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Episode 238 – By The Power Of Expo

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 12m·analyzed·Oct 29, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Slam Tilt recaps Pinball Expo 2024: new games, Dennis Nordman drama, and industry criticism.

Summary

Slam Tilt hosts Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale recap Chicago Pinball Expo 2024, covering new game announcements (Metallica Remastered, Alice in Wonderland by DPX), manufacturer news (Dennis Nordman's departure from American Pinball, Masters of the Universe licensing loss), and tournament results. The episode focuses on critical analysis of game quality, pricing strategies, and industry dynamics while discussing design choices and community reactions.

Key Claims

  • Alice in Wonderland trailer had terrible call-outs, worse than X-Men

    high confidence · Bruce directly observed the trailer at Expo; hosts compared call-out quality negatively to X-Men game

  • Dennis Nordman quit American Pinball after being offered an unacceptable contract

    high confidence · Nordman released a public statement contradicting David Fix's retainer claim; confirmed he left and has no current involvement with American Pinball

  • Masters of the Universe licensing deal for American Pinball is no longer active

    medium confidence · Ron claims '100% belief' based on conversations at Expo; presented as rumor sourced from NAP Arcade reporting

  • Metallica Remastered is priced at $13,096 for both Premium and LE versions

    high confidence · Ron references specific announcement details; price confirmed in official release details

  • Only 500 Metallica Remastered LE units will be produced

    high confidence · Official Stern announcement; Ron cites this as evidence of intentional FOMO/scarcity strategy

  • Star Wars comic book art option is back in production for December shipments

    high confidence · Official Stern announcement made before Expo; Ron confirms availability window

  • Zach McCarthy won the main Expo tournament bracket

    high confidence · Official tournament results; Ron notes bracket display was incorrect but outcome confirmed

  • Women's tournament went until 5 a.m. Sunday because participants wanted to avoid finishing Saturday

    medium confidence · Ron observed this decision and its consequences; Elizabeth Gieske (Stern employee) withdrew at 3 a.m. due to flight

  • Ron did not receive an invitation to Stern's Friday morning media event at Expo

    high confidence · Ron directly states Stern employees asked if he was attending, implying he was excluded from the media program

Notable Quotes

  • “Your call-outs are at Tim Kitt's row, World Cup soccer level, compared to what I heard in that trailer.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ early — Strong criticism of Alice in Wonderland call-out quality; comparison to X-Men

  • “Cash grab! 100% a cash grab.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ mid — Characterization of Metallica Remastered pricing and feature strategy

  • “None of this is true. I have no contract with American Pinball. They were not honoring my original contract...They offered me a contract that was completely unacceptable and said if I don't accept it, I will be terminated. So I quit.”

    Dennis Nordman (quoted) @ mid — Direct contradiction of David Fix's retainer claim; major personnel/business dispute

  • “I have six or seven games at various companies that will never be produced.”

    Dennis Nordman (quoted) @ mid — Nordman reveals unreleased games across multiple manufacturers, including Whitewater sequel

  • “I 100% believe this rumor is true...They had Masters of the Universe, but now they don't have it.”

    Ron Hallett @ mid — Insider perspective on American Pinball licensing loss based on Expo conversations

  • “The only person that had one out of the two of us. Why don't you still have it if it's such a great game?...It wasn't a great game.”

    Ron Hallett @ late — Personal admission that Ghostbusters 2016 pinball was not good despite sales success

  • “If you don't update your brackets or your final things, I'm not going to go through the trouble of trying to look up who won.”

    Ron Hallett @ late — Criticism of Expo tournament bracket management and communication

  • “It's the 40th Expo. It's not the 40th anniversary...you go to pinballexpo.com, it doesn't say 40th anniversary.”

    Ron Hallett @ late — Correction of widespread media mischaracterization about Expo's anniversary status

Entities

Dennis NordmanpersonDavid FixpersonAmerican PinballcompanyDPX (Dual Penetration Extreme / Dutch Pinball Exclusive)companyStern PinballcompanyMetallica Remasteredgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball facing significant business challenges: licensing losses, product delays, aggressive discounting, talent departures

    high · Masters of the Universe license loss; Pulp Fiction LE delayed 1.5 years; $1,000 price reductions on Barry's Barbecue; Dennis Nordman departure; hosts express concern 'doesn't look good'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern excluded Ron Hallett (Slam Tilt podcast host) from Friday media event, suggesting selective media access strategy

    high · Ron directly states Stern employees asked if he was attending media event he wasn't invited to; indicates intentional exclusion of critical voice from official program

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament bracket management failures and communication gaps reflect organizational issues at Expo level

    medium · Main tournament bracket incorrectly displayed; women's tournament went to 5 a.m. with incomplete results; Expo staff failed to update final standings; Ron refuses to validate unconfirmed winners

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Alice in Wonderland call-outs criticized as worse than recent X-Men game, representing quality regression

    high · Bruce's direct observation at Expo; 'Your call-outs are at Tim Kitt's row, World Cup soccer level' comparison; speculation that trailer company went bankrupt and DPX did their own

  • ?

    event_signal: Chicago Pinball Expo 2024 was largest ever with expanded tournament infrastructure but organizational execution issues

    high · Ron's one-hour walkthrough video documenting all areas; large tournament bracket expansion caused scheduling problems; factory tours at four manufacturers (Stern, Jersey Jack, American Pinball, Chicago Gaming)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.397

0:00
Oh, this is that video where they show you how to shake that ass? Cool. You know, I've always wanted to learn how to shake that ass. It's like on my bucket list. I want to shake my ass in a bucket. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Still Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with the other host, Bruce Nightingale. Why are people assholes like me?
0:40
I can't answer that. And this is episode 238. the big expo recap. Yeah, but why are people assholes like me? Oh, God. Okay, why are people assholes, Bruce? Ron doesn't even know what I'm talking about. I never have any idea what you're talking about. Exactly. Yes. I've been talking to this person since last Tuesday. They buy a pinball machine. Oh, God. Okay, hopefully they don't listen to the show. No, they're not. They're fucking newbie people just trying to sell something. So she has on her ad, how much will you give me? First it's like an auction, a silent auction. Oh, okay. It's $600 I won for. It was a dead countdown. Uh-huh. Oh, you won a countdown. A dead countdown, yes. So going up to the day, I'm like, hey, I need your address. She's like, I'll give it to you today and you're leaving. I'm like, well, I'm not going to be leaving then because if you don't give me the address, I ain't coming out. Because I can't get there. And she's like, well, I'll give it to you the day of. Guess what? She's waiting for somebody else to come and snipe me. Well, guess what? Friday, the day before, got sniped. Fucking people. Oh, well. I'm going to use my Australian for a little bit. God damn cunt. Okay.
2:01
Sorry, ladies. I had to do Australian there for that. You know, not the worst. Yeah, that was Australian, so it's perfectly okay. Perfectly okay. Okay. Fucking wanker. So I hate people. Yes, we know. People suck. Yeah, but I might have to get something else done. There's something else out right by her. Another place. Okay. You know, there's a thing called the Expo we should get into, Bruce. No, no, no, no. Like every other podcast did. Yeah, I know. Every other podcast. Yeah, it's already done their Expo review. I know. Exactly. All right. Well, we'll do some news items first, and then we'll get into the – Yeah, I was going by your pattern. Yes, my pattern.

  • DPX game designer could not demonstrate shots during stream and had to remove glass to hit them by hand

    medium confidence · Bruce references a stream where the designer (who tweaked Papa Duke's layout) struggled with gameplay demonstration

    • Alice in Wonderland
    game
    Star Warsgame
    Masters of the Universegame
    Barry's Barbecue Challengegame
    Whitewater Sequelgame
    Ron Hallettperson
    Bruce Nightingaleperson
    Zach McCarthyperson
    Jarrett Augustperson
    Elizabeth Gieskeperson
    Chicago Pinball Expo 2024event
    Wonderland Amusementscompany
    NAP Arcadeorganization
    Pinball Brotherscompany
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    Chicago Gamingcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Ghostbusters 2016game
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Masters of the Universe licensing deal failure for American Pinball represents missed opportunity and possible poor business management

    medium · Ron claims 100% belief based on Expo conversations; positioned as rumor from NAP Arcade; timing suggests deal fell through after Barry's Barbecue prioritization

  • ?

    community_signal: DPX employs 'two of the most polarizing media people' as new spokespersons, including 'Chrissy' (podcaster who previously criticized others for monetization)

    medium · Bruce's criticism of Chris for criticizing Marty/Haggis over money while joining money-taking company; described as 'true Dutch fashion' (ironic/problematic choice)

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dennis Nordman's departure from American Pinball represents significant creative talent loss and contract dispute with management

    high · Nordman's public statement contradicting Fix; claim of six unreleased games across multiple manufacturers; preference for Whitewater over Barry's Barbecue indicates creative priorities mismatch

  • $

    market_signal: Growing market skepticism about $13,000+ pricing and three-tier LE/Premium/Pro model sustainability

    high · Hosts criticize Metallica at $13,096 as 'cash grab'; reference past $1,000 discounts on American Pinball games; express concern about company health based on aggressive pricing strategies

  • ?

    product_concern: Multiple quality issues reported: Alice in Wonderland voice work poor despite playable mechanics; Star Wars game sucks despite art improvements; Magic Girl broke after 3/4 of first day

    high · Hosts' firsthand observations at Expo; Ron explicitly states 'the game sucks' about Star Wars while praising art; Magic Girl free play breakdown documented

  • ?

    product_strategy: Potential for ACDC Remastered following Metallica Remastered; speculation suggests easier licensing and concert footage options

    low · Ron and Bruce speculate ACDC next after Metallica; discuss Tron and Ghostbusters as alternatives; reasoning based on licensing simplicity and previous art variant sales

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern constraining Metallica Remastered LE production to 500 units to restore FOMO/scarcity narrative after previous LE demand failures

    high · Bruce explicitly states 'Cash grab! 100% a cash grab' in response to same price/limited quantity strategy; Ron acknowledges previous ACDC re-release success driven by limited availability and variant art

    • 2:45
    And the funny – this came out right after our last episode. Remember our last episode? I had the whole rant about call-outs, and I think X-Men kind of brought it up. Yes. The new X-Men game, that we need better call-outs and all that. Well, almost right after that, DPX, Dutch Pinball Exclusive – It's called Spinball Extreme. Or as we call it, Dual Penetration Extreme.
    3:10
    They released the trailer for Alice in Wonderland. Did you see this, Bruce? I did. It was fucking bad. Oh, it's terrible. That's why they didn't have the volume on at Expo.
    3:24
    Actually, no, they did. It was on like one or two. But it was like, I apologize to the X-Men. Yeah. Your call-outs are at Tim Kitt's row, World Cup soccer level, compared to what I heard in that trailer. Oh, my God. 24 time, wasn't it? Supposedly the deal was that whoever was going to make their trailer bail, so they had to do it themselves or something, just don't do it. They probably didn't get paid. Hey!
    3:53
    No, no, that's other companies. But it's just, oh, it was, they had, like, no actual gameplay footage. Nope. They just showed the game, and then they had the graphics. The graphics weren't too bad, but the call-outs, oh, my God. They weren't so bad. Okay, so Metallica, let's go, if you want to go trailer to trailer, Metallica really didn't have much, except for the Sparky, or whatever you want to call him now, the new guy who gets electrocuted. No, he's still Sparky. He's still Sparky. He's never called Sparky in the game at any point. I know, exactly. Oh, they had a trailer? I haven't seen it. Yes, they had a trailer for that, and that's the only animation they showed. They didn't show, and they showed some of the concert footage. But you didn't know it was for the game because they never showed it on the game. Yeah, but they showed the play field. You knew it was the same. Oh, no, you knew it was the same game, which, you know. I just remember the trailer. What's my favorite saying? Cash grab? Cash grab! Oh, yeah. It's 100% a cash grab. Yes. But Raymond's programming it and tweaking the rules and making them better, better, better.
    5:04
    So when's yours coming, Ron? Well, hold on. I was still on the damn DPX thing here. Dual penetration extremes. They have a new spokesperson.
    5:14
    You know that? Well, no. Well, that's the thing. So to help them with their whole media, they employed probably two of your most polarizing media people you could possibly pick in true Dutch fashion to advertise this. Then they had a stream where the guy who had designed it, i.e. took Papa Duke's layout and tweaked things so it would actually play. He was trying to show shots, and he couldn't hit anything, so he had to take the glass off and do it by hand.
    5:51
    So, oh, and then there was the artwork itself, where it's, did we talk about that the last episode? Was the art out yet? No, it wasn't out yet. What was it? It wasn't? It wasn't scantily clad yet. Well, they showed the art, and, I mean, it's based off the Zombie Eddie artwork, and it's porned up. Yeah. It's porned up big time. Yeah, Alice's clothes are getting ripped off on the side of the game and all that. Like, damn. Yeah. I mean, they know their audience. Middle-aged white dudes who don't realize there's something called Pornhub. The funny thing is who they picked as their spokesperson. Oh, my fucking God. What, Chris the podcaster? Chrissy. We call him Chrissy. Oh, God. Okay. And then he was making fun of another podcaster for taking money, but he's going to be now working for a company that took money for 10 years.
    6:46
    Okay, you lost me. He made fun of Marty. Oh, of Haggis. Yeah, accusing him of taking all this money and not saying what they were doing. Oh, that guy is such a fucking douchebag. Okay.
    7:01
    Okay. Quote me on that one, folks. All right. So they show the art, and it's all porned up, basically.
    7:12
    I thought they did have the art last time. I only had a piece of them. It wasn't the whole thing. I think they had the whole thing, because I remember mentioning the price, which I was incorrect. I said it was $12,000. I would like to apologize. That was incorrect. $12,500 is the price. I'm sorry. But that was interesting. So I was really looking forward to playing this thing at Expo. Then we also had another announcement, and we can tell our Zach this. I'm sure he's excited that the Stern Pinball's comic book art for Star Wars is back. It's back. The comic book. Better than ever. Yes. I'm so excited. The far superior art option. I actually prefer it, too. Is now available for you. I prefer it, too. So I'm going to be honest. I like it. Yeah. It will be in the production line in December. So if you want to get your comic book art for Star Wars Pro and Premium, get it in December.
    8:13
    Unfortunately, the game sucks, but I love the artwork. Oh, okay. Then before Expo, Dennis Norman came out with a statement. This is fucking hilarious. Oh, God. So, basically, Dennis Nordman, at some point, he must have heard David Fix's interview on Pinball News Podcast. Yes. And I listened to that, where basically Fix said that they kind of like have – he's not a regular employee now. He's on retainer, and if they make his game, that, you know, they'll bring him back.
    8:52
    And I'm not going to read the whole damn statement. No, but it was – Well, basically, yeah. And so then Nordman came out and said, no, that's bullshit.
    9:02
    So, yeah. What did he say? Nordman said, none of this is true. I have no contract with American Pinball. They were not honoring my original contract, so I told Fix I was going to work from home more days per week. I wanted to see my game go in production, which is the Whitewater sequel, folks. It's an unlicensed game, but it's a theme that everyone's familiar with. Yes, Whitewater. And it has an amazing play field. I've talked to two people who played it, and they agree that it played really good. It was way ahead of Barbecue and Development. Yes, I thought that Whitewood was done years ago. Yeah. But Mr. Fix decided to put Barbecue in front of it. They offered me a contract that was completely unacceptable and said if I don't accept it, I will be terminated. So I said, do you mean if I don't sign this contract, I'm terminated? I was told yes, so I quit. There you go. So as it stands today, I have nothing to do with American Pinball. It's like, okay. That doesn't sound like a retainer to me. No.
    9:59
    Norman says, I have six or seven games at various companies that will never be produced. There was three at Deep Root, which was one flipping whitewood, one full-size foam core, and one drawing. One at Chicago Gaming, a flipping whitewood. That's interesting. I wonder what that was. And three more at American Pinball, one flipping whitewood, which is whitewater, and two more drawings. So that was interesting. Yeah. I think I believe Mr. Nordman before Mr. Fix. What's that saying, baby? I think the truth could be somewhere in the middle, baby. Come on.
    10:32
    I'm the American dream of American pinball. I'm the personification of truth, justice, and the American way, baby. Come on. Well, I think you got caught with your pants down this time.
    10:45
    The truth may be somewhere in between, but, I mean, I don't think he's on retainer. I don't think he's doing anything there. No, I think he's going to have to go counsel. Yeah, I think that's over, bro. Yeah. Now, would he get paid for a game if they put it out on the line?
    10:59
    Don't know. I would have rather seen a Whitewater sequel than a barbecue game. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. But I also would rather see them do licensed games so they actually sell. Well, honestly, that is close to a licensed game you're going to get. Well, without it actually being licensed. Yes. So I think that would have sold better than barbecue. Yes. I mean, they're not selling well because they keep doing these sales where they're taking $1,000 off. I know. I mean, no one does that. Well, except who did that? Pinball Brothers did. Well, they took like $500 off or something on one of them. For Ripley. We gave them more stuff, and we lowered the price. Yeah, but there's literally the same games, and it's just like $1,000 off. Well, that worries me. That worries me. I mean, I want to see companies succeed, and I just don't like what I'm seeing there. It doesn't look good. No, no. They don't want to pay for a license. Oh, well, that's another news item, too. I know. That's where I'm going. I said something. Well, okay. The rumor is, rumor, Masters of the Universe is no longer coming from everyone. Pinball. Yep. So supposedly they had the license, but now they don't, and that's it. I can tell you that these are all from NAP Arcade, by the way. Hi, NAP. So I can tell you from being there and talking to lots of people, I 100% believe this rumor is true. Rumor, rumor. Yeah. They had Masters of the Universe, but now they don't have it. Yeah. They probably went, oh, what are we going to pick first, Masters of the Universe or barbecue? I have the power. Of the salami.
    12:49
    Of the salami. I have the sausage power. So, yeah. Yeah, that's basically what I heard. Yeah, I think it's time to get.
    13:06
    Hopefully, I really hope Cuphead is good. I know you don't have to get anything of the theme, but I really hope it's good. Wait a second. What's more appealing to you and me, Cuphead or barbecue?
    13:20
    Neither, really. Neither. Exactly. He-Man, basically. No, I wouldn't like even He-Man. Oh, I wouldn't like He-Man. I hated He-Man. Oh, fail. Come on. I hated He-Man. He always would win. Fucking Skeletor never, never, ever won. That's the problem. Okay. If Skeletor won once in a while, I'd feel happy. Once in a while. so it's like it's like cobra so you're like gi joe gi joe always fucking won cobra got fucked always at the end it was bullshit and after a while you're like why the fuck am i even watching this show because guess what you know it's gonna happen so after like the second roadrunner short did you just stop like fuck he's never gonna go because once in a while you know at least they talked and they did something else talk he never talked well no he did in the other hi joe in the other one, not the Roadrunner, but he did talk to the other, the Sheepdog. Well, actually, he did talk. No, that wasn't a different character. He wasn't in the Sheepdog one. You could have said in the ones with Bugs Bunny where he's Wile E. Coyote, super genius. Super genius. I got a trivia question wrong once on that. It pissed me off. But, yes, guess what? What's its name? Elmer Fudd won once in a while. And here it was, the only cartoon. What's one of the few cartoons that Bugs Bunny loses at? He loses to the Turtle all the time. Turtle and the Gremlin. Oh, yeah, the Gremlin. So at least you knew there was a chance. Not in fucking G.I. Joe. Not in fucking He-Man. Not in Smurfs. Gargamel never fucking won.
    14:54
    What the fuck? So the bad guys got to win once in a while. These fucking early cartoons sucked. Wow.
    14:59
    Wow. Okay. You need a little plot, you know, a little cliffhanger. I didn't realize we would be going down this path. Fuck no. That's why there's no pinball off these machines, off these cartoons, because they all suck. Okay.
    15:14
    So, Chicago Gaming, they had an interesting way of revealing the new stuff for Cactus Canyon, which is... Yeah, which is weird. On the factory tour, it was just on the game. Like, there it is. There it is. It's working. There it is. And they had some pictures of it they released. Yep. But with no information on, like, when it will be available, how much it is. How much it is. I know. Yeah. That was very piss poor. Weird. This poor. And they take forever to do anything. I mean, are the Pulp Fiction LEs out yet? No. It's been two years? Yes. Well, let's see. They're trying for DPX numbers. One and a half years. DPX numbers, baby. Hey, say what you want about DPX. I think they actually will make the Alice in Wonderland. Oh, they might make it. They might make it? They might make it. I hope so with the money they're taking in. Oh, I know. Well, yeah, two years or a year and a half to show a mod that you plugged as the first day sale thing. Oh, yeah, that it was. Well, there was. I understand. In any circumstances. No, no. But the mechanics could have been there showing you before this. It could have been all a big teaser. No, we had nothing at Expo. So what are we going to do? We'll release this. Great idea. Yeah, yeah. Great idea. They all were in the boardroom clapping each other, patting each other on the back. They were giving each other, oh, my God. Giving each other the clap. They were giving the clap.
    16:36
    And they're all like, yeah, great idea, great idea. And then you come out and they do it this way, and you're like, what the fuck? Wow, Bruce is on fire today. He must be well-rested. I'm well-rested, and I saw all this shit, and I'm going, what the fuck? At least there was a lot of tourists if you wanted to go see factory tours. That was a nice thing. There was three. They had factory tours up the bottom. Three of them. No, they had more than that. They had Chicago, American, Stern, Jersey Jack. That's right. Four. Yeah. Four. New pinball company coming next week, Bruce. That's what I'm reading here. In the bad timing department, there was an announcement with a silhouette of a rabbit where it said, welcome to Wonderland Amusements. We are reimagining the pinball experience for the whole year. If we can sell this for $8,000, hey, We actually might have a great idea. So there's a new company with a seasoned team of industry veterans, and they literally named themselves Wonderland Amusements, and their logo is the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. The timing is not good on that. Well, if actually the DPX machine didn't shoot well, yeah, you would be fucked.
    17:52
    Really fucked. But the voices suck, but you can change the voices. Let's see. I heard it shot pretty damn well. The people who were involved in the product were, looks like they were, New Wave Toys and the Arcade 1 Up people. Oh, great. So it's going to fall apart within three days.
    18:10
    Bruce is so positive. Those fucking Arcade 1s are junk. Okay. Junk. All right. We got micro switches from Zimbabwe. Well, they don't make micro switches in Zimbabwe. We know. They rebuilt them from other things, and they put them on the Arcade 1 machines. Okay. Oh, they're fucking terrible. Then, right before Expo, like literally the day before. The day before. They announced Metallica Remastered.
    18:42
    Yep. The heavily rumored Metallica redo. Yep. Details we have here. Stern is making both premium and limited edition versions of the game, no pro. 500 limited editions. Yep, 500 limited editions. Same play field as the original. What? Hold on. At what price? Same price as before. So same price as their regular LE and same price as their regular premium. $13,096. Yes. The LE will have different art, speaker lights, mirror backless, cabin expression lights, foil cabinet, upgraded speakers, anti-reflective playfield glasses, shaker.
    19:21
    Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah? Is this on? Yeah. Cash grab! 100% a cash grab. They even said that in, I think, the thing that you didn't go to. Oh. The release whatever. Yeah, the release thing in the forehead. Other one of these might be coming, which would be smart. Oh, I think the ACDC. 100%. Yeah, ACDC because that would be easier to get the license. Maybe Tron. Or Tron. I think ACDC would be easier. But, yeah. Because no one was ever happy.
    19:54
    And guess what? No one was ever happy with the art. That's why they had the other version with the Ellen version. Yep. That sold well. Yes. Yeah. It sold more than, you know, God, it was popular. So, you know, they actually underrated that one. They re-ran that. Well, then they had the Vault edition of that edition. I know. Different, different. Yeah. It's just on and on. So, yeah, ACDC put actual concert footage, et cetera. Yeah. ACDC would be the easiest one. Tron, all you got to do is just re-run it and maybe show some video. Yeah, get the movie. Which it already is. We'll be clips. Yeah, so I don't think Tron's the way to go. Put even more lighting on it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think Tron's the way to go. I think it's going to be ACDC. Well, how about after ACDC? Then that's a possibility, but I think ACDC would be the easy one. Or like Ghostbusters with actual video. Oh, God, not from 2016.
    20:46
    It's sold well, Bruce, for as much as we all hate it. Yeah, we all hate it. I was like, where's yours, Ron? Why don't you turn yours on? I sold mine. Why did you sell yours?
    20:59
    Yeah, wait a second. The only person that had one out of the two of us. Why don't you still have it if it's such a great game? It wasn't a great game. Yeah, there you go. I really didn't like the Magnus links. The pro actually. Oh, the Magnus links sounded great, and then. The pro played much better, honestly. Oh, yeah. But the fucking flipper gap is just so annoying. And then they had Metallica. It was at the Stern Factory Tour on Friday. Yes. to the two of them, a premium and a LE, and then they brought it in to the show Saturday. Yes. By the way, the speaker lights and expression lighting will be available for add-ons on the premium. Oh, yes. So when are you selling yours? Oh, God. It's at my dad's still. I know. So you need one. Your dad can keep the old one. You get the new one. I haven't played the new one, Bruce. You didn't play it there? No, Bruce, because they only had two of them, and the line was never less than like two hours away. I know somebody to hook you up. You can go down to New York City. They have one down there. Oh, God. Oh, no. I'm not going to fucking New York City. You take the train. No. Okay. I think that's all the items I had. Here's the hat. Am I going to get it? I should be getting this machine. So the world-famous Rock Fantasy? Yeah. Well, he already has a Puppets edition, so is he going to get it? I need another Ellie. Get another Ellie? put that LE next to the other LE for the ultimate LE experience. I need it bad. Jesus. There will be no Metallica at our PC. I will tell you that. Oh. There won't be.
    22:34
    What else? I'm going to get this out of the way. The tournaments. Oh, my God. Stop. Expo tournaments. Cut them off. No, we're going to do this quickly. So they had the Stern, what is it called? Tournament. No, no, no, no. Before that, the – Oh, the Stern Open Party, like, you know. No, no, no. What? The finals of whatever. Oh, the Stern Circuit. The Stern Circuit, yes. The Stern Circuit finals, which was won by Jarrett August. Congratulations. They played it at Interium, I believe. Yep, they did. On New Sterns. Sternment. That were – well, the difference here was they were set up absurdly hard. If you watched any of it, it was like, wow, that's pretty rough. Deadpool scores under 100 million. That's pretty brutal. Yeah, it was pretty brutal. You sneezed on it. You get tilt warnings. So, yeah. Yeah, that was fun. Then they had, for the Expo, they had the main tournaments, which were they had the main tournament, the classics tournament, and the women's tournament. And the all-night tournament. Well, so the main tournament, they do this thing where qualifying is like, I don't remember. All day Thursday. And everyone gets in. Everyone plays. Everyone plays, and you get in this bracket that goes, like, forever. It's the bracket that never ends. And it goes on and on, my friends. Yep. And that went all the way through until Sunday. Yeah. And the winner was Zach McCarthy, even though the actual bracket doesn't go all the way through. Actually, it does go all the way through, but it's incorrect. because the finals, they have a winner's bracket and a loser's bracket. So you've got to lose twice. So if you lose, you get stuck in the loser's bracket. So you get one more chance. Yeah, you've got to wait. So then when you get to the final final, basically whoever's in the winner's bracket, if they win once, they win. If the person in the loser's bracket wins, then they have to play a second time. Yes. And that's what happened. It was Zach McCarthy versus Jack Slovacek. and Jack was in the loser's bracket, but he won. So they had to go to another round, and then Zach won that. But if you look at the bracket here, it basically makes it look like Zach just won outright on the first match, which isn't true. Which isn't true. And actually on the right where it has the stand, it has Jack being at first, which is not true.
    25:04
    Yeah, they're never good at actually updating this thing. Or finalizing it. Which leads me to the women's bracket. They just gave up because – Oh, my God. I feel bad. The women decided at some point they didn't want to finish on Sunday, so they were going to go as long as possible. Well, they went to 5 a.m. on Sunday. Yeah, that's just stupid. To get done. No offense. If it was me at 5 o'clock in the morning or 4 o'clock in the morning, I'd be like, fuck this. Well, that's what Elizabeth Gieske's, a Stern employee and overall favorite to win it, basically at 3 in the morning she's, like, tapped out because she had to fly back. So it's like, I'm done. She's good. Yeah. So 5 a.m. it went to. I think I have a message thread somewhere that says who won, but I'm not going to search for it. I'm looking at the bracket. They just gave up way before the end. So it's going to be my thing now. If you don't update your brackets or your final things, I'm not going to go through the trouble of trying to look up who won.
    26:03
    Congratulations, winner. Congratulations to whoever won. You are the woman. Then we got classics. the classics that was all day Sunday yep okay I'm going to be kind of mean here they didn't update the winner but they have the finals with Zachary Parks in the winners bracket versus Josh Sharp in the losers bracket being as Josh Sharp I'm going to figure he lost and finished second wow because it's not updated so congratulations Zachary Parks I'm assuming you won I'm sure someone can correct me if I am wrong but I'm thinking that he probably won. Yeah. But it's just, come on, guys. It doesn't say. Update the brackets, please. Even not even that. It's just, holy crap, how long?
    26:54
    They got to stop. How long has this been going on? Maybe don't take everybody. Take three-quarters of the group now. Well, I think the women said, yeah, like 40-whatever was too bad. and they're probably going to do less next time. Well, originally it was less, and then they wanted, no, let's get everyone in, and that was the whole thing. So, yeah, but there's lots of people that like the Stern event. So you play in, like, it's all on Sterns, well, except classics, obviously, but all on Sterns that are pretty much factory default so people can play them along. What I was disappointed with with the Stern circuit is there was no old games brought in. Oh, you wanted old Stern games? Well, two, yeah. One or two. like they did last time. They did it before. This time they didn't. I'm sorry. Fail.
    27:47
    What would you have brought, Bruce? You could pick two old sterns. Meteor. Good game to watch on stream.
    27:59
    Thinking? I would go really weird. Oh, so you wouldn't just go stars? No, I would go... No, I wouldn't. I would go Rawhide, right? Rawhide? No. Oh, God. Yeah, two player EM. It's a stern. No, no. It's a stern. And that's how you screw up all these good players. Not really. You give them weird games. Or you can just do stars and just really fucking mess. That never.
    28:28
    The good players are never screwed, honestly. They're going to win in the end. Okay. It's time, Bruce. Are you ready? For Expo. No. No? No, I didn't go. So you can talk. I'm going to go get a sandwich and a burrito. No.
    28:48
    So, yes. So I got to Expo, and I did a walkthrough video. I got a question for you. Yes. First thing, why is it 40th anniversary when it's not 40th anniversary? They never said 40th anniversary. It doesn't say that anywhere. It's the 40th Pinball Expo. Yes, it's the 40th Pinball Expo. It's not the 40th anniversary. No one ever said that in any of their marketing materials. You go to pinballexpo.com, it doesn't say 40th anniversary. I know a lot of podcasters keep saying that. That is incorrect. I know. That's why I'm saying it. That's why you have never heard me say that. It's the 40th Expo. Like, if I go to pinballexpo.com, they're probably already ready for the next one at this point. Yeah, probably. But let's see what it says. It involves celebrating 40 years. That's all it says. It doesn't say 40th anniversary. Well, usually you'd say I'm celebrating 40 years of service. That would be my 40th anniversary. Get ready for our action-packed 40th year, which is correct. 40th show.
    29:47
    So, yeah, it's not anniversary. Yes. Very good. I knew because the first one. That seems like the kind of anal thing I would try to correct someone on. Yes, but I'm just saying, you know, I went to the 10th, and actually that shirt's the best shirt ever. Oh, okay. Well, it does the 20th century, but it did the 10th anniversary. Yeah. Wait a minute. So, wait a minute. It was the 10th anniversary or the 10th expo? 10th expo. So, 94. Okay. Yeah.
    30:14
    Any other questions? No, no. That was the only question I asked so far. So far. All right. I have another question. Now you made me think. Yes, sir. How many hugs did you get?
    30:25
    I think I got at least one. See? so I didn't get COVID this time so you're getting sick I did get sick yes you did you lost your voice yeah I lost my voice and then had the sniffles I had the sniffles so I did a walkthrough video my most ambitious one ever it's been a while since you've done one it was awesome a lot of people loved it was on our Facebook page I used to do walkthrough videos for all these shows whenever I'd go to someone's home game room collection back before I had any games and I thought that was wild that people had games in their house that kind of stuff and I kind of stopped doing them because I'm going to the same shows over and over and it doesn't really change so why, what am I doing, you know, how many times could I go around the Papa Warehouse and just film the same stuff over and over? Exactly, yeah the same position, both of them. But I figured if there was ever a time to break it out of Mothballs, the biggest expo ever was it And holy shit, did it take a long time. One hour. An hour. I went through every area. I went through the tournament area, which was greatly. You went through the bathroom. You went through the stall. The tournament area, going back to tournaments, was huge. Yeah, it was. That was a great area to have a tournament. Then they had the free play room, which there was a magic girl in there, Bruce. Did it work? Yes, it did. It worked for about three quarters of the first day, then it broke down, then it was dead for the rest of the show. Yep. Good job. Another piece of shit. Then I went into the main hall, and I tried my best to not repeat or go past things more than once, and it took me an hour. Yep. So check that out. Go to our Facebook. It's linked down there. Book in the face. If you have an hour to kill.
    32:21
    Yeah, I went with Dad, as always. and we arrived Thursday and then the first thing we went to, we went to the factory tour for Jersey Jack, which is funny because I had been there. That was not anticipated, the media thing. Oh, speaking of media things, I had certain employees asking me, like, hey, Ron, you coming to the media thing on, what was it, Friday morning? like what media thing? You didn't include me. I guess I wasn't invited. So once again, thanks to Bruce. Thanks to what? Thanks to Bruce I sure it insulting stern people We were not invited Everyone else was that you can think of But we were not invited so that one of the other reasons I didn get to play any Metallica
    33:12
    Thanks, Stern. Again, you fuck nuts. Actually, I think it was Thursday morning was the media event, not Friday. It was something. Yeah, it was Thursday, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway because that was the same time we were... No, we were there, but we were at the Jersey Jack tour. Oh, so they were trying to cock-block each other. Oh, Jesus, no. Yes! No, nothing to do with the other. How would they know when I scheduled the Jersey Jack thing? The Jersey Jack tours were all day. You could pick the time you wanted to go. Oh, okay. So you didn't have to, you know, go with ten other school buses. And Jersey Jack gave you an actual limo bus, which was much nicer, by the way. Just saying. Our tour guide was Eric Menier, just like it was in the media event. So it was basically like a redo. of all the same stuff I saw. But it was new to my dad, so that was nice. That's good. I asked him about, see the questions I asked, I asked him about my dialed-in trapdoor, which Eric suggested I go into the menu and lower the coil power. And I was thinking as he's telling me this, I'm pretty sure I tried that once, and it's not in the menu, like that coil, and it's not in the menu. It's not in the menu. Only you can disable it or not power it. Yeah, you could turn it off, but yeah, there's no power thing for that. So you're wrong, Eric. You're wrong about your own games. Fail!
    34:35
    Well, he didn't program it, so, you know. Yeah, it wasn't his game, so. He did confirm, though, that the flap for the Funhaus trapdoor fits that one because it's literally the same part. Yes, and you can still get the JJP one.
    34:50
    Well, you can get another JJP trapdoor, but they charge God knows how much for it. Yes, they do. Exactly. Yeah, I got the flap. It cost me $4. I already got the old flap off, but the new flap on. It's already in the game. All done. Flap on. Flap off. Flap on. Flap off. The flapper.
    35:09
    All right. Yeah, super fun show. Talked to tons of people. Sorry if I forget y'all, your names and stuff. But I tried to play every single, every rare game that was there and every one of the new games.
    35:27
    But you didn't. Oh, I didn't play Super Hoop because that wasn't on free play. Yeah, and you didn't play Metallica. And I didn't play Metallica because I wasn't standing in two hours for the line. It had the longest lines, though. Yes, it did. Yes, I saw Jody Dankberg of Stern. I think he was looking at the lines like masturbating to himself.
    35:50
    Wow. Now you wonder why Stern didn't talk to us. See? He looked very happy. He was just like, I can't wait until we do this with ACDC and Tron and insert other game here.
    36:04
    Hey, take advantage of it, man. I mean, it looked good, Metallica. I mean, I am partial. I like the old Sparky as opposed to the skeleton dude. I agree, yes. And I like the original Sparky intro better.
    36:20
    I might be in the minority, but it's something about the dot matrix and the callback to Monster Bash and all that. They shortened it a little bit. Yeah. Although the light show is the same. Everything else, it looked like you're better off with the new one. The graphics were nice. It has the improved magnets that won't wear all over the place. supposedly they improved the drop targets for the inline drops and made some tweaks here and there, and I'm sure it probably plays better. Opto spinners, they put a post in or something. They made it so you can't get borg down the left. You can't get borg anymore yet. That's why everyone was playing forever. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it looks good. I couldn't play it, but it looks good. The UV lighting and all that stuff looks really good. What else?
    37:06
    Let's start with the free playroom just because there was some rare shit in there because it's all Robert's games. And you had the Magic Girl, which I didn't get a chance to play because it broke by the time I got back in there. They had all five Hankin games, which is the Australian manufacturer who made games like in the late 70s, early 80s. Late 70s, early 80s. Yeah. I would say all those games kind of stuck. And talking to a few other Australians, they pretty much said, oh, those games suck. Yeah. But I was kind of digging Shark. I don't know why. One of the games is called Shark. I think it was probably supposed to be like a Jaws thing. Yeah. But I wasn't hating that game at all.
    37:52
    Empire Strikes Back was terrible. Oh, it's terrible. It's like firepower combined with Space Invaders or something. And it's bad. It's like firepower with no speech and no multiball. Like, good job.
    38:04
    No, it wasn't good. But it was nice that they were there. So I could say I played them. Some more weird Zachariah stuff I'd never played. So that was cool. They had a soccer-themed one, a Zachariah that reused the mechs from Robot. You remember the Robot mechs? Yeah. The little guys. So they had them. They had, like, I think it was five of them in front of the goal. Pretty neat. So you had to hit all of the defenders down, the robots, and then the goal target would pop up, and you had to hit that for a goal.
    38:37
    I thought that was pretty cool. I like a lot of the weird Zachariah shit. Maybe it's because I'm Italian. Hey, what the fuck it up? Yeah, what the fuck it up. Okay, let's go right with that. Pinball Brothers booth. Oh, God. So they had, I think, four or five Abbas. They had an alien. And I think on the other side, they had a queen.
    39:00
    So I got to play Abba. So do you have any questions? Anything specific you want me to tell you about, Adam? No. I will say it plays better than Queen. Yes, it does. I know that. Nothing. See, if you're looking for me to completely bash games, you're not going to get that. No, you get that from me. There wasn't anything like that this year. There wasn't what I call an elements. Remember elements? Oh, God. When you played the thing, it didn't work. It played like shit. It looked like it needed multiple more Whitewoods, and it was falling apart. And it got shut off before the show was over because it just didn't work. That's the high level of shit. Like, it just doesn't work. And I don't think Pinball Adventures, I don't think they've done anything since then. Nope. Not one of them. They've been in, like, seclusion.
    39:48
    We're trying to fix our problems. So there's nothing like that there. Everything played, at least somewhat confidently. Somewhat. Yeah. Oh, I hear background noise. That's the fan kicking on. The fan kicking on. So it played fine. I was digging the music. I'll admit it. I do have a greatest hits album, all that stuff. Wow. Looking at you. I do. I played, what did I pick? I picked The Winter Takes It All. That's my song. It's got 19 songs. Yes, it does. You've got a ton of songs. It's got all the ones you would want on there. So the helicopter thing was pretty cool. It locks balls in a helicopter.
    40:35
    Yeah, and it was fine. I mean, it wasn't anything like, oh, my God, this is incredible. I need to play this again. This is amazing. But it was fine, and it was better than Queen, which is sad. Queen should have been a better game. Queen deserved better.
    40:54
    I totally agree. But, yeah. So that was ABBA. I'm trying to see. Okay, let's see. I wanted to bring up some of the other ones that I really wanted to play. Space Hunt. Oh. Hunt. Space. By the French manufacturer Hexa. Space Hunt. Space. That thing's got like four ramps on it.
    41:21
    However, the left side. Well, you know how Houdini had the really tight shots? Yeah. The left side of Space Hunt says, hey, Houdini, hold my beer. Because on the left side, they have in a row from, let's see, left to right, you have an orbit, a very narrow ramp, narrow entrance, and then another ramp next to it, all in a row. And the ramp, the shot in the center of that ramp is the one you need to hit to get up to that upper play field thing. I could not hit that ramp to save myself. It was just too tight. It was too hard to hit. I couldn't do it. But I did start multi-ball. I played multi-ball. The graphics were fine.
    42:10
    It was, again, it was fine. It wasn't anything out of it that's like, oh, my God, this is amazing, incredible, et cetera. But it was fine.
    42:22
    I think it was Rob Burks. I think, yeah, it was. It had his name on it. Space. Hot Hunts. So then I went over to the, I think it was the Bitronix booth or Quetzalpimp, or whatever they're called. They had a Tokyo Perfect Drift. Do you remember that one? That was actually one of the first games I ever saw with the Hot Rails. I think it was before Jersey Jack did them, before expression lighting. This was way pre-COVID at this game. This game has been around for five, six years. Yeah, Tokyo Perfect Drift, and next to it they had a Super Hoop. But the Super Hoop wasn't on free play, and you had to ask the guy to play it or something. And Ron will never ask anybody to do anything. Exactly. Ron has bad social skills. So I played the Tokyo Perfect Drift, and I'm not going to lie, I kind of liked it. I'm not really into electronic music, but this was very catchy. Very catchy. And it was like a street-level game. And I thought it shot pretty good.
    43:25
    I was digging the Tokyo Perfect Drip. I actually played two games of that. Okay, that's good. Yeah, that was not anticipated. Not anticipated at all. Before I continue, I want to give a shout-out, because if you want to see any of these games, Yeah. There's a guy, Michael Madsen. He's a California dude. He was there at Expo, and he brought his full streaming rig. And he went around to every either Rare game or all these new games and streamed it. And now it's on his YouTube channel, which is DRI374. That's DRI374. So if you want to see what all these games, like if you want to see what the Hankin Empire Strikes Back plays like, you can see it. If you want to see Tokyo Perfect Drift, you can see it. I'm talking a full overhead shot like an actual stream. So you can see exactly how these games play. And he went through all of them. So what do I do next? I'm trying to save the best for last. Oh, I played Ninja Eclipse. Remember Ninja Eclipse?
    44:31
    Remember when that came out? And it had the weird cabinet and everyone hated the cabinet because it didn't have a coin door. And it needs to look more like a standard pinball. Well, guess what? It looks like a standard pinball machine now. and I played that. The guy at the booth said he listens to the podcast. I didn't ask him which one. I'm so sorry. Which this one or my other podcast, which is the Silver Ball Chronicles, which can be heard on the Pitball Network.
    44:55
    Check out our latest episode on Gottlieb. Dead. Silence. It was so thrilling. I just couldn't contain myself. So I played that, and again it played good I don't the right ramp is always hard for me to hit on that thing it's kind of narrow but basic stuff, light locks, start multi-ball, the call outs honestly sounded better than some of the stuff I've heard in X-Men graphics were fine the theme I'm kind of I don't know what it really means, I know what ninjas are I would have liked if it was like Godfrey Ho's ninja experience or something, that would have been super cool if you're going to do a Ninja game. Yeah.
    45:42
    Yeah. I mean, that played like a fully functional, ready-to-go game. Would you pay for it? Would you buy $9,000? Well, that's the thing. How much do you think it is? $9,000. No. Ninja Eclipse is $6,995. It's less than a Stern Pro. Yeah. We'll get back to that. But, yeah. Let's get back to your show. Your other show. Until David Dennis gives me my code for early access, I will give you Dead Silence. Oh, okay. So you're just not going to listen at all until you get free? Nope, nope. I want my free shit. You want your free shit? I want my free shit. And why should you get free shit? Because you're my... Because you're on it. Because I'm on it. You should get the free shit. Doesn't that always work that way? Okay.
    46:34
    You got invited to JJP. Because of my big mouth saying we should be invited. We got invited to J.J.P. No, no, no. You couldn't make it. Because they blow you off on both of your shows.
    46:49
    Actually, I think I got invited more because I actually know Ken Cromwell. I know. I know Ken Cromwell, too. But, I mean, you didn't get invited for two shows. I only got invited for one. I mean, I don't get invited to the Stern events because of you. No, because they didn't invite David Dennis. And David Dennis is Canadian. How can you hate a Canadian?
    47:09
    Okay. Got it. Go. All right. Let's see. What other games? Okay. I went to the American booth. If you wanted to get on games quicker, American booth was the way to go because they had the lowest lines of any – actually, they had almost no lines on anything. I played the barbecue game, and I'm going to say this again. They need to fix two things. One is the sound. the super tinny sound that just cuts through everything. Second, fix your fucking flippers, man. Yeah. I mean... It doesn't shoot bad, actually. No, no. The thing is... You can't make the shot. The other... We always used to do the low show power thing. But I went to all these other booths, whether it be Ninja Eclipse's booth or the Space Hunt or the Quetzal Pinball and Stern, Jersey Jack. None of them had weak clippers.
    48:07
    Then you go to the American, and I'm playing barbecue, and I'm trying to hit that left ramp, and it will not make it up the fucking ramp. You had to hit, like, absolutely dead center perfect, and it would just make it up. And it would hit that spinner and spin maybe two times. This is your time to shine, people. Like, you got to do better there. Crank up the power if you have to. Do it, because it's just – yeah, and like you said, it plays absolutely fine. It does play fine. It's just the themes things, and the sound sucks. Well, the sound sucks. I thought the call-outs were fine. The video was weird with the shots of the real-life meat going on. It's just bizarre. Like, what am I watching? This is so weird. So I played a game of that, and then I came back later in the show because I wanted to play barbecue again. I figured I'll pick another game. And this one had a little better power, but it's still weak. I got through ball one, and it reset on me, and I gave up.
    49:05
    So just fix the flipper power, dude. Fix it. Just crank it up. Bring your own power source or something. Do something. Ah.
    49:16
    Where else did I go? I'm trying to save Alice in Wonderland. Okay. Let's just go to Alice in Wonderland. Okay. So Alice in Wonderland. You want to know what the rules are for the game? It's got a whole story, Bruce. Well, is it the book story? Okay, here's the story. Well, Alice looks quite a bit older than she does. She doesn't look like the 7-year-old girl she's supposed to be. Remember, it's slutty Alice here. All right, so 17-year-old, she just got off senior prom.
    49:48
    She's wondering what happened. Where did the football team come from? So, in the game, you play as Alice. Right, I'm Alice. Yep, and you're going to Wonderland, and you're trying to get to the porn shoot. The porn shoot? Yes, to make your latest movie. Okay, great. Now, the Queen of Hearts is trying to stop you, because the Queen of Hearts is, like, ultra-conservative, doesn't like porn. You know, I don't understand that at all. You know, just crazy. She's obviously the villain. The only way you can defeat the Queen of Hearts is with the magic dildo. The magic dildo? The magic dildo. So to get the magic dildo, you have to get it from the Mad Hatter. And the only way Alice can get it from him is by blowing him. Wow. Yes. So you know the upper play field on Alice in Wonderland? So you know how on Twilight Zone it's called the power? The power. On Alice in Wonderland it's called the blow zone. The blow zone. So you go up there and you've got to keep the ball active as long as possible, and she's blowing him. And the longer you keep it up there, the more his power meter goes down. And his power meter goes below a certain point, you can get the magic dildo from him. Does he ejaculate, too? I didn't ask that question. Okay. But then when you get the magic dildo, you can then defeat the Queen of Hearts. And give the dual penetration extreme. And then you can get to the porn shoot, which begins the final wizard mode, which is called Alice Does Wonderland. Yes. Where she bangs everyone in the game, including the rabbit and the cat. Wow. At the same time? So that's where the dual penetration extreme comes from? I think so. All right. And that's the game. that's the rules. Wow. I'm in. I'm now writing out a – I'm actually clicking on it right now to buy one.
    51:31
    Okay, folks, those aren't the actual rules, but I – yeah. They had shirts, Bruce. They had – now, they had Dutch Pinball exclusive shirts there, and I was so bummed. I'm telling you, if they said DPX on them, I 100% would have bought one. For me, right? For me, too. I want a twins. I have two of them. So, yeah, but they just said, like, DP exclusive. And I'm like, damn it. Why couldn't they just have done DPX? Oh, I totally would have bought that. Would have been awesome. So, okay. Okay, so Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Yeah, by the way, Alice does Wonderland. Pinball show stole my idea. They used that for a title of their episode. It pissed me off. I had that idea ahead of time.
    52:22
    But whatever. Oh, they mentioned you in the last episode. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Zach from the Pinball Show was saying how if he said half the stuff you say, he would be just completely canceled.
    52:34
    And he's probably right. He's probably right. But Bruce can get away with it because he's Bruce. I'm Bruce. I've been here longer. That's it.
    52:44
    So, yes, it's got the super slutted up artwork. and I just want to say I think Dutch Pinball are the smartest people in all of Pinball now I really do, they sold out of this thing they had two games originally and then went to three, they had lines the whole show not once did I see the game open or being worked on so that's good, that's one of the things I always look at and no, it was pretty reliable, probably because it doesn't have much on it to be fair,
    53:17
    there were people going up to the desk like, yeah, I want one of these. Like, sorry, it's sold out. It's like, damn, these guys are the smartest fuckers in all of pinball. They are. Well, here's the funniest thing. They are. How many are they doing? Is it 250? I don't remember. Let's see what DPX gives us. Yeah, you see what DPX gives us. I'll go over the actual game. So, basically what the guy did that bought the rights for this, he took the original Papa Duke design and he just made it so it actually will play. You know, whatever modifications had to be made to make it actually work. It's a very basic play field. It doesn't really have any toys, unless you want to consider the upper play field a toy. The upper play field sits way above the main play field, so you can see everything on the lower play field clearly. There's 500 total, and 300 are allotted for the United States, or North America, I mean. So it's got the one ramp. You hit the ramp. That's the thing I was – okay, let's see how this is. The flippers were a little on the weak side. I think you'll probably jack that up. But I hit the ramp like five times in a row. It's like, okay, so that's not a problem. But you hit the ramp, which lights the mode at the scoop. You hit the scoop. It starts the mode. The modes are very simple. They tell you what to do. And the shots – only the shots that you need to hit are lit. So even I can understand it. You know, you hit it in there, it starts the mode, both the orbits are lit. Like, oh, okay, I guess I need to hit those. You know, it's very, very simple. Multi-ball, you hit a couple stand-ups, it lights locks. Oh, and you'll like this part. So you light the locks on the right side, you shoot it, it goes all the way to the back left and locks. If you start a mode while you have locks lit, guess what happens?
    55:08
    It turns them off. Nice. I like that. It's one of those. So you're not going to be doing, for a company called Jewel Penetration Extreme, you're not going to be doing anything Jewel. It's one at a time. I know that's going to piss off a lot of players, but that's the way they're doing it. They went for full, simple rules. The sculpts look nice. Instead of plastics, they have sculpts for everywhere. Lior from Art of Pinball.
    55:36
    The lighting was cool. They used the lighting. the Stumbler guy, I'm sorry, I don't know his name, the guy from the Stumbler mods, he does all the cool, all those cool mods, he did a lot of the lighting. The callouts I heard while playing were not as bad as the ones I heard in the trailer, I'll say that.
    55:54
    The graphics, the display graphics were fine. Wasn't anything, again, there wasn't anything like, oh my god, this is like horrible, this doesn't work, this is shit. There wasn't anything like that. I could not make it up to the upper play field. Couldn't figure out how to get up there. I've seen a couple people up there, and they're flipping the flippers like crazy, but nothing happens, so I don't know if the magnets were off on some of them.
    56:20
    There's not much more to say other than these guys are geniuses. They unveil a game. They have a disastrous trailer, a disastrous stream, and it doesn't matter. They got the Papa Duke game, and they got the sellout at $12,500.
    56:38
    So, hold on. So, $12,500. Now, I played this with my dad. So, after we played this, we went over and played Avatar. So, we're playing Avatar. You know, this game that is, like, ridiculously flashy, has two lower play fields, it's just packed to the gills, whatever. and I tell my dad like hey this is Avatar this is $12,000 how much do you think that Alice in Wonderland we just played is and my dad's a very reasonable person he's there like $8,000 no it's $12,500 and that's the genius of Dutchman they got $12,500 for this and it was made back for 10 years like And the game actually works and stuff, but still, $12,500. You can get a Ninja Eclipse, which is a much better playing game, for $7,000. You can get two of them almost. Yeah, actually, yeah. Holy shit.
    57:40
    Anything I ever said about Ducks I take back. You guys are the smartest people in all of pinball. Danai got a loan for $6.25 million U.S., and they get to milk it for at least a year because they said they're going to make them by 2025. I honestly think they're taking in this money and going to use it for the Back to the Future game.
    58:01
    You know, the one that they're going to make, that everyone says they're going to make. Going to get back in time. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Going to get back in time. I know, people are always like, where's the dirt, man? Come on, I want to hear about all the games that didn't work and stuff. Okay, I'll give you a game that didn't work. Mothership. It was in the homebrew section. It was made to be bigger than Hercules. Yes. And it is bigger than Hercules. And it wasn't working. They hadn't gotten to that part of it yet in the build, actually making it work.
    58:35
    It's not plugged in. It's not plugged in yet. But it was fucking huge. Jesus Christ. Yes. Home brews. Yeah, that's the one. My one regret, I did not play enough stuff in the home brews section. I played, like, the Van Halen one, which was actually a rethemed dolly.
    58:56
    That was it. I'm sorry. I failed. You can see where all the love is.
    59:05
    I'm not blaming anybody but you. Honestly, I was too busy over in the stern area because they had carpeting. Oh, so much more comfortable. I'm surprised they didn't kick you out of that. Did they do who you were? Don't you? You? You're not allowed in here. We didn't invite you to anything. Get the fuck out of here.
    59:23
    Get over here. Fatality. You should have a media pass. Yeah, I saw people with a media pass. It's like, how do I get one of those?
    59:34
    You have to talk to Mr. Burke. Yeah, well, I think he always had a media pass. Of course he did. He didn't play in the tournament. That was so weird. Well, he's got time now. He's getting older. He's realizing that these young kids are just going to stop. Well, yeah, he doesn't want to play in a tournament where he has zero chance of doing anything. But he could have played in classics. True, he could have.
    59:57
    So, yeah, Avatar, which I'd already played. Again, I like the upper half of the play field. I like the shots up there. The lower play fields don't really do anything for me. It doesn't really have any mechs.
    60:13
    Unless you want to consider the suit guy with his arm that moves like a rock and soccer robot. I mean, that's really it. They don't have the mechs, the toys, I guess, or the lighting. Yeah. And the absurd topper, which, yeah, it looks cool as hell, but my dad's looking at it and he's like, what the fuck does all that text mean?
    60:35
    That's a good point. I mean, I don't know what it means, but I'm sure if you're into Avatar, that means something cool. They had a tent area where they had the collector's editions. Oh, boy. The super UV whatever. I did not get a chance to play those.
    60:51
    You're sorry, sir. You're not worthy. I'm not worthy. But, yeah, the more I think about it, it's like, yeah, where are the mechs on that?
    61:00
    I mean, you think about it. Well, I have four flippers. Four or six? Five. Six. There's six mechs right there. But, you know, Elton John has the crocodile that moves. It's got the Elton that moves. fully animus Ron and Gil and John. But only two flippers. Three flippers for his warp ramp. Come on.
    61:24
    Yeah, but I mean, it looks cool. I mean, it looks like they spent a lot of money on it. Let's put it that way. I can see $12,000 on that more than I can see $12,500 on Alice in Wonderland.
    61:37
    Okay. And I'll get my game from JJP. What, you don't think you're going to get your game from... I mean, they eventually got everyone their... Yeah, okay, you just put the perfect word in the perfect location in that sentence.
    61:52
    Eventually. They're going to blow through that 2025 spot. Because, let's talk about this. When they were building, okay, how many big Lebowskis did they have to sell? It was something like, no, it was like three. No, no, it was like, it was three or four. It was more than that. Okay, so three to one, over ten years to make one. For those at home, they had to sell like three new Big Lebowski's to be able to build one for one of the original people. Original people who they blew their money on. Yeah, they blew their money on, yes. So let's say they made 300, so it was 1,200 total or 1,400 total. That took 10 years. Now you're telling people you're going to make 500 pinball machines by the end of 2025.
    62:40
    Ain't going to happen. Okay, Bruce is calling it. Ain't going to happen. The way they're geared up right now, it's not going to happen. So then what's going to happen is they're going to have to build and get more people to be involved. And guess where that money's going to go? At that place right down the fucking drain. Okay. You heard it here, folks. Bruce is gone. So it's going to happen again.
    63:01
    See what you want to know about it. Big Lebowski was cool. I mean, it had upper play field. It had lots of max. Lower play field. The lower play field with the bowling. It had a lot of cool shit on it. Yeah. It was innovative. Alice in Wonderland doesn't really, it doesn't have any mix. It doesn't have any cool stuff. Other than the upper play field, if you're going to call that a mech. No, no. It's just an upper play field. It's just very, very basic with porn art with an extreme price. Yes. Extreme! Yes. And they sold them. So, like I said, smartest dudes in all of pinball. As I said, even if you count these extra two months or three months, let's say they've been building them since October. So you have to give them 15 months to make 50 games. So you've got to make at least 34.3 games a month when they couldn't even build a quarter of that. Well, it's because they didn't have the money. But now they're going to have the money because these are $12,500. Well, it's $6.25 million U.S. So do you think they're going to actually expand their factory and put all this money in and do this? No, they're not. They have to build over a game a day. What's the deposit? Is it 1,000? 1,500? I think it was 1,500. Okay. So that's actually what they're getting. Yeah, exactly. But I'm saying, okay, so now you only have, let's go over. Well, let's do some math. I'm doing some math here. So if you have $1,500 for 500 people, that means you now have 750K. U.S.
    64:35
    So you convert that to Euro, it's about 850, 825. The thing is, there's no licensing costs on this. No, there's no licensing costs. That's the great thing. But there's going to be software people you've got to pay up and that kind of stuff, and people to build these, and the parts to build these. Do you think they have enough money right now to build 50? Let's say each one costs $5,000. I don't know. $750,000 doesn't seem like a lot to build 500 pinball machines. They can build probably 150 games right now with that money. and not including paying people, rent, and any issues you have. Like, say, don't forget, if something gets made wrong or something comes back wrong. Yeah, part is wrong. Exactly. You're now waiting and paying. So now you really only have, like, 250 as a good buffer zone because you have to pay your rent, you've got to pay your employees if you're going to expand your employees. Well, the thing is, they use, like, hobbyists and other people to do a lot of the stuff in the game, I noticed. I think the team that did the software was like Team Pinball. I thought I remember seeing somewhere they're the same people did like Mafia. Yeah, great. Great. But I'm saying you have to make $250 minimum to use the money that you just got for the deposits and have all the parts and that kind of stuff and build them fast so you can get more money in once that happens if they smart well let see if they let see I wondering how they going to do this And I think once they got back from Expo they went shit we better in the next two months make 25 games If we can make, let's think about this, 25 games at the $10,000 left, or let's say $11,000 left because of the deposit, that is $260,000 right around there. That will help them. But if they can't make those games, they're fucked.
    66:36
    And that means you're not going to have anything. It's a – they only had three people working or four people working on these last games for Lebowski. They even showed them in the factory.
    66:48
    They had the longest lines until Metallica showed up on Saturday. You can have the longest lines. Great. Wah-ha. Hoo-hoo.
    66:57
    Will they make it by the end of 2025, building all of them? No, unless they spend money, which we know they don't spend money smart. They spend it very foolishly. They have in the past.
    67:12
    Maybe their lean way of doing it now is better. What system are they even using? Are they using fast? We don't even know what system they're talking about in that system. Yeah, I don't know what they're using. And nobody, that's one thing I did notice. None of these new manufacturers tell you what they're using.
    67:29
    I think some of them do. We just haven't. Like, I think, isn't barrel fun? Barrel fun is fast. It is fast. I know that. But not a lot of these other companies.
    67:40
    So, you know, I don't know. It just seems very, I would not be handing over shit to these people. Because we just saw how people get burned with a reputable company.
    67:54
    And this company, in their past history, have proven that they're not reliable. Well, they have proven. They have proven that if the right situation occurs, they will lie. Yes. Which they have done. Yes. Lie, say anything they have to to get your money. But they also prove they are determined. They are. Guess what? You can be so great. We'll be talking about this in 2034. When they're done.
    68:24
    I'll even give them 2030. But I think their deposit thing. What was the quote they said? If they don't get them by 2025. Yeah, the end of 2025, you get your deposit back. It's right there. So guess what? Oh, I get my deposit back. I still don't get my game, and you had my money for interest free for one year.
    68:47
    Over a year. Does that make any sense? I can make 6% on that money. And wait a second. Everyone, send me $1,500. I'm going to make a pinball machine. Oh, I can't make it by the end of 25. Here's your money back. Guess what? I made 6% on that. Interest on it. Woo-hoo!
    69:06
    Doing nothing. I did nothing. I just, it just, everyone's screaming about a company like Haggis. And if this doesn't scream to you, what the fuck?
    69:21
    And buyer beware. Okay. That's all. You heard it from Bruce. What would you do? Would you buy from this company? No. Of course not. I don't. Honestly, I don't know if I'd ever buy. I said this before. I don't know if I would buy from anyone not in this country. Yes, first.
    69:40
    That worries me. I mean, like, for example, the Tokyo. You saw how hard it was on people to try to get money from Dutch when they tried to sue them. The Tokyo and the whole Hagga situation. Yeah. It's like he's, Jamie's probably going to get off on that somehow. So you think it all got free. Highway pinball. Look, another one. Oh, yeah. Everyone forgets pinball, bro. I know. They basically, they took over highway. They took over highway. They got the company for pennies at the dollar. They saw how fucked they were. They got all the assets that anyone would want under their company. Yep. And then declared bankruptcy under the highway company. Yep. Whatever legal shit they were able to do in Europe that fucked over everyone. Everyone lost their money. But people still buy their fucking... But they got to keep the rights to all the stuff, and then they started their own company. Yeah. With some, you know, legal, nefarious legal shit. I mean, I guess it's technically legal, but it's like, you, like, got all the assets that are worth anything out of there and then declare bankruptcy to fuck over everyone who wanted Alien, and then you're going to build your own Alien. Yep. You know. You stripped the whole company. People kind of forget about that. Oh, I know that, but, hey, they're making pinball. No, they're not making pinball. I would never buy a Pinball Brothers. First, I see inequality. First, I saw equality. Oh, yeah. Inequality is shit. Second, hey, what the fuck it up?
    71:05
    But the – But I mean – But like the Tokyo Drift game and the Super Hoop and that whole display that Quetzal had or Medtronic or whatever it was, they sold all those at the show. And I'm thinking like that's fine and dandy. What happens if the game breaks? Yeah. You're fucked. Like, what are the mechs in there? Are they regular mechs? Are they special? We don't even know. The software, what's it running on? You know, you don't know any of this stuff.
    71:34
    Oh, there is another one I forgot to mention. I played the, what is it, Pinball Factory? What are they called? The Pinball Company's booth. They had the fun houses there. Oh, God, those things play like shit.
    71:52
    The one I played, played absolutely fine. The one I played at York? Okay. But it's from, well, it's from your buddy. It's not from Pinball Brothers, but it's from the, what are they called again? Pedretti. So, yeah, it played fine for me. I didn't think so. I thought so. At York, it played very sluggish and very, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm dispensing opinion. It played fine for me. What I will say is if you're going to get one of them, just play the new software because the old software just got like a basic background that looks like an amusement park, and then they superimpose all of the alphanumeric stuff in front of it that would have been in the original game. Actually, if I'm playing original code, I'd rather play it on the original game just because I think the alphanumeric suits it better than what they did here. If you're going to get it, get it for the new code. Don't get it to just play the old one. I'll say that. Yeah, I thought it played fine for me. Yeah, York, it didn't play well. Maybe it was just a clunker game. Who knows? Clunker game, bro.
    72:58
    What did you think of X-Men? Yeah, I was saving that for last. They had a fuck ton of X-Men there. I know a lot of it was tilt amusements brought a bunch of them, but Stern had a bunch of them. There had to be 20 X-Men there. It was ridiculous.
    73:11
    You never really had to wait too long to play. Yes. Let's see. Should I go for... We'll go negatives first.
    73:22
    I like take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have it. Well, we're slam-tilt. We've got to go negatives first. Okay, good. Yeah. I played five or six different copies, and they all played drastically differently. Yes. This is going to be one of those, you're going to have to tweak the fuck out of this game. Tweak the fuck out of this game to make it work. To make it work 100%. But, again, I've said this on previous shows. If you want cool play field shit, this is what you're going to get. It's the same thing with some of the Elwynn games. I had to tweak the fuck out of Jurassic Park to get some of the stuff to work right. It's just the way it is. If you want cool play field elements, cool shots, a lot of them are going to require some adjustment. Yes. I am concerned about the Sentinel mouth.
    74:08
    I've seen online stuff. I've already seen a couple of them broken. I've seen a couple of them broke, and at the show I saw one of them broken, which the thing was trying to open.
    74:17
    He looked like drunk Sentinel. He looked like intoxicated Sentinel. So maybe the Pro is the better way. Well, no, the Pro is the same thing. It wasn't probably. Is it a kicker? I don't think it has a kicker. The Pro has the same mouth, and it's the same. Yeah, but I don't think it's a kicker. I think it has the same kicker. I'm pretty sure. Let me see. I'm pretty sure it has the kicker. Now, and it has the magnet, which surprised me. There's a magnet in front of the Sentinel. Yes. I played a premium, and I figured, like, okay, that's a premium thing. And then I played a pro, and it had the same magnet. Like, okay, that surprised me. I didn't think that would be there. Yeah, I don't think the pro has a kicker on the front. Well, someone can correct me. Let's see. Oh, I'm still looking. So a couple of them I played had flipper hop on the right side. It's very annoying. It's got the regular, like, metal guide, so you could just loosen it, jam the thing up, tighten it down in your flip-a-hop. Flip-a-hop will be gone for so many games before it comes back again. I wish they would just use a wider guide or something, something so that wouldn't happen. The left side, the stargazer side, as I call it, the left flipper, or not the left leftmost flipper, but the left of the regular two flippers, it basically is stargazer. It has the same little pocket area, but it has extreme flip-a-hop. I was listening to Loser Kid, and Josh said the same thing, and he said he talked to Gomez, and Gomez said you can adjust the guide.
    75:43
    Yeah, that guy's reading very hard. You've got to bend it a lot. Yes. Well, also, the guide, it's not like three-quarters of the way above the play field. It's like one of those Gottlieb thicker ones that's low, that hardly comes out of the play field at all. So how are you going to bend it to that degree? I don't know. I don't know about that. That being said, the thing plays amazing. It does. It really does. Gottlieb has fucking returned from the dead. This is it. Gottlieb survived. Jack Danger is continuing the legacy of Gottlieb. Because that's what I thought when I'm playing this thing. This is shit Gottlieb would have done. Just all the weird crap you hit. Shots that go nowhere. You don't even expect where you don't even go. No, yeah. You hit, it's kind of like the main ramp on the left, which is kind of like your bailout shot, the one that's somewhat easy. But if you hit left of that, it does the whole figure eight curled cue thing, and you're like, whoa, what the fuck? Yeah, no, where did this come from? You hit the extreme left shot, and it goes all the way across the play field, then underneath your fucking flippers at the other end to the danger zone area, or whatever the fuck it's called, danger room. Holy shit, what the fuck did I just do? Somebody likes Flintstones, obviously. Yeah. But, yeah, he's their new John Trudeau, and I don't mean that in a – Oh, my. No, I don't mean it in that way.
    77:03
    But Jack Danger, he will try anything on a play field, and I appreciate that. This game kicks ass. It kicks major ass. The rules are very simple so far. Like, you shoot a certain number of white shots, it stops the ball, and you pick one of ten modes. But every mode is, like, hit-lit shots. Like, okay. Yep. You know, and if you play so many modes, then I think you get some kind of mini-wizard thing. It's something I was in after I played so many modes. Kind of reminded me of Dalton. Balty Ball, you just hit the Sentinel enough times. Yep.
    77:40
    I liked the premium in that the Sentinel goes up and down. Yeah. I like the look of that. But I think the Pro is... But the Pro shoots better. Yeah. I talked to other people in the know there, and they basically told me, yeah, that the Pro is going to shoot better.
    77:58
    And the only thing you're really missing that I would want is the moving sentinel head. Yeah, exactly. The other stuff, it's got that other captain's ball thing, the fingers, which almost drained me, by the way. When I hit the shot, it told me to hit. It's like, really? It's almost like the X-Men movable ramp. Fuck you, too, you know? Yes.
    78:18
    Definitely GoPro. That GoPro. Or go home. And I would actually advise wait a couple runs. I know Scott doesn't like to say that. Wait a couple runs. This is the one game. Here's the funny thing. Here's the one game where they put the LE out first before any other games, and you're going to hear these people bitch and moan. The LE owners are basically beta users. They are beta. They're going to discover all the broken mouths, the things that don't work. They're the ones that are going to be experiencing that. So congratulations, guys. Congratulations, Ellie O'Neill. All your fishing and boning got you this. Yes.
    79:00
    But, yeah, I would wait a couple runs, especially with the Sentinel had thing worries me, the broken mouths. Yeah. Because that's going to get pounded, and if it can't hold up, that's the problem.
    79:14
    Yeah, it can't hold up. It's just, but, yeah, it was, I would consider this game. Yeah, well, there's one coming to RPC soon. What's RPC, Bruce? The Rochester Pinball Collective. Where is it? I don't know. He's going to say Rochester. Rochester, New York. East Rochester, New York. 349 West Commercial Street in beautiful East Rochester, New York. Suite 2965. Be there or be square. Yes. You're going to have an X. What kind of X-Men are you going to have? Premium. Oh, you're getting a premium. Yep. It's already, hopefully, next week. So you're going to be a beta tester. Yes, we will be the beta tester. Enjoy. The mouth broke again. Stern sent us a third different mouth. We're gamma. We're gamma because, you know, alpha, beta. No, kappa. We're kappa. Kappa.
    80:10
    Alpha, beta, kappa. Yeah. Yes. But, yeah, I played that far more than any other game. I think that's why I ended up not going to the homebrew area for as long as I was going to. I just got between the carpet and playing X-Men, I just, yeah. It's a good game. Yeah. You know who's upset that it's a good game?
    80:34
    John Wick is upset. Oh, yeah. God. Poor John Wick. Wah, wah. But you know what else we can do at the Rochester Pinball Collective? Hold on. I'm not done yet. Oh, what the fuck? I don't know. The call outs didn't seem quite as bad when I was in front of the machine. Yeah. And I would say out of all of the games they've done with kind of a static graphics that don't move much between Avengers and like Turtles, this is the best of them. It's still. Yeah, go in the comic book route. I know, but you know. Yeah. And then you go over to Avatar or like Elton John and you see the full display jam. And then, yeah, it does kind of stick out. Yeah. But, yeah, it just shoots like. Like if I put an X-Men LE next to an Elton John. Oh, yeah. You can see where the money is. Yes, yes. But it just shoots so. It's insane. It is insane. I just wanted to shoot shots. I didn't even care about the rules or anything. It's just like, I want to hit that again. I want the thing to go underneath my flippers again.
    81:45
    And it goes underneath your flippers, and it goes right to the danger area where you immediately have to try to save it. I will say the spinner in the danger area, I hardly ever see that hit. Really? Because you're trying to get it out via the ramp. I know, yeah, but if you get the loop, you're inside the loop part. But Bruce probably can't because you're the loop king. I am the loop king. I am the loop champion. Let's see, anything else about Expo? It was the biggest Expo ever I've been to. Oh, yeah. It was really big. It was insane. I mean, they filled that whole convention center. More vendors than I've ever seen. I saw stuff there.
    82:24
    So there was one vendor selling aprons for Williams games. So they had, like, a Whitewater apron, Circus Voltaire, whatever. And I'm thinking, like, those don't look licensed to me.
    82:37
    and they're like an Italian company. So it's like, oh, they're definitely probably not licensed. Where's the sticker, buddy? Because you remember Pinball Circus was supposed to be there. Oh. The one the guy built. Yeah. And it was there, and then it was pulled.
    82:54
    Pulled? Why? It was pulled. The rumor was cease and desist, like you can't have that. Wow. Yeah, wow. But that's what I heard. I would have been laughing at him. Yeah, go ahead and make me pull it, motherfucker.
    83:09
    Bruce just parks himself in front of the machine. You'll pull this over my dead body. I think that's it for Expo. I mean, it was a fun time. Thanks to everyone who said hi, talked to a lot of people, heard a lot of stuff that I can't say on here, et cetera. But it was a fun time. A fun time was had by all. Oh, and I like the cup display thing. Not cup head. They had cups. No, no, no, stop, stop.
    83:39
    There's some guy who made this whole huge display with cups. It was insane. And, like, you couldn't clearly read what it said, but if you look through a camera, like your phone camera, you could see it. It was almost like an optical illusion thing. It was freaky. You'll see it in my video, the walkthrough, because it's through the camera. You can actually see what it says. It was super cool.
    84:00
    And props to the Project Pinball. They were doing their thing there. with the tournament they were running, raising money to put games in children's hospitals across the world, or the U.S., and they immediately, when Metallica was announced, they immediately had the Metallica LE sweepstakes. Yes, they did. Which I entered in immediately and did not win, but yes. Which is good. Very good. Do you have any questions, Bruce? No, it sounds like you had a fun time without me. Well, again, everyone was asking for you, Bruce. They're like, why isn't Bruce here? Why isn't Bruce here? And I tell everyone, he just goes on cruises. I go on cruises. I want to enjoy my life. Well, come on, Bruce. You could have went to this one. You know, you're not taking advantage of your fame. World famous. Who asked for me? I want to know one person. Basically, every person that I ran into that listens to the show. Like, is Bruce here? Is Bruce here? Like, no. Okay. I will make a promise. Oh, I promise. Here we go. And you can't say, like, just come to Allentown. I'll be there. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not even going to Allentown next year. What?
    85:12
    I'm going to be on a cruise. Oh, hold on. Oh, my heart. What? An Allentown without Bruce? This is not happening. This is not possible. Allentown without Bruce. It is impossible. No, I will go to 2026 Expo. Guaranteed. In two years? Yes. I'm being totally honest. Okay. So if our podcast is still around. It will be, because that will be our 10-year anniversary. I'm going to be soaking in all the love. Oh, our 10-year anniversary. Actually, yeah, that's right. That is right. I think that is right, isn't it? That is right. Yes, that is right. Okay. Our 10-year anniversary. Wow, he's calling it already, 10 years. I'm calling my shot. Wow. You're assuming I still want to do it. I will be at Expo. Oh, wow. You know why? Why? I get two extra weeks of vacation every five years I work at Corning. Ah, okay. So with that, Ron, I'll even sleep in the room with you and, you know, snore your head off. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, I got this. No, no, no, no, no, no. Dad's there with me. Sorry. Don't worry. I can sleep on the floor. And he doesn't snore. I can sleep on the floor. That's easy. We're good. No, no, no, no, no.
    86:19
    All right. I think that's it for Expo. Yes, Expo. Let's see. What else do I got? That's pretty much all I had before we get to the ball bag. No. You have something you wanted to talk about. I have something. We still got spots for Royal Rumble.
    86:35
    December 12th through December 15th at the RPC Rochester Pinball Collective. Two tournaments going on simultaneously. We're going to have a pump and dump and a match play going on. Three-day event. Pay one price for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, $85.
    86:54
    $15 for each day. That goes to the RPC. The rest goes into the pot. So come on out and enjoy. We have plenty of spots. You can check on the Rochester Pinball Collective Facebook page under events. It's there. We got spots. Come on down. We need to make 48 to make a certified tournament, and we are over halfway. That's the good thing. But we need your support, and come check us out. Ron, you have not even paid. I didn't say I was playing in it. You are. Okay. You don't do anything. You just got to look pretty. and not play well. Uh-huh.
    87:34
    Okay. So you got them both down. Mm-hmm. I am not playing it. And it'll probably snow, so. It's not going to snow. It's December. It's going to snow. It's not going to snow. Okay. God, you're such a negative Nancy.
    87:48
    It's not going to snow. Are you ready for the ball bag, Bruce? I'm ready for your ball bag, big boy. All right. Okay, so the first one here is from Cole. Been a while. Cole, he's kind of like our new pinball princess with the super long emails. Been a while. It's been a while.
    88:13
    Okay, Cole says, hey, world travelers. Oh, that must be me. Now I understand mainly because of Bruce where the term ugly American comes from. Well, that is wrong. Yes, I totally agree. Or maybe it's from Soller taking what seems to be 20 minutes to play his ball. Wow. Holy shit. Wow. It was killing me watching the U.K. Open and waiting for him to step up to play. Actually, he was fine there as far as I saw. I didn't know. Towards the end, he started dragging him on. Okay, I didn't know he was in the group I was watching. And when nobody stepped up to play, I looked and saw it was him. I said to myself, figures, Bruce, you need to go to more tournaments to warn these guys, like at the Beast. Yep. Let's see. A couple episodes ago, you mentioned Blues Brothers was out and about.
    88:57
    I just curled into a ball and cried that Home Pin is doing that license. While I understand that the license would probably be a nightmare to deal with, I can only imagine Stern doing it with Elwin on Design and Code. Let's see. Nunn mode, you have to combo ramps, which would be like you're smacking the two of them with a ruler. I like that. Good old boys mode, hit different shots to escape them. Bob's Country Bunker Scoop, if there is a scoop. Let's see. Mall multiball. Oh, yeah. They go through the mall. Got to go to the mall. Yeah, stuff like that. Palace Hotel Ballroom Mini Wizard Mode. That leads to 106 miles to Chicago. Car Chase Multiball. Yes. We're on a mission from God wizard mode. We're on a mission from God. And to top it off, when you drain, you hear the line from the Illinois Nazis when they're falling from the bridge, I've always loved you. I do.
    89:43
    I know somebody who owns one. And you do too now, Ron. I know I'm missing more, but all the possibilities, damn you, Mike, and home pin. Okay, who owns Blues Brothers? Dr. John. Oh, yeah, Dr. John. But he buys everything. I know. He says it doesn't shoot bad. Well, because it stars. It stars, exactly. Good luck to Asher Lefkoff. He is moving to Australia. So all you people down there that are getting free found points and wins, ha ha. One of the times I was playing X-Men, he was playing next to me.
    90:17
    And when he was done, he looked over, hey, Ron, are you going to miss me? and I was thinking, yeah, you know, I will miss you, Escher, because he's 21 years old and he was basically born at the same time I got into this. So he's like mirroring my whole pinball obsession in his lifetime.
    90:36
    Yeah, and it's like, he's not going to college there or anything. Like, he's moving there. He's living in this new home because he already has, his mother's Australian, so he has dual citizenship anyway.
    90:48
    He's going to be there, mate. He's got a nice Roy! He's got family down there on both sides now. Mm-hmm. Oh, the factical. Also, hearing Zach complain about how Ron's games play differently than his, the fact is they played the same for everyone. You need to have a poster of the T-shirt I wear when I play softball that says, Stop whining, suck less, play better. Yeah! That sounds like a T-shirt for Slam Hill. It's never the game. It's always the player. Having him have to play the flaming turd note is dialed in. It was basically karmic justice. Wow. It is. Sorry, Ron. It still sucks along with Star Wars.
    91:28
    Fuck yeah. Yes. Yes, it does suck. See, you just heard him say it. Mike's the player who picked it. He did say that. I think he did say somewhere that he heard Zach bitching, and that's why he picked it. Yes, he did. So you fucked yourself over, Zach. Of course, Zach would say, I got stuck in on it. So if he got first, it would have been better. Hulk Hogan. I mean, Robert Mueller working for Boeing makes complete sense now. That's why they're falling apart. He took his octo-assembly process for deep-rooted Boeing, which explains everything. Yep, the doors keep on falling off fucking planes. That piece of shit needs to get deep-rooted himself. Hopefully somehow it gets sucked into one of Boeing's engines. But that would be good and quick for what he deserves. Let's see. Dutch releasing poop-a-dicks. Alice does Wonderland. Makes sense as it would definitely be dual penetration extreme. Yes. First from J-Pop, then by Dutch, while you wait 10 years for your cane. Wow. It's like I'm almost psychic about this. People are jumping on the bandwagon, baby. Bruce, a couple of episodes ago, you guys were talking about how long you have been in pinball. Yeah. It's a long time. There should be something that details your history throughout pinball. If there was an outlet to do this. It's called 238 episodes. Yes. There's an outlet to do this that talks about pinball history Wait, Silver Ball Chronicles Which can be found on the Pinball Network Seems like just the podcast to do that Silver Ball Chronicles Which can be found on the Pinball Network Can start from the beginning of you buying Kiss Machine From a crack house To the Silver Ball Saloon To RPC Which can be found at 349 West Commercial Street In beautiful East Rochester, New York Suite 2965 Not even Zach can do that I know I think Silverball Chronicles, which can be found on the pinball network, would do it justice or maybe not. Ron might take some creative freedom just for the hell of it. Yeah, we should have a Silverball Chronicles episode. It's just about us. We should. David, that does make that so. Yes, I'm sure everyone would want to hear that because of our huge influence on pinball. We are influencers. We just convinced somebody to buy a surfing safari, and they bought it. Oh, yes. one of your DPXing STDs, Cole. Yes. Thank you, Cole. Always entertaining. P.S. Attached is a gif of Bruce when he hears Silver Ball Chronicles, which can be found on the Pinball Network.
    93:55
    I didn't even look at the gif. Yeah, you have to look at that. He looks pissed. Let's see. This one is from B. Johnson.
    94:05
    It says, deep root fake news. Uh-oh. I think we made some mistakes. The penalties, Ron read, are proposed ones submitted to the court by the SEC. Who is the plaintiff? That's right. The judge has not yet ruled, which I think he's supposed to do in December.
    94:23
    So in December, the judge will say whether he actually has to pay it or not. It will probably still drag on. It says Robert Mueller allegedly came and went from Boeing a while ago. It was a short stay. Wow. I was there just assembling doors.
    94:39
    Oh, God. Yes. The picture is the angry guy from Inside Out. Ah. And you know who voices that? Not Jack Black, but the comedian Black. Louis Black. Louis Black, yeah. He does the voice for that, which is perfect. Yeah. I like Louis Black. I love Louis Black. The other day, the president told me to grab a hammer, and I was waiting for their instructions.
    95:07
    Sorry. Okay. Jeff says Hey fellas, I was listening to your podcast today on my way to my job at Boeing this morning and shit myself when you said Robert Mueller works here I tried to pull him up in the internal database to see what he does, but it was clear he doesn't work here I found his LinkedIn and it states he worked at Boeing in contract management only from August 2022 to November 2022 so he hasn't been there in a couple years it sounds like he was just a consultant maybe he's flipping burgers now Door hardware. He was figuring out who buys the door hardware.
    95:44
    I'm going to tell you how to get that cheaper and make more money. Maybe he's flipping burgers now to start to pay back all the people he ripped off. Cheers, Jeff.
    95:55
    Wow. Well, hey, door hardware, if you only put in four bolts instead of the eight, we save money. Very good. Next one we got Stern's Survey Oh yeah, there was a survey sent by Stern Yes, I saw that Where you could put the And they sent me that And I put Beavis in Butthead And the Freeform field And it was in the drop down also But also were things like Family Guy Games they already did And games that Jersey Jack has already done Things that other manufacturers have already done So it was kind of weird It was weird It says, Bruvis and Ronhead, did you see the Stern pinball theme survey? Yes, we did. For the first question, I put down Beavis and Butthead. Thank you, sir. Bravo. Thank you, Bob. This is from Bob. You see, I put down – however, the next question was a list of themes and whether you'd play them or buy them. And Beavis and Butthead was one of the choices. Wondered about some of the choices provided, like do we really need a third iteration of Guns N' Roses? No. Does anyone really want to spend $7,000 on Candyland? No. Or Taylor Swift, no. How about if it was Taylor Swift and the football guy that she used? Oh, what's his name? Chelsea. Chelsea and Swift, the game, the power couple game. How about that? God fucking no. I'm thinking that the list is overly long and has lots of not likely pin themes to keep their competition guessing. I agree. Or maybe even to suppress themes that might be a consideration for the likes of JJP, American.
    97:30
    Will they do another licensed theme? Yeah, maybe Candyland. Barrels of Fun, et cetera. Would be good to hear your thoughts on the teams provided in the list, and not only with not only the would play, would buy, if Bruce could part with a few machines, but also there's no way Stern is considering this theme. I would, but the thing had like 100 titles on there.
    97:50
    Went to York on Friday. It wasn't me. Did it seem smaller this year? No, Bruce. Too bad, because I had $20 to give him for his uncanny X-Men fund. What was Zach's sightings there? Zach was there. After all the talk about Elton John on the past few episodes, I was hoping to get to try an Elton John at the show, but there was none. Oh.
    98:09
    I guess the good thing about the seemingly lower attendance on Friday is that the newer games had short lines. Huff and John wicked no line at all, and sometimes Jaws had no line, but Uncanny X-Men had a line, though not very long, by pinball show standards the entire time. Keep the episodes flowing. Bob, according to Bruce, we need to keep them flowing for another couple years at least. Yeah. Let's see. Do I have the survey?
    98:33
    Oh, what is your dream theme? I'll just put it in again. Let's see. Beavis and Butthead. Let's see. I'll go through these quick. Mickey Mouse.
    98:44
    That means Disney. They could probably do that one. No, they can't. Well, eventually they'll be able to because the 1920s stuff is already going. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to rapid fire through these to see where we think this would be a good theme to make. Pulp Fiction. Soundgarden no Angry Birds no Major League Baseball haven had a sports one in a while No You want the Otani game No I think that was Fuck that Hope his fucking shoulder dead Oh Jesus
    99:18
    Die Hard? Yes. Yeah, Die Hard, but it has to be the Christmas movie. Oh, stop. Frozen? No. Halo? No. Dodgeball? Yes. Fuck yeah. I don't know. I've never seen that one. Oh, my God. I probably should because it's the South Park, guys. Yes. Oh, my God. It's fucking funny. NHL? No.
    99:41
    South Park. An updated South Park. Yes. 100%. Fast and the Furious. No. Yeah. I would say yeah. That means a shitload of money, bro. No. World of Warcraft. No. Elden Ring. You're going to say no to all the video games. No. Incredibles. Yes. Okay. Friday the 13th. No. Okay. Mortal Kombat. No. But it probably would do well, but no. Barbie? No. F1 Racing?
    100:09
    No. Dragon Ball Z? No. John Hughes films? Yeah, a couple of them. Ferris Bueller, maybe? Yeah, Ferris Bueller, I'd definitely say. Watch, that's not a John Hughes film. SpongeBob SquarePants? No. Tony Hawk? No. Wonder Woman? Wonder Woman, yes. Scream? No. Red Hot Chili Peppers? No. Tomb Raider? No. Hangover?
    100:33
    The Witcher? Yes, The Witcher. I'm not going through all these because this will take forever. I'm going to see which ones they already did.
    100:43
    Or ones like I'd actually like. X-Men. Good fellas. They should have done that instead of Godfather. I agree totally. Eminem? No. Really? You don't think that would. No. Taylor Swift? So you're like no on that. No, fuck no to Swifties. Okay. Godfather's on here, which is hilarious. So is Iron Maiden. What are you saying? You want to do it again? Prince, they already tried. Maybe they wanted too much money Rocky No, too old, too far gone Okay, Animal House then? No, that's too gone Untouchables No, too far gone Led Zeppelin Ozzy Osbourne I would say like an Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath type thing would work That won't happen Come on, you could just You won't get all four You could have like gibberish multi-ball I gotta flip the fucking I got to save the sand and push the ocean back in.
    101:41
    Yeah, that'd be great. Monopoly. Wow, they already made that one. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In another 15 years, you can get it for free, the licensing. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I would like that.
    101:53
    Batman, which they've already done multiple times. Multiple. Bon Jovi. No. Nirvana. No. U2. No. Black Sabbath. Come on. No. I'd say Black Sabbath. Motley Crue. You could probably do that one, too. No. No? I like Motley Crue. I'm sick of the music between most of them. Yeah. Indiana Jones. Well, since they canceled the one they were making, I'd say no. Yeah. How about ELO? Is ELO on there? Didn't you take this one? Madonna? No. Oh, come on. Voltron. Ooh, Voltron. Voltron, if you have both. Tron. They already did. Tron, they did. But they're probably... Call of Duty. I don't know if that would translate. Big duty. Evil Dead. Well, I thought Spooky's doing that. ACDC, you already did. Caddyshack. Yes. Okay, PC Boys. No. Van Halen. No. Oh, yeah, definitely Van Halen. You know, it has to be like Alien or Aliens. You get Van Halen or you get Van Hagar. All right. Yeah. Peabody and Butthead. Yes. Yes, of course. Alien. It's like, oh, that was already done. Ghostbusters. Again, Jaws is on here. Futurama. Futurama I think would be good. Or an updated Simpsons. That's the game they should do. No, no, they're not going to do it. So everyone can enjoy the third flipper shot. That works awesome. Oh, you mean redo the game? Like the same game? Yeah, same game, but honestly, with 35 seasons of information instead of four or five, I think they started at four or five. No, no, no, no, no. When they did the one that you love, they were 13 seasons in. Was it 13? Oh, yeah. I like that. But now imagine 35 years. No. Plus, Gary's already said they're not making another Simpsons. He said that in Colorado in his speech. He said that the second one they did was Perfection, and they're not going to screw with that. So it was Metallica, and they'd screw with that. Green Day, yes. No. Yes, 100%.
    104:01
    I'm going to rage against the machine. No. Guns and Roses. Tool. No, no. Back to the Future. Well, you guys passed on that, supposedly. E.T. No, no extra testicle for me.
    104:16
    Superman. I mean, like what movie? Pearl Jam. Journey. Supposedly that's out. Beetlejuice. No, it didn't do well. Lord of the... No. What are you talking about? The new Beetlejuice did not do well. Yes, it did. It totally made like at least three or four times back its budget. You are incorrect. Look it up, bro. I'm doing it right now. Yeah, look it up right now. Lord of the Rings, which they already did. Dungeons and Dragons, which is the next game. So that's kind of funny. Conan the Barbarian. I know I said I wasn't going to keep saying these. A Family Guy. They already did Family Guy. Kenny Rogers, who they spelled wrong.
    104:50
    That bothers me. I'd love a Kenny Rogers pin. And you could have Will Sasso. He's the Candyman. The Candyman. Can't go as you make your thing. Will Sasso from Mad TV. Oh, Kenny Rogers.
    105:03
    Robocop. They made double. They already did that. Double. Oh, I'm sorry. Double what they made. So, yes, a total bomb. Terminator, which they already did. Dune.
    105:13
    Dune. I could see Dune. See, Dune to me seems more like a JJP thing with the presentation. Like a big sandworm toy that moves or something.
    105:23
    Let's see. ELO. Nope, no ELO. I'm sorry. Yes. No, it's not on the page anywhere, Bruce. What? No. Sorry to bring you down, but that's enough of a survey. Don't bring me down, down, down, down. I'm sorry, Bruce. Down, down, down, down. Okay. Let's see. Next one's from Tom, the creator of Make It Pro. Make it pro, Tom. Make it pro, sir. Says, hello and good day. Back from Expo. I don't think I saw Tom the whole time I was there. Or I just miss them. His beard is hard to miss. It is. Back from Expo, had a great time. My quick breakdown. Avatar, eh, weak flippers and a crash dummy during ball two. Alice, eh, not impressed. X-Men, fun, would like to play more. Metallica, beautiful, stole the show. Okay, this episode's Make It Pro selections, don't forget, must make three changes, no more, no less.
    106:25
    Okay, you ready? I'm ready. Simpsons. See, this one to me is hard. That's easy. Yeah, but the upper play field is the lock, so how do you remove it? You take away the TV.
    106:38
    The color DMD TV. A little color TMD TV. Okay, that's one. That's one thing. I don't know. Second, you can take away the captive moving ball for Bart. Okay, so it's static. Yep. And third, you can just take the itchy and scratchy hole away.
    106:55
    Okay, so we're leaving the upper play field. Yeah, leave the upper play field. You almost have to because that shit just doesn't work with that. If you hit it in the garage, where's it going to go?
    107:06
    You know what I mean? I know. I'm just saying. That's why I was telling you. Okay. I don't know how much money that saves us, though.
    107:13
    We're just making it a pro. But it's going to be an Elwynn title, so we're going to give a higher budget because that's what everybody says. All right. Fishtails.
    107:21
    Real gun. Yeah, let's see. How do we do... And you get rid of the boat and just put X ramps instead. So you're making it cheaper. You get rid of that extra play field and just make them ramps. I'm trying to think. Okay, get rid of the reel. Reel. But somehow it goes in a position where you can still use the catapult? No. Or no, you just get rid of the catapult. Everything. And it's just like a lock. Or a virtual lock. And it dribbles out.
    107:47
    Get rid of the shooter. The handle. Yeah, the shooter. It's out. The reel thing. The handle. The reel thing. Just make it a button. Yep. And the third is just get rid of the play field, the little mini play field that pushes up. You just make it ramp. So it basically becomes kingpin. Yep. Okay.
    108:03
    Monopoly. Okay, get rid of DMD again, the little DMD. The little DMD. Get rid of the bank so it's just an open ramp.
    108:13
    Get rid of that drop target. Yeah. The one that blocks the cock target. The cock blocker, yeah. Cock block. Yes. Or you can also get rid of the door on the safe, so it's just a safe that's open. That's what I said. This is a regular ramp. That's the bank door. Oh, okay. The bank door is one. Oh, the bank. Okay, that's right. Yes, the bank door is one. That's right, it's the bank, not a safe. I'm thinking of – The drop target is the second thing for the mode start area, and the third would be – or you can get rid of the spinning flipper.
    108:41
    Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get rid of the spinning flipper, the drop target. Use the drop target. Oh, no, leave the drop target. Okay, spinning flipper, but we still have the drop target. Yep, and the door and the DMD. In the DMD. Here we go. We made it pro. Make it so. Make it pro.
    108:59
    All right. Thank you, Tom. This next one's from Rabia, who I played. I think I played some games with him last year, but we hooked up again. I believe he's from Chicago. He's in the area. It says, hey, Ron, minus Bruce. It was great to hang out with you at Expo. I don't know about you, but the more I play Jaws, the more I like it. Keith Elwin keeps updating the code, adding interesting features like the latest one, Great White Shark Bounty Hunt. I hope your dad enjoyed Expo as well. Thanks again, and see you at the next Expo with the Full Slam Tilt Team? Nope, 2620. There you go. Oh, God, we should start plugging that two years in advance. It would be a really fun thing if you and Bruce hosted like a Dunk the Slam Tilt Duo where two pinball players challenge the two of you on any machine of their choice on the Expo Convention floor. We did that one year. I mean, I guess triple drain, if you took two of them, two of the three. Yeah. They'd probably be better than us, but I would think we'd be better than most anyone else. I think so, too. I mean, I'm not saying that with ego or anything, you know.
    110:08
    Marty and Jeff would give us a run, I think. Let's see. Mike Finacore from CERN has the similar challenge where he gives away medallions to those who can beat him on a game. Maybe Stu should show up. They'll deport him. They'll deport him back to Romania.
    110:24
    Yeah, me and Robbie have played a very long game of Jaws. And it's the first time I've ever actually found the shots on a Jaws. Wow. And it was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. I do like the little upper play field.
    110:39
    You don't stay on there very long, so it doesn't get old. But the thing is, I don't like the amount of times it stops the ball. Yes. It's very stoppy. It reminds me, it's like even Jurassic Park had that issue.
    110:53
    Yeah, he likes his pop-ups that present you with the instructions and then you go. Which is good because then you know what you're doing or you can choose something like, you know, beep, beep. I think I figured it out. I don't like the stoppage to be right where the flippers are because then you're there like, oh, is it going to let it go? Am I going to drain? What's going on? You know, as opposed to, think about like Iron Maiden. It's on the ramp. Iron Maiden, you hit the center shot up there, then it presents everything. But the ball's way up top, so you're not really worried about draining.
    111:25
    Maybe that's it. Stop stopping the ball that close to the flippers, maybe. Stop stopping the, stop stopping the, stop stopping the ball right there.
    111:38
    Second email. This is also from Rabia. Robby says, also on Alice in Wonderland, I spent a lot of time on the upper play field, and it takes getting used to, but I figured it out with momentum flipping. Okay. Similar to a slapstick motion, the ball would shoot up, and the goal, I think, question mark, was getting into the upper scoop and or the right saucer. I completed.
    112:04
    That would be funny if it said that. I completed the knave of hearts mode after much laboring on that upper play field. Was it satisfying? Not really. More of a relief.
    112:15
    Wow. Womp, womp. Doesn't matter. They sold them all, man. Money, money, money. Performance issues and everything like that. Money, money, money. I got your money. I'm going to go on a trip or two.
    112:29
    All right. This next one is. Did they have girls passing around flyers this year? No, they didn't have the babes there like they did for Lebigabowski. Yeah, okay. They've learned something.
    112:43
    We got this. This is the last one from Tim. He says, guys, slipping into the ball bag last minute before you record, hopefully.
    112:52
    First things first, I'd like to thank you for the update on our favorite pinball scam artist failing upwards in life. Well, Robert Mueller, I'll be completely terrified stepping on any polling with the knowledge that Robert Mueller is involved in any way, shape, or form. Or everyone's going to be going onto a plane, looking at the door tag, sneaking out to Boeing, and then looking at the date it was made. If it's before June of 2022, you're good. So you're going to look at the door, and it's going to say pin bar on it. Yeah.
    113:21
    Imagining deep root terminology being incorporated into the cockpit of all new planes, brother. The horror I'll feel when I'm the only one on the flight that knows what a pin bar is, and that it's not going to work to steer the plane, brother. anyway I'm really I'm going to lower this play field down look how easy oh oh you go into the cockpit there's a pin bar here's the pilot of the plane oh my god anyway I'm really writing about the segment you did on call outs audio is very near and dear to my heart and big reason why I've always loved pinball as janky as they sounded I love the old ballies that talked a la speak and spells as a kid. Hello, I am here, she say.
    114:07
    2XL is here. As a kid, I remember being blown away by Williams games and actual voice samples. This isn't a knock on Stern's sound department. Maybe JJP and their slot machine sound packages. They've gotten away from that. Oh yeah, when I was at Jersey Jack Factory, they have a new sound guy there that they've hired. He's getting trained. Eric Minier told me he was being trained. David Thiel was helping out, training him. I'm like, oh, thank God. Thank God. It just figures that modern games have the ability to pack a game with so much content, audio and now video, not that we really need that, but everything is just kind of meh overall. I think Ghostbusters may have been the last audio package I liked from CERN. We get the incredible Super Jackpot callouts for like a million points. Yeah. Super Jackpot! Maybe having storage limitations made the audio departments of long ago laser focus on making something memorable and informative to the player. Yeah, like the new Metallica supposedly has 1,000 new call-outs by the band. Fuck yeah! To me, I'm just thinking that's 250 large call-outs. Fuck yeah! No, no.
    115:17
    I have a request for you to get some of these audio guys on the show and get them to talk about the process, the equipment, and fun stories they may have when working on some of our favorite games and call-outs. Okay, Ron, that's up to you now. Oh, God.
    115:32
    Watch the head-to-head one. Watch. Listen to the head-to-head one they had with What's-His-Face. That was excellent. One of the William Sound guys. To my knowledge, nobody has done an interview with Paul Heche from Williams. It's possible he's busy or doesn't want to talk, but we really need some clarity on who Fluffy the Vampire is and why he's in BSD. There's a Fluffy the Vampire?
    115:56
    There is? I had that game. When does that come up? Well. Hmm. Tim. Oh, P.S. I'm sure you'll be talking about Alice in Wonderland on the newest episode. I've only seen the trailer, but to me, the Mad Hatter sounds like Chris Kattan from Saturday Night Live doing his goth talk character. Oh, God.
    116:15
    Yeah. Or Jack. Whatever. It was pretty bad. Bad. All right. The ball bag has been empty.
    116:25
    I can go to sleep now. Okay, we're going to finish it up with repairs. Oh. And I'm going to start. Wow. Yes. So, dialed in. I got new flaps for my trap door. Mm-hmm. And getting the trap door out, I remember. It sucks. Yeah, but I also remembered I didn't have to take everything apart. No, no, you don't have to. And they do it so you can kind of spin it around, and there's a notch where you can get it out. So I put a new trapdoor in, and then I raised the habit trail above it a bit to try to get it so it doesn't hit it every time. And I stretched the spring. I made the spring even stiffer, trying to make it so it doesn't come up as fast.
    117:18
    Oh, my God. And then I kind of went crazy because the thing that always bothered me about Dial-In. Besides the game. No, Dial-In is awesome. It's the fact that on the prototypes I played, when you have a lock lit and you hit the left ramp, it diverts it into that upper playfield area. And on the prototypes, it would divert it, it would hit the one rubber, bounce back, and go right into where the skill shot is and fire it around to your flipper. It was super cool. and since then I've only played one other game, one other copy of it that actually worked, that did that. That didn't suck? Okay, yeah. Gotcha. Stop, stop. It's the truth. It's awesome. So I worked for like over an hour fucking with that shot, trying to get it to work, and I finally did get the thing to work. I had to take the actual, the part that the ball curves around that she's holding, the diverter, I had to bend it. But you've got to be careful because you can't bend it too much because then when it comes up, it actually hits there. You have to fuck with it a lot. But I got it so it actually hits right in the center of the one rubber.
    118:31
    Sorry, I didn't say that loud. The rubber between the posts there, the main that's there. And it bounced back. And it doesn't work every time, but it's never 100%. But most of the time, it'll bounce, and it goes into the back, and it feeds it to the side flipper, and it's beautiful. It finally works like it's supposed to.
    118:49
    Oh, and I replaced my CMOS battery because I had to because it went dead, and I had the deal where I'm dialed in, if the CMOS battery dies on the motherboard, it loses the bio settings. Yes, it does. Now, on some of their other games, like, it'll still boot, but on this game it's special because it has three monitors technically. Yes. It has the main monitor, it has the hologram, and it has the phone. The main monitor and the hologram thing, they come from the motherboard. They're the integrated video.
    119:28
    Probably because they ran out on the integrated board, they have an extra board, the PCI board, video board, for the phone. The problem is you've got to tell the BIOS to not go off that one first and it doesn't boot because I found if you take that board out, the game will boot, but you'll have no phone.
    119:51
    So it was funny. I still have a VGA connector, so I put it in there, and I got a PS2 keyboard. So I had the thing. I got into the BIOS, which I read somewhere that it had a password, but mine didn't. I think the password's QModem, I read, but mine had no password. I got in, and I just went around the BIOS settings trying to find what I thought was the right setting, and I was one for one.
    120:17
    I went over to the video section, found it, like, use integrated or the card, and was set to the card, like, I'll change this to integrated. We'll see what happens. Boot it right up. So I had the phone on my monitor, my 24-inch monitor that I was using, so that was pretty funny. So that was my adventures. I also got rectifier boards, Bruce. You'll be happy. So I'll be working on that. Yay. I actually had a rectifier board from Pinball Life already, but I got a second one.
    120:47
    Rectifier? I hardly knew her. I also got those new, the stern flipper bushings that are supposedly narrower.
    120:59
    Are they using those on the new games? Or is that like the special part? I don't know. I think it was only for one game. Well, I got a bunch of them. They're supposed to, well, your mileage may vary, but supposedly it's less play for the flipper. So it should generate some more power. And I want to try that on my Ironman and see if it makes the ramps a little bit better. I think that was it.
    121:24
    Yeah, that was it. Well, while you, I drove down to York. Oh, you did go to York. I did go to York. Went down one day. I got my back glass for Countdown. I mean, or Counterforce, I mean. Ah. And I got my plastics for Viper. I got a spare set of plastic for Viper. It's actually cool because this one, somebody wrote a note on the actual Viper plastic, the one in the center for the turret. Press red button to fire. Press, you know, other button to move. So, backwards, you know, it says. So, I'm going to put that plastic on so it's easier for people to understand it. I got to cut the trim lip because the trim piece is now on a system 80A and 80B and 80 games. Or, sorry, 80 games. The trim. The trim, the lift trim for the back glass. Oh, the lift trim. Oh, that's the thing where I was telling you that was the wrong term, and it turns out that's what Marco calls it, so it's right. Yeah. It is right. Yeah. And I found my tape to tape it in and glue it in and get it all sticky. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thicky, sticky. Other than that, not much repair work except for a couple games at the RPC.
    122:42
    Last night, I'm assuming, Zach texted me. He's like, oh, you lost all the flippers on whitewater. I'm like, well, do we have 50 volts? He's like, I haven't checked it yet. And I never got a message from him, so I don't know if he checked it last night. So I might have to go in and see why I lost all the flippers on whitewater.
    122:58
    What else? Not much. It's broken this week. So we're going to be putting some games back, new games on the floor, so I can pull out some games that will actually finally start working on them. The scariest one I'm going to be working on is the Medieval Madness, my newer edition from the Chicago Gaming one. Yes. I've got to pull the whole bottom board off. Which is the main board. Which is the main light board and everything else. Yeah, the main board, and it's under the play field. Stupid. Why? I don't get it. Because one LED is completely out. Yeah. So, yeah, it's probably got a cracked trace. Yeah, isn't that great? One LED's out, I have to pull out the entire fucking board. Yeah, exactly. God damn. You know what happens on my demo man if the light's out? You go in there and fix the board or fix the little board. No, no, no. I just take the light bulb out and put a new one in, and it's good. Yeah. Isn't that great? I agree. I'm right with you. Oh, God. It's like, oh.
    123:57
    Yeah. So we're going to be bringing Tommy out on the floor soon with working blinders. But we're bringing out Little Chief, Timeline, and Counterforce. Yes.
    124:15
    Love Timeline. Now my board, my nine ball has the new Opto board in it for the trough. Yep. And I've played like 40 games on it and it has not gotten lost once, which is really nice. I've been playing 44-player games to see if it gets all screwed up. Hasn't yet. You play 44-player games? 44. That's one hell of a backlash. How do they fit all that on there? It must, like, scroll. Yeah, it's got to be it. And then Zach is going to eventually download the code so we can put, because I have a newer board in my stars, but you can put the code in for the new spinner, the spinner for stars that we asked for. We talked about it. You didn't even bring that up, Ron. I thought we did that the last episode, but maybe we didn't. We didn't. No, Scott, our Scott. We asked him for it, and he made it. We asked for a spinner counter for stars, and he did it. Yes, he did. It's currently in my stars. He already has it on his own site, so if you want this code, If you go to Pinside and you look for his username, I think it's S-L-O-C-H-A-R, Slowchar. Yeah, Slowchar. He has a link in there where he has all his code, and I checked it. He has the latest Stars code. He's already uploaded there. So you want a spinner counter. For both spinners, not just one. It does both. Yeah. So you forgot about that. Let's get that in there. I forgot to mention, I played Labyrinth at Expo, and I liked it. I know you don't like it. I hate it. I love draining on the left side just so I can see the little guy poke his head out.
    125:53
    Yeah, great. Just what I want to see. Oh. Well, I'm telling you the truth. I'm telling the truth. I hate everything. Except X-Men.
    126:05
    Somebody made a thing of Taylor Swift on Genesis Playfield. So you can build your own Taylor Swift. Oh, God.
    126:19
    Okay. That's fucking funny. We're going off the rails here. That's fucking funny. I think we're done. Are we? I got nothing else. Oh, wow. Mailbag, repairs. I think I've covered everything. Yeah. Okay. So that's our Super Duper Expo recap. You haven't had any really good Bruce business I can use as a title, though. People suck. No, I'm not using it. I put it right in the beginning. Did I or did I not say that? I'm not saying people suck as a title. That's, that's no. People suck like me. Yeah.
    126:51
    It works. No. It works. I might just call it something like the super duper expo recap episode or something. No, that's so fucking corny. Yeah, exactly.
    127:02
    Like we're not corny. No, we're not. No, we are. It's long. This is a long episode. It is because we had expo, expo, expo, and I got to go to work now after this. Oh, so this has been episode 238 of the Slamtail Podcast. You can check us out at our website, www.slamtailpodcast.com. All our links are in the upper right-hand corner. Check them out. Check out our Facebook. You can see the one-hour expo walkthrough, the awesomeness. You didn't even talk about Dick Bot. Dick Bot? What the hell is Dick Bot? You posted the picture. Oh, yeah. Somebody had. I love this. Was it a pin or a sticker? Was it a sticker? I don't know. Somebody had a sticker or something that said Dickbot on it. So I was just like, that made me chuckle. And it's like, I wonder if that's the new Dutch game. Because, you know, they did do Bride of Pinbot. So this is their new one, Dickbot. I'm here to penetrate you.
    128:05
    Yes, this is Python. That's totally what I wanted. I wanted full penetration, but they would not allow it. At Dutch Pinball Extreme, we double penetrate every time we catch him. Oh, God, can you imagine if, oh, God, if he was still alive. Dutch Pinball has hired Python Angelo to do our latest art package. Oh, my God. I have finally found a company that's not all about money, man. They let me do what I want. I have finally been able to draw the perfect dick on a game with Dick Bot. Oh, God. I've got to say one more thing before we go. Okay. Before we do our final things. I saw that JJP's hiring for $15 an hour to build pinball machines. Did you hear the uproar about that? No, I didn't hear the uproar. I'm sure you're going to tell me. No, they had a sign outside. Everyone's like, how the fuck are you supposed to live on $15 an hour in Chicago?
    129:05
    It's like, Jesus Christ. Making pinball is hard. And expensive. inexpensive about $15 an hour come on you know it's not expensive this podcast no it's free yes so hi to everybody yes hi Zach hi Steve I'm a bonus pinball princess did I just say that anyone everyone in our cluster Jeffrey we miss you Marty get your bass back here get your bass back here yes I agree always. Okay. I think that's it. We're just killing time now. Bruce, do you have a name? I have a name. I've always had a name. I've had it for the past three minutes. Oh, wow. Full three minutes. Holy shit. All right. Well, thanks to everybody.
    129:56
    Hope everyone had a good time at Expo. Yes. Don't forget, come out and see us at the Rochester Pinball Collective in December and play that thing, whatever you said it is. Yes. The ball rumble. Yeah, hopefully it doesn't snow. It's not. It's fall. Okay. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Ben Clement. Thank you. Meteor Level Zero Clusterfuck George the Kai Jim Balls Bruce Dism Tournament Talk Car Holder Cheetah Xanadu Cash Grab ELO Ball Pay What You Find Game You Love Game You Hate Tournament Talk Game of Princess Oh my.
    131:22
    Oh my. I like our influence. I hear now. I was listening to Loser Kids. Josh was trying to say Dutch Pinball exclusive, and he says Dutch Pinball extreme. Oh, wait a minute. No, that's the other podcast.
    132:06
    And then Marty and Jeff and Ryan were saying. Yeah, Ryan just straight out called it Dual Penetration Extreme.
    132:13
    I loved it.