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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 14: Robert Byers Jumping Off The Top Rope

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 2m·analyzed·Feb 16, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

InDisc 2024 finals game selection debate and Rush Pinball mixed review.

Summary

Triple Drain Podcast hosts Joel, Tom, Travis, and guest Robert Byers discuss the controversy surrounding InDisc finals game selection (vintage games instead of modern/purchasable titles) and offer competing solutions to balance competitive integrity with marketing/spectator appeal. The hosts then shift to reviewing Stern's Rush Pinball, with mixed initial impressions centered on playfield layout concerns and shot difficulty.

Key Claims

  • InDisc 2024 finals featured three vintage/non-purchasable games: Stargate, Rock and Roller Games, and Alvin G's Mystery Castle

    high confidence · Joel and hosts confirm the three final games in the tournament

  • Zach Minney (Pinball Show host/distributor) criticized the finals game selection as unsuitable for marketing pinball to new audiences on an 800-1000 viewer stream

    high confidence · Robert, Travis, and Joel all reference Zach's recent podcast criticism of InDisc finals

  • Tournament format prevents replaying previously-selected games, forcing players to pick from remaining inventory by finals

    high confidence · Travis explains the five-game qualifying format creates unavoidable depletion of desirable game options

  • Robert Byers won the Classics 1 championship at InDisc 2024

    high confidence · Joel explicitly congratulates Robert on 'Classics 1 champion now at Indus'

  • IE Pinball stream reached 800-900 viewers during InDisc finals with strong production quality from Carl D'Angelo

    high confidence · Multiple hosts reference the viewership numbers and Carl's streaming capability

  • Rush Pinball has bent/torn cliffers and playfield design issues limiting left-side shot appeal

    medium confidence · Robert and Joel both note cliffer damage and Joel criticizes lack of compelling left-flipper shots

  • Rush Pinball has no left ramp, only center-upper-flipper ramp and difficult scoop/orbit shots from right flipper

    high confidence · Joel provides detailed playfield layout critique, noting absence of traditional left ramp

  • InDisc 2020 featured modern games like Alice Cooper (Spooky) and Pirates of the Caribbean (Jersey Jack)

    medium confidence · Tom references historical game selections but does not confirm these exact titles were in finals

Notable Quotes

  • “I just watched the finals. And he completely kind of tore them apart...why in the world is the final round of the biggest tournament of this year played on such crappy games?”

    Joel (paraphrasing Zach Minney) @ early segment — Core criticism framing the entire tournament game selection debate

  • “As soon as you force a game on a person, you just took away that advantage that the first place person has been working towards that entire tournament.”

    Robert Byers @ mid-discussion — Articulates competitive integrity concern with mandatory sponsor game requirements

  • “I would like to see the higher seeds be rewarded by the time the finals come...by the time you get to finals, you're going to be playing it just basically rolling the dice on whatever games are left.”

    Travis @ mid-discussion — Proposes pick refresh for finals to restore competitive advantage and game quality

  • “In competitive play at a major tournament then is not the time to try to market pinball...the Stern Pro Circuit Championship is the perfect time to do because it's guaranteed to be a sternament.”

    Tom @ late-discussion — Reframes marketing responsibility away from competitive tournaments to manufacturer-specific events

  • “I don't have a lot of time on it, but I walked past a Rush Pinball a thousand times at NDSC...And then I walked away and I never came back.”

    Robert Byers @ Rush segment — Summarizes negative first impression of Rush despite limited play time

  • “There's nothing on the left side of the game that excites me...I'm so used to having a left ramp in a game, and this game has no left ramp.”

    Joel @ Rush playfield analysis — Identifies specific design flaw reducing playfield engagement and shot variety

  • “We just witnessed the best tournament that's probably been streamed in, I don't know, the last two, three years because of COVID...Carl's production and the commentary, the announcers, the four days of it...was incredibly well done.”

    Robert Byers — Balances Zach's criticism with acknowledgment of InDisc 2024 production quality excellence

Entities

Robert ByerspersonZach MinneypersonTriple Drain PodcastorganizationInDisceventIE PinballorganizationCarl D'AngelopersonStern PinballcompanyRush PinballgameAlvin G's Mystery CastlegameStargate

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: InDisc 2024 finals game selection sparks debate between competitive players (defending tournament format), tournament organizers, and industry figures like distributor Zach Minney who prioritize marketing/spectator appeal

    high · Multiple independent confirmations of Zach's criticism and split community reaction ('heard it half and half...some people that don't agree')

  • ?

    community_signal: Robert Byers' competitive achievement (Classics 1 champion at InDisc 2024) and guest appearance on podcast demonstrates community recognition and media integration of tournament winners

    high · Joel opens with congratulations and Rock wrestling intro; Robert participates as industry-recognized tournament champion

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tournament players forced to deplete preferred game picks during qualifying rounds, arriving at finals with only undesirable options remaining—structural issue limiting final game quality regardless of rules

    high · Travis explains five-game qualifying format creates mandatory depletion; no-repeat rule creates cascading constraints through bracket play

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Rush Pinball receives mixed reception with specific playfield layout concerns: missing left ramp, difficult left-side shots, and bent/damaged cliffers affecting playability

    high · Joel provides detailed critique of shot availability; Robert notes cliffer damage observed at InDisc; both express initial disappointment despite limited play time

  • $

    market_signal: Distributor and industry observer (Zach Minney) publicly criticizes tournament format as missed marketing opportunity to introduce pinball to new audiences via high-viewership streams

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.369

0:00
the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast all right tom you ready uh-huh travis you ready hell yeah let's do it joel okay calm down here we go We're three guys who like to dunk and ball. So we came up with the wild card name. We're going side to side with dunk and ball. And we call ourselves Triple Drain. All right. Well, welcome, everybody. It's been quite a while since we've recorded one. A lot of stuff's been going on. We usually shoot for every two weeks, two to three weeks. But, yeah, what was it, last weekend there was this slight, I mean, it's kind of a big deal. I don't know. It seemed like a big deal. But InDisc, InDisc was happening in California. And Travis and Tom both went to that. And so they needed, like, a week to mentally prepare. Then they needed, you know, to compete in it. And then they needed a week to decompress. And so, yeah, so here we are. And to be honest, even scheduling this podcast was a challenge, not because it's three of us, but there's actually four of us. And so we have an extra ball this week. It's very fitting for the topics that we are going to discuss. We have the one, the only Robert Byers from Topper.
1:39
And, yeah, there's Tom blowing out our mics with our applause sample. Sorry about that. But, Robert, hey, I appreciate you being on here tonight. There's a lot more I could throw in. I mean, you've got a lot of personalities that you – I don't know if we should call you Rob all night or whatever wrestler you are at the moment. I mean – You call him champion, Joel, because he's a champion. The people's champion, brother. And the Classics 1 champion now at Indus. So congrats on that. I've got to start out with my classic, you know. Finally, the Rob has come to the Triple Drain podcast. If you smell what the Rob is podcasting. This is better than having the rock on. It is. Look at that. F that guy. But what's crazy is episode one, Tom came into this and said, hey, I want this to be my intro. And literally did the exact same thing. And we told him, no, Tom, that's just not you. So, Rob, I'm glad that that is your intro. We were like, whoa. tone down the charisma come on man yeah no i will say and and we've got a lot of stuff to discuss today but um and most of it is is tournament related but for everybody that just heard that doesn't care about tournaments don't don't shut it off yet we're going to save a lot of the in-depth tournament talk till the later part of the part of the podcast but exactly and and what's funny is i mean i've only been in this hobby a few years i don't personally play in tournaments So anytime any podcast talked about a tournament, I just zoned out or I just never thought it applied to me. But the more that I've gotten into this hobby and the more that I've played games, I've really started to enjoy watching tournaments and respect the level of play in tournament. And as being part of TPN, it was awesome to see the three of you guys be so successful at InDisc and then now recognizing other names and seeing people week in and week out, you know, that do these tournaments over and over again, you start to recognize different players and their styles. And tournaments end up being very entertaining. So we'll dive more into that. But let's just start off with some controversy. I know we're not going to talk about – I don't want to talk about specifics of tournaments yet. But Zach, Zach Minney on the Pinball Show, Zach Minney on the Pinball Show last week on his episode kind of was covering in disc, and he kind of interrupted his coverage of it. And he said, all right, I just watched the finals. And he completely kind of tore them apart. And the reason he tore them apart was because the final three games were – none of them were modern games. None of them were games that you could buy. None of those games are, you know, pretty – what were they? They were Stargate. Was it Cosmos? whatever Tom I swear I will end this podcast right now Robert thanks for coming out so it was Stargate it was Roller Games Rock and Roller Games and then what was it what is it Alley G's what's the Alley G's Mystery Castle it's not Alley G's Alvin G's Alvin Don't correct yourself. Alvin G's Mystery Castle, which we don't have to go into the history, but Alvin G is, I mean, how many games did they make? I mean, it's this random manufacturer. That's a whole game. Obviously. Yeah. And Mystery Castle, it's like a game nobody knows, and that was the final game of the finals in this huge tournament that took days to build up to it. And so basically Zach's opinion is why in the world is the final round of the biggest tournament of this year played on such crappy games? And I don't know. Whoever wants to go first, Rob, I mean, feel free. So when I was sitting in the car listening to that and, you know, it started out talking about, you know, tournaments and excitement and all that. And then he got to that point when he went on his rant. And at the very first, as a high-level tournament player, I was like, all right, Zach, where can I come strangle you at? But I really started listening to his points, and he did make some good points. I do give him credit for that, and I do feel like there maybe should be a little bit of tweaks. I mean, IE Pinball, I think, had 800 to 1,000 viewers at that point. and one of your biggest sponsors that's giving away a pinball is Stern, and we're playing stuff you can't buy and not displaying scores.
@ post-finals reflection
game
Rock and Roller Gamesgame
Godzillagame
Pinball Showorganization
Stern Pro Circuit Championshipevent
Jeff Teolisperson
Galvinperson
Steve Bowdenperson
Joelperson
Tomperson
Travisperson

high · Hosts reference Zach's on-air complaint about 800-1000 viewer stream showing unplayable/unpurchasable games instead of recent Stern releases

  • ?

    product_concern: Rush Pinball units showing premature wear/damage (bent cliffers) affecting competitive play and user experience at tournament venues

    medium · Robert observes 'bent and torn up...all the crap' cliffers at InDisc making shots difficult; no official quality acknowledgment mentioned

  • ?

    content_signal: InDisc 2024 achieved exceptional production standards with 800-900 viewer stream, multi-day broadcast, professional commentary team, and 'best tournament probably streamed in last 2-3 years' acknowledgment

    high · Robert praises 'Carl's production and the commentary, the announcers, the four days of it...incredibly well done'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Industry stakeholders proposing structural solutions to finals game selection: pick refresh for seeds, mandatory sponsor game inclusion with competitive carve-outs, or tiered manufacturer participation

    high · Travis, Robert, and Tom each articulate distinct reform proposals; discussion spans competitive fairness vs. marketing objectives

    • 6:30
    And so he did make some valid points, and I do feel like there maybe needs to be some adjustments where maybe one of the three final games has to be a sponsor game, you know? And when the top seed picks that game, he gets to pick position, and he gets to pick when it's played, and then he gets to pick the other two. But just to sum up, there's two reasons why they played those games is because you can't repeat picks. And that's the biggest thing. The top seed players had already picked their go-to games because when I'm in a tournament, I'm not saving games to pick in the finals. I got to get to the finals first. So you're picking your go-tos first, and then you kind of got whatever is left over at the end. And that's part of the problem. Yeah. And so, once again, for the people that don't know tournament play, and by all means, I'm the odd one out here. So the three of you correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole advantage of being in the lead is you're, and you guys typically refer to it as you're driving the bus. You're the person that gets to pick the game, or is there options? There's times where it's you either pick the game or you pick your position, right?
    7:36
    Yeah, you can do that at both, yeah. And sometimes if it's a bank of games, you get to pick both the bank and position of the first game. It just really depends what the format is. Yeah, and so if you think about it, if you're number one, if you've earned that right, you're number one right now in the tournament, you want some advantage to that. You've earned that. What do you get from that? And so normally it's a you get to pick the game. What are you most comfortable playing? Or you can pick your position. And if you're going to pick your position, you're going to pick last. You want to know the scores that you're trying to beat.
    8:11
    So those are the perks, and you earn those perks. So that's why I think all the tournament players that were listening to Zach say, why are we down to that point where we're just picking crappy games? And Zach wanted them to, like, force a game on a person. Well, as soon as you force a game on a person, you just took away that advantage that the first place person has been working towards that entire tournament. So, I don't know, Travis, how do you work around that? Well, pretty much my idea for this from the get-go, and I was kind of thinking about this for the past couple of years after Indisc 2020, But to me, it really comes down to what I would like to see is as soon as the finals start, whoever is the top seed, I would just like to see their picks just refreshed, just from scratch. That way they can pick the games that they want to pick because, you know, Tom and Rob can attest to this. It's difficult qualifying for the Open. It's not an easy thing because it's a pop-up card, which means you've got to play five games in a row. And if you mess up on any of those games, you're pretty much done for that card and you'll have to start back over. So you've got to use five games to qualify. So since it's so difficult to actually qualify for this tournament, and it's a major championship tournament as well, I would like to see the higher seeds be rewarded by the time the finals come. Like I'm talking the final four. Because at that point, the way it's set up now, we're always going to see, and Rob attested this earlier, or alluded to it, that basically if you're driving the bus, you want to get your best games out of the way because you want to get to the next round. You can't take any chances. I mean, it's very difficult to hold a game in your back pocket. Some people try it, but I don't know if the Open is the place to do that because you're playing against other world-class players nearly every single round. So that being said, by the time you get to finals, it basically guarantees that you're going to be playing three other world-class opponents and you're going to be playing it just basically rolling the dice on whatever games are left because at that point, air minimum, you've already picked six games out of the bank. And like we just said, there's only five games that go to your qualifying, so that means you've already picked one game over. So I'd like to see picks refreshed. I want to see them go to their best games against the best people. That's what I'd like to see. Yeah, I agree. I agree, Travis, especially for the finals. I mean, the whole purpose of you not picking games is a little bit for the stream and it's a little bit for repetition because if the top guy's got three go-to games, guess what you're going to see all the rounds all the time on the stream? It's going to be three games out of 18 over and over and over. So there's a good balance. And some tournaments do, you can't pick a game back-to-back rounds, so you can repeat. But I do like the idea of possibly no repeats, but finals is finals is finals. Everything resets. It should be on the top seed's favorite three games at that point. They've earned that. Well, what I find interesting, though, is if the top seed, and maybe we're already getting into the tournament talk here, but the top seed, that's the thing. If you refresh it, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to pick modern games. They're not going to necessarily pick. So of the bank, there was Godzilla and there was Turtles, right? Were those the only two games that you could buy today? Every other game of the bank was.
    11:29
    That's currently being manufactured? Is that what you mean? Exactly. So if Zach's looking at this from a marketing standpoint, hey, there's a chance that somebody stumbled across this stream or somebody stumbled across this YouTube video that has a slight interest in pinball. Well, great. Here's an awesome marketing opportunity to sell a game. What's up, Tom? Oh, no, I was just going to say, you got to remember that all these games are brought in by operators and collectors in the area. the way to circumvent that is to have a sponsor that's actually going to bring the games to the tournament that's the only way you could do it like uh you know chicago pinball expo has tilt amusements they provide all those certain games you know uh for the tournament so you know but on the same token you know the open you don't want to have necessarily a sternum and either where all the games are are just by one manufacturer i mean that would be pretty crazy though if if next in disc spooky donates whatever they have game on the line stern donates their most recent game you know jjp throws whatever their recent game is you know if you have the brand new of each major manufacturer there then i mean that's cool but it also it comes back to the competitive advantage of the person in first because just because they're there are we now going to force that person to pick those games or are we just having them be an like an option i would say in competitive play at a major tournament then is not the time to try to market pinball i don't think that that's the good time to to ever do it if you want to really try to market pinball and you want to market stern stern pro circuit championship is the perfect time to do because it's guaranteed to be a sternament. Hell, the name is literally the Stern Pro Circuit Championship. So they usually have Jack Danger on there, who's a designer now and a streamer with Stern. So, I mean, that's a way right there they can get more of their product out there. So I think there's already a tournament out there that's geared towards that perfectly. And just even Expo, the same exact thing. Tilton Usements, they specialize in stern products. That's what you get. So there's two tournaments out there for that already. So I don't really see a need for that. But that being said, the Open at Indisc, they already use games from every manufacturer. In 2020, Alice Cooper was there. And I know in the past there's been a Pirates, a POTC from Jersey Jack that's been there. And Dialed In was there too in 2020. So they use different companies. I mean, we saw that with them using the Oli-G Mystery Castle, as Joel talked about earlier. So they use everybody anyways. I just don't think in this, at a major tournament, is the time to be doing that. I think that's the time to focus on the players, personally. And I'm going to go with what Travis said, but I'm going to hybrid it with what Zach said. There's three games.
    14:32
    Stern's giving away a premium pinball machine. One of those three games should be a Stern premium pinball machine. It could be, but that's really, to me, that would be on Stern themselves, because they could easily tell these tournaments, like, hey, we're sponsoring it. We want X amount of our games in the bank, and we want those games to be available to be on the stream. I mean, they could easily push that. Obviously, they're not, and I don't think that they're overlooking that. But I do like the idea of potentially playing on a pin on your final game, that that's the game you could own afterwards. I like that idea. Maybe Stern Pro Circuit should do that because you win a game, right? WWE, LE. Yeah, so there you go. That's what they should do then. Perfect. Yeah, and I think it's – well, that's what I always thought with – you guys always talk about the – what is it? It's like every time a new pinball machine comes out, you know, your league does like a – I don't – what's the word? It's like a tournament. Launch party. Launch party for it. And I always assumed at the launch party you were playing that game, and on a previous episode you informed me that's not necessarily the case. It depends on how the launch party is run. But, yeah, if Stern or somebody was sponsoring that and it got to the finals, I would be okay. I mean, I don't think I have a stake in the game. I'm not the tournament person. But if the three of you guys had made the final round in the Open and you knew that one of those three games had to be Godzilla Premium,
    15:57
    I mean, does that – if you were number one and now you don't get that, I mean, does that offend you? Are you okay with that? Or it's – I mean, you get a pick choice. So I get to go last on that game when it comes up. Okay. So, you know. And that's what I was saying. Like whoever's driving the bus, let's say Godzilla Premium is one of the games you have to pick. You can pick it for game one or game two or game three, and you get to pick the order. So you can get it out of the way first and see how that plays out and then pick your other two games after that instead of saving it to last. But just have that one of the three. The guy still drives the bus of when you play it and what order you play it, but it has to be one of the three. That's kind of that hybrid model I was talking about. It gives a little bit of Travis. It gives a little bit of Zach. It gives a little bit of sponsorship. It gives a little bit of, oh, my gosh, check out this coolest thing. I didn't even know there was pinball, let alone a pinball tournament. Oh, I can go buy that game right now. That's the excitement in the chat for those 800 people. Maybe 700 of those people are pinball people, but 100 of them are not and not seeing it.
    17:03
    They're going to search Stargate. You know, it kind of takes away from growing the hobby when it is so – it kind of fuels that fire, whereas they even make those things anymore. Well, it looks like it when you're playing games from the 80s.
    17:19
    Good, Tom. So I could see maybe one downside with that. You know, they picked their newest game, and the code isn't up to snuff. You know, there's a lot of bugs in it. Still got to be fleshed out. there's potential for problems there, but I guess you wouldn't have it in the bank. But if you're talking about the brand-new newest game, you could have some potential issues right there. So what purpose would it really serve to try to show off the newest game from Stern right now in the big tournament? I'm asking all three of you guys that question. Yeah, and I know what you're saying is because, obviously, to show it means, hey, you could buy it, but the reality is you can't buy it. Like if it would have been a Godzilla premium, how do you buy a Godzilla premium these days? It's not a thing. But we're not always going to be in COVID.
    18:16
    It's going to come back around. And I agree with what Tom said. I wouldn't have – if Rush was in the lineup, I would have been upset.
    18:23
    I don't have time to play. I don't have time to learn the code. So maybe it's not that one that just released, and it's just the one back that has some code updates, and that's the one you go with. Raymond would have done well. He would have done real well. Yeah, right? Raymond, yeah. What I'm getting at, too, is, you know, even if there's a new game out there, I don't think that there's new people watching pinball that find pinball through just a tournament. I think that that's very rare because, to me, it's like on the ground level, you're finding out about pinball basically at your local arcade, where you happen to come across something just seeing somebody play a pinball. You don't necessarily understand that you're watching a tournament, at that point in time. So I think the people that start watching that, they're already, like, well-versed in the pinball world. They may not be experts, but they know what exists because they know to search that out on Twitch because Twitch's discovery is horrible, terrible. So everybody that's watching that already knew all this existed. I guarantee it. Yeah. I agree, except for this one was tied to the fighting festival or whatever it was, and at some point in time, that group raided our group. So they had, you know, five, six, 700 people watching the fight. And then they rated in the IE pinball. None of those people know pinball existed. And also because IE pinball is such a good streaming and Carl does so well, he had 800, 900,000 people on there. That's going to start filtering in the you might like category. So we, you know, top rope stream with four people or five people online or even 20 people online are not going to get that coverage. But in certain situations, we are starting to feed into a market and people come across that might not know that this hobby exists at this level. Yeah, I mean, it's great points. And I understand Zach's main thing. And I know Zach, Zach sells, Zach Mini, he's a distributor. He sells pinball machines for a living. That's what he does. And so he's looking at everything pinball, as in how do we grow this hobby? How do we bring more people into this? And we just witnessed the best tournament that's probably been streamed in, I don't know, the last two, three years because of COVID. I mean, it's the best of the best are there. They're all there. Yeah, you hear that, Tom? You hear that, Tom? This stuff shifts, Tom. That's what we're trying to say. That is not what I'm saying. But, man, I mean, Carl's production and the commentary, the announcers, the four days of it. I mean, it was so great. It was incredibly well done. And I get that. If the finals is the culmination of that, four days of this, it's all building to this, and it ends on Mystery Castle where you can't even see the scores, I get it. I understand how he could feel that letdown. But the reality is it's, from a competitive standpoint, nobody's complaining. Like the tournament players, it showed the level of skill that they have. You need to adapt to whatever you're handed. and it's great competition. So it's, yeah. Well, the thing is, is I talked to a lot of people during this because my dumb ass was driving back to Oklahoma during this time. So I was somewhere out in Arizona, New Mexico while this was happening. You were just a smart boy. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you weren't in the finals?
    21:35
    No, I swear. He drove to this thing because of the ice storm. If I could punch you through this mic right now, I would. I totally would. All right. Sorry, listener. Sorry for my – Robert, you're awesome. Tom, Joel, eat shit. Okay, I'm good. I'm going to interject right now. So, you know, the joke was Tom and Travis are at the tournament, and we're missing Joel from the triple drain. And so I was kind of filling in as Joel, but then I started playing really good, and so I was actually playing as the anti-Joel. Yeah, that's totally fine. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I'm just here to stir things up. But, Travis, so you're saying you're driving back. You're talking to a bunch of people. Thank you, Joel. You're bringing us back on track. So, I mean, so there was a lot of people talking about that. I heard it half and half. And I was talking to Zach during this time as well. I heard that there was several people that they were just like, okay, Mystery Castle is a terrible game to have in the finals. I wish it was on something else. Like, I heard that. But then I heard the other half saying, you know what, this is pretty cool. It's different. We get to see players adapt. And, I mean, that's the thing. at the end of the day, you're going to have some people that agree with the decision. You're going to have other people that don't agree, and you're going to have people that just don't care either way. And I think that this situation pretty much is kind of that, because we've heard it from every different angle, from people that don't play in tournaments, from people that do play in tournaments, from people that are world-class players to players that are just weekend warriors. So you're going to have all kinds of different ideas. I mean, the same things happened to Pinnberg over the years. if there's a game in that finals bank, sometimes it got shat on. Other times it became like the new darling. And that's kind of what happened with something like Doodlebug, you know, or even Guardians of the Galaxy when everybody saw Andre Massinkoff. Hot hand. Yeah. No, high hand, right? High hand. High hand, yeah. So that's another one. I mean, that's typically what happens. So we may and some of us may be talking about this, and all of a sudden there's probably 50 people out there that suddenly want a mystery castle. Yeah. I mean, it's highly likely that that has happened. And it's not a bad game. It's not a bad game to play. I mean, would it be the game I'd pump quarters into? No. But if somebody wanted to loan me one for free, you know, I love the game then. Go ahead. Bring it down. I'll play it. I mean, I understand the gameplay that we witnessed of Mystery Castle is not going to, you know, bring people into a pinball hobby by drones. You know, like that's not that. But the reality was if it would have been a modern game, a modern LCD game, I don't necessarily know if that would have made that big of a difference. But it is what it is. All I know is as a non-competitive player watching the stream, I'm basically relying on the commentators to tell me what the thing is. You know, on this game, this is what they're trying to do. And I relied on that heavily in the Classics tournament, and we'll get more into that, because all the Classics games, there was always, like, a thing. You know, do this thing in this order, and that's how you get points. And so once the commentator told me that, that's all I'm watching for. I'm like, I get it. The player's trying to get control because they're trying to rip the spinner and then do this. So I'm just, you know, like it didn't matter at that point. I just wanted to see the skill that it takes to do the thing. And the truth is, in a lot of these modern games, Godzilla, you can attack that thing from so many different directions that the commentators may not know the thing. They may not know the thing that the player's trying to do. And so we're kind of sitting there waiting to see what happens while some of these older games is blatantly obvious what they're trying to do. So I don't care, but I really respect – who was it? It was Jeff Teolis and Snow – Galvin. And then Steve Bowden were announcing at the time, and they killed it. They were incredible, the three of them explaining it, telling what was going on. I mean, everything was there, but I don't know. Tom, you had something? No, I was just going to say, you know, I think the idea of the tournament is to basically take all games from all manufacturers, different eras, and bring them all together. So, you know, I was just alluding to that. But you were talking too much, Joel. That's okay.
    25:50
    So, listeners, we're trying something new here where people are, like, raising their hands when they have something to talk. And so far, I think we've honored it pretty well. But I'm not going to lie. Tom rose his hand about halfway through that, and I just – I was disappointed. I was waiting for him to go, I got nothing. Oh, yeah. I'll be back in ten minutes. Well, this is a good segue because we could always come back to end disc. Yeah, yeah, we do. But we got to talk about what, Joel?
    26:21
    I don't know. You led this transition. Go ahead and transition. Everybody, it is now time to talk about the newest pinball machine out from Stern Pinball. Oh, wow. Yeah, because Joel, out of all four of us, Joel's the only one that actually has one in his house. So, Joel, go ahead. Let's start this segment. We're talking about Rush. That was the worst transition we've had. But, you know, nice job. It's done. Rush Pinball. So what's interesting is there's four of us. All four of us have played this game. And what I'm finding is all four of us have different opinions. So, you know what? Let's go with the guests. Rob, you're the extra ball. Rush Pinball, what is your experience with Rush Pinball, Vince? Oh, boy. Okay. So I don't have a lot of time on it, but I walked past a Rush Pinball a thousand times at NDSC. It was right there at the entrance for Project Pinball to stick in $2 and play and donate. And I walked by it a lot, and I never played it, and there wasn't very many people playing it. And then at a break, I said, okay, let me throw $2 in this game. And then I walked away and I never came back.
    27:26
    Now, that may have been the way it was set up, the way it was playing. We already know the issues with the cliffies. So they were bent and torn up, all the crap. So it was hard to make the shots. So my initial one-game, three-ball impression was it was a little clunky. And I just never got the feel for it. So, again, I've said that about other games before and then end up loving them. We all have. But right now, I don't get it. So interesting to hear your guys' opinions that maybe had played it more and had more time on it.
    28:04
    I think we're just going to – I'll go ahead and go next because we're just going to increase is what we're going to find here.
    28:11
    I'm with you, Rob. When I, so Zach swapped out Godzilla and he dropped off Rush here. And I was like, all right, I'm not, I'm not a Rush fan. It's not that I have anything against it. I'm just not a Rush fan. So it's not like I was super excited about this theme. So my initial impression really has nothing to do with code. It's just, how does it shoot? And to be honest, I didn't love it. I did not like initially my first few games on playing it. And that was, once again, nothing to do with the code. It was just shooting the game. And to be 100% honest, Tom doesn't know this. I texted Travis and I told Travis, I said, I don't like this. And I texted Travis because I didn't want Tom to know. He was behind your back, Tom. But he was looking out for your feelings while he did it. I was. I was like, I know Tom. I know Tom is like literally laying awake at night dreaming of this game. And I don't want to, you know, poo-poo on that. But it's just like I'm not loving what I'm feeling. And one of the main reasons was I realized there's nothing on the left side of the game that excites me. as in I'm so used to having a left ramp in a game, and this game has no left ramp. I mean, it has this kind of center-ish, like you have to do it with the upper flipper to kind of hit that, but from the right flipper, I'm like, what do I have to shoot? I have a scoop that's very hard to hit. I have a between-the-pops shot that's a super crazy orbit, and if you miss it, you're hitting a pop, so the thing's coming flying back at you. I have drop targets that are super close, and if you hit those, it's coming flying back at you. And then on the pro, I have a dead-end shot where it just comes flying back at you. So I felt like half the play field I wasn't enjoying.
    29:45
    And that was my initial impression for, like, the first two days, just trying to find shots. I'm just like, I don't know about this.
    29:53
    Well, on Thursday night on the Flippin' Out channel, I actually did a stream, and I had Raymond Davidson, who's one of the coders of this game, on the stream with me, and he started to explain the game to me. And I will tell you, my opinion of this game has drastically changed because of the rules that Ray and Tim have built into this game. And I'm going to let, you know, Travis and Tom go more into that. But I will tell you, the ways that you can go about playing this game, the risk-reward that he is building into this game is insane. And once he actually started explaining what they're doing with the different shots, so much more made sense. And so I understand yes my initial impressions of Godzilla when I started playing was it felt amazing I mean every shot on that game just feels good And it doesn matter like that just looking at the way it shoots And I you know I got to give props to Keith Elwin I felt the same way when I first played Avengers You know, there are certain games where you step up to it and it just, everything you're hitting feels good, even without listening to it or looking at the display.
    30:57
    And that's nothing against Sean Moore. It's just this is a hard game. This is a hard game. I felt the same way about Turtles. It's hard for me, Tom. Tom's shaking his head. I felt it's hard. like Turtles, it's easier than Turtles but Turtles I know the first few games I was like this game is destroying me but I will say as the stream went on I started to find the shots I started to get a little bit deeper in the game but I'm barely scratching the surface of this game so initial impressions for anybody like Rob who steps up the game puts one game on it, two games on it you may not like it but if you can keep going or if you're there with somebody that can explain what you're trying to do I think this game is going to end up getting a lot of love. And so, Travis or Tom, feel free to – I don't know which one of you likes it more at this point, but one of you guys can take third.
    31:49
    Tom, do you want to answer Joel, even though he's gone behind your back? I don't know. I'm kind of offended. I was looking out for you, man. I was like, I don't want to crap on this game. It's your dream team. I was like, Joel, is Tom okay with this? He said, yeah, Tom's fine with it. Don't worry about it. I know. Go ahead, Tom. Tell us about your opinion. It is the greatest game ever made. It is the best John Borg shooting game. I don't know if it's the Rush music or what.
    32:18
    Actually, I really like it. I will say it's really heavy with the multi-balls. I felt like I was playing it, And actually, I was having really long ball times.
    32:37
    And I took Neil with me, and he was having really long ball times. And we had another friend with us. But we thought the game was a little easy. Maybe that was just the way it was set up.
    32:52
    But it is super multi-ball heavy. so that would be my only complaint about the game. I thought the shots were all findable rules were good as far as songs and things but I enjoyed it.
    33:15
    And Travis go. Awesome analysis there Tom Graff. So what I'm here for. So this game is exactly what I thought it was going to be, and I told you guys this as soon as we saw it debut, that I think this is going to be a game that your great players are probably going to really enjoy once they really get into it and they figure out the rules, and is another game I thought casuals would enjoy, but they wouldn't be able to hit shots near as well because some of these shots are tight, but it's not really a drainy game. So what happens when those two elements come together? There's a lot of brick shots, and there's a lot of watching the ball go horizontal and go vertical and hit off slings and hit off targets and hit off posts. I think that's pretty much what you're going to see out of this game with your casual players. But if you're an above-average player or you're an elite player, you're going to find shots fairly quickly, and you're going to start, well, you need more than one game because I'll even, I can attest that my first two games on this, after I fixed the tilt-bob issue, you know my first two games they were just it was finding a lot of posts and it was even missing the center shot because even on a pro it's not a gimme shot it is a tight shot and probably the easiest shot out of anything on the play field is probably the dead end shot for a pro from the right flipper but that being said what you find well i'll come back to that just ending my thought here is it's hard to find shots early on but give it a few games and you start finding them you start jamming on it, it's the type of game I think can grow onto people. And knowing what the rules are in it right now and seeing what it could become, this game definitely has a chance to go on elite level status for sure. And I think it really does have that chance. And that doesn't come around too often for anyone outside of Elwynn. And this is the first time that I played on a pin after getting about 15, 20 games on it that I feel like this has a really good chance to be a solid game. Now, keep in mind, all my games have been on a pro, but I'm able to tell what I'm missing and what would make this game a lot more enjoyable. And I'm telling you, compared to the pro and premium or LE, I think there's going to be a massive jump in the way that people enjoy this game simply because that shot we alluded to earlier, that's a dead end shot. Now it's going to have a Vuck on there that's going to return back to your right flipper. I think that'll shore up a lot of your left side because the left side is difficult to navigate because you got targets It's at a weird angle that guarantees that the ball is going to be in danger every time. You've got a tight orbit shot. You've got a scoop right there that if the scoop protector is in the way, good luck doing that. But if it's fixed, it's not too bad. It is a tight shot, though. It's what I thought the Mando scoop was going to be like. This is exactly what I thought it was going to be. So the left side is all tough. It really is. And without that Vuck there, you're basically guaranteeing your ball is going to be out of control any time you take a shot to the left-hand side of this play field on a pro. And I think that could be its biggest downside right now in terms of design. But you get to a premium LE, I'm sure those issues go away awfully fast because of their return. Yeah. And I know when I see the ball coming down my right, I don't know, habit trail, so it's feeding my right flipper, in my mind I'm like, what am I about to shoot? And the reality is the whole left side, like none of it's safe. And if I hit the left orbit, it's so fast that, like, it's safe, kind of safe if I hit it. But it's just, that's the thing. That's the speed of the game. And I know my playing ability and the three of yours are drastically different. And so, you know, getting control is something that I need to get better at. And I know you were talking, too, you know, it took you a few games. It takes me a lot more games to find shots than it does the three of you. I know my whole first two hours of streaming Godzilla, I was struggling hitting the scoop. And that's like an integral part of the game. but as my streams went on you know i could hit it when you know it's i i'll get there i'll absolutely get there but that's the advantage of me having it here being able to put time on it play it versus you know a casual person walking up to it in a bar putting two games on it they're probably going to be like dude that just kicked my butt and walk away go ahead tom i was going to say everybody's experiences might be different. Travis, shut up.
    37:36
    I'm not even looking at you anymore. So the two games I played on location did not have the scoop protectors on the front, so it made that shot a lot easier. So I'm thinking if that scoop protector is there and it's causing rejects and, you know, everything else, that could certainly cause people to not like the game.
    38:06
    Rob? Yeah, so my two cents, I was going to jump in there on this, actually. The one time I did hit the ball through the pops and come around that orbit, I think I remember holding up the right flipper and it bounced it right into that scoop. I'm like, well done, gentlemen. Good design. It's not the shadow where sometimes it goes into the con, sometimes it doesn't. But the one thing that I was going to bring up with the scoop protectors, my personal opinion as a player, no cliffies, no scoop protectors on any game until you go sell it. I want that wood finish. I want that wood bevel. I want that open scoop. It's the way the game is designed. It's going to get wear and tear, but you can put that clippy on at the end and make it pretty and showy for the next person to buy it. And if they buy it with it worn out, then you buy a clippy and put it on there. But my personal opinion is no clippies on no games if I can avoid it. Yeah, that's an interesting take. I mean, you know, though, you go to any buyer thread on Pinside in the moment that there's a chip or a wear, and they're like, is this expected after 40 plays? And they show a scoop. I mean, where they're going to then assume a play field defense. I mean, I understand why Stern's doing it. And the reality is if Stern does it to protect their back, it's up to the homeowner or whoever's routing the game. If they want to take it off, take it off. Well, what's fascinating about this, if you look at this weekend pinball's pictures of it, right? The pro, and I'm not even looking at the premium. Well, this is actually the premium I'm looking at now. it doesn't have those protectors on there. Correct. That's what I'm looking at right now. So obviously this was a later part at some point. And I don't know if it was just a last second decision. It's clear that whatever parts on there now in the pro is not the correct part. It's crystal clear because within three to five games, it's just trashed out. And it's really bizarre because you look at Aerosmith, most of those all came with some type of scoop protector, and it doesn't have widespread problems with it. But then if you look at Guardians of the Galaxy, guess what? That didn't come with a scoop protector, and you don't hear about a bunch of issues either there. So this situation is just kind of like a, I don't know, scoop gate? I don't know what they call it. It's just odd. It just goes to show you something like this. You know that this was not tested at Stern. You know it wasn't because otherwise they would know within five games on any model that something was up. They would know after two games something was up. So I kind of feel like that this is a very much last-second part that came in very late to production and just happened to be the wrong type of part. I don't know. That's just my theory. I don't have that confirmed, but it's not on the promo pictures. I don't even know if it was on the one that they premiered, the dead flip. I don't even know if that one even had one. I don't know. I think you're right, but, I mean, I'm looking at it right now, And between Zach having this game, he put some games on it, and he recorded a whole video with it and iPad. I mean, mine has easily less than 100 plays, and the scoop still works, but it is banged up. It is one of those, like, I will pull that until there is a fix. So I don't know. I'm curious. I mean, Tom, your LE is being made right now with love and care, and I hope that the scoop particular they've even done a different one. We'll have to wait and see on that. but I don't know with that aside I the main reason I wanted to bring up Rush was and I not to plug but the flipping out stream the flipping out stream it the video is now on YouTube so check it out I you can see my level of play it's mediocre at best but Ray Day didn't you don't have to agree with that Tom you were shaking you're shaking your head very vigorously you know to that comment but raymond did an amazing job explaining the rules and just hearing that i think could be extremely helpful for a lot of people and and i'm not going to get too deep into it but what excites me about this game and correct me if i'm wrong if there's other games that do this but what this game gives you before you get in a mode like to start your first mode you have to hit two records with which in a record corresponds with the main shots so you basically You just have to hit two of the main shots. That's all you have to do to get into a mode. But different records have different colors. The colors represent different songs. So if you're hitting the shots with the same color, then all of those shots, when you actually get into the mode, are now worth two times what they normally are worth. If you're hitting shots that aren't corresponding with the color of that mode, those shots are bringing in 10% additional value to your mode for every single shot you hit. If you happen to hit all of the main shots before you start your mode, they all relight. so you can keep adding. So before you've even started a mode, you can just start hitting all these shots, and that's what Raymond's saying. He's like, before you start the mode, you could start your mode knowing that mode is now worth 200% value of what it was going to be worth before and have certain shots that are now worth two times. On top of that, there's a whole bunch of combos in this game. Hitting certain combos actually gives you like a smart missile or like a boom button. A weapon. A weapon is what they're calling it, and it's for only particular songs. It's a good rush song. The weapon is, of course, on to an album, and if the song you're playing happens to be on that album, then you can use the weapon. So there's a whole other level strategy there where before I start this certain mode, I want to get it to this certain percentage. I want to make sure I've hit this particular combo so that I can use this weapon, and boom, I can get into that, bam, hit the button, and just get a ridiculous amount of points. What did I say, Travis? No, you're saying everything perfect. I'm just enjoying seeing Rob's face just gradually just try to really focus in on what's being said. And he's like taking all these notes down. Well, you know, here's the thing. I grew up in the 80s and 90s watching a lot of basketball. So if we play, you know, fast break, I know the trivia questions. But I don't know Rush. So I don't know what songs on what albums and when it was debuted and all that kind of stuff. So that's that kind of obscure stuff that they better have it flashing up on the LCD screen on, you know, hey, this song is part of this album. It's worth more now if you do this. I mean, it's pretty complex there. But is it good or bad that they're forcing you to actually kind of get yourself involved with a theme? Because now you have to know the songs. You have to know what goes together to get max amount of scoring. I think that's a pretty genius way to do it myself, although I don't know much about it either, but it's forcing me to figure it out. Yes, Tom. So I think it was yesterday, Joel had asked us on our Facebook, you know, do you know the colors to the songs, right? Yeah. And each song has a different color for the records, but they're not distinguished on the middle of the play field what color those songs are. So, you know, to Joel's credit, he had mentioned that, and I think it would be a good idea to color those inserts as far as what the songs are. So, you know, people like me, I know the songs, but other people don't. So, like, Rob. What about, like, sorry, I wanted to talk over Tom at least once. No, that's okay. Everybody else can really feel like part of the group. Tom, quit talking. I'm talking right now. Sorry about that. Tom, Tom, please stop. Okay, thanks. Maybe a fast flashing insert. Like you could have it color coded, but have it do something different if it's part of the stacking. You know, a quicker flash or a double flash solid, double flash solid. You can, you know, Morris code in some other cues that aren't tied to necessarily knowing songs, knowing albums, and still have the game be the same. Well, the song color, I think we actually have a fix for that. And I'm already working with Penmonk. Penmonk makes some amazing – he makes these, like, gel inserts. They go under – they go between your LED and the game. And then they – like, he's made some really good ones. Deadpool, he did some. Thrills, he did some. Maiden, he's made some really cool ones. And so I basically reached out to him because, you know, like, The Big Money, that right now is just a white insert. But that record is orange. So it's super easy. Like, just – It's pink. Big money? You are right. Yes. Pink. Yeah, orange is working man. Big money is pink. Big money is the whammy. The whammy. Stop. Working man is orange. But anyways, you do learn them, but for a casual person who has no idea, yeah, like throw an insert in there, a gel insert, boom, now you have your color coordinated. The albums and the weapons, I don't know. I don't know a good way to explain that. But I'm just, what I found is, like, Travis was not, I don't think he was planning on buying this game. but now that he's started to realize the code possibilities and the scoring possibilities and the risk reward of everything involved here. Cause Raymond, Raymond made a comment during the stream that kind of blew my mind, which was, you know, I think it's kind of like law. You don't start a multi-ball until you start a mode. Like that's kind of, you know, whatever, 99 out of a hundred times, you don't want to do a multi-ball unless you have a mode going. Well, Raymond made the comment. He goes, well, you could start your mode and then a multiball, or you could start your multiball and use that multiball to start racking up your records and start hitting your shots to increase the value of your mode. And that's a crazy concept in my mind.
    48:00
    I agree with you. Tom and Robert are just doing strays of different wrestlers in the background. Joel, to me, you're absolutely correct. So one of the things about this game, and I didn't get around to this because I was just talking about what I felt was wrong with the game. But that being said, I personally think that this game has high end potential of being a home run when it's all said and done. Like I can see the elements there with this. And it wasn't the same feeling that I was getting with Turtles or Mando. It was just or even Stranger Things early on, you know, games like that. It's just more or less you see the potential of this game. You see what the rule set could be. And what I really do love about this rule set is there's a lot of risk-reward built in close to the start button. And we don't see that too much. And it's forcing you to explore the entire play field. It's forcing you to say, you know what, that left side may be death, but I'm going to have to hit that at some point because of the combo system, because of trying to get songs matched up with albums and try to get your scoring higher. And you know what, if you're not into any one of those things, if you could care less about all that, and it's just too overwhelming, but you're just a Rush fan, you're probably still going to enjoy it because the Rush music on it is actually pretty good. The call-outs are pretty good on it. I mean, everything makes sense. It feels like that this is a Rush pin. It doesn't feel like Led Zeppelin did to where you could just tell there was corners cut within that game. You just knew it was, and it took away from a lot of the game. You don't get that from this at all. And this, to me, meshes perfectly. We all want a concert in a box, but we also all want a pinball machine in a box, too. And you know what? This game does a good job at doing both. Yeah. And my takeaway after now a week is I absolutely think Rush fans will love this game.
    49:51
    The theme integration, the LCD, the call-outs, everything, to hear the call-outs from the two guys themselves is actually really, really neat, especially when you get an expression light kit in there. Like the overall experience, the rush experience is here. And I think rush fans are going to really love this game. But I absolutely think competitive and tournament players are going to really get a lot of, like, joy out of this game. So, Rob, it'll be exciting to talk to you in whatever, three months, six months, once you put more time on it and wrap your head around some of these rules. I think you're, I think, I'm not, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you're really going to get a kick out of this game, for sure. Even from a rules standpoint, though, if you haven't played this yet, you're going to get elements of Walking Dead in this. You're going to get elements of AC-DC in this. You're going to have an excellent combo system. So those three things alone right there, I think even elements of Funhaus, for instance, when you're hitting the pop bumpers, and that's adding on to time, and that works yourself to a multiball. So I know that Ray and Tim, just looking at this, they've taken some things that are like greatest hits for a lot of tournament players that enjoy these certain, just the way that the game goes from a rule set point of view. And this is in there. So even if you're not a rules person, if you say you like Lyman games, this is as close as you're going to get right now, because there's a few things that Lyman had the concepts for and they are here in this game. So, I mean, just from a rule standpoint, I think it's going to turn out excellent because it's going to keep going, keep going, keep going. And I think too, once those premiums and LEs come out, people are going to enjoy how those shots work a little bit more because you can do the combo system a little bit easier as well. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's about all I can say. I mean, very initial impressions. I've only had it a week. Rob's had a game on it. Tom doesn't have his yet, but he blew up one on location the other week. I know Travis has been enjoying it as well. So we'll definitely, you know, come back to it probably in a few weeks just to see where our impressions are at that point. But it's looking promising, I would say. It's definitely – I'm excited. I'm excited to see, you know, where this game is going to go and the love of it grow.
    52:08
    Transitioning to another thing here, something that's actually been out for a while, and I'm curious what you guys' thoughts are. Insider Connected. Insider Connected kits. I now have two. I have two. I had one on Godzilla. Rush obviously has this one. I have one on Turtles. just initial impressions we can go around again you know it's been out long enough that we've all experienced it do you like it more less good experience bad experience we'll start again rob if you want to go first go for it sure um so my impression was it's long term it was a must-have so i had three games that it was available for i got iron maiden pro a deadpool pro and a jurassic at Park Premium. So as soon as I heard pricing, I called Flippin' Out Pinball, Zach Minney, and put my order in for those three, and got two initially, and then got the third one in. I haven't installed two of them, just hadn't got around to it. So I like the idea of it. I'm a gamer at heart. I'm somebody that's a completionist, you know, playing games like Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, where I want to do all the things and all the side quests and all the stuff. Come on, Breath of the Wild 2, where are you at, baby? Where are you at? So having those achievement-based, I can see controlling the younger crowd, something to accomplish. There's leaderboards. Who knows where they'll go with it? So I think it's an exciting thing for pinball overall, and I do appreciate with the cost of pinball, not going to go down that road, but the fact that they rolled these out at $200 a game, even though it's adding $300 a game to the new game, but they allowed everybody to retrofit for $200 a game. I felt like that was fair. Probably made a little bit of money, but they're not, you know, it's not a cash grab and it's allowing me to update my game. So if I do go to sell it later on down the road, I've got a fully functioning game. So overall, I think it's brilliant and I think it has a lot of potential. It just depends on where they go with it. I do know that, you know, as a young gamer, or an older gamer, but somebody who's been gaming, I love the idea that as I turn 50 this year, as an older pinball guy, I can see how the potential for DLC content is scaring a lot of people and could turn a lot of people off. So I think they're going to have to tread lightly with that. And that's just my two cents. I'll let you guys ad lib on that. Yeah. I'm with you. My entire Insider Connector experience has been just at home. I have yet to play a game on location that has had a kit installed so I can't talk to that but Travis I know Travis and Tom definitely can but from a home experience I've really enjoyed it especially with streaming. You know if I streamed Turtles the other day I knew I was going to play the game for two hours and to know like at my skill level you know reaching Calabunga not going to happen. You know reaching final battle on a single one-player game, not going to happen. But there's a bunch of other little things there that I find really intriguing. So as I'm playing, it's like, I'm going to attack this game totally different than I normally will because I'm focusing on this achievement. Now, to me, I love Turtles. I'm a huge fan of Turtles. I don't see this game going anywhere. There will be a point where I will probably get all those achievements. And at that point, Do I have any interest in redoing them? I don't know. I don't know, but I will say it's definitely going to prolong the wanting to own this game or playing this game. Go ahead, Rob. I agree with you. The only thing that I missed in my comments was because I'm a completionist, a lot of times once I get through all of them, then what? They need to be rolling out new challenges or can you do this times two? I mean, I'm excited about Iron Maiden. I've made Run to the Hills on Iron Maiden. I'm looking forward to going back and playing and try to get there again. I've made it to when Dinos ruled the earth on Jurassic Park. Now I get to do it again, and I get an award for it, so it's exciting for me to go. So it is adding that longevity to the game, but they can't let it be stagnant.
    56:19
    And I don't know how that works into there because you can't constantly update the games, but you've got Insider connected now, so you can constantly update the games and do little patches for new achievements or new different things or, you know, achievement of the week or the month. So go ahead, Travis. Yeah, just going off what Rob was saying, and this is my take with the Insider Connector right now. The achievements are fun to do up front, but the reality is if you're an above-average player, you're going to get the achievements really, really quickly, and some of them maybe within less than five games. It just depends. Then you might have two to three achievements that you've got to clean up afterwards. So that's typically what everybody's been experiencing right now. That's above-average players. But that being said, what this is really lacking at this point is just the content. And I think really the content needs to come into play through adding in additional challenges, like Rob was saying earlier, whether it's weekly things, whether it's getting XP that way, and then you can unlock some type of badge or something like that. It absolutely shocks me and floors me that this released without any badge system in place for all the users. I mean, they kind of did it with Expo. But to me, it's just you just follow what Peloton does. They have badges just for playing X amount of games or doing certain tasks or so many miles or meeting so many milestones that something like that is needed because that keeps your community engaged and that keeps them coming back to that particular game. So the fact that this released without that in place kind of shocks me. I'm very surprised it's still not with the system right now.
    57:54
    So I play a game called Asphalt 9. It's a racing semi-levered game. They have it on computers. They've had it on different systems, and they finally came out with a Switch, and I play that thing all the time. And there's individual modes that you play and achievements, and you're building cars and all this kind of stuff, but then there's multiplayer, and that's where this has to go. I've got to be able to get on my maiden and somebody else get on their maiden. They're all connected to the Internet, and we say, play a competitive game against Insider Connected 56433. whatever your code is. And that screen should be able to come up on the LCD display screen and have this person's score and this person's score. And you get the stern challenges that they've done where you're like, okay, the first one to get this many points or this many shots or whatever, those should be like a random number generator. And it flashes up there and it goes three, two, one. And both people start playing at the same time. They don't have to be like synced to the second because it's synced to the game and displays that back and forth. And you can build that so you can have a multiplayer version. And that's where it needs to go to be engaging. If it's just earning rewards by yourself on your game at your house over time, you're going to just not enjoy it. There needs to be that interconnectivity with other people.
    59:17
    Don't you find it interesting, though, right now that Pinball is trying to figure out ways to get people together, right, online? But yet right now gaming has been doing that for so long that it's already came all the way back around to the first player experience or solo player experience. That's the hilarious part about this, like with God of War, games like that. So it's kind of curious to see how Stern tries to do this. I think it is smart to try to have something just like you talked about, Rob. And I think something like that would be a lot more fun. You could even get a group together. I wish they would do it, 8, 12, 16 people. have, however, you know, private rooms, whatever, give a password, you're in the tournament. They do this with chess all the time. So I don't see why they can't do this with something about pinball. And to me, that'd be a lot of fun. Just, it's not even having to talk to each other. It's just knowing that you showed up for this or there's open lobbies or whatever, and you can get connected with other people and be able to play in open lobbies against people. I wish that that was something that existed. Tom, what do you think? Would you do something like that?
    60:20
    Yeah. No. So I just looked at – I'll be honest. Joel, I'm going to interrupt you. No, I wanted you to go. I know your opinion.
    60:31
    First of all, Joel, thanks to you, Zach sent me a few premium Insider Connects that I didn't need. So thanks for that.
    60:47
    Why did I have a part in that? Well, because you tell everybody that I'm the Ellie Elitist, even though I have a bunch of pro machines. And Dak just assumed that I had all premium and Ellie. So thank you for that. Which pro kit do you have now? What's it for? They're all the same. Iron Maiden? Probably Deadpool. Iron Maiden, Deadpool, Stranger Things.
    61:15
    See, I just wanted them to start listing out his games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry. I feel so bad for you. You got the wrong version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways.
    61:24
    Honestly I not real impressed with the whole Stern Insider Connect I can see that Feel free to elaborate No I don want to No.
    61:36
    You spend $200, they're raising the price of the games $300, and you just get a bunch of achievements.
    61:47
    Hi, future Joel here. At this point, we saw Tom's call drop off, and we thought he disconnected for comedic effect. Later, we learned it was actually technical difficulties. Please bear with us for the next few minutes as Travis, Rob, and I try our best to do a podcast without Tom. Oh, he just clacked out. Where did he at? I don't know. He's doing fine. Tell him to come back. He was cracking me up. Yeah. I liked what he was saying to you there. Well, I know one of his frustrations was he's voiced a few different frustrations in our Facebook chat. And a lot of them deal with, like, like location play. So he's, he's basically saying he's, he's tried to play a few insider connected games on location and they're like, not, they're not, they'll, they'll be active, but they don't count. What's the, what's the word I'm looking for here? Certified. Verified. Yep. Verified. So it's like, Hey, I'm doing this on location, but I'm not getting my, you know, I'm not getting full credit here. Or, and I know that Travis, you said like, that's, that's the operator that, responsibility to go that extra mile and make it verified. But there's like a cost associated to it. Yeah. I'm not quite sure. I know that there's some type of location, like a commercial operator thing, but I don't know exactly what it is.
    63:08
    That's what I need to find out myself. We need to figure out where Tom went. Yeah. I'm texting right now. You coming back? You just checked out. I don't know if he took us. I think the three of us are positive on, like, I still look at insider connected as like potential. This is a platform that they can do a lot with, but they've only done a little so far. And I don't know. I mean, it sounds like, Rob, you ordered – you had three games. You ordered three kits.
    63:36
    Correct. And Tom ordered a bunch of kits for his game. So I don't know if he's, like, regretting that. Like, hey, maybe I shouldn't have ordered all these kits or – No, I think it's good to have on games that you're retrofitting, though, because those games, they're going to go up in value. Either way, and having something like that to where somebody gets to avoid having to get the product and install it themselves, to me that's the one modification that actually provides value to a game. Yeah. I don't think – I mean, I do think it is comical. I've already seen it once where there was somebody who bought a Godzilla and sold the Insider Connecting thing. They, like, pulled the kit out and sold it? Took it off and sold it. And so what I think is comical is somebody posted, they said, I just bought a Godzilla used and the previous buyer had sold the Insider Connected kit. And he was trying to find, because he had replaced the apron too. So he was like, how do I go about buying this stuff to build it, like put it back?
    64:34
    So I don't know. My view is I just, there are things about it that I'm already enjoying. And we've talked a lot. We've talked multiple times before about, you know, the potential of Insider Connected. And, you know, if they can, I hope, I hope they're working towards some of that stuff. So what else do we have? We had that on there. I just, I know Tom was worked up about it because, yeah, he had played a few games on location that, you know, he's like, here, I'm trying to give it a shot and I'm not even getting all my points. And do operators, you know, they've marketed this heavily towards operators. Are operators not even doing this? Are they not taking it seriously? and maybe some more? I don't know. Well, that's what I'm wondering, too, is that they need to have operator support a little bit more at some point, too, because originally they had said that the operators would be able to say, this is our promotion that we're doing. You get X amount of points or you get some type of achievement with them. You could get a badge or you could get something connected to whatever their business is, money off something or something like that. So I don't know. I would expect something like that would show up maybe this summer, I would hope because it had been out for several months by then. So to me, other options have to be coming pretty soon. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, just an app, just a dedicated app. Yeah, that would help as well. Yeah. But, well, I don't know. Tom's not – Tom disconnected, so I think we just keep going. Maybe he might be mad about his placing when we played each other at Classics 1. I don't know because he's going to be here and talk about that. Yeah, that's the next topic. At this point, if anybody just really can't stand tournament talk and you made it this far, appreciate you. You must stay. We'll talk to you next episode. But the reality is there's value here. And what I mean by that is there is entertainment to competitive pinball that I think novice players are missing out on. And you don't have to actually be the person competing. It's just seeing the skill, seeing the abilities that they have. And, like, man, I mean, I compare it maybe to, like, golf. You know, there's plenty of people that go out there every once in a while and hack away at golf and have a good time. But when you actually watch professional golf players play and the consistency that they have and the shots they have, you know, you can look at that and be in awe or be like, man, I wish I could do it. Like, that's how I felt watching you guys play. Just like the control that you have, the patience that you have, some of the flipper skills, the nudging skills that you have, you know, really, really impressive. And I got a big kick out of that. But, Rob, go for it. It reminds me of some of the old classic commercials and even some of the new ones with the golf. These guys are good making these crazy shots. Back when Jordan and Bird did these nothing but net commercials, do you remember that? Yeah. And it's just like, there's no way they did that. No, yeah, they're doing some of that stuff as a fabricated, of course, but some of the stuff that high-level athletes can do are pretty impressive. And even at my level, I sit there and I watch Keith and I watch Kaylee and I watch these younger kids and I watch some of the things they're doing. And I'm like, man, I still got a lot to learn and a lot to get better at because some of it's just crazy.
    67:50
    Yeah. And one quick aside, there's one person that kind of blew me away, and his name's Walt. What's his last name?
    67:59
    Wood. Walt Wood. He's a secret superhero. Walt will let you know. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. It's watching him play, like watching him play, not only was – I mean, I'm not going to discredit his actual ability, his actual flipper ability, and he can hit shots. I mean, the guy is a good player. There's no denying that. But the movement that he adds to every single one of his shots, I mean, he's just – you've got to watch him. Look it up. He was in the final open. He didn't make it all the way to the finals, but he was playing in the open.
    68:37
    I don't know. Hopefully somebody clipped it. But, man, what a character. I mean, he brought personality to the game, which was pretty great. Well, it was amazing to me how much he could move and still hit his shots. Like, there's no way I could do something like that. I have to remain steady. And he was able to move his entire body, his entire field of vision, everything. And then he was still just deadly accurate. I mean, it was highly entertaining to watch. Yeah, I mean, I can do that on streams for fun, especially when I'm doing drinking streams, jumping around, being all crazy. And I will get animated sometimes even in tournament plays and stuff like that. But it's entertaining to watch. But I saw him fumble one ball that he could have saved because he wasn't at the flippers. And so it's entertaining for sure. But there's something to say about not having your hand on the game and your fingers on the flippers at all times to pre-nudge or be ready. But, yeah, the guy's awesome, and it's intense to watch, and it's entertaining for sure. And he can play. He can play some tempo. Yeah. Well, it really comes down to, like, I mean, Keith Elwin. If Keith Elwin's the best tournament player that's ever played, what does he do? He is as calm and as collected as you could ever ask for. So if it's like if that's the recipe for success, then, yeah, maybe playing a little more controlled is probably the better way to go. But I'll tell you what, I enjoyed the heck out of it. If that's how he's playing, I mean, I like watching him play. I mean, at the end of the day, he came up with his style. He was using his style, and he had some success with it. I think he finished top 15, if not top 10. He made semifinals, right? Yeah, and I'm drawing the blanks. Who was the guy from back in the day that jumped all over the place? Rick Stetta. Stetta, yeah. Right? Yeah. He was down, he was up, he was all over the place. Yep. So there's precedent for this, just not on games that weren't very much older than what even Walt was playing on there. So it's, you know, I can't really say it enough how impressive that truly was, because just like you talked about a second ago, Rob, if you miss a shot and you're not at the flipper, it's coming back fast enough that you're not going to be ready to nudge, you're not going to be ready to save it. And the fact that Walt was able to do this and not really be in that position too many times, except for maybe just a handful or once, speaks to volumes of how accurate his shots truly were, which is even more amazing to me because those games did play tough, and you've got to be accurate to have success, and he was doing a great job of that. Yeah, for sure.
    71:17
    All right, I think we're back here. We had a separate – yeah, so Tom is back. We got Tom here to really, like, let's dive in here on this tournament. So the reality was this was, we had Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. There was actually, was it four? There were four main tournaments played? No, there was five. Five. Five and the women's, oh, yeah, yeah. And the youth, seven.
    71:42
    Hi. It's future Joel again, just here to correct, you know, all the mistakes we make on the podcast. When we said four or five major tournaments, What I was actually trying to refer to were the tournaments that I know that Rob, Travis, and Tom actively participated in. Those were the ones that I was tracking and watching from afar. I absolutely did not want to discredit how important the women's tournament or youth or any of the other tournaments were. So just wanted to correct that to make sure nobody was offended. And here we go. So I know every single night there was excitement, every single night doing that. And then in the background, Travis had alluded to this earlier, this is a ticket format. So in the background, people are playing, trying to build their ticket, trying to get to the main, the open, which is Sunday, which was Sunday's big event.
    72:29
    But, yeah, so let's just go chronologically. So Thursday night, Thursday night, that was, what game was that? What tournament happened on Thursday? It was the Target Match Play.
    72:42
    Target Match Play. It started Thursday afternoon, noon, I believe. gotcha and i remember i i caught just a tiny bit of that because the streaming was just at the end but um travis you actually did you ended up doing the best in that right because you got well i got a little bit lucky i have this thing to where i never play in the top group and i just hang out in the bottom groups and just buy the dip and eventually just work my way up yeah but it never it never works out because it's always a top five finish but never a top two finish Yeah. And the way that tournament played was it's the first person to get 30 points, right? And so I remember seeing the final status. Number one has 30. What was it? Like number two had, I don't know, 28. It's like – or 29, 28. And then number four, Travis happened to have 27. And then there was like 20 people that all had 26. So, Travis, it seems like you just happened to hit, I'm assuming, in your last game. something went right to get that 27th point. My last game was actually hilarious because I played this with Tom and Neal right there, and I was on Dolly Parton against Zach Sharp, Zach McCarthy, now world champion Zach McCarthy, and who else was with me? Tim Sexton.
    73:59
    And, yeah, so the hilarious part about this game, so if you knock down the first in-line drop target, it lights your spinner for 1,000, right? Well, that spinner by far was probably the shittiest spinner I've ever seen in my life, my pinball machine. I had it lit. I ripped it. You know how many points I got out of it, Joel?
    74:17
    Two. I don't know. Close. 3,000. You got three spins. I was just like, oh, this is not going to work. So I figured out the meta after ball one. I'm like, well, I'm not going to tell these three guys. Maybe they don't realize this is happening. But, yeah, so I ended up just switching up my strategy and just kept going back up top, trying to get dolly letters, and I just ignored the spinner completely. I mean, if I had it on the flipper, I was just trying to send it back up top anyway. So I got lucky. Then I think I got Zach McCarthy by maybe like 10,000 points on that game. It wasn't much, but that was enough to get me over and get me in fourth place at the end of the day. You got fourth.
    74:58
    So, yeah, so I remember seeing that, and I was like, awesome. I'm glad people are having success. And it was cool watching the standards, like the open qualifying stuff, because seeing the three of your guys' name and Neil and Ray Day and all these others, like where they're at, are they even qualified in top 40 yet, and seeing that day-to-day, I mean, it was constantly changing and fluctuating, which was really cool. But I know the real exciting thing started the next day, which was Friday, which is Classics 1.
    75:24
    And so classic games are anything before DMD counts as a classic. So what was the, in the classics bank, what was the most modern, quote unquote, modern game that was being played in the classics bank?
    75:40
    Tom might know this one. Tom, what do you think? I was trying to think about it. Big game. Maybe Genesis? Maybe? Yeah, I'm looking through the games right now. Yeah, but that was on day two, wasn't it? No, big game was in both days. Oh, it was both days. But Genesis was big. A state ball? Yeah. But we're talking, I mean, these are, yeah, so anything before DMD, so alphanumeric. So there are some really cool, it was, I mean, these are the games that, yeah, typically have a thing. You know, it may only be one thing to do. And there were some games on there I'd never heard of, never seen before. But I'm going to kind of let you guys take this because all three of you guys did very well. And it was really cool to watch that tournament because, you know, to see you guys, you know, do so well in it. was really neat. So I don't know. I mean, you, you have the memory, Rob, if you want to kind of take it away, go for it. I'm just going to real quick and we'll take that line. So here, here, that much time here's, here's the lineup for four square, which is an EM, abracadabra, Argosy, big game, Eldorado, firepower, future spa, heavy metal meltdown, Jack's open jungle princess, magic, Mars Trek, meteor, mystic, nine ball, Paragon, skate ball, Stargazer, Stars, and Strikes and Spares. So that kind of gives you an overview of what it is. It's a lot of, like you said, Joel, it's a lot of know the thing, do the thing. Is it light the spinner and rip the spinner? Is it inline drops for bonus X? Is it, you know, a lot of these games are either bonus heavy or they're spinner heavy.
    77:18
    So what's interesting about the classics is it's only a four-game ticket. So it makes it actually a little harder. because on the five-game ticket, you can have a medium game. You can even have a zero game. There are some people that qualify for the Open with a zero game, but with four games, you've got to have four fairly solid games, and that's one of the keys to Classic to make the cut.
    77:42
    Tom, you had something there. Oh, I was just going to say Rob said Heavy Metal Meltdown, which it is listed here, but there's no scores. Oh, it was the died, yep. I never saw that streamed I think the only like the newest game in that bank on day one was El Dorado it's the only one with that I can think of what was the game though and I know all three of you and we don't have a ton of time to like go through game by game and all that stuff but there was the what is the it starts with an A you guys all played it multiple times Argus Robert, yeah. Argus. Is that right? Argus. I saw that streamed multiple times, and that game was, I mean, it's very much a do the thing and just keep going. And I remember really being impressed by that, because it got pretty near the final. Like, all three of you guys were playing that at the same time. But I don't know. What was the final? The end result was, Rob, you were number one.
    78:49
    And then what was two? How did it work? Well, I finished first. Paragon was the first game, and that was interesting because Rob really blew it up in the finals.
    79:05
    My game had – I didn't flip the first two balls, and then my third ball I got in a groove and got some points. But then Travis had a chance to pass me to take third on that game and ended up tilting out.
    79:23
    I tilted, I think, 30,000 in bonus away. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. And notice nobody said collusion, though. So that was nice of them. Nobody claimed that. But, yeah, so it was weird. It's like I knew where I was at on bonus, but yet somehow, even after telling myself don't tilt, no matter what, I still did. And I don't think I made that big of a move because if you watch back, I flipped one last time with my right flipper just out of frustration because the ball had drained. And then it tilted right afterwards. So I got a feeling somehow my frustration flip might have induced it. And looking back at it, I'm just kind of like, that's why I was standing there just so shocked that it actually tilted because I was like, I did not make any type of move on it. And during qualifying, you can make moves on it. I mean, you couldn't throw it across the room and pull in a horny hack on it. But you could do some stuff with it. And I didn't feel like I did that at all because it's a wide body and it wasn't the situation to do it. But, yeah, I ended up being the idiot in front of several hundred people, tilting away bonus. It takes fourth place too, Joel. So I got no points.
    80:30
    Well, yeah. So four. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. And then, I don't know. Tom, what was your memorable moment then from that? Or the haunting. Maybe it's – feel free. If you have a good one, go for it. But if you have something to haunt you, like what Travis just said, then. The whole game of strikes and spares. Yeah.
    80:49
    I didn't play very well on that. And it was funny because I had a couple previous rounds I had taken first on it. But, yeah, just dumb luck kind of thing. It just didn't pan out. Yeah. So our final three games was Paragon, Future Spa, and Strikes and Spares. And so, you know, you have a paragon, which is a combo game. You know, you want the drops for the bonus X, but the spinner can also build your bonus to get to 20X or 20 to carry over from ball to ball. So there's a little bit of different strategies on that game. And then future balls, it's kind of similar. You're hitting the drops to build a bonus and then strikes and spares.
    81:36
    It's kind of interesting. You know, typically you like the spinner, rip the spinner, But the spinner wasn't the best spinner on that game either.
    81:42
    And the bonus was building if you could clear ABC up top. So I switched gears and stopped trying to rip the spinner. And with the left flipper, I went to the right side trying to catch that scoop for a 3K bonus buildup and then get it back up top. So it was an interesting final. And it wasn't my favorite games. I was driving the bus. I qualified 13th, but everybody else got knocked out. but it's the same situation we talked about in the open. Couldn't repeat games, so I couldn't pick Argosy. I couldn't pick big game. I couldn't pick Meteor or some of the games that I would have liked to go to.
    82:19
    So I picked the best of what was left, and that's what you had for finals. Yeah, and you did it. You performed well, and, yeah, it was really cool to see that. So, I mean, congrats, Rob, on that win. I mean, that's fantastic.
    82:34
    So, Travis, you ended up placing fourth, and then, Tom, Where were you at in that? Do you remember? Which game? I'm sorry. Just in the overall. No, I was – Travis and I were tied for third, and we had to have a playoff. And Travis beat me on Meteor. I mean, I tried to distract him when he was having a good ball, screaming at the top of my lungs, but it didn't work. I'm sorry, Tom. I was there for you. Who ended second then? I appreciated that. David. David Real. Yeah. So it was the top view three and David for the four. That was really cool. That was really neat to see. That was awesome. That was awesome to see. So that was Classics 1. So then you go into the next day, and once again, I'm just kind of watching from afar. The stream hasn't started yet, but you can kind of see who's qualifying where.
    83:19
    And Travis, did you even, like, were you just burnt? Like, were you just burnt out on that? I mean, I'm assuming you were trying to get into Classics 2. Oh, are you talking about how I qualified basically last second? That was a minute. Because I was just like, is Travis, what's going on? Oh, yeah. So, well, one, Travis needed sleep, so I slept in that morning. He missed the first couple hours. But two, I was basically just using my cards just to kind of test out games because it was a new bank this time around, too, at least some of it. There was some overlap, but other than that, a lot of the games were newer, and I hadn't played them before, so I wanted to kind of get the feel, kind of see where tilts are, try to see what game I want to include because just like we talked about before, with only four games, you have to really manage your time, but you have to make sure that those four games you're going to score well on so you can qualify because if one you do very, very bad on, you're basically SOL. So that was kind of my thing too is I was just kind of waiting to see how different games were going to fill. And the hilarious part was is a couple people started talking about Sinbad towards the end, that it was actually manageable, that the bounces weren't crazy, and that's kind of the word that started getting around. And it was like five ball. Yeah. And yeah. And the fact is on five balls. So word started getting around on that. And as soon as I heard the third person tell me that I was like, you know what? I'm going to go over there and look at it because typically I don't play it at all. It usually eats my lunch. And when I went to play it the first time, that's when I pretty much figured out, OK, the bounces are where you think it's going to be. The tilts where you think it is. The shots are where you think it is. So it turned into one of those games that just happened to be on my card when I'd even wake up that morning expecting it to be on. And I think it turned out pretty well because I think I ended up getting the number three or number four ranked overall score on it. But that being said, then I don't even pick it in the finals when I could have twice. So, yeah. So there you go.
    85:14
    Yeah, so there was 18 games in both Classics banks. There was nine repeats. So there was nine games that were in Classic 1 that carried over to Classics 2. And that's just because, I mean, there's a lot of games there. So to have complete turnover of 18 games is asking a lot.
    85:33
    Previous ones have been on the same 18 both rounds, so this actually was a little different, and I enjoyed that better, having some new choices. So how do you – I mean, for the three of you guys to all make the Final Four the night before, like, how do you show up the next day and think, like, all right, time to do it again? You know, like, is it motivating? Like, I had great success the night before. Like, let's do it again? or is it almost like, all right, here we go? You know, how's the mentality the second day?
    86:03
    Go ahead, Rob. So, you know, being lucky enough and it's a combination to win these things. It's definitely skill. You've got to be on. You've got to be making your shots. But you also got to get some in lanes. You've got to get some bounces. You know, these games are set up that if they go out, they go out. And, you know, Tom had the perfect thing on strikes and spares. He never even got to play. I mean, the ball was just gone. So you've got to have some little love on top of that. But I came in the next day with me personally with no pressure. I came to the event in 2020. I didn't make the cut for anything. I just won the first big event. It's all gravy at this. I was just hoping to make the cut in one of the four tournaments. So I came in pretty loose, and sure enough, first ticket, boom, Argosy, boom, Paragon. And then I think Mars Trek, and then I think Sinbad was my last game. and I just, for one ticket, one ticket and done, I put up like four scores that were in the top 10 early on, no bleeders, and went to go play open ticket. So that was my experience.
    87:08
    How about you, Tom? My experience was Classics 1 and that was about it. Yeah. It was kind of what you were alluding to before you were thinking of, you know, getting into one thing. I honestly thought I would get into the Open, which I didn't, but getting into Classics was definitely special, especially getting into Finals. But yeah, the thing about the ticket format, I mean, when you play in a Herb style or a bus game, it's easy to just keep going back and you can eventually get a higher score if you're a really good player but uh when when you're doing the ticket format and you're doing it on four or five games it's it's tough yeah yeah so at the end of the at classics two i mean travis you did get in yeah then i promptly blew it in the first round i think i was uh so i took second in big game and then i took second on genesis which gave me four points which made the scores 8-4-2-0. So basically, all I needed to do was, and Jermaine got out of the way since he was through to the next round, so he took position, and all I needed to do was just pick a game that I could take third or higher on. So I was like, okay, yeah, I'll just do Paragon. I feel fine enough with this. I'm not going to tilt. It'll be fine. And what ended up happening was that Jermaine, he finished up, he picked player one. Like I said, he got out of the way. He finished up with about 37,900 points. So that's all I had to beat. That was it. And somehow I magically ended up with 21,780 points on Paragon, my worst score ever on a Paragon in competition by far. So I went into this positive, I'll get at least 100,000, and I came out of it like, oh, my God, I can't believe I just did that on a game I just picked. And what ended up happening was is the player that was in last place with zero points, they took first on Paragon with 131-7. So it wasn't even like it was a big score anyways, but it was good enough that everything got set in position, where since that player got a four and I took a zero, right, and then the player that had two took second. So now all of a sudden that created a three-way tie. So the scores ended up being 9-4-4-4 after three games. So I got another pick, and I'm like, crap, this sucks. I'm going to go ahead and pick a game that I feel highly confident on again. So I pick stars. And lo and behold, I end up doing the same thing pretty much to where I just can't get a ball in a flipper. It's everywhere. Even my bailout shots aren't working. And I end up taking second. And it's just a ball of flames, like a Michael Bay movie explosion happened. And that was that. And I realized right then and there, I was just like, I looked at my wife and I said, I'm so tired right now. I just want to go to bed. I want to go to sleep. So I didn't even do qualifying for the Open anymore. I didn't put in any tickets. I was just like, wherever I end up at, I don't care about getting a bye. We'll just – hopefully I don't bleed too much. I was just so dead tired and mentally done that I just went to sleep. And, yeah, I fell asleep around 9 o'clock that night, I think. So it was nice. So you're the one that let Richie through to beat me and take me out in the quarterfinals. Yes. Yes, so I basically caused the butterfly effect because Richie, Terry, he got all the way to finals after that. So he started off, I mean, with two zeros in a row. Just he needed, I think even on the statistics that Tim Sexton was providing on that worksheet or whatever it was, the spreadsheet, I think he had like a 3% chance of going through at that point. And I had something like an 80-some-odd percent or whatever it was. And I proceeded to show you never bet on me when the odds are in my favor. So I know, what was it? So that was the second day. Keith did, because I was watching Keith Elwin. Like, this was a big deal, the fact that Keith Elwin was really competing in a tournament again. You know, you kind of see him come in. It's like, well, how far is Keith going to go? How far is Escher going to go? How far is Ray Day going to go? You know, those types of names. Now you've got Zach McCarthy. You know, you've got these names that are just really taking over. And Keith, I remember, made it further the second day, right? Am I wrong on that? Yeah, he finished second in Classics 2. Escher won and Raymond finished third, the three people you just mentioned. Yeah, exactly. Joel, you're talking to the man that eliminated Elwin.
    91:45
    On the first day. Yes, on the first day. Elwin was my wingman round one, and Tom was just like, no. He's like, you're not getting between us, buddy. I did no such thing.
    91:57
    But so, Robert, you made it the furthest then. So classics, how did classics to how did classics to end for you or? Yeah I got into my my second group I got through the first round was Elwin Levy Neyman who really strong classic player and Richie Terry who Travis let through
    92:18
    And we played big game, and I got a third, and then we played Argosy, and I got a second. I should have came back to beat Elwin, but I choked because I was player four, and then Cheetah was not nice to me. So I went out in 10th, so after a win, I'll take that all day long. Yeah. Which is great. So, I mean, another – I don't know. It was – yeah. I just don't know the stamina that you guys – like how you come in the next day ready to perform as well as you did the day. I don't know. It's just with that level of play. So once again, watching from afar, I saw that. I was like, all right, you know, that's fine. But here we are. That was Saturday. So here we are looking forward to Sunday.
    93:00
    So Sunday was the – I mean, that's – am I missing something here or we're just – you go right into the open? Saturday was playoff, the Classics 2, so the qualifying started at 9, ended at 4.30, playoffs at 5. Same format for Classics 1. But the whole time this is going on, you can put in tickets for the Open and for the high stakes. That's for high stakes. That's what I was forgetting. So while we were playing Classics Finals, there were other people playing the Opens and putting in tickets for the main event. So as soon as Classics, as soon as I got knocked out of Classics, I went and started putting more open tickets in because I was in like 28th and I was steadily bleeding. Unfortunately, I never needed to put in another ticket. I finished 39th and made the cut. But I probably put in, you know, four or five more tickets trying to improve that score because I didn't think it was going to make it. So you made it. I know you made it. Travis, you made it as well, right? Yes. do you remember getting in like what was the combo of five games do you remember what it was what got you in so well what happened with me i think i only did two cards total for the open because i actually ended up going to bed with two more cards that i could have used but i was just too damn tired at that point but i didn't even realize i did this till after the fact but all five of my games i qualified on were from different different manufacturers so i had Frontier, Ninja Turtles, Laser Q, Mystery Castle, and Alien Star. And it was just one of those things that I just, I played consistent across all of them and just, I mean, the Ninja Turtle scores were really muted, though, at this. And a large part of that is because the ball saves for multiball were turned way down. And so that took a lot of the meta out of the game in terms of building up your hurry-ups or building up to a 2x play field, just because just without those ball saves, you're basically hitting a target with a solo ball the whole time, and that's going to take a long time to build up. So, I mean, it just really helped that those scores were muted for me because I think with 11, I'm looking at it right now, with 11.1 million, it was good enough for 26th rank the whole time. And I thought that was going to be a bad game. So it turned out, you know, really wasn't that bad. And Frontier I had ranked 14th at 1.6 million. Mystery Castle just got to 290, had really no idea what I was doing on it, Just timing out modes, just hitting some shots, looking at some dancing skeletons and hope for the best. So got a 73rd on that. And then Alien Star, I was a little disappointed with this one. I got 2.3 million for 26th rank, and yet it was playing super easy because there's no pop bumper working on it at the time. Yeah, what's up, Rob? Yeah, so I had a similar ticket.
    95:40
    Just Alien Star was 38th ranked. Godzilla was 64th ranked. Sorcerer, 53rd ranked. Batman, 35th ranked. and Mystery Castle ranked 117. So as you can see, there was only two scores above the 40th best score, but because they were consistent, it hops you up in the standings. So this really comes around to don't have a tank game and have, you know, a couple of really good games, a couple of mediocre games, and don't tank anything.
    96:14
    That's really interesting because I really thought to qualify, you would have to be like you would have had to have had, you know, one of your five games, maybe be a top 20 finish, you know, like a really good game, maybe one or two of those. And then three that just aren't terrible. But you're saying, I mean, the numbers that you listed there, Rob, were a lot lower than I would expect to get in. But that's just me guessing here from the I mean. Yeah. I'm trying to find another ticket. So here's an example. So David Rowe, real? Rowe? Real. His ticket was just kind of polar opposite. His Batman score was fourth, Dirty Harry 38th, Mystery Castle 23rd, Stargate 12th. Sounds really good, right? Nope, his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle scores was 225th. So he got zero points for that. But his other games were good enough to carry him through. And so there's different ways to approach this.
    97:12
    I don't like bleeder games. And what bleeder games are is a game that's so bad that it's going to go to zero. You know you're going to have zero points for that because the top score is 200, 195, 190, and then it goes down one point per game. Well, there's enough people playing that there's going to be 200 to 300 games played on these. And so if you have a stinker, it's going to go zero. It may look good early in the standings, but it's going to go to zero.
    97:37
    Yeah. And I'm not – this is not purposeful, but this – so, Tom, you did not qualify, but what was your overall experience or scores or, I mean, what was – yeah. Yeah, I just couldn't really get anything going together. I really struggled on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is usually a strong game for me. I felt really, really good on Royal Rumble and RoboCop. Oh, yeah, brother.
    98:13
    And a couple more, but I just couldn't put a ticket together, and you got to do that. So how do you, like, when do you, so Turtles, you're saying you made it, so it sounds like you played Turtles a few times. Were you starting with Turtles, or was that like you were trying to? Yeah, no, not necessarily, but it was usually my, like, second or third game going into a ticket. Okay.
    98:38
    So, yeah, and I was getting just a couple million on the game, which really wasn't going to do it for me. So at that point, I mean, you finish out the ticket, right, or do you just, like, toss it? As the tournament goes on, so in the beginning, yeah, you finish your ticket because you're kind of practicing your games. But then after that, once you get to Saturday, you start, yeah, this isn't going to work. Let's toss it out and just start over. Yeah. Because there's no point in playing it anymore. It'd be interesting to see a graph curve of when the cards were voided. because the first couple days, like Tom was saying, if I had a crap game, game number one, perfect. Now I'm going to go play some games that I haven't played that, you know, maybe for whatever reason, I figured out how to dead bounce trap up easier or save the ball. So I want to get every game. Also, I'm anticipating making the finals. I never go in going, I'm not going to make it. So I also try to put at least one game on every game because you never know what somebody else is going to pick. Oh, no point. Yeah, just to get experience. Yeah, so it's practice. Then once you get to Saturday at 5 o'clock and there's six hours left, you know, game one, ah, it's not bad. Game two, ah, that was crap. Void, re-cue, start over and dump the ticket because it's volume at that point. If I don't get in, it doesn't matter if I practice on these games. So early on, I don't skip any of that money. It's $4 a game. I'm going to get my money's worth and practice. I played the best Sunday night while high stakes was going on so 20 bucks a ticket do you guys know how many tickets because I was watching you guys which was cool you could see it all online but I only saw submitted tickets so I never saw, it's like I have no idea how many tickets you guys are voiding in the background I'm trying to look I played a pretty late ticket Travis do you know? Yeah, I can actually answer that. So I had Classics 1. I think I might have had one Voided ticket for that, and I might have put in two tickets total for one ticket for the – no, for Classics. I think I put in four. Oh, I didn't void anything. Never mind. I have three. I think he's talking about total number of tickets over the weekend for everybody. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to go through. I think I probably did – I did three open tickets, two high stakes. I think seven classics. I think it's somewhere right around there. There really wasn't much. So three open tickets. So that means you only played, what is it, 15 games. Right. Well, no, I did it twice. Never mind, two open tickets, I think. I think that's what I did. I can't remember. I might have avoided one because I shotgunned through one really, really fast just to test out some things. But I do know, just like Rob alluded to just a second ago, I did not play my other tickets that I could have to test out other games because I went I decided I need to get some rest need to get some sleep and lo and behold that bit me in the ass because the very next day all three games were on games that I didn't have any significant time on like I played Dark Knight once with my initial card and that game just shat all over me I think I got 1.2 million which is the worst in the whole tournament and I was legitimately trying to get a ball and a flipper just because I wanted to flip and just see, but I don't think I even did, but one flip on it, just a panic flip and yeah, just tilted all three balls. I found the tilt at least, but yeah, that's all I knew because then I played Godzilla LE, knew the rules, didn't know the balances of that game and that kind of burned me. And then as a horse, same thing, knew the rules, knew how it was and just wasn't prepped. I remember when we talked about Freeplay Florida though like you bought a ton of tickets so that's what i was thinking yeah i was i was thinking you were like you know you had like 40 plus tickets that you were doing and you only submitted two of them no so i did the exact opposite where i tried to buy less but i got the combo which gave me a high stakes and like 20 off so with high stakes i did accidentally submit my first card i was supposed to avoid it and i wasn't even thinking i just kind of just went with the flow And then, lo and behold, I noticed earlier that I'm down to like 135th in the tournament. I'm like, I don't even have a card in. And I look, and to my amazement, yeah, my horrible card was indeed in. But, yeah, I was just so tired and I was ready to drive back that I just had to not finish out a couple of cards anyways. What about you, Tom?
    103:21
    Yeah. Plenty? I was done after Classics won. Yeah. That's fair. I just don't – the stamina, these multi-day tournaments, I mean, I just – nothing but respect for you guys, you know, participating in them and trying to keep mentally in the game there. But I just – that idea, that pressure of multiple days, trying to play games in the background, especially when you guys are doing so well in tournaments on Thursday, you know, are you even thinking about Sunday while other people are back there cranking away games preparing for Sunday?
    103:54
    Well, there was people that dropped out. I think Walt did it. I think Escher did it, and I don't know if anybody else did. I'm sure there was. There was multiple people that dropped out of the target match play the first day when they realized that they were going to start off way behind everybody else and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening just trying to climb up. A lot of them just decided to duck out, and they went over and started doing their qualifying, and that's the way that they chose to manage the clock. So, yeah, there's a lot of pressure in terms of putting games together, managing your time and really realizing where you're at because if you have any bleeders i i knew several people in the past other tournaments they thought they were good they let up off the gas they go to dinner break they come back all of a sudden they're outside the cut line and there's nothing they can do about it because they run out of time because the queues get so long the final hour to two hours they get so long so yeah yeah it's all about time management i felt bad for uh Ryan Spindler because he was up there for a while, and then he kept dropping, and finally he took that 41st spot.
    105:00
    And he got knocked out by Jason Wardrick, who was still qualified. You know, at 11 o'clock, they're like, okay, everybody, you know, no more qualifying. Well, Jason was still playing on his, like, last game on his ticket, and he ended up doing well and knocking Ryan out of the playoffs. Literally last minute, yeah.
    105:24
    So, Neil, did Neil make it? Yeah, Neil made the open. Yeah, so Neil made it, Travis made it, and Rob, you made it in. So, real quick here, I know we're running low on time, but real quick, how did the open go for the three of, I mean, feel free to speak for Neil if you want, Tom, but how did the open happen for the three of you guys? um yeah neil had a tough group uh he had uh the first round he had jason wardrick adam mckinney and uh richie terry and uh he ended up surviving that and uh then he got knocked out in the second round so he finished what place uh 24th i think it was nice and then travis you sounds like dark Night handed it to you? Well, I was with Bill Mason, Josh Sharp, and Adam Lefkoff, and we played Godzilla L.E. early on. I got really lucky taking second with that. None of us really played it all that well, and I had $53 million on that. Got lucky because Josh had two locks, and with the next one lit and ended up draining out. Otherwise, I would have put him over the top, but yeah. Then we played Batman Dark Knight. I just got annihilated on that. Had $4.7 million. I think Adam ended up with $63 million because they had a great Scarecrow and Joker stack going on there. But all the settings were set to hard, and the tilt was just super tight as well. I mean, there was a couple of times I watched Bill, who picked the game, I watched him actually get a danger while just flipping on an in-lane return. So this is, I mean, from a ramp return, he was getting a danger while flipping. I'm like, man, this is just way too tight. So yeah, it's just every single one of my balls, I had something that I had to take a danger or two dangers early on. Then I was just pins and needles. So that didn't work out well. And then I went over to Sorcerer to where I just couldn't score anything. I think I ended up with 300,000, even with my locks lit. I just could not find that left ramp. I probably missed it at least eight or nine times. And that just goes to you need to be able to play all the games at least once to get a fill for where they're at. Otherwise, you're putting yourself in bad position. So, I mean, lesson learned there. Maybe I'm just going to skip to sleep next time so that way I don't get my ass kicked. So what was your final place? 33rd I believe and then Rob how did it go for you I'll keep it brief I was bleeding all day and I was lucky to not be Ryan and get bumped off I finished 39th I was sweating the last minute tickets I kept refreshing like I was back in the room two hours later going to bed hitting refresh making sure it wasn't a fluke somebody else didn't get past me but I got in a pretty tough group with Andre Massinkoff, David Reel and Roland Nadeau that went pretty well. I think that's how you pronounce his last name. I can't be sure. But this is the disadvantage of being the lowest guy. I didn't get to drive the bus, and I went second every game. And they picked Shadow, Dirty Harry, and then Doctor Who. And Doctor Who wasn't even in the tournament, got brought in later, so I had zero time on it. And all three of those games I don't have a lot of time on in general. Honestly, this whole open bank was tough for me. I didn't have a lot of go-to strong, I know this game, and I like this game. So it was a tough bank, and I got knocked out and finished 38th. But, again, I'm riding a high there. Like I said, first, 10th, 38th. In 2020, I made zero cuts, and this year I made all four cuts. So it didn't even matter at that point. But I was tired.
    108:56
    I don't know. I'm tired. But that was the open. Correct. The Open finishes, and it was Zach McCarthy who won it, right? So it was awesome. We already kind of talked about the finals, the final three games and all that. You know, shout-out, too, to Ray Day, another TPN guy. Ray Day was crushing it all week as well. Ray Day did very well in that. But then there's this other thing called High Stakes. High Stakes was the last tournament of all of it. It's the same – what is it? It's the same games as the Open. It's the same concept as the Open. It's just the tickets were more expensive or what? It's the same concept. It's five games, but there was only eight games in the bank, and it was a completely separate bank. Okay. Same format, same everything, except for instead of $20 a ticket, it's $50 a ticket. Yeah. They still had over 160 people put in an entry.
    109:41
    Nice. I think first prize got up to $7,000 for first. So it's pretty significant. I got really lucky there. I, when they, when I got, um, I knocked out a target match play, I went right over and, and just had one of those tickets. I couldn't do no wrong. And so I managed to qualify my first ticket there. I was number one for quite a while and bled down to fifth. Um, but, um, it was one of those no bleeder tickets. So, um, I saved some money there for sure.
    110:12
    Nice. And then Travis, you, you were driving home, so you didn't, you didn't qualify, I assume. Correct. Yeah. And Tom as well, you didn't qualify. Did Neil? That is correct. No.
    110:24
    So high stake, spoiler, Keith Elwin won the whole thing. So you, Rob, you said one and done. You had a great ticket. You submitted it. Done. You're in, right? Correct. Nice. Keith, any idea how, was he similar? He's always similar. I don't think he puts in more than two tickets. I'd have to look, but he's usually, that's the thing that amazes about me. Greatest of all time, of course. You know, just it's the consistency. He just doesn't have any bad games. I mean, everybody has a bad game, but just not that often. So a format like this is just geared for him for sure to destroy. Yeah. Well, I mean, he does. He does lose. Tom beat him in one round. Just, you know. Never happened, Joel. It didn't happen. Yeah.
    111:10
    I remember that message. Quit reminding him. Travis was like, Tom took out my wingman. But, Rob, so you made it to high stakes. So how did high stakes go for you? The same as the Open. I actually played better. My group was Raymond, me, Ryan Spindler, and Johnny Monica.
    111:30
    Raymond was driving. He picked Tron, then Pinball Magic, and Taxi. And I had my chances. I finished third on Tron. I had my chance to come back and take the win on Pinball Magic. I just didn't know the game that well, and I don't think my strategy was very good. and then came up to taxi. It was win or get done. And I actually got a jackpot in 12 seconds. No lie. I got the jackpot in 12 seconds. So that was kind of cool because I was player four and nobody did good. But then Monica ended up – Johnny Monica ended up throwing up $9 million. Wow. But it was this crazy sequence. I mean, you'll never see it again. But I plunged the skill shot and got a spot passenger. The person in front of me left me a lock. So the ball comes down. I hit the lock. The ball comes out of the lock, comes down. I hit Dracula. The ball comes around the ramp to the left flipper, and I sweep Pinbot. And then the other ball comes back around to the right flipper. I hit Santa Claus, and then Joyride sparks me my fifth character. Ball kicks out of Santa Claus, dead bounces, lays up on the left flipper, and I drill the jackpot shot. It was amazing. Like 12 seconds and I had 1.5 million fixed jackpot. So you just sped run it. It was crazy. Even Raymond was like, oh, my God, what just happened? It was wild.
    112:58
    If Taxi's in Pen Clash 3, then now we know. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully somebody clipped that. I'm like, no, we weren't on video, unfortunately. I'm like, man, what a time to not be on the stream. Yeah, that is another thing. I mean, I respect the heck out of Carl. Everything he's trained, that was amazing. But there are definitely times that I'm looking at the tournament and I'm looking at the bracket and it's like, I mean, this is a good group. But, man, I wish I could see this group. And I know it's not possible. I know you can't stream everybody. But there are definitely, I mean, the level of play that was there, there were definitely games that I know missed. Like, obviously, Rob, that would have been awesome to see on stream. So what I'm hearing, Joel, is you're calling on Carl that he needs to have two rigs running at all times so he can at least have at least two games. IE Pinball 2, maybe an IE Pinball 3, and that way you can switch between streams. Yeah. No big deal, Carl. Just throw that in. What's an interesting story, the first time we streamed Texas Pinball Festival, we had cameras on every single game. Twelve games, we had cameras on every single game coming to a central computer with lines everywhere where we could just click a button and switch to different games. Oh, wow. Let's check in on Taxi and see what's going on. No, I mean, if you finished a game, you just switched over to a new game. You didn't have to stop anybody. You didn't have to roll the rig or whatever. It was great from that standpoint, but the cost was just prohibitive at that point to have that many cameras and lined up. So high stakes, where did you end up with, Rob? I finished, I don't know, 12th. So I'll take it, 12th out of 160.
    114:23
    Pretty big whopper haul for the weekend. I think I finished 7th overall whopper haul. Travis finished 9th, I think, because he had some solid, even though, because he got his two-fourths in the high stakes. So, yeah, that's the one thing that was really cool. I mean, all you guys came home with hardware, so congrats on that. It seemed like it was an amazing event. It was awesome to watch from afar. The level of play was fantastic. But I did see there was an update in rank.
    114:52
    I don't know. I can't make fun of Travis anymore. He's high enough, but I can't make fun of him for it.
    115:00
    But what are you, Travis? Go ahead and say it. 23rd. In the world, Joel. 23rd in the world. Okay. Front page.
    115:09
    And, Robert, you popped up a good bit. Now where are you at? I was 68th, 70th coming in. I popped up to 29th. Well done. And then, Tom, where are you and Neil?
    115:22
    Let's see. Neil is at 22nd, so he's one ahead of Travis. That's fantastic. I hope that stays. And I am 26. six. That's awesome. All you guys are in the 20s. Is that what I just heard?
    115:40
    That's impressive, guys. Well, I will say, though, I was looking at the ranking. I mean, congrats to the three of you, plus me. I mean, fantastic job. But you look right at the number one spot. Ray, Raymond has almost a thousand points.
    115:55
    Number one, and here you guys are in the 20s, and you're like, where are you, in the 600s? I mean, it's like that gap is He started running away with it, with all these high-end certified finishes. It just goes to show you, because what people may not realize when it comes to Whoppers, if it's a major, it gets a 50% boost. But if it's a certified tournament, which is 64 players or more qualifying in two different days, finals, you get a 20% boost. So, effectively, the Open had a 170% boost on both the high stakes and the main tournament, and Ray got 105 with a fourth-place finish at the main, and then at the high stakes with the second place, he got 85. So that's a ton. Yeah, well, overall, I don't know if you guys have any final thoughts on Indisc. Incredibly entertaining to watch. That's all I can say, and I think there's a whole bunch of people that watch the stream that applaud not only the level of play from all you guys, but also Carl and the production that he put on. But, yeah, I mean, I looked at that. I mean, today is the Super Bowl. We're recording this on Sunday the 13th. But that to me was like that was the Super Bowl of pinball streaming. I mean, now that Pinnberg's out, to me it's like I look forward – I now know, look forward to InDisc and look forward to Super Series because that's where, you know, those are the weekends that I need to make sure I'm not doing family stuff. I need to save time to watch that. I think in 2020 they had 350 people-ish. this year I think there was 250 people-ish enter the open so you know that's definitely a couple things COVID restrictions people didn't want to come wear masks all weekend there's also some weather that went through the country that slowed things down but I expect easily over 300 next year and at some point in time they're going to get themselves in trouble there's going to be four to five hundred people coming so it's it's it's going to continue to be challenging to for game and game and time management.
    118:00
    But if anybody can do it, it's Carl and Jim Belsito and Bob Matthews helps out quite a bit as well. And there's a group of other people that support them. I just don't know everybody's name, but they're always there. They're always spot on. There's text. There's everything. Cheers to all the InDesk people.
    118:20
    Yeah, 100%. Well, I think that's about it. Yeah. we covered a good bit here there's always more to talk about but we'll have to get to that later on but yeah real quick we'll just go around the circle and do some plugs we usually start with a guest so Rob plug away so you can find me on TPN I stream on the TPN channel on Wednesday just before Joel at 630 to 830 and then he comes on after me at 9 o'clock on just flipping out stream I believe and that's a cool place we created but I also stream on my own channel Top Rope Pinball, it's a little crazy it's a lot of pinball, it's a lot of high end pinball but it's I focus on the entertainment and you just never know what you're going to get you might not be a wrestling fan but if you watch Top Rope Pinball you might become a wrestling fan so you can follow me on Twitch Facebook, Instagram all the pinball profile, you can find me on all the places because I'm just fuelless, so just search It's Top World Pinball in any streaming or any media, social place you're at, and you will probably find me. Yeah, your stream is way more than just pinball. That's for sure. And it's impressive that you can put on that type of entertainment but also play at the level that you play. Thanks. So well done.
    119:42
    Yeah, Travis, go ahead. Well, first off, I'd like to thank my camera for making it through this recording. I'd like to thank my microphone for holding up. and I'd like to thank my headset for staying charged the whole time. Now that it's out of the way, you can find me at the Triple Drain podcast right here, and I'm also on YouTube at Marv Loco. Yeah, well done. Thank you. Well done to you and your equipment. I'm glad. Thank you. This is big. It took me 14 tries, but we got it right. Got it right. Yeah. Tom, go ahead. You can find me at Fox Cities Pinball. actually we're going to be doing a very big tournament this weekend at District 82 called the Winter 2X. It's actually going to start on Friday with a knockout. There's a lot of players signed up and then on Saturday two tournaments so if you're interested in competitive pinball please check it out. Travis will be there. yeah and even if you're not interested in competitive pinball but you like pinball watch it because i'm telling you even if you don't know what they're trying to do these the the quality of these streams are is so high that when you have commentators that are they're telling you they're telling you about the game they're telling you kind of what the player's trying to do it's it's it's very very entertaining so i would i would i highly support that and um yeah good luck good luck not only to the the competition but also the stream um as well and then yeah i'm joel i do um i do this obviously triple dream podcast and then i stream yeah after rob on the the pinball network on wednesdays and then every other thursday on flipping out um i will tell you that on flipping out what i just did i mentioned it earlier an awesome stream with ray day if you want to know anything about rush rules check that out it's on youtube and And then I actually have a cool stream coming up with a homebrew game, which should be really pretty cool in a few weeks. And then I am – lastly, I also do just another pinball podcast, and I have an interview coming up, which should be pretty exciting. So stay – keep your eyes open for that. Yep. But, yeah, go ahead, Rob. Well, just want to say thank you guys for hosting and bringing me on. If you ever need an extra ball, I'm always ready and willing to bring the comedy and who knows when I show up. This has actually been a very calm podcast for me, believe it or not.
    122:12
    Yeah, we had a lot to get through. Yeah, but, Rob, absolutely, thank you for being on here. We knew you had great success at InDisc. We knew we were going to be talking a lot about competitive pinball, and your pin was definitely – it was great to have. But, yeah, Travis, Tom, appreciate you guys. Appreciate the content you create and the time we get to share here. And to the listeners, if there's anything we can do for you, feel free to email us at tripledrain at gmail.com. Otherwise, hopefully, yeah, hit us up on any of our streams or emails, and hopefully you'll hear again from us in a few weeks. So, like always, Tom, you get the last words. Goodbye, everybody.