All right. Hello. Hi. Oh, geez. Oh, geez. Dropping stuff. It's my clacker. Drop the clacker. I use it for color adjustment. I'm not really good at color adjustment, but I'm trying and I'm learning. It's good to have something white on the screen and I just automatically just say that's white. That's white. Make everything match. Well, welcome to episode number 13. Punk rock pinball. Wow. I'm Stephanie. I'm Mike. Marshall is right down on my feet looking at me weird. Our dog Marshall. Yeah. So a lot of people watched the last one and a bunch of you liked it. Thank you. Thank you so much. And if you could like this one again. We also got a couple likes on Spotify I saw. Oh. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. And I didn't check Apple because I'm an Android person and I don't even know how to get into that. I think I can on the Internet browsers. Yeah, James Griff says he wrote a review on Apple, but it got deleted. It was probably rude. Maybe he used foul language, but I think he likes the podcast, so I don't know if he would. He probably wouldn't. He probably wouldn't. He wouldn't. So, yeah, thank you so much, and it would mean a ton if you are following and you haven't liked the YouTube video or however you're listening to this on a podcast. It really helps a lot. We're little guys in the big world of podcasting, and it's hard to get noticed. Yeah, especially on the Apple and the Spotify. If you rate the show, write reviews on there, that really helps. And then on YouTube, if you subscribe, that helps. I think we had 32 subscribers off the last one. That's awesome. Yeah. Anytime we put Star Wars in the title, those are our two biggest ones that have Star Wars in the title. This one's not going to have Star Wars in the title. Maybe we should have a future one with Star Wars in the title. We should have a future one with Star Wars in the title. I think we will. Okay. Well, we probably will. Every third episode, Star Wars. Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars. All right. So, Mike, I want to give you a little update. Okay. Remember our friend Deanna? Yes. The Sincere Engineer. Two episodes back, she's on the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. She played a couple songs upstairs. Well, remember how she said, you guys, I don't know if I like pinball? Yeah, I think she even said, like, I don't like pinball. Like, early on in the podcast episode, she said she didn't like pinball. She did. And I'm happy to report that we have converted one person to becoming pinball obsessed. Because not only did she have a good time after we filmed that and we played some, you know, pinball games. She did awesome on Cactus Canyon. We talked about that. And we played Firepower and a few other games. but now she let me know that on wednesday nights at the dave and busters it's half price night and she went because she went to go play pinball and she tore it up on godzilla and she tore it up on pulp fiction pulp fiction me i don't know if it was there or another place but she's officially hooked and she said pulp fiction was her favorite pulp fiction is her favorite so good choice i mean It's a great game. That is a cool game. It's so fun. And when you can hear the call-outs, it's just even better. Yeah. That's a great home game. Maybe we'll have one sometime. I would love it. Otherwise, we'll just go to Joe and Shelly's. Yeah. Until they want to get rid of theirs. Or maybe they'll want to trade for something. Joe? Shelly? Are you ready? We're ready. A little, I don't know, Ripley's for Pulp Fiction? Or Joseph was trying to trade something for Cactus Canyon. Well. I think Pulp Fiction for Cactus Canyon. That's a fair deal. It's called Chicago Gaming for Chicago Gaming. Yeah, we got a bunch of mods on that. But was that on Shelly's top five keep it list, Pulp Fiction? She can forget about it. It might have been, but Cactus Canyon could be on that. Oh, my God. Joseph would be over the moon. We do have the upgrade kit coming. Mm-hmm. So if you don't know about Cactus Canyon, it's by Chicago Gaming Company. It was released in like 1997? Something. Seven? Sure. Six, seven? kind of incomplete and it was like maybe the last like valley williams pin maybe maybe i'm like i'm not i know some pinball history but i'm not a historian a historian but it was like one of the last Bally Williams games it kind of flopped the code was never really fully realized it was by Lyman Sheets, I know that, and Cactus, or the Chicago Gaming team, who worked on this code to finish it? I think Josh Sharpe. Josh Sharpe. Is he a coder? I know he's working on it. I think he helped write the rules. He probably doesn't write the code. But Josh Sharpe and the team there, like, basically finished, based on, like, notes and stuff that, like, Lyman Sheets had about rules and code that was going to go in this game, and there's like a kit that adds a couple different shot type things to the game. And a new little mechanism. A new mechanism, a saloon door. And it's got a bunch of new modes. So that was like $1,250 or something. We ordered it from Flip N Out Pinball. And I paid that invoice today. So we're getting it. And I think they're shipping. I saw on the CGC Facebook that they shipped a pallet. Dreams do come true. Hopefully, did that palette go to flipping out pinball? I mean, they're kind of a big deal. I paid the invoice, so should be getting that. I think it takes 30 minutes to an hour to install the thing. I'm not looking forward to that. Okay. I don't like working on the games. I like playing the games. It's too bad this relationship isn't a fixer and a player, because that would be the ideal. Yeah, we're both players. We're not really fixers. No. Like I can fix some stuff. Not really. I'm not a pinball technician like Mark the Knife. No, Mark the Knife. Whoa. Google that guy. Maybe Mark the Knife can come down and install my Cactus Canyon kit. Mm-hmm. Badass tech out of Chicago. Yeah, badass tech out of Chicago. Used to be Mark the Knife like a sword swallower guy. Yeah, like knife. He's got knife skills. Google or YouTube search Mark the Knife. Mack the Knife will come up a lot. Mack the Knife? Yeah. But is that, that's not him. No, that's like the Bobby Darin song from like the 50s. Mark the Knife. He's our tech friend from Chicago. Really good player, too. Mm-hmm. But I need to have him down. He can put that kid in. And he can figure out why we just bought a Close Encounters of the Third Kind pinball machine yesterday. And after a while of playing it, started scoring like 10 points per flipper hit. Well, it's an old game. It's almost 50 years old. All right, Mark the Knife, we got some things for you. I don't know if he listens. Maybe he doesn't, but maybe somebody that knows him is listening. Aaron? Aaron Reddick. When you see Mark the Knife, tell him we need him. All right. So we did a big, we had a big pinball. Yeah, I derailed us with that combo. That's all right. We were talking about Deanna and she rules and she's becoming, like really getting into pinball. And so I have to say that anybody listening who is a Sincere Engineer fan or has become a new Sincere Engineer fan, and you're going to go see the band as they're going on tour in a couple weeks here, meet up with Deanna. Tell her where the pinball places are. Say, Deanna, let's flip. Challenge her to a game. Yeah. She'll probably take you up on it. Try a ramp shot. Try a ramp shot. All right. So this week, this past weekend, Mike, we did a first for us in pinball, our pinball journey here. Yeah. So we faced off against some of the best pinball players in the entire world. That no joke No joke Probably like at least 15 to 20 of the top 100 in the world were at this thing What was it called Papa 22 World Pinball Championships. Oh, yeah. World Pinball. I wrote that down. Papa 22 World Pinball Championships. Yeah, we played in it. We were there. We were there. We gave it our best shot. Stephanie almost made, you were close to the ladies finals. Not really. No, I was like eight spots out. Eight spots out. That's all right. I did pretty good. I was like middle of the pack. I haven't been playing as long as some of these other ladies, I think. I'd like to think that. I mean, maybe some of them just picked it up. I don't know. But they're incredible players and really nice. And it was the ladies. So there were three different tournaments going on over the weekend. It started on Thursday, ended on Sunday. I'd say four tournaments because there's youth. Yeah. So there was a main tournament open to everyone, and it was a mix of, I would say, like 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s games. And in that main division, there were 240 players. Pretty crazy. And these machines were not set up like normal machines. No. Wow. Mark the knife. Jeez, Mark. So if you breathe on the games, they'll tilt. It seemed like it. Like, you can't really... Some of those better guys, they have ways of nudging that don't tilt it. I tilted just about every game I played. And I was grinding. It was a very unique format where you have to get a card. You do, like, a card, and you play five games. So there's a bunch of games to choose from, like, 20 or so. You play five. And you choose. Your total scores or points. Every game you play, you get points based on your score. But your total is your score. Yeah. So if you have like one or two crappy games out of five, like your whole card is screwed. And I played like seven cards. Did you have fun? I did have fun. But man, it's like the fastest James Bond game I've ever played. yeah they're steeper and sometimes they take the rubbers by the outlanes out so there's like you're just going to the outlane yeah and then they put on kind of the old school pink rubbers that you see a lot on em machines yeah they're real bouncy they put those on every game in the tournament and so it was even if you are familiar with a machine it doesn't these machines didn't play like any other machine they were they were they were set up to be really mean yeah ball saves off no in-lane rubbers at all so no ball saves no in-lane rubbers tilts tight as hell like any kind of nudge is like double danger tilt boom you're done and we set our games up here like the pitch wise at about seven degrees i think on a modern stern most of them are recommended to be at six and a half we usually go at about seven degrees and i think mark said these were all around eight degrees on the moderns so super fast uh some of them i think even had the rules to game rules in the code modified to be like on hard yeah because i know like the metallica was harder to get the sparky multiball than it normally is on regular settings so when you see these guys like fox cities pinball they streamed it so if you see these guys playing on like james bond or venom and they're shooting a score and maybe it's something it's like oh i could shoot that score it's like i'd like to probably not on that one i'd like to see you try and it was really humbling just seeing the level of skill on display at this deal. I shot some okay games for me. I didn't put together a good card. I ended up in 197th place out of 240. I was kind of hoping to not get last. I didn't get last. Yeah. But just standing there in queue behind a lot of these guys. I think I did. You were like third or fourth from last. I was fourth from last. You did a lot better in the classics. Yeah. but standing behind these guys like i was behind one guy that shot like 2.3 billion on like the hardest james bond i've ever played and i followed him up with like a 2 million so it was really cool just seeing how good some people are at this stuff and we had some friends that did well yeah we had we did have some friends that did well so there was the main tournament which were all of those kind of more modern games, and I mean 70s and newer. But then there was a classics group, which were all EM machines, electro-matics. They weren't all EMs. No, they weren't, actually. Some were solid state. Yeah, they were. The classics, I don't know if there's a year cut off. They were all like kind of 1980s and prior. Yeah. Because there were some like mid-80s games. But there were 80s. I don't know how they did it, because there were 80s games in the main, too, like the Star Trek. Because the main had a mix of classics and modern. Yeah, it was. Anyways, the classics, there was another, I don't know, 40, 50 games in there. And that was really fun. And that's like a totally different skill set than playing some of these guys. It's they they're just designed totally different and super fun, ridiculously fun. And we had some friends that did pretty well in that. So our friend Luke from Galesburg, he ended up in 31st place out of 197 people. Yeah. Congratulations, Luke. Amazing, Luke. Because some of the scores they were putting up on these games were absolutely nuts. Bonkers. Like the Grand Prix, we play on a Grand Prix, like CJ has one. And if you roll it, it's one of those games, if you're going to get a million, it rolls the score. and that around here like that's a pretty good job like i haven't rolled it but like joe and cj can roll the game but i don't even know what the high score i think that somebody got like six million so they rolled the thing like six times on the grand prix crazy it's just freakish how good these people are yeah so our buddy luke central illinois pinball player um got 31st out of how many people were in that one like 2 190 something 197 197 so good job luke yeah that is awesome luke he's a great player yeah and a really nice guy too yeah and then in the main um our friend cj that we talk about all the time who is an owner operator here in central illinois he came in 10th place in the main b finals which is pretty awesome which i think qualifying qualifying he was 94th 94th out of the 240 which is insane like you think oh 94th that's not that great in that crowd 94th you're like a badass oh my gosh yeah yes and i can't wait to watch the stream i know they streamed it live on twitch but it takes them a few days the fox city um Fox Cities Pinball. It'll be on their YouTube channel if you want to watch it. I think you'll see me play Cactus Canyon if they upload the qualifying days from day one. I hope they do. Next Thursday I played the Cactus Canyon. I didn't do terrible. What did you do? It might have been the one I shot like 13 million. That's okay. Or maybe 8 million. That's all right. That was a tough one. That one was tough I did 30 So I tilted you see me tilt I pretty sure I tilted ball two So check out Fox City pinball If they show the qualifying rounds from Thursday I be on there playing Cactus Canyon Yeah. My first time on the big screen. Oh, my gosh. Well, on a different channel. We streamed on here. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But it's an experience that happens in Schaumburg. if you're thinking about you know if you're a decent player and you're thinking about maybe coming to play in that i think you should do it i should also say ladies we need more lady pinball players so there were 240 players that were in the main tournament 48 of them were women um and so 43 women well there's in the qualifying oh i thought it was oh yeah 43 43 43 um so So we wanted more. If we would have had 48, there would have been a top 24 in the finals. I still wouldn't have made it. I was number 28. Shelly was 26. But our friends Lily, she was 18, and Dory from Wisconsin, she was 19. They both made the cut, which is super cool. Yeah, nice job, ladies. Yeah, so cool. But some of those ladies, I mean, they were like badass players. Yeah, but there needs to be more. I was expecting more on the women's side there. So if you're a lady pinball player for Papa 23, you should go play. Yeah, come to Schaumburg. We'll be there. Or just go out to find a local ladies tournament or a regular tournament. But the ladies tournaments are called Bells and Chimes, and those are always fun. Yeah, get out there. Start playing some Bells and Chimes. Get your chops up. You got a year to get ready for Papa 23. Yeah, I'm going to do it next year. Because you've been doing about a year of tournaments, a little over. Played your first, Papa. Now next year, you've got to try to make the final. This is my rookie season. It's a rookie season. Because it's a full season. Yeah, this is still a rookie season. We're both rookies. My goal for the main would be to be in the top 140. Just the top half. I think that's the best I could do is be top half. I can't even make top half in that field. if you practice. Like 140 is not the top half. Or it would be right. I just want to be just the bottom person on the top half. That's my goal because I can't do better than that. It was fun though. I have to say that I was a little nervous because it was something new and I think it's normal to be nervous when you're doing something new. I don't know if you can hear that but our dog is fluffing up his bed in the corner. And it's not really fluffable. It's not a fluffable bed. No, he's trying. He's just digging it up. Oh, he found his spot. He's good. Anyways, it was something new, and I felt like a little bit nervous, especially like the very first game. I went up to Foo Fighters and plunged to that ball. Oh, my God. I got 1.3 million on Foo Fighters, which like – On three balls. On three balls. I was like, what am I doing here? This is ridiculous. But I just kept on pushing, and everybody was so nice. And so just like any other pinball tournament, so happy that you're there. And so welcoming and supportive and encouraging. Yeah, it's a fun time. I ended up getting kind of sickly. But other than that, I had a fun time. Still don't feel really good and trying to get better. Yeah. But fighting through it to do the podcast because it's usually out today. Yeah, and we were like, it was a big weekend. It's going to be a day late. Sorry. All right, Mike. What else we got? Well, I think that was it for the news, but I have a you choose. Okay. You choose for me. I choose for you in the year 2026. Next year. Next year. After you've been grinding for a year. Okay. Getting your skills up. Papa's coming up. Papa 23. You're all fired up to go. You go in and let's just say they're the same games that you saw this weekend. Can I see what they are? Yeah, you can see what they are. There's like the list. Is there game scores? million game scores okay all right you get one card get one card how i get to play so five games five games should i read what the choices were i mean it's a lot of games but if you want to is my choose like which five games am i playing yeah for your one card your singular card for my card and i only get to play one i played like seven cards funny thing is every card you play it cost you 20 more bucks my first card was the best that was the card so it was my second one that got like submitted because that was my best card i should also say that all of the proceeds from this event went to suicide awareness yeah and a um a charity for that i think called 988 which was pretty awesome so no one was making cash off of this yeah so i didn't feel bad just cranking another 20 in there. I'll tell you the games you could choose from. Now, mind you, every one of these is going to be the hardest, most badass example of that you could ever imagine. ACDC, Banzai Run, Cactus Canyon with the new code. They have the new code in the kit. Cyclone, Demolition Man, Elton John, Foo Fighters, Iron Maiden, Jackbot, James Bond, Jaws Pro, John Wick Pro, King Kong Pro, Kiss, Metallica Premium, the old one, and Metallica Remastered, the new one, Rush Premium, Six Million Dollar Man, Space Invaders, Star Trek, the old ballet one, Star Wars, Strikes and Spares, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tron, Twilight Zone, Uncanny X-Men, Venom, and Xenon. A lot of games. Yeah. So what are your five? I'm going to write it down because I'm making a list Okay, I'm going to take Venom Pro even though it did me dirty I had one really good card and I had shot a good Venom game earlier and then I went and shot like 3 million on Venom which is not even one good skill shot because I didn't hit a skill shot or anything but I'm going to do Venom I'm going to do I'm going to do the Metallica, the old Metallica. Okay. I'm going to do John Wick Pro. And given that this is next year, I would hope they would have it on the new code. I was a little... Peeved? I thought I was a little peeved. They had it on the old code, the .94 code, which is like... If you're going to put it on the old code, don't put it in the tournament. You heard it here first, folks. Like, kind of... I know there's, like, three elite players in the world that can, like, manipulate a thing to score some billions. So I think that's why they put it on the old code. They didn't consult you. That's a problem, man. Like, pick a different game. Tell Mark the Knife. Mark, pick a different game. There's, like, a whole bunch of other games out there in the free play area. I don't think he was the main tech. I don't think he's. He wasn't. But Mark the Knife, use your influence and pick a different game to put in there. If you've got to put it on old codes, it's lame. I'm going to play James Bond. Is that four? That's four. And then I think I might do Cyclone. You hate that game. No, I do. I like that game. Oh. I like Cyclone. And I had some good games on that. I shot like over two million on one of them. That amazing Which for me I think somebody has shot like 10 million or seven I could see the top scores actually But for me like 2 million on that is like pretty good Top score was 9 million Wow And the best one I registered I think I had a better one on a card that I ripped up Yeah I did I don't even know where I'm at on there. You shot 1.1 million on it for 130th place. I did. But yeah, I shot somewhere around two. I can't see it on the list. Those are my five. Those are your five. All right. So we got Venom Pro, the old Metallica Premium. Yep. John Wick Pro, Bond Pro, and a Cyclone. A Cyclone. Okay, you better start practicing on some of those. Well, I don't have a Bond anymore or a Venom anymore. Well, you choose. Or a Cyclone. You chose those. Or a Metallica. Do we own any of those? John Wick. John Wick. I'm just going to grind John Wick all year long. That's my machine. I have all these other machines. I'm only going to play John Wick from here to next Papa. Yeah, I own this one. John Wick all day, every day. And then the Papa one is going to play nothing like ours. I'm going to suck on it. He's going to be mad. I own this game. Piece of crap. Yep. Okay, Mike. It's also your turn to do a dream theme. That's all from all me, huh? It's all about you. I think I wasn't prepared for a dream theme. Let me think about this. I was thinking of one just the other day. Okay, I'm ready. Okay, go. Okay. We're all ready. Are you guys ready? Are you ready? I'm ready. I think, you know what would be a badass one? Hmm. And I think this would have been cooler than King Kong. And maybe Stern should have done this instead of King Kong. Can I guess? Yeah. Is it a movie? Yeah. About a monster? Kind of, not really monsters. Planet of the Apes. Oh, yes. Planet of the Apes with the new movies. Or. The old movies. Whoa. Here's what you do. Don't say make it a cartoon. No, you don't make it a cartoon. Good. That's what they did with King Kong. I know. Yeah, like, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. You take it, you go the spooky route. Mm-hmm. And you have a little bit of a you choose for the player at the beginning of the game. old Planet of the Apes or a new Planet of the Apes? You choose. Whoa. And you choose which one and then you have... So licensing probably gets a little expensive because you're going to have to license all the old stuff and the new stuff. But how badass would that be? Like... You know I'd want it. Yeah. Then I don't know what that means for like the back glass and the play field art because you can do the old and the new and they look drastically different. maybe it's one of those like lenticulars where you move like you look this way the plate feels old look that way the plate feels new I think I would probably lean into the newer ones for the art but the old ones look cool too yeah they totally do this is where with the artwork you do two different LEs and you only make like 350 of each. Whoa. And you get the LE with the classic movie and the artworks, playfield art's different. What? On both. What? So one with like the cabinet, the playfield, the back glasses is a classic. And then one with the modern. And there's only like, maybe there's 300 of each LE. And then maybe we forego a pro on this guy and just have like the premium you can choose which art package you want there's two premiums one's the old art one's the new and therefore we're going to eliminate a pro just because i don't know why sometimes too many choices too many choices like elvira just had the premium elvira just had a premium that's a big one or maybe you know maybe because i'm thinking of the stern model here right maybe stern doesn't make this one so that eliminates the premium pro having to do like a premium in this net like this one maybe spooky makes it and if spooky's making it like we can up those quantities because there's not going to be a premium spooky's making 550 plan of the apes with the classic art and they're making 550 plan of the apes with the modern art the games have both franchises playable via you choose at the beginning just like the evil dead you can pick which movie you're gonna play through yeah and there's 550 of each so then they end up selling 1100 machines i love it i'll pre-order today put me down pre-order today if spooky announces that if that's their announcement like and whenever they're doing it here you go we're in uh-huh i'm in it i'm pretty sure it's not planet of the apes there are no rumors of saying that it's planet of the apes let's start a Planet of the Apes rumor. Yeah. Did you hear Spooky's playing on a Planet of the Apes machine? And did you hear they're saying you can choose the old films or the new films? Have you heard about that? Yes. So let's all start spreading some rumors. Yeah, I've heard Spooky's got Planet of the Apes coming. Mid-2026. I mean, if you're actually watching this podcast, please just post that in the Facebook group? Post it around in the pinball enthusiasts, those groups. I don't do much posting in those groups. Go post it on Pinside if you're one of those Pinside poster people. I don't post on Pinside or in pinball enthusiasts. I feel like you'd get stabbed posting stuff in there. Oh my God. I'm afraid to post in there. But if you're a type that posts in there, posts like, you guys here? Spooky's working on, Spooky's got Planet of the Apes. Yeah, then repost it in the Punk Rock Pinball group. Yeah. I want to see. Oh, my God. That's so funny. This is what I'm hearing from reliable sources. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, that's so great. That's the title of this video. Spooky Pinball's got Planet of the Apes. And it's way 32 minutes into it before we even mention it. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. That's a great theme, honey. Yeah, that's my theme. I love it. That was like a really good one. And I'm a big Planet of the Apes fan, so I can't believe I didn't come up with it. Yeah. Our dog seems like he has to go outside. I think he does. He's just staring at me like, just staring at me. So we can end this. We're at 32 minutes. Okay. If you made it this far, please go spread some rumors. Spread that Planet of the Apes rumor. Let's get that going. and thank you so much for watching and if you haven't already please take a second to like the video subscribe tell a friend about it join the facebook group we have so many people in the facebook group yeah 1400 now and what i love about it is i just saw someone posted the other day like hey i'm traveling to baltimore and dc where can i go play pins at a cool bar and there were a bunch of people like oh come to this place go to this place so cool people are making connections in there yeah yeah digging it making friends just not that long ago this group was like 300 people yeah it's like that's 14 it's over 1400 pretty awesome so thank you everybody who's participating in that it's pretty awesome um to just have be part of a cool community like that yeah thank you very much toodaloo see ya