from when I was a kid. So I sent the link to my friend, and it was like the whole thing of here's how you take a soft file and you can bake it into where you can make this record out of it and then 3D print it. So I sent the link to a friend of mine who's got a couple 3D printers. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to need you to print me some records for my Fisher Price record player. That is wild.
    63:45
    I mean, I wonder, as those get more precise, you're probably going to be able to bootleg some vinyl soon. There you go. Well, even, you know, on a Fisher Price record player, it's just got like, it's like a fork inside the thing. You have the notches.
    64:03
    Just take your favorite four-chord punk songs and burn them to a Fisher Price record. Yeah, I mean, I could put any Ramones song on the 50-plus year table, and it would probably sound pretty authentic.
    64:13
    That's awesome. Deadflip has the best looking... Aw, what's up, Greg? Love you, Red. Extra pool! I'm surprised the screen's holding up. Usually, my computer hates all these cameras and Zoom at the same time.
    64:30
    And it's almost like Mike's here. Can you believe it? Look at him. He's right there on screen. I feel like I'm right there in the room with you almost. Almost.
    64:45
    Get up there. It's amazing what technology allows us now. A couple of years ago, we would not have been able to do this during a pandemic like this. It's pretty amazing.
    64:57
    Some technology is awesome. Some of it. Yeah, but I don't give a crap about all that streaming music nonsense. And it's like, just give me some old-fashioned vinyl records any day of the week. But I'm all for this technology of being able to Zoom and connect with people virtually like this with video. I love it.
    65:17
    Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. Brian is working there just fun as hell. Oh, at Stern? Yeah. Listen, everyone at Stern, when you're there, they are working hard. And they work long, right? to build these awesome things for you, but they all look like they're having a damn good time. Yeah, I mean, we all got into the pinball and the game industry because we are all big fans of games, we're very passionate about them, we love them. We're fans of the games, first and foremost, which makes, you know, it's a real treat to get to do something you love to do it for a living. I mean, with what goes into these machines, you would have to love what you do to work in pinball. absolutely I mean you know it could be very stressful could be a lot of long hours at times sometimes it could be frustrating you know and exhausting but you know for all of us it's worth it because we love you know I love pinball you know so much I love games so uh you know it's worth it for for all of us thank you and I genuinely like every single person I work with at Stern, which is a really rare thing to say. I usually go to a company and you're like, I like these people and I don't like some people, but I like every single person I've ever come in contact with in that company. That's awesome. Yeah.
    66:46
    Alright, so I've got a trivia question for you. Let's go. Except that one guy. If you won a prize, you cannot win two. One person per stream. So, in keeping with the theme of what was Brian's first project, what was the first project I worked on at Midway Games when I started my career there? I'll give you a hint. It was a video game. It was not a pinball machine because I got hired on the video side when I entered the industry. And this would have been 1994.
    67:17
    So what was the first game I worked on at Midway Games? Look at all the cool stuff you could do with this. You could put it on a bottle.
    67:26
    You could probably... obviously it's a collector's item but you could probably figure out how to smoke a tobacco product out of this thing there's a whole lot of things you could do with this look at it, it's terrifying Galaga?
    67:45
    Vinacore's not that old bro Galaga was made by Namco, I played Galaga at the time when it was new but I was a kid I haven't seen it yet Nobody's listed it yet. I've got some people that have gotten in the right time frame, roughly. Pong. Pac-Man. Pong, yeah. I remember playing Pong in the arcade when it was brand new. I mean, I am that old. That's wild.
    68:14
    The projected art is nuts. Isn't that great, Mitch? All right, Hobbit's third flipper. You got it. It was Revolution X. Wait, you worked on the Aerosmith shooting game? Yeah. Do you want to know how my life and my career life came full circle? So the first, when I got into the game industry, if you exclude working in an arcade, which I did before I came to work at Midway, Williams Valley Midway, my first project I got hired to work on was Revolution X, which was an Aerosmith-themed game, right? One of the first two projects I worked on, which they both started for me at the same time when I started my first day at Stern, was an Aerosmith game.
    68:52
    That's amazing. I started doing game testing, QA stuff on an Aerosmith game. My career went completely full circle where I came back to doing QA stuff largely as a big part of my job at Stern, and I worked on an Aerosmith game. It's one of my first two projects. That's wild. Hobbit's Third Clipper, send me your information. DM me on Facebook, Twitter, here on Twitch, anywhere. everyone that's winning something tonight send me your name and your mailing address and I will forward that off to the appropriate folks to send you what you want I had a revolution x game in my house for a while back when I worked there and for the people that said mortal kombat mortal kombat 3 was the second project I worked on at midway games and that was the but mortal kombat was the reason why I even got my foot in the door there. So that was what brought me to the dance, and then I didn't get to dance for that one until the second project. Dude, that's wild. God. Even, like, when I was a kid, seeing that game, I'm like, this is an Aerosmith shooting game? What am I looking at? Aerosmith and aliens. Like, I wanted to be in that room where they pitched this to the band. uh cast right my two i so i i used to wear a size large shirt then i grew into xl and i was dangerously close to outgrowing xl at the beginning of this year right now i could wear xl shirts still but they're kind of loose on me and i can wear most large shirts comfortably unless they're like weird and run a little small so i haven't given any up but i do regret like i gave one of my really good friends and his son, all my size large shirts, when after two or three years of hanging on to them, I still couldn't fit into them because I was only gaining weight. And now I kind of wish I never gave them away because I could fit in them all again, but I can't make those guys return all those clothes.
    70:50
    But they got some really good shirts, but I was sad to give up. Lots of drugs. Oh, for, yeah, Revolution X. Guys, I got this great idea. Aliens. And you're fighting them, And music is the weapon.
    71:09
    We have an ultimate MP3 cab. Oh, nice. Mr. Mitchell, I was given a Mortal Kombat 3 dedicated machine when I worked there, which I still have in my basement.
    71:21
    And I have all four Mortal Kombat board sets, so I can switch between them at will. Dude, that's dope. do you have any like cool rare like video game shit from working at Williams back in the day just like sitting in boxes at your house? Not so much anymore because when I had some hard times of you know years of unemployment or whatever I sold off a lot of that stuff to keep the lights on you know because I had a couple of long stretches yeah but I have a few treasures that I'll never get rid of so I had a lot more. I still like all the promo shirts I used to have. Even though they were used, people went crazy for that stuff. They wanted it. I want a bunch of those old promo pinball patches that they used to come out with when they launched games. Oh, yeah.
    72:14
    Data East and Sega did patches for the games pinball. Lonnie has a complete set of all the patches that the company threw out. It's all iterations of Data East Sega Stern when they would make the patches. Lonnie has a... Ask him when you're going to be at Stern sometime. He'll bring in the jacket and show it to you. I think he's shown me a picture of that.
    72:40
    I wish we still made the patches. They stopped that many, many years before we ever came on board, Brian and me.
    72:48
    I would love to see them bring that back because I would probably save something like that for all the projects I work on. I get to work on them all, so I would have a complete set of the modern games if we started that. Yeah, dude. I'd rock some patches if we started doing those things again. Yeah, you could put them on that jacket you wear. It would be perfect. Bro, my cool guy jacket? Heck yeah. Yeah.
    73:10
    Your pinball biker vest. Yeah, man. Real bikers, please don't beat me up. Lonnie's met him all the time. I've never seen it on IP, but I would assume it might be.
    73:22
    Because I don't know anybody else that has a jacket with all the patches. He might be the only one. One of one. Because Lonnie has been at the company since it started. Yeah.
    73:32
    There's a lot of pinball people. I'd love to dig through their, like, attics and basements. Like, I'm sure Steve Ritchie's sitting on a bunch of crap he doesn't realize he has.
    73:43
    I'm sure Brian Eddy's got a whole bunch of crap somewhere in a storage locker with just amazing stuff. yeah Brian was a lot like me where he was a saver we would save things that we thought were cool for a historical merit yeah I still do that anytime I do anything I put shit aside I'm like this will be worth something someday but then I look at some of the crap I have from like 10 years ago I'm like this is absolutely worth it yeah I downsized largely for money reasons when I needed it but also for space reasons you know um it got to be like overwhelming where i'm like man even at the time i was still living alone it was just taking up so much space i'm like i'm not gonna need all this stuff like i'll just keep the stuff that really like is the most important to me like i've turned down big offers for that moral combat machine because it's a dedicated one a beautiful consumer that never has been operated um but i'll never sell it because the sentimental value of what that means to me is way too great you can't put a price on that oh yeah uh no comment to that one jackpot. I'm a bit of a classic pinball video pack rat. Brian, no doubt, bro. No doubt.
    74:59
    Frickin' frick. Brian's probably got like a whole shed that he built just for like old pinball stuff. What, the thing that kills me, who was I talking to? It might have been Lyman. He's like, I had all these beautiful back glasses from all these games that I've collected over the years, and he's like, I kept them all in this box and I finally opened it like ten years later and all the art had just flaked off of them. Oh no, that's terrible. You need to seal them, you need to climate control these things. Now he just has a box full of glass with a bunch of crumbled up lead on the bottom of the box. Oh yeah. Back then it probably was lead.
    75:46
    Yep. Yeah, that's the worst. So, Mike, on this game, can you point out some things that you had a huge influence over? The drawings one was a lobby for that, you know, big time. So that's something I pitched from, I think, almost the beginning. Brian correctly said wrong. But it was a pretty good split. But, like, you know, depending on the rule, one of us, you know, would have pitched it, and then the other two, you know, signed off on it. Some of the ideas came from any one of the three of us and it evolved over like somebody came up with the idea and then somebody else said well that sounds good but what if we took that and did this with it Or through the course of developing the stuff especially in the second half of this year Lonnie and I did a lot of iteration and made some minor tweaks to some stuff just for the fact that we thought that they would play better. Oh, right on. But it was a pretty good split amongst the three of us. You know, like, and we were a great three-man team where our strengths complemented each other. So, like, each one brought, like, unique things to the table, and then they all meshed really well together. That's great. I mean, that's awesome to hear that this was, like, a super big team effort to make this thing come together. It was. And, you know, having a three, usually it's, like, two leads, like, to get the lead programmer and the lead designer. Like, I'm not usually that kind of a big of a, that as big of a factor on a project. So I was really honored when Brian asked me to be, you know, to have a bigger role than I usually do. And then it just, and then, like I said, the chemistry was really good between the three of us where it was a really successful three-man team, I feel. Love it.
    77:35
    And it was good because, like, I had a good relationship working with both of those, Lion and Lonnie and Brian, independently of each other. So kind of the common ground between those two who never worked together was me. So it really, like I said, it just worked out great. Like I had a fantastic time working with these guys. So you're saying you were the most important part of this game come to life. Absolutely. I was the glue that held the whole thing together.
    78:04
    Yeah. No, that's not true at all. We got along great, you know. Sometimes when people get really excited about things and they really believe in the thing, You know, I'd be lying if I said there might not have been competed discussions, but, you know, nothing bad. It was just, you know, three guys that love games so much, you know, trying to do what's best for this game. Is there anything on this game that was, like, what was the most contentious decision made on this game, you think, between the three of you?
    78:35
    I don't know that we really had something that bad. That you can publicly say. I'll defer to Brian on that because I don't really, Nothing sticks out.
    78:47
    Lonnie has this saying that he always likes to say, which is 100% true, is you can write something down on paper and believe it's the greatest thing in the world, but the game will tell you if it's good or not, and the game will let you know what it needs. So if somebody could have come to the table with a rule and were like, all right, we'll try it this way, and then we'll try it this guy's way, and the game will tell us which is the better one. So we probably had a couple of things like that. Brian says he's still scarred from the experience. Yeah.
    79:18
    The only thing I'm scarred from, Brian, is, like, the amount of hours the three of us were locked in that room upstairs, like, fleshing out the whole game.
    79:27
    Just the amount of time. Like, you know you've been in there a long time when your Apple Watch tells you it's time to stand up. Oh, no. Did you guys have a lot of your meetings at Stern, or did you, like, meet outside? Yeah, they were all. They were all. They were all at Stern because this was all done last year.
    79:46
    So we would find whatever meeting room was vacant where the three of us could sit down. And oftentimes we'd equip a couple of artists to do the storyboards and whatnot. That's awesome. And sometimes we'd be up there for half a day or more. The crow's nest up there? Yeah, we were up there a lot. I like it up there. It's quiet. It's uh...
    80:08
    There's no chance of randos just walking in on you? That's true, yeah, because that door's not... you know, you could lock that door so people can't just walk in there. I sleep in there a lot. Um... I had to lock the doors because they kept trying to leave.
    80:24
    You're not going anywhere until we figure out this upside down shit. Come on! Yeah. I sleep in the body lanes to lighten it. Stay alive.
    80:39
    Mike, did you ever... Pulp Fiction really wants to know my favorite Brady Bunch episode. I actually have an answer to this. Uh-oh. It's where they went to Hawaii, and then they got the tiki that gave everybody bad luck. And this was Price was in it. I'm pretty sure that Brian Eddy answered that question. Because I feel like I just read that in chat somewhere. Internet, look at this UV kit, bro.
    81:04
    Wild. The problem with UV is trying to capture this with a camera is kind of a pain in the ass. You can tell it's doing something, but boy, oh, boy, pointing a camera at it doesn't do it justice. Brian, you picked the same episode. I mean, I would imagine a lot of people would probably pick that cheeky episode. It was easily the most memorable one ever.
    81:29
    Him and Brian had the same episode answer. Oh, no. Speaking of, was there ever an idea for reverse flippers in the upside down? No. Like, I don't even really know how you'd pull that off successfully and have it be fun. Not to say that it's impossible, but I don't know. I don't know if they did it, but, like, the sport people just... Or how both of us have had reverse flippers. Yeah. I think they're talking about in... Are you talking about reverse where you cross your hands? Oh, where they're off constantly and you flip to make a... That would be fricked. Oh, man. If you're talking about reverse flippers, no, because it was done in some other games. And that's, you know, reversed versus upside down. It's like cross-handed more than I view that as being an upside down thing. Yeah.
    82:17
    Yeah, that'd be interesting if the flippers were constantly up and you had to flip to drop them. Yeah, that's what I misread. I was thinking that. Like, I don't even know how you pull that off mechanically. But, yeah, I mean, Simpsons had the reverse slippers.
    82:31
    Ghostbusters had it. And I'm sure some other games have it. Mike, this skill shot's freaking impossible, bro. It's really, really hard.
    82:41
    That's why it's the MXV skill shot. Yeah. I mean, historically, all my skill shots have been fairly difficult to do, but not impossible. Yeah. The funny thing is, the first one I ever had was an Iron Maiden. and I used to do that when I was playing the Whitewood all the time, which is how I came up with it. I'm like, oh, this would be a great skill shot. And then when Keith said, yeah, we'll put that in the game for sure, you can have a skill shot in my games.
    83:07
    Then after Rick coded it in there, like when it got to 1.0, I couldn't do it for the longest time. I wanted to show my friends. I was like, I can't do this, I swear. And he was over at my house for like three hours before I finally nailed the skill shot where you could see it. That's awesome. I swear my name's on here.
    83:28
    My favorite part was when it ended. Wow. I think of the games that I have a skill shot in, the easiest one for me to do is the Deadpool one. That is the full plunge. Wait. Yeah, full plunge, and then you shoot them to right orbit. Oh. No, you shoot the full plunge, you shoot the right orbit, and then the katana ramp. Okay. Yeah. So full plunge, then it goes around again, and then you Katana-ing. Yeah, so it's a three-way combo, basically.
    83:58
    Heck yeah. We're going to get this. Second place, Andy, when we were, when we released that Deadpool update a few weeks ago, and I was working on it with Tanya, this was the first time I'd played the game in almost a year, probably, and it took me a couple days, but I nailed that skill shot twice in one game for the first time in ages, and it made me very happy to see my skill shot again in action. Man, I want to see... Deadpool is just... It's such a great game, and I want to see Tanya as a lead on something else, man. I feel like I haven't heard his name on a machine since Deadpool. I was doing anything, so I'm excited to see what... He's worked on a lot of different things since Deadpool.
    84:46
    He's a hugely important part of our team in many aspects. because Tanya wears a lot of hats. And one thing I really respect about Tanya is that he's always, like, the first person to volunteer to help somebody, no matter what it is or even, you know, if it's even part of his job. Like, he's such a great help for all things in our department when people need things, and he's very smart. Oh, yeah. He learns things very quickly.
    85:15
    I really enjoyed working with him on Deadpool, and I really enjoyed revisiting Deadpool with him just recently.
    85:22
    He had a great sense of, like, laying out, mapping out the flow and the stacking. And, you know, we revisited some of that stacking that he had some fantastic ideas for that he ended up implementing that I thought were great. When he pitched them, when he threw them by me for my opinion, I'm like, this is great. I think we should do that, you know. what he did with Deadpool was just his next level man he made a fighting game out of a pinball machine yeah that was like their goal I mean it was to like have like a 16 bit fighting game inside of a pinball machine and it worked? it worked yeah I just gotta turn this chat off it's like driving me insane there we go okay we're good click Mike, Deadpool is Jack's favorite game ask him, yeah, I'm an idiot and I won't stop talking about it it's a fantastic game, it's a lot of people's favorite game, which is really nice to see it's a lot of fun yeah, not extensively the mystery and horror aspects fit better with pinball yeah yeah, I mean, I like the humor and stuff in Stranger Things but to me that's like the palate cleanser of what got me hooked on the show, which was like the spooky and the horror and mystery aspects of, you know, what's this upside-down business and these alien creatures and whatnot. That's really what got me hooked in the thing, and then that was just the icing on the cake, you know.
    86:58
    Yeah, buddy. So we kind of focused on that stuff, and then we sprinkled in some stuff like the bullshit mode and some of the lines we were able to use, you know, the call-outs and stuff, had some comedy, to remind you of those things. But yeah, for pinball, though, it would seem way more interesting to do the more supernatural elements and whatnot. Do you think a Golden Girls pinball machine would work?
    87:22
    You know, I was never a big fan of that show. I'll ask my sister because she loved that show. Man, I watched the crap out of that. Designing Women. I was all over those shows.
    87:33
    You got me, bro. Saw the 80s vibe was another for me for sure for Stranger Things you know because at my age like my teenage years were in the 80s so that was like you know I could really relate to what those kids were living you know because that was my era I was just a little bit older than they are in the show during those years heck yeah plus one drawing so Mike you're essentially anything that comes out of stern you will have in your place and you'll be beating the crap out of it to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to that is correct like you guys can't see it um but if you were to see this the disarray that's my basement slash office here at home i have so many plate fields piled up on the floor now that it's taking up the space of more than one pinball machine so i just i have a couple of development cabinets and i swap them in and out sometimes multiple times a day but I work on every single game we do and I'm typically juggling two or three at a time in fact the heavy metal we have came from your house correct yeah I brought it back so we could bring it to you when I was done with it and I brought it back to the office last week Wason enticed me to do it quicker by driving me with some lunch which was very nice of him I love that kid it was one of the nicest things that happened to me this year, Waston said, hey, you know, can you bring back that play field? Because we wanted to get it to you, Jack. And I said, sure, I can bring it any day this week. He goes, can you bring it tomorrow? He goes, if you do, he's like, if you do, I'll pick up Johnny's beef for lunch and bring it to the office for you. And I haven't had Johnny's beef since late, late last year, you know, because, you know, I'm not working in the office right now. And I'm like, absolutely. You know, I would have done it. I would have come by tomorrow no matter what. But you just made it even better. so yeah and he bought that for me and brought it to work you know on its way and that was so nice of him it really like was the highlight of that week for me that's awesome I haven't had a good Italian beef sandwich in a long time yeah Waston's a pretty genuine dude I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right is it Meeges or Meeges I'm just going with Meeges that Scott Pilgrim movie was fantastic Yeah.
    89:59
    And there was a video game for it. Was there really? I think it might have been like an indie team that made it, though. Oh, okay. But, yeah, I loved that movie. And every person in that movie ended up being like a DC or Marvel superhero.
    90:17
    I should go back and re-watch that. Yeah. It's been a long time. It's wild. I thought it was real clever. um uh Crow by the way there is a pinball machine called Knight Rider but it isn't about Knight Rider it's with no K it's N-I-G-H-T it was like a trucking theme it was about a truck stop and a young lady serving a meal I remember that being a pretty fun game yeah Knight Rider is pretty cool um I think there was one at Stern for a while oh really I think Ed Robertson won it in an auction at Expo, but he couldn't bring it all the way to Canada, so it just lived in Jody's office forever. Isn't that Arch Rivals? Also Ed Robertson's game? And then we have the Gen 1 Big Buck Hunter in the cafeteria.
    91:12
    Yep. I mean, even... I don't know if Ed's watching, but Ed, if you're watching, are we charging you rent for these things? That thing's huge. I don't think Roth Rills even has, like, a Gen 1 Big Buck Hunter. I told the Big Buck Hunter team that there was one of those in the stern kitchen. They're like, what the hell? Wow. You know what? I could guarantee you George Petro saved that. He's another guy, like, kind of like Brian and me, where he saves a lot of stuff, you know, like historical artifacts. I love, oh, dude, the Petros are, I love those folks. getting to know the big buck hunter community and doing all their like show commentary and stuff has been pretty wild and getting to like become friends with Mark Ritchie in an environment that has nothing to do with pinball was pretty cool when I worked over there at Play Mechanics for a few years like the highlight of my working there was absolutely working with Mark Ritchie like it was just fun to hang around him and talk pinball and anything else he was easily the best friend I had at Play Mechanics when I worked there.
    92:17
    Play Mechanics is what I was trying to say. I kept saying Roth Drills. Yeah. Well, they're... It's like the same difference but not really. Well, Roth Drills is the parent company so they like own Play Mechanics basically.
    92:30
    So it's all one big family split into two studios. Yeah. All gas, no brakes machine. I just flipped that looking. check out the left hand spinner on the low angle camera it has a hypnotism effect oh yeah it's got that pulse and spiral artwork going on it I wonder if I could get you a cool shot of that but it's pretty sick NDI we'll see if my NDI stuff's working I'll get you a close up of it turn off the microphone yeah that should work let's see alright you know what we're not going to do that because I'm going to lose Mike forget it just look at it internet would you look at it sweat so I did not know that putting the ball in the pop bumper is helping me to quarter hunt oh yeah because it's a frenzy mode so what gives you the most twitch closures in a frenzy mode is Spinners and pop-up first. Yep.
    93:44
    Hell yeah. Spinners and pops. Take your puny haul. Can you show the cabinet art? I mean, I can. Yeah. Here, I'll do it anyway. I'll just carry... I'll copy Mike over.
    94:05
    I'll grab Mike and I'll slip him over. We'll see if this works. All right. So, let's see. Grab Mike. Got him.
    94:13
    Go to remote. Hopefully this works. It did not work. Oh, wait, hold on. I just see a black screen now. Oh, we can still hear you. Okay, yeah, it's going to be black for a second. Hold on. Okay. Connect.
    94:32
    This will make it work. Give me a second. All right, let's see. I feel like I'm right in the middle of Jack's studio with all these wonderful games there's so many great games here oh there it is oh we can still hear you I guess we don't have to see you yeah that's fine alright so first off oh of course since we're in a track mode it's not going to show up but here I can show you the cab so this is the premium that we're looking at
    95:07
    yelling and blood and stuff. Pretty cool. I just got wires everywhere, so, you know, there's that. Let's see if we can get that. There it is. There's the pattern.
    95:32
    Wow, wow, wow. I don't get to see the nice cabinet art in my basement because my games are literally like three inches apart from each other side by side you know so I can't see any of the side art on any of my games only the ones that are on the end of that row do I get to see oh dope I'm glad that worked man the so the picture of me wearing the Stern hat that Stern posted recently, I look like I got punched in the face twice, bro. I have, like, the biggest, puffiest, like, black eyes. I don't – it's become a meme. People are just constantly sending me pictures of them, like, with fun little meme captions about how I got my butt kicked. That's what happens when Gary gets mad at me.
    96:27
    He pops them in the eye. So they're like, Jack, come here, come here. Pop, just real quick, not expecting it. next time don't talk shit about our games sorry Gary oh good old Gary Bear I love Gary I've learned a lot from Gary in the four just shy of four years that I've been at Stern he's got great stuff he's got so many great stories because he's been in the industry since he was a little kid going to events with Gary like he he becomes my drinking buddy and the stories he has are so freaking mind blowing especially if you're a pinball fan, but even if you're not, he's got some stories to tell. Oh, man, he told me a few stories of Stern Electronics when they were making the video games, and like the video game boom of the early 80s, because you know, I grew up loving that stuff, and some of those Stern games that they made back then were some of my favorites, and any game I read about, he had a story, just like, he snapped the fingers, he would tell a story, like, his recollection of all that stuff was amazing. Yeah.
    97:29
    He's a... Wait, he's like a lawyer by... He went to school for law, I believe? So I think that makes you have a good memory? I don't know. I'm not sure, but yeah, he's very sharp. He's got great memory on him. He... I think he's at work like every freaking day, too. Oh, for sure. He's masked up... That guy puts in more hours than most people. Sitting in his office by himself, just doing his dang thing. That's right. A fedora Did you take that from Charlie? Yeah, it's a small hat Internet, calm down We have a premium COVID's been brutal This game is still making $100 a week Really? Heck yeah That's awesome Yeah, Mitch Berserk is absolutely High on the list Of favorite games to me Oh, Berserk Yeah They put an 8-bit, 16-bit version of that in Deadpool.
    98:28
    That's right. Yeah. Stern, you know, I don't know who out there in the internet land is fans of the old Laserdisc games, you know, like Dragon's Lair, but Stern had one which is actually my favorite Laserdisc game. It was called Cliffhanger.
    98:43
    And I have a distinction of being tied with one other person for the world record in that game. Oh, really? Is it Billy Mitchell? No, it's... I think his name is Chris Clatchy. He hangs out at the Galloping Ghosts all the time. Oh, sure. Fantastic game player.
    99:01
    I put up the world record, and then I knew how to do a perfect game, and I was just too tired to keep playing to do that. And I'm like, well, nobody's going to play this whole game. It's not that popular.
    99:12
    And beat me. And sure enough, like a week later, that guy did the perfect game. He figured it out. And then so I went back to do the same thing. And so we're tied, but he got the perfect in first because he's younger than me and didn't have to go home and go to bed that day.
    99:29
    And also, as a whole, that guy could probably play, you know, run circles around me playing video games. He's got a lot of records. Oh, man. But I'm proud to share the spotlight of he and I are the two guys that have the maximum possible score. So we're co-record holders. I uh the only record that I hold is the highest score on a recorded game of Qbert's Quest the pinball machine the one that has like six flippers and they're all aimed in weird freaking places also I'm pretty sure that game's like heckin rare cause people would've beat the crap out of me a long time ago which one? that Qbert one? yeah oh yeah it was Qbert's uh I think it was Cuba's Quest, yeah. Yeah, that is really rare.
    100:20
    David Thiel. I remember I was at a pinball event in Canada where David Thiel was there, and I was streaming that game, and David came over, and he's like, yeah, man, I got some stories about this game. Most of them were terrible. I was like, oh, wow. Okay, cool. Like, yeah, they used my sounds without asking me. They did all this crap. I'm like, okay.
    100:42
    Good old pinball. What are you going to do? Oh, Brian threw out a question for a prize. Nice. Wait, he did? Yeah. It looks like he did, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah.
    100:58
    Wait, what was the question? Did everybody see it? Let me see if I can scroll up and find it. Uh-oh. Also holds a record for most NOES say, how about a little nappy? Oh, yeah.
    101:17
    Nightmare on Elm Street is a wild game. Is he literally saying, how about a little nappy? I think it is.
    101:29
    I don't think he asked a question. Oh, yes, an hour ago. Never mind. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian, it's your turn to come up with another one, though. How about that? That's the last one. Yeah. I think, how many have we given away so far? Three?
    101:45
    One, two, three, yeah. All right, so the next one we give away, I think, is the last one, so let's milk it a little bit. Okay.
    101:56
    All right, I'll leave that question, because I've asked two, so Brian's owed another question. This is a great opportunity to get the internet to say whatever you want them to say, Brian.
    102:14
    Imagine having a tilt in the game. Why was I not... I've got to check my tilt, Bob. Jack, the word on the street is that you just pull them out of all your games.
    102:25
    You know what? I started that meme, and it's really backfiring on me. Doug Dimmadog yeah you know what Harrison did to me I was like I was notorious for gaspabing on my games in my office yeah and when we were working on Jurassic Park he set the tilt he put a plumb bob on my tilt mechanism on one of my cabinets and he made it really sensitive and then he loctited it so I couldn't change it wow dude and it was like you sneezed on it and it would tilt Like I ended up having to break the thing off To get it off I would have been mad at him If it wasn't so funny I would have been mad at him It was pretty good Killer camera angle Yeah baby Oh come off Alright let's ask that question Whatever Brian says We'll reiterate so that everyone can hear it But I'll give him a minute to figure that out Okay whose name S-Rad This is for you buddy Enter your initials. Pass. Space. Red. So what are you doing for Thanksgiving there, Mike? We're just having it here with our family, you know, our immediate family here in the house.
    103:44
    I usually make the stuffing every year, like my family's recipe of stuffing. And we got, you know, a big turkey and make a whole bunch of other stuff. Oh, yeah. Do you mess with the green bean casserole? My wife is making that today, actually, as we're doing this. I don't eat it, but it's my favorite. It's my favorite thing on the planet. But everybody else loves it. Our younger of the two daughters is home from college for a winter break. She came home end of last week. Heck, yeah. Yeah, so it'll be good. It's my favorite meal of the year. And then I get leftovers for days, so it's awesome. Sandwiches for the rest of the week. Yeah, well, just good plates of leftovers. You know, stuff in potatoes and some vegetables.
    104:28
    Oh, man. I keep forgetting that's tomorrow. Yeah, Thanksgiving's tomorrow, Internet. Me just, are you in Canada? Because Canadian Thanksgiving's in October, right? Oh, yeah, that's true. If you're Canadian, that doesn't count. TGM, thank you. Okay, Brian's typing the question now, the last trivia question for a prize. Okay, here's the question. So, Internet, we are not going to be streaming traditionally tomorrow the way we normally do. I'm going to bring that Mr. Arcade Emulator home, and the wife and I are going to be streaming for you after we put the kids to bed. Sound good? You have no choice. I'm surprised that you're not just going to take the day off, Jack. That's pretty, that's good that you're going to be there for the people after they're in their food comas. Listen, if I'm sitting in a food coma, all I want to do is veg and, like, watch anything that isn't, like, some garbage old movie I've seen a million times. Sure.
    105:20
    After you put the kids to bed, whoa. That wasn't an innuendo internet. That was the... He has kids, and they need to go to sleep. He has two children that need to sleep.
    105:31
    White Claw Overload, yep. All right, let's see. Oh, that ain't it. All right, Brian's asking the questions now. All right. Let's put the virtual spotlight on Brian. Brian!
    105:44
    Here it is. At the beginning of Stranger Things, the kids are playing D&D and are up against the Demogorgon, but the dice goes off the board and they all have to leave. What number did the dice land on? Oh, people are already answering.
    105:59
    And would he have survived or not? You know what's funny about this? You could type whatever. You just spam numbers in chat.
    106:12
    That's literally what's happening. 42, 69. It's a two-part question, so you need to answer both parts correctly. Oh. And Brian knows the answer, so he has to be the one to call out the winner. Two-parter, you have to answer both.
    106:30
    Well, it gives me a minute to grab another beverage. Mike, entertain the Internet. All right. I don't know what to tell you. Anybody got any questions while you're throwing out answers?
    106:41
    Want to win? Okay. Pocket wins. Jack I worked on every single game I see behind you in your video there yeah every single one I'm proud to have worked yeah I'm proud to have worked on every one and the ones I have in my house dedicated would just be I have a dedicated Batman but I've got playfields for all those other ones except heavy metal because you have my heavy metal playfield I keep telling the internet like if Stern and I ever have a fallout there's two games that disappeared from the studio, and that's Deadpool and Batman.
    107:24
    I love both of those games. That's great. Pocket. So, was it Pocket who won? Pocket, send me a DM with all of your... But I think he won before, right? Pocket, did you win before? Yeah, so Pocket was excluded from winning, so somebody else has to win. So whoever answered it correctly second after Pocket should get it. However you want to address that. Yeah, I'll leave it to Brian. He's reading the chat. I was looking at the games behind Jack to see which ones I have.
    108:03
    Yeah, it's wild out here. I have Gomez's personal Sam testing cabinet from his garage that he gifted me. Nice. That he prototyped, like, all the games he's done since he's been a contractor. Wow. Which is wild. Yeah, this thing belongs in a museum, and I have it sitting frickin' right here.
    108:26
    The only Sam game I own is I have a Tron. I would love some Stern D&D games, man. But, you know, we're... So I've carved out a cool job for myself, but it's also become a thing where, like, I get to show off all the new games now, but the old games...
    108:43
    So, aww. That's okay. It's a nice problem to have, though. Hey, it's an amazing problem to have. You have a certain DMD behind you. I guess heavy metal counts. Shut up, Internet. Okay? Stop it.
    108:58
    I'm going with whatever forever since he had seven before I claimed the winner. Okay. Whatever forever. Send me a DM with your, probably here on Twitch because everyone else has sent it here on Twitch. Send me your name and mailing address. and I will send that over to Stern and they'll get you the dang thing.
    109:23
    Whatever forever. Look at these freaking Demogorgons. They're so cute. I mean, they're not cute, but...
    109:38
    It's even sculpted all the way around, like in the back. They got the delts and the quads. I don't know what muscles are, but...
    109:48
    All right. So is there anything else we haven't covered, Mike? Talking about the old stream thing? I think we covered it all, for the most part, that I can remember. Yeah. Yeah, excuse my brain fog, only because I had to release three code releases for this week for everybody, So that ate up a good chunk of my last couple of days. Yeah, we got code updates for this game. We got code updates for Black Knight and for AIQ. Yep. Yeah. So it was a Thanksgiving code extravaganza for the people.
    110:28
    You're welcome, Internet. Yeah. Code? Where's the code? Remember when that was a meme? Yeah, you know, people are stuck at home, and a lot of people have games at home now. So we figured it was a good time to try to coordinate a couple of code releases for people over the extended holiday that most people are probably having to spend at home instead of traveling to visit their loved ones and friends.
    110:52
    Oh, it makes a lot of sense. What was my favorite pinball machine I worked on? Oh, man, that's a tough one. Uh-oh. Well, this one ranks super high on the list because of the large amount of involvement I had on it. So this game is going to go down in history as being one of the most special to me, for sure. That's great.
    111:11
    There wasn't a game I didn't enjoy. I liked working on everything for various different reasons. I said that he really hated Batman. I heard him say it. No, I was just about to say I loved working on Batman with Lyman so much that I bought a Batman at my house. Yeah. That was one of the first two projects I did, you know, when I came to the company.
    111:31
    So that game was pretty special to me. And also, you know, Lyman and I came up with that channel changing thing together. So that was a cool new feature that hadn't been seen before. So that alone, I'm super proud of that one. I'm real proud of working on Deadpool with Tanya because he gave me a fair amount of input, you know, to work with him on game rules and whatnot. And that was a real enjoyable process. But it's hard. It's like picking your favorite kid, you know. Listen, I get asked that all the time, and I'm like, if I say any game, Gary's going to call me and tell me to shut up. Iron Maiden was a ton of fun for me. My only input on any rule was just my skill shot, but I like that band a lot, and it's such a great game, and Keith is a pretty good friend of mine at work.
    112:20
    So, again, I can give you reasons why I like working on everything for sure. Yeah. It's not a place to say, like, I like this better than that, but to give people why you like each other. Yeah. So, you know, I have a really unique position where I work with every lead designer, you know, software guys especially. And each one, I could give a little, you know, I could tell you why I like working with each one, and every answer will be different, you know, for the different people. like I genuinely enjoy working with all of them. And I have a good relationship with all of them, which is, you know, real important to me. Oh, yeah.
    113:03
    Oh, come on, game. Let's try that again. Dart. Evolve faster. Okay. what is the the thing that you think has changed the most on this game since it was released that's a good question let me think well when we when we first released it you know the game was you know it wasn't complete obviously so there were some stuff there were some modes in there that didn't have the proper rules fleshed out yet.
    113:40
    So I'd say the modes themselves probably changed the most from when we first shipped it to what it came a few months later.
    113:50
    That was the biggest change. The multiballs, then the multiball since the beginning, like we had that all planned out to get going and implemented because it was one of the first things you see.
    114:01
    But I'd say the modes for sure changed. BoardGamer says they just got the MXB skill shot on their pro. Nice. Congrats.
    114:11
    How dare you. Does it play a video or something? There's a graphic that pops up, yeah. Do I need to take the effing glass off of this thing, dude?
    114:24
    I'm actually supposed to get a bunch of points. RB, what's up, dude? We were just shouting you out earlier.
    114:33
    Oh RB on the technical front I have a GoPro Hero Black 8 They can do a live 60 FPS out right now That why we only getting like 30 Is that something they can fix later with like a firmware upgrade Yeah. Or is it a limitation of the hardware? It's like the GoPro like 4s can do it. So it's just something that they screwed up in the firmware. Gotcha. Yeah, so it's common. We just don't have it yet. SLC Punk, my initials are MX3. Those are my actual initials for my name. Mostly Spring Vinegar. Most extreme vinegar. My parents were hippies. They named me most extreme vinegar.
    115:23
    Is your middle name Xavier or something? It is, yep. And here's some MXV trivia, which would have been a good answer, but nobody would have known this unless they grew up with me or something. If I had been born just a couple hours later, my birthday would have been the same numbers as my initials and Roman numerals, which would have been 1015. How the hell do you sit there and figure that out, especially if it isn't even what it is?
    115:51
    Well, my initials are 1015, 1015 in Roman numerals. And then I was born October 14th. I'm like, man, if I just stayed in for a couple more hours, those two things, I was a little too eager to get into the world, I guess. Heck yeah. Yeah. Jack, does your GoPro, wait, Jack, does your GoPro is 16 by 9? Yeah.
    116:16
    It's a known problem with the thing. So we might have to buy, like, a crappy old GoPro 4 to get, like, the sexy, the sexiness. Andrew, thank you, buddy. Yeah, Caster, my initials became, like, my gimmick name. You know, people just call me MXP instead of Mike or Michael because, you know, it was born largely out of me putting my initials in games everywhere. And then I just started using it like when I would sign emails or anything.
    116:44
    And then from my photography, I do concept photography. You know, it's like I call that MXV photography.
    116:51
    And yeah, for my website, when I write it, like, you know, I don't go by my name. I just go by MXV. So it became like a professional name on top of actually just being my initials.
    117:03
    And Mike is a very common name. so it helps distinguish me from the many other Mikes. So many Mikes. Yeah, I mean, we have a few at Stern. Yeah. I know at least, yeah, I know, well, I know at least four, including myself, at least four Mikes at Stern.
    117:23
    All right, upside down, give it to me, baby. So, Mike, right now you have, obviously we're not going to say, but you have, like, games that are coming down the pipeline soon from Stern at your place. I can't confirm or deny that, but typically that would be the case, yeah. I work on everything as we develop them.
    117:51
    So if Stern was ever coming out with another pinball machine, which who knows? if it'll ever happen yeah we might do another one someday you know this pinball thing seems to be catching on with people so we might make another one yeah that's fair yeah but yeah I mean you know much like my office in the Stern building you know would have the latest stuff in there that I'm working on and maybe something that we're you know developing that could be coming you know my home office could have those things too. That's awesome. Yeah. Jack, I want a Demogorgon or not? Hell no.
    118:32
    I think we're out of Gorgons. I officially gave away my Demogorgon, which I'm sad about. Okay, whatever. I'm going to kiss this one for you, okay?
    118:45
    I don't have COVID, but you might want to clean it anyway. You'll do this if you shout, Mike, depending on how many of us are in the building at a time. At least three or four. I think would turn around I mean there's two Mikes just in product development myself and Mike Kizavat alone Mike Kizavat did the voice of who on TMNT I can't remember oh I forget he did a couple of the voices him and his brother have done voice work for us on a few titles and they're great at it one of them did Shredder and the other one did Krang but then some several other voices too but yeah that That's awesome.
    119:27
    Going to sign it yet? You want me to sign this one? Listen, no one wants my heckin' signature. Get up there, please, mom! Dang it.
    119:40
    How far behind is the screen for you, Mike, when you're watching live on the Twitch? I don't notice it too bad if I'm not watching you talk. If I'm looking at your camera, your mouth is moving way ahead. It's like watching a dubbed-in movie. You know, you'll never defeat me, Mike Viticorno. Yeah, it's probably a good three or four seconds, I think. OK, it's not bad.
    120:05
    Get up. One million. This mode, I think, is the hardest mode. Thanks for the kind words, Testership. I look forward to when, you know, there's a vaccine and people can go out again safely. safely that you know i look forward very much to the day that the pinball shows resume and i could be out there with all the people challenging me and talking about our games you know like yeah touring with the marco folks for the you know the pinball show circuit every year that's a real perk of my job like something i really am very uh happy that they let me do um they trusted me to be like a representative for the company you know it became a real perk for me. It's one of the highlights for sure.
    120:53
    Oh, there you go, RB. Congrats to the dev team. I really love this game and it's the best for me, the best of 2020. Damn. Wow, thank you very much, RB.
    121:02
    RB Flip Frames. Yeah. I was a big fan of the show from when it first aired. My wife and I both watched it together. We binge watched them both when both seasons happened. When I found out we were going to be doing this especially with Brian, like I was super excited because it's like a theme that I really liked and it gave me a great excuse to re-watch them a few more times you know while I was traveling to all those shows I had my iPad and I loaded up I loaded them up with the episodes and just watched them on the plane and was making notes and stuff, it really made the time go by quickly on those flights yeah I need to check this show out again. It's been a hot minute. I don't think I watched the last season that just happened.
    121:57
    Yeah, whatever. This game, if you played it in February, it's really come a long, long, long way since then. Since February, it was still pretty early.
    122:07
    And then, you know, especially like the past six months for sure, it really took a giant leap forward. You know, obviously now we're at 1.0. But the last six months worth of updates were pretty substantial.
    122:23
    I had a great ball one, and now I'm draining all my balls. That makes me still shot. Stop! How many units are expected to be produced in this game? That is not a number that Stern shares. No, it's not. I don't know that you can even predict, really. But you, I mean, if you wanted to guess, you could look at, the only number they make public is how many LEs they made. Yeah.
    122:57
    There are no drawings for the total isolation, and there is not drawings in the demo Gorgon mode either. Got it. Because both of those were very lucrative as they were, so they didn't really need the enhancement so much. It's like my goal of the drawings was to really entice people to want to finish the modes and do well in them because then they get, it helps them out further down the road in more than one way. So there's nothing worse than like if people just want to time out the modes just to get to quote unquote the good stuff. Like I want it all to be the good stuff. So like with the drawings, it's like I want to finish every mode and I get bummed if I didn't get that drawing, you know, because the more drawings I get when I get those wizard modes, it's like, yeah, I'm going to get way more money points.
    123:49
    Heck, yeah. Well, Mike, we're at the two-hour mark, my dude. If you let me know what you want to do, bro. Are we chilling? Are we vibing? Are we done? I'll sit for a little bit longer. Yeah. I can maybe hang out for another 15, 20 minutes or so if you guys are still going to go. You want a small topper hint? We have the topper on here, but I installed it upside down, so I can't show it right now. I see the topper right above Jack's head. It's... Bling!
    124:18
    Danger things. Mm-hmm. All right, who gets this? Andrew, this is for you, buddy. Andrew. K-E-T. Well, um... I hate putting the wrong letter in.
    124:48
    Steve Ritchie could put his name in super fast, or his initials in super fast without looking. And it blows my mind that he's able to do that. Oh, yeah, he always likes to show that off. Yeah. It's unbelievable. And he doesn't ever mess it up, either. It's like, bam, done. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. I didn't mean for that to be a link. Uh-oh, there was a link?
    125:08
    Yeah, it said like 802.anything. Wi-Fi retrofit? There's Wi-Fi coming, ladies and gentlemen. George talks about it on the podcasts and the stuffs and the hey-hey. Yeah, I mean, it's public knowledge that Wi-Fi connectivity is coming for sure for our games. I can't speak as the details or one, obviously, but it is something that we are doing. that Georgia's made that public in multiple platforms. We don't leak stuff here, Internet.
    125:41
    Don't get me in trouble. That's a good question, Blue Zeus. The current crop of our Stern games have tons of feature adjustments to try to give people of different skill levels a way to tweak the games to kind of fit their levels better. So anything from like how often the extra balls appear to how many extra balls to the difficulty of lighting locks or things like that or how many things are spotted for you. There's barb timers. Yeah. I mean, we really – you could really – like you could really go down a rabbit hole of tinkering with your game settings to try to fit your play style and your skill set, you know. And then the beauty is as you get better, become a better player, you can tweak it and make it harder to make it more challenging so it doesn't get easier and boring for you. And then if you've got young kids or people that are more casual players that don't really know the ins and outs of the ball, you can make things more accessible for them so they can see a multi-ball faster or start a mode faster.
    126:47
    So it gets to be out of hand on paper where you're like, wow, there's like 100-something settings in this game. But really it's like a necessity because, you know, people keep these games in their house sometimes for many, many years. I've got games I've owned for over 20 years, you know, and the ability to be able to tweak that stuff to make, to keep it interesting to you or appeal to like, like if I have my nieces and nephews come over, you know, like they play at a different skill level than me. I can make the games more fun for them. Yeah, exactly. Less frustrating for folks that aren't typically used to playing pinball. Yeah. for sure. So I can't really recommend one because you can't really make that blanket statement because the different settings would apply to different people's needs or desires. I would just say experiment with what works for your skill set.
    127:39
    Remember when we put Avengers on 10 balls and I probably could have played probably forever? It really depends on what your skill set is.
    127:49
    The TK Lock Power setting is for the strength of which that diverter pulls in and also there's one setting I think for the strength of which the coil pulls the magnet away from the back panel to release the ball. Got it.
    128:03
    Because the magnet itself, like we mentioned earlier, is not powered. It's a passive magnet. But the diverter and the coil for the release have adjustable settings in there.
    128:20
    Calm down. Okay, multi-ball is Rade. And I'm shooting nothing. There we go. One thing I've done personally in a couple of my games is sometimes I'll dial down the strength of the coil for the slingshots a little bit. Because to me, they always fire. They seem to fire so hot, like I feel like they're hitting it. So I tend to dial those down a few notches. And that really depends on the game, too.
    128:49
    But there's some. Like, I had a Sturgeon Star Trek for a long time, and I turned those slingshots down. They just seemed crazy hot to me at the time that I had the game. I had it for about four and a half years. So that was when I turned down, not to make the game easier, just to make it, like, less violent, I guess.
    129:08
    Violent's a good way to put it. Yeah, a lot of people like to turn down the eject power from when it kicks out of the ball trough into the shooter lane. Totally. So, and, you know, that's a smart one to turn down if you're a user at home because, you know, to try to keep it from getting marked up or whatever.
    129:28
    Woo! Walkie-talkie. Starts again for one thing. Uh-oh, Test Bishop, what did I do? Stay alive. Burn it back, burn it back, burn it back.
    129:44
    The UV kit. I remember when that was told to me at Stern before it was announced, and I was like, this is on all play fields? Like, even the pros are like, yeah. I'm like, that's freaking wild. Man, I'll tell you.
    130:01
    No one freaking knew about it. The thing that blew my mind is no one knew about it. It wasn't leaked. Yeah, we were so, we were, like, almost had, we had it, like, in our heads, like, all right, what's the over and under on how fast somebody finds it, you know? I almost leaked it like at what's that big consumer electronics show they're like hey this thing's cool and I said to the internet hey put a black light on this and then some people came over and were like shut up and I was like let me delete this video oh I remember that was at CES I think yeah yeah I remember that because I wanted to reach through the screen and hit you yep but it didn't get out It was amazing that nobody, like, saw that. Because some people really, like, look at their play field with a really critical eye, you know, to look for any deep. So I was surprised that they didn't just figure out, like, what's this? Because it's really, really hard to see unless you shine a black light on it, you know. But I'll tell you that when Lonnie coated up those lights and brought Brian and I in there to show us his first pass at it, we were just completely blown away by how cool it looked, you know. I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. Like, you know, I've got, like, when I get that game at home, I have to have these lights. Yeah, it's pretty rad. Yeah, it's awesome, and it just totally fits the theme.
    131:24
    And there's, like, little bits of, like, when the UV lights turn on, if you have the UV kit, give the game an actual good look. Because there's a lot of hidden little Easter eggs in all the UV art. Oh, yeah, for sure there is. Like, remember on an earlier stream we did at the studio, at Stern Deck with this game? We pointed out a couple. I remember you had the camera on there, and I was pointing to a couple of the little... We had, like, one of those high-intensity UV flashlights. Yeah, yeah. You'd go over, like, here's this, here's that. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Now, we didn't want to do... I answered this earlier, but I'll answer it again. Stag, we didn't want to do the... We never considered the reverse flippers because it had been done on a few other games. and not that it had been done poorly it was fun in those games but I feel like it would just feel too much like we borrowed it from another one of our games or two of our games because Simpsons had it and so did Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters wasn't that long ago so that one was absolutely still fresh in people's minds that it just felt too much like oh we just took it from Ghostbusters If I were messing with flippers for the upside down I would set them to be up by two Yeah, that's what we were talking about Yeah, that's what I thought Like I misread it That's what I thought the other person who asked that was talking about That would be extremely weird Like I've never seen I feel like that would do some serious damage to your coils Yeah, because like they'd be energized on to keep them off, right? You'd be turning them off to go down. Yeah. Like, when you're turning them off, then you're only... The flippers are dropping that with any force. They're only dropping it at the speed of how the string responds. Exactly. Yeah, so there'd be no snap to, like, the downward motion, you know?
    133:18
    It would just kind of, like, just droop down. Oh, man. Since it's fast short mode, it wouldn't burn the coils? Eh, I don't know. over the lifespan of a game being played.
    133:36
    Because you get upside down at least once every game. At least. Oh, for sure, yeah. I mean, it's pretty much a given you're going to get the first one. That's a guarantee that it's going to happen. Yeah.
    133:48
    Whereas, like, mass hysteria is something that, like, you don't get a lot. That was far out. That was pretty far out into the game. Yeah. like when I came to work you know Ghostbusters was like the second newest game that they had you know like Batman had just come out and so I never got a lot of time on Ghostbusters until I came to work at Stunner so I was learning it like when I learned about how to get that mode I would just shoot for the ghost to try to get that mode I think you were on our reveal stream for Ghostbusters maybe? No, I didn't work at Stern when Ghostbusters was released. Huh. I came to work at Stern right after Batman started shipping so. That was my first time meeting Zombie Yeti and I was like, this is a snarky son of a bitch. But he's like one of my best friends. I love Zombie Yeti. He's such a nice person and what a talented artist. Yeah. Amazing talent.
    134:51
    There's a cow hidden in here somewhere. Oh. You know, I forgot about that, Brian. That's true. Somewhere there might be a cow.
    135:03
    Beautiful. That's closer. This is the burn the kid mode. I used to call this mode burn well. Burn well? Yeah.
    135:18
    Oh, burn well. Oh, good warning. Good warning. All right, can we backhand? Got to burn that will. Yeah, you can backhand that inner loop shot. I do it a lot. There we go. Done and done.
    135:36
    Nice job. Burned him. All right, so we should be on our way to... Wait, we're still burning will. Okay.
    135:51
    Finish that burn. No, we don't use toddlers to stress test the machines because there's labor laws here in the States. True.
    136:05
    Man, one of the biggest reasons I miss going to Stern so much is it was Portillo's. I loved going to Portillo's. Oh, yeah. But thankfully, we just had a new one open up. I could walk there in about five minutes from my studio. Oh, that's the one that Josh Clay has been so excited about. He lives, like, across the street from it or something, doesn't he? You know. Yeah, he's been giving us regular updates, like, you know, via our Slack channel or whatever, for, like, the progress of when they were being built. So I feel like I watched it grow from Josh's updates. I was late for a stream for, like, an hour because the drive-through line was so heckin' long. It was wild. Oh, wow. The layout is pretty close, but some of the features change a bit for, I guess I missed what? How far is the final layout from the first draft of the game? Oh. Yeah, I think Brian shared some photos. There was, like, three banks of drop targets at one point. There was, like, a bank here, too, and a bank here, I think. Yeah, there was, like, at one point there was, like, two banks of drop targets side by side with, like, a gap. Yeah. And then ultimately, like, it turned out that the layout we have now ended up being the most fun version of iteration of the drop targets in the middle there. Yeah, buddy.
    137:28
    Thanks, Will. He's trying to talk to me. Thanks, Winona Ryder. Oh, gosh. It's your puny halt. Right.
    137:42
    Yeah, when we were working in the building, you know, like, Portillo's, like, I'd eat there at least once a week for sure. I eat there every single time I go to Cirque. Every time. Yeah, you know, once a week for sure. And what's nice in nice weather, you know, a group of us like Keith, me, and Rick, and a bunch of others, we would just walk there, you know. It's a nice, like, just shy of a mile walk. So you can kind of earn the Portillo's by walking there, you know. Earn it? I like it. Yeah.
    138:10
    Uh-huh. but I've only had it like maybe three times since the pandemic has been going on you know like my stepdaughter has gone to pick it up at the drive-thru for us a couple of times oh yeah a couple of in fact when she came home from college the first day she was home she got she went and got herself a little bit of drive-thru you got to because they don't have it where she goes to college I freaking love Chicago style hot dogs from Portillo's are like Chicago, they are like Chicago style hot dogs.
    138:47
    See, I like Portillo's food a lot, but I have places I like the hot dogs and especially the Italian beefs better than Portillo's. Oh, yeah. I don't think they do the Italian beef, the Chicago justice, but I think their Chicago dogs are pretty solid. I went to, my wife and I, I've never eaten at Super Dog, right? The famous Super Dog. Yeah, they got good hot dogs there for sure. Bro, we waited for like an hour and a half, and when we got our food, my wife's like, this tastes like Denny's, and I was like, yeah. I mean... I like it, but I would never wait an hour and a half. No, it was... I think her attitude of waiting for so long really diminished the flavor of what was going on. It'll do that for sure.
    139:34
    I think, like, you know, everybody's all crazy for that Gene and Jude's place. I think that's some of the worst hot dog I've ever eaten in my life. Gene and Jude's? Plus the fact that they're so anti-ketchup. To me, I'm not on board with that kind of discrimination. So I won't eat there out of principle that they hate ketchup. Why would you exclude a perfectly good condiment? And don't shame people that like it.
    140:01
    It's the shaming part. I was born in Chicago, and the only thing I liked to put on my hot dogs was ketchup. I'm like a little kid. you weren't beat with a belt by trying to put ketchup on your hot dog? no, not at all I find it irritating when people try to be like that doesn't belong on a hot dog I'm like, don't tell me how to eat I don't tell you how to wear your clothes hot dogs go hand in hand in the flavor profile that is a Chicago style hot dog where it has the entire effing garden on there I get it because ketchup is sweet and it's a very overpowering condiment Yeah, yeah. I was born three miles away from this ballpark, and I don't believe in your stupid elitism of what goes on a hot dog.
    141:20
    Someone in chat said they've been here for ten minutes and they didn't see the Demogorgon. Here, I'll show it to you in less than a minute. Ready? That was one shot. You got it ready now. I accidentally hit the wrong shot. We're going to life catch this, and then you just shoot it up here, and there's a Demogorgon. Yeah, that's one thing that did change since the early versus the game. The first Demogorgon was a lot harder to start the first time out. But it's like such a big, important toy that you've got to make sure. Exactly. And, like, Gary was, you know, insisted, like, you guys have to make that easier. And he was totally right. And when we did, like, it became like, then it felt right to everybody. Closer to the start button. Absolutely, yeah. We spewed a little too hard on our first pass of what it took to start that day.
    142:08
    I also had, like, five or six successful Demogorgon kills in, like, mouth kills tonight, which is a high score for me.
    142:18
    You should put a small Chicago ball cap on your gym cooking. True. Oh, have people been modding these the way they do Sparky from Metallica? Oh, that's right. People used to pass on some really cool paint jobs. Dude, they've done some wild stuff with that Sparky. Pull this thing off and paint it all crazy. I want to make this look like a sandworm from Beetlejuice.
    142:39
    Oh, that would be funny. No idea. We have the designer here. Yep. My custom Sparky's amazing. Oh, you have one? Yeah. I feel like if you own a Metallica, you have to have a custom Sparky. Oh, my God. Just put googly eyes on it. You're right. What the hell am I thinking, Blue Goose? It's genius. Yeah, I don't... Can you shake it around? Oh, my God.
    142:59
    to put a finish on the hot dog thing that's still going on the chat, I don't care what people put on their food, especially their hot dogs, you know. Like, I just personally don't like mustard or all the other gimmicks that are on the thing. But I'm a really picky eater. Like, I really do have, like, the eating taste of a young kid, you know. Like, I eat probably the same stuff I did when I was seven for the most part. But that's just, you know, but I certainly wouldn't shame somebody for what they put on their food, you know. I've seen people put ketchup on their fries, and I don't like to do that either, but I'm not going to. If you don't put it on your fries, you get your hands old. Yeah, I'm not going to tell somebody they're wrong for putting a condom in their food. No, you call that person a troglodyte or whatever.
    143:44
    But I never understood this weird hang-up people have of what goes on a hot dog just because you live in Chicago.
    143:53
    What about ketchup on eggs? Dude, I love ketchup on eggs. I don't do it, but I see lots of people do that. If I'm eating an omelet or straight up just eggs, I got hot sauce and ketchup on there. I see a lot of people do that. All day. Oh, God, it's so good.
    144:11
    Welcome to Food Talk with Jack and Mike. Yeah. When I'm at those pinball shows, like Food Talk is a regular thing with people. Yeah, man. Because you got to know what's around. yeah mostly was talk about In-N-Out burgers and Waffle Houses but I you know I love food like I'll plan my day around where I'm gonna go eat that day you know when I'm anywhere it drives my wife crazy she goes you wake up and you try to plan out what you're eating for lunch she goes you know I'm like yeah my dad was that way too like I need something to look forward to oh get it up so is there an opto inside of the demogorgon's mouth or how does it how does it read that so there's uh there's two for sure there's an opto in front of like a long range one that's in front of so like it detects hits to the body you know like if you just there's a long throw here there's a long throw like between the demogorgon and the ramp i'm pointing like people can see me.
    145:19
    Yeah, I can see it. And then inside the Demogorgon's mouth in the metal inside this metal bracket, there's an opto so it knows when the ball went in there and dropped down. Oh, heck yeah. So there's a couple of pairs of optos that play there for your interaction with the Demogorgon. Alright, Internet, this is going to be the last game of the night. Thank you all for hanging out tonight. Big shout out to Mike Vinicore and Brian Eddy for being here to answer any questions. If you have any last-minute questions, we're just going to play this game out and then call it. But I think Mike covered pretty much everything.
    145:56
    Yeah, I think so, too. It was good to be back on here with you, Jack, doing this again. It's been so long I missed it. Well, we've got to get some more Zoom action going on with if Turnover makes another game. Yeah, hopefully we'll make another game because, you know, I certainly would love to participate in these things more regularly if we do. Me, too. Yeah, this video, by the way, is being recorded live on Twitch. I know it's rare that I do that now with the DMCA stuff, but we're going to take a chance on this. We're going to leave it live on Twitch. I'm going to upload it to YouTube so that you can watch this, and it will live in perpetuity.
    146:36
    Brian, thank you again, Mardude, for being here. Yeah, that's how the game does, as of 1.0, like all the planned features that we had for the game are in the game now. It's not missing anything. I think that's the idea of 1.0 is like everything that could be in the game is in the game. Not that like it doesn't need maybe some massaging down the road, but everything that had an idea for the game is in here now. Correct. Yeah, like the goal of 1.0, it signifies feature complete. So all planned features for the game are in there. it's not missing any modes, like everything that in the game does something that's supposed to do.
    147:23
    Like, you know, for example, Turtles shipped, you know, with 1.0 software. Mm-hmm. But there were some updates to Pollux and whatnot, but it shipped with, it shipped feature-completed.
    147:38
    Yeah, Brian, congrats again, my dude. Your first game back in pinball. It's freaking rad. Yeah, like I said, I'm glad Brian's back in pinball.
    147:54
    Selfishly, because I love working with him, but also because he's made some great games over the years.
    148:00
    It's a shame he'll never make another pinball machine. Yeah, I hope that we make some more games so Brian can do another one. It's a damn shame. Sorry. Hey, it's been a good run, Brian. Thanks, buddy. I do have many of Brian's games that he designed over the years in my home. that I've been playing for years. Yeah, we, uh... We've had this pool sharks here forever, but, like, we've played the life out of that thing, so we're... It's on to greener pastures now.
    148:29
    Yeah, when the pandemic's over, I need to downsize a little bit because my basement's overflowing, so I'm actually going to probably sell a few games I've had hanging around for a long time to make some space, and then I'll put that money into, like, fixing up my house for some home improvement. Some sort of, like, adult Rothmeyer label. Yeah, some, like, grown-up, some grown-up non-sense responsibility.
    148:53
    But right now I'm overflowing where, like, I can't even play every game down here because I've got games in front of games. Mike, I'm in the exact same boat as you, my dude. I keep trying to get games back and they, with one that I give away, two show up, so I... I don't know what to do with myself anymore. it's awesome to be back to work with all the amazing people at Stern, Harkins, back to the Williams Valley days, a lot of passionate pinball people. Hell yeah, dude.
    149:20
    Ad 104, great. Oh, we got him. Oh, yeah, I was just going to say, now I'm watching ads. Well, you're watching ads? Yeah, is that new? Like, I've got you. I'm not logged in as a user, so I'm just a guest watching on my other computer here above my laptop that I'm zooming from. So, yeah, right now I'm on ad two. mid-roll ads. Let's get them. Yeah, add two of eight. What the fuck? Alright, now I'm at adding three of eight. So multiply 30 seconds times five. There's no way they're 30 seconds apiece. This one is because it's got a timer going on it. Can you skip them?
    149:59
    No, but maybe a logged in user might be able to skip them. I don't know. It's time we introduce you to something called Adblock. Of course, ads pay me, but The inconvenience is... I can still hear you, so it's okay. Actually, I just realized above the stream is a small version of the... Above the chat, I can still see the... Oh, there's picture-in-picture. Yeah, there's picture-in-picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they do it like AEW Wrestling, where they still show you the match that's going on while the commercials are showing. The match is in a picture-in-picture. Pip it up. Yeah.
    150:33
    Hell yeah. Well, yo, Mike, again, congrats. This game's freaking sick. Brian. Thank you, guys. And thank you everybody who came and tuned in on this Thanksgiving Eve here.
    150:45
    It was a real pleasure to be able to interact with you guys, virtually at least. Yeah, man. We got to have you on more often, for sure. Yeah, we've been separated for so long. Like, I don't get to see you guys. I get to see the shows. Like, I was bummed I didn't get to see anybody this year. Because that is a real highlight of the gig, you know, is meeting all you folks in person.
    151:05
    Hell, yeah. well wait i can't answer crow's question i never answer that question because if i ever get the opportunity to make that theme i don't want somebody stealing it so um i never answer the question of like what's your dream theme or all i ever say which is the truth is i have a couple ideas in my head of themes i would love to do if i was ever given the opportunity um but until unless i did come was like i can't say wham the pinball machine you've been sitting on that idea for a long time.
    151:38
    I legit television ad break. Oh, crap. Sorry, Sean. Love you. All right. Ten seconds left of ad eight of eight. Oh, you're almost done. I'm almost done.
    151:49
    Definitely understand. Yeah, I mean, and that's just the way that... I think everybody in the industry would give you that same answer of, you know, there's competition out there. We're not the only pinball company on the planet, you know. You don't want somebody saying, oh, yeah, he wants to do that. Let's go get that and do it. Absolutely.
    152:10
    All right, Internet, thank you all for hanging out tonight. Again, Mike, thank you so much, my dude. You look great on the screen here, by the way. Thanks, man. I got my own tiny little vinegar here.
    152:22
    Brian, thanks for hanging out and chatting, my dude. I love you. Lonnie, if you're watching, I know you're not. Great job.
    152:30
    And I will – we're not going to be – I'm sure Lonnie will watch the playback, I'm sure, for sure. We'll see if any bugs showed up. We're not streaming tomorrow our normal stream, so just stay tuned and I'll announce what's going on. But we're probably going to be playing some old arcade games or something at home with the wife. And she's excited to yell at you all to give me money. There you go. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Thanks, Internet. Have a good night. I love you. Hey, Mike, hang around for a minute, please. Okay. All right. Do-do-do-do. you