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Season 4 Premier with Nezzy's Prints

Fresh Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 2m·analyzed·Jan 17, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Fresh Pinball S4 premiere: travel updates, venue tours, Pinball at the Beach announcement, community league news.

Summary

Fresh Pinball Podcast Season 4 premiere features hosts discussing recent travel adventures, pinball venue visits, community projects, and league updates. Guests Keith Nesbitt (Nezzy's Prints) and regular contributors discuss new arcade developments in Ohio, the upcoming Pinball at the Beach event in February, and local pinball community initiatives including Ben's surprise Munsters Pro birthday gift and Kid Force Pinball's 100-person winter league.

Key Claims

  • Pinball at the Beach event is scheduled for February 7-9, 2025 in St. Pete Beach, with Spooky and Stern expected to attend

    high confidence · Corbin announces upcoming event: 'February 7th through the 9th in St. Pete Beach, Pinball at the Beach. Spooky's going to be there. Stern's going to be there.'

  • Finney's Arcade in downtown Canton is targeting a March opening (first Friday in March), with extensive renovations including mosaic floors, refinished hardwood, brick exposure, and pinball schematic wallpaper

    high confidence · Corbin: 'I think the target opening date, I mean, I think it's probably like March. Yep, we're looking at March. Like they want to be open by first Friday in Canton for March.'

  • Kid Force Pinball in Berea, Ohio has nation's largest pinball league with 100 participants joining for winter session; first-time joiners pay no league fee, only arcade cover charge

    high confidence · Host notes Kid Force Pinball expanded to adjacent space; Corbin: 'they're going to have 100 people again here for the winter session. First time, if you join the pinball league for the first time, it costs you absolutely nothing to join the league.'

  • Roger Sharp action figures: 100 units made at $130 each, sold out first day, all delivered by Christmas

    high confidence · Host reports: 'the kineticists let us know that the Roger Sharp action figures, there were 100 of them made, and they were $130 each, and they sold out the first day.'

  • Buffalo Pinball Collective has secured a leased space with pinball machines as community hub

    high confidence · Host: 'Dave and the folks up in Buffalo. They have a space leased, and they have pinball machines in the Buffalo Pinball Collective.'

  • Electric Bat arcade in Arizona is a punk rock dive bar atmosphere with quality pinball games, affordable drinks ($4 IPAs)

    high confidence · Kyle describes Electric Bat: 'It's literally like your favorite shitty punk rock dive bar with a bunch of really good games... I'll give you whatever IPA you have on tap. She's like, oh, we just had Sierra Nevada right now. I'm like, okay. And it was like four bucks.'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's literally like your favorite shitty punk rock dive bar with a bunch of really good games.”

    Kyle @ ~8:00 — Describes Electric Bat arcade in Arizona as ideal casual pinball venue aesthetic

  • “We're looking at March. Like they want to be open by first Friday in Canton for March.”

    Corbin @ ~35:00 — Confirms Finney's Arcade downtown Canton opening timeline

  • “If I were to do a place or we were to do a place, it would be like this.”

    Host @ ~13:00 — Describes ideal pinball venue design inspiration from Satellite Pinball Lounge in Fort Lauderdale

  • “He would stand beside you and tell you how to beat him. And he'd be super nice about it. And then after you'd learn some shit, he'd be like, hey dumbass, you're supposed to hit the drop targets.”

    Host @ ~52:00 — Describes Aaron's mentoring approach as both competitive and supportive to newer players

  • “Beware the eyes of March.”

    Host @ ~33:00 — Reference to Caesar/Shakespeare phrase joking about March opening target date

Entities

Fresh Pinball PodcastorganizationKeith NesbittpersonKylepersonCorbinpersonZach AngelipersonElectric BatorganizationSatellite Pinball LoungeorganizationFunky Buddha Brewing CompanyorganizationFinney's ArcadeorganizationKid Force Pinballorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Fresh Pinball expanding operations with Finney's Arcade placement in downtown Canton, targeting March opening with significant renovation investment

    high · Corbin details extensive renovations (mosaic floors, hardwood refinishing, brick restoration, custom wallpaper); operational partnership confirmed; targeting March opening

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball at the Beach announced as major February 2025 event in St. Petersburg Beach with Stern and Spooky attendance; positioned as significant gathering

    high · Corbin confirms February 7-9, 2025 dates with major manufacturer presence; hosts planning attendance; event positioning as 'blow it up nice and big' for first-time show

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive reception of Munsters Pro game placement with long-time listener; Fresh Pinball maintaining access to machines in community through trusted networks

    high · Ben's surprise gift from wife coordinated through Fresh Pinball team; Corbin notes 'traded through' regular Pittsburgh customer; team will have future access through Columbus visits

  • ?

    community_signal: Kid Force Pinball supporting competitive development with nation's largest league (100 players) and division-based championships to balance skill levels

    high · Host confirms 100-participant winter league, free entry for first-time players, skill-level divisions for championships at Pastimes

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Ohio competitive scene highlights rapid player development trajectory (Jaden: 0 to 400 WPPR in months) and mentorship culture enabling newer players

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.369

0:00
Welcome everyone to the season premiere of Season 4 of the season premiere of Season four of the Fresh Pinball Podcast. We are here. Season four. We've teased it. It's happening. It's now. It's 2025. We're in the future.
0:43
2025 really is the day. I was sitting around the other day just thinking, like, 2025 really feels like the future. Like, this feels... George Judson's, like, three or something now. Yeah, I think this is... We are in the future now. Dipping dots in the ice cream of today. Yeah. Ice cream of the day, for sure. happening now.
1:01
Alright, to my right, on the board, we have Super Kyle. Super Kyle, how you feeling, buddy? Pretty super. Super duper. And we need to add the, uh, a little cold. The Mario like power-up sound, or like Mario getting a coin, yeah, to the board. That way when I introduce you as Super Kyle, we have... We need to do some 2025 upgrades. We do, we do. We need to make some updates. And to Kyle's right, we have Keith Nesbitt of Nezzy's Prince on Pinside. Keith! Hello, hello, hello. Welcome again. Welcome back to the Fresh Pinball Podcast. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for being here. You know what I always find fun when Keith's on? Yes? He talks less.
1:40
I know. Why is Keith so quiet? Oh, we're recording something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta shut up. Whenever you meet Keith in real life, you know he can talk. You know. Keith is also, he's our representative from one of our major sponsors for the trailer and other things, Summer Racing, live action here today.
2:06

Keith Nesbitt scored 745-780 million on Metallica at Unhitched launch event

medium confidence · Host: 'He put up like 700 million plus. It was eight something, wasn't it? No, it was eight something, I thought. I think it was 745 or 780.'

  • Ohio state pinball championships to be held at Pastimes Arcade; Jaden (IFPA Rookie of the Year) and Aaron competing; Jaden achieved ~400 WPPR in couple months

    high confidence · Host: 'So some exciting things there... Jaden, the IPA rookie of the year... He went from zero to, like, 400 this year. In, like, a couple months.'

    • Buffalo Pinball Collective
    organization
    Pinball at the Beachevent
    Benperson
    Shannonperson
    Jadenperson
    Aaronperson
    Danperson
    Rachelperson
    Dave Sousaperson
    Jason Krakarperson
    Roger Sharpperson
    Metallicagame
    Munsters Progame
    The Walking Deadgame
    Pins Mechanicalorganization

    high · Jaden achieved IFPA Rookie of Year with ~400 WPPR in couple months; Aaron's mentoring approach praised for balancing competition with skill transfer

  • $

    market_signal: Roger Sharp action figures limited release (100 units @ $130 each) sold out first day, indicating strong collectible demand and pinball cultural icon value

    high · Kineticist confirms: '100 of them made...they were $130 each, and they sold out the first day. And all of those arrived to folks in time for Christmas'

  • ?

    community_signal: Fresh Pinball podcast considering fifth member expansion; multiple candidates applying including Dave Sousa (Buffalo Pinball Collective) and Jason Krakar

    medium · Hosts announce four applicants for fifth member position; Dave Sousa and Jason Krakar specifically named with context

  • ?

    venue_signal: Buffalo Pinball Collective successfully launched as community-driven pinball space with leased venue and communal game collection

    high · Host congratulates Buffalo crew: 'They have a space leased, and they have pinball machines in the Buffalo Pinball Collective'; described as 15+ year community staple expansion

    • And to Keith's right, we have Mr. Flippin' Fantastic himself. Just Flippin' Fantastic, hanging out with my pinball pals. Zach Angeli, in the Angeli, Zach Angeli lair. Wonderful. And to his right and to my left, the boss man himself, Corbin Angeli. Corbin, how are we feeling, buddy? Feeling good. Feeling good just moving a bunch of stuff around like normal. Yeah, it has been a busy, busy time. Definitely got thrown some curveballs here the last couple weeks with some traveling that did and did not happen. But, you know, we'll talk about all of that in this. I think this is probably going to be a supersized episode. So buckle up, strap yourself in.
    2:44
    Grab a tasty beverage. Tasty beverage. Someplace warm. Cuddle up with a nice blankie because we're about to soothe your ears with some fresh pinball. But before we really get started here, I wanted to welcome the newest member of the Fresh Pinball family.
    3:03
    Crosby Allen Hudson was born into the Fresh Pinball family. Mike Tank Hudson and Angelica Hudson, biggest of congratulations. They had their first puppy.
    3:16
    Thanks a dog. It's the strangest litter of puppies I've ever seen. It was only one, and it came out human. But congratulations to you both. And welcome to the family, Crosby. I'm excited to meet you whenever the time comes, which hopefully isn't too long off because I love Crosby. We got to see him the other day. New little baby. We stopped by. Nice. Nice, nice, nice. But welcome. Welcome to the family. So let's start with a little bit of traveling, some of the travels that we've been doing here. Kyle, you found yourself out in Arizona, what, Christmas time? Yeah, yeah. Talk about that a little bit. You had some pinball adventures out there. Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was like we flew in Christmas Eve, and it was a long flight, it felt like. Was it direct? It was, but it was like we got to the airport like 3 a.m. I mean, you also, I mean, I've driven with you a lot. I've never really flown with you, but I can't imagine you. I've never flown with me either. This was your first time flying? I was like five the last time I flew. Wow. Essentially. Yeah, so essentially. Yeah, so I did have a good time. Did they get any wings or anything? Did they get wings? What airlines? He's a pilot. What airlines was it? It was American on the way out. It wasn't awful, but it was like Spirit or something at least. Their first adult time. Right, right. But no, I ended up hooking up with the Lazars in Arizona. It was funny because we got in and I was like, I'm going to lay down for an hour. I text Dan. He's like, oh, we're here now. I'm like, shit. And when he says, we're here, where is here? The electric bath. So, Corbin's been there. Now, Kyle, you have been there. I have not been there. I've not either. That is not them. I know. That list is shorter. I was there by wild card just to have him say it. So, I got to let him know personally. When Norton and I were in Vegas, we almost made the drive because I'm just tired of being the person who's not been there. But, Kyle, give us a little bit of the rundown, a little recap. I was pretty blowout. It's literally like your favorite shitty punk rock dive bar with a bunch of really good games. Sounds great. That sounds fantastic. Right? I mean, it sounds like a good time. I'm like, I'll give you whatever IPA you have on tap. She's like, oh, we just had Sierra Nevada right now. I'm like, okay. And it was like four bucks. I love this place. You know, this is great. I could see why that would be a regular hangout for Arizona people. Got to see Dan and Rachel and Lindsey was out there for Christmas, too. Yeah, because we saw Jared of a quarter up. That's funny. And he was like, oh, yeah, she's out there. It's like, oh, okay. We saw him on the 23rd, I think, is what it was. Correct. On Monday before Christmas, yeah. Yeah, because that was the big quarter up event there where they gave away the Game of Thrones play field. Weren't they launching something that night, or was it just a Christmas party? No. I think it was just a Christmas party. It was a Christmas party. It was a good time. The next one at the end of this one is going to be the Metallica launch party. Oh, is this the announcement? Yeah, because we just did it at Unhitched this past Wednesday, which was a good time, so then it'll be making its way. Keith wasn't there, was he? For the – Keith blew it up at Unhitched. He put up like 700 million plus. It was eight something, wasn't it? No, it was eight something, I thought. I think it was 745 or 780. I don't understand how it just kept going. Corbin had to give me some beer. I was playing, I was getting tired. But shout out to Dan and Rachel for buying me a pizza and a couple beers. It's nice seeing you guys. Absolutely. In your area of the country. Normally, we always see them over here. I didn't realize Dan was from Asplund. Yep. Yeah, originally. Yeah, they're out there for his job, essentially. So, pretty cool. They're threatening to possibly come down to pinball at the beach. That'd be cool. There's another announcement. At least three of the members of the Fresh Pinball Podcast will be down. It's coming up, apparently. February 7th through the 9th in St. Pete Beach, Pinball at the Beach. Spooky's going to be there. Stern's going to be there. For a first-time show, it looks like they're going to blow it up nice and big. So, actually, Zach and I, when we were at Stern this past Tuesday for the D&D reveal, ran into four of the people from Little Shop of Games, which is kind of the driving force behind Pinball at the Beach, and they were all wearing – Zach, remember seeing the crew that was wearing all the inflatable dragons? It was pretty awesome. That's funny, yeah. So imagine, like, the Halloween costume of Mario riding the inflatable Yoshi, but instead it was humans riding inflatable dragons. So we need, like, some Hawaiian shirts and whatnot. I need, like, a beach-themed pinball kind of thing. Oh, yeah, dude, if you think I'm not packing a Hawaiian shirt, then... Or a hot dog costume, I mean.
    7:55
    Kyle's going to be a banana. I have that one. It's not a personal item only, guys, so... No, fine. I understand what Halloween... I'll use my space wisely. It's just a single banana backpack. I mean, you can fit that in a backpack. I got it. Don't fold my sleeves. Just wear it on the airplane. You worry about your space. I'll worry about mine. I called Corbin about it the other day, and I was like, personal item, he's like, oh, I'm only going to wear one pair of pants. I was like, yeah. If I can have enough room for a toothbrush and a few pair of underwear, I'm good to go. It doesn't take a lot more than that. Well, it's going to be T-Night, so I'm going to take six pairs.
    8:28
    I shit my pants three times, and I'm good to go. So, Kyle was in Arizona. I was in Florida and in Fort Lauderdale for the first time to hit up a few places. I'd been to Glitch Bar before, so this time I made my way over to the Funky Buddha Brewing Company, and they had four different pinball machines. Nice little Rella Stearns. Had a good time on those. Dollar a play. Played like they should. Was a good time. And then we were able to walk from the Funky Buddha. Anything noteworthy or just a couple of things? It was a wick. It was a Venom, it was an X-Men, and maybe a Deadpool, if my memory serves me correctly. So a nice little... What's the most important one? How was their water? Oh, PH was on point there. I like the name. It's a pretty cool name. So they've been there for at least 10 years because they had a big banner up celebrating their 10-year anniversary. And you could tell they'd been in that neighborhood as it's kind of rebounded probably over the years. So it's always cool to see a spot like that. But we were able to walk. It was like .2 miles to the next spot, and it was the Satellite Pinball Lounge, which is by the same folks who do the Glitch Bar, but this one is exclusively pinball. And as soon as I walked in, I said to myself, if I were to do a place or we were to do a place, it would be like this. All the walls painted black, black lights with all kinds of cool concert posters, play fields on the wall, had a U-shaped bar that was in the middle of the space, and then they just had an eclectic lineup of stuff from Pulp Fiction to they had a multi-morphic P3 on the floor. They had a Legends of Valhalla. You put a bunch of money in that, didn't you? The P3? So I did play two credits on the P3. What was it? We talked about this on our journey. Was it Weird Al? So it was Weird Al. Of course, that's right. We talked about what part? Remember quarters in these or not? If we could put them in. Right. So that one, still the problem with that game for me is the lower flippers and the upper flippers being separate buttons. Definitely. And then having a whole other button. I thought there was a way in the settings or something. I thought I had heard it. That's what people keep saying. But I don't know why you can combine it so only it's like a standard style flipper. Because like my mind is only one track and if I'm having to do multiple tracks. I thought there was something along the lines of like they couldn't do it because of not having enough power or something. I don't know. I don't love it. It just throws everything off. You're having to think along all kinds of different lines. You've got to power that fucking two-thirds of the play field with that. Run from different services. The LCD? Yeah. Oh, well.
    11:07
    Then they had your newer Stern Spike 2, some Stern Spike 1, and then some Sam System games. I actually got on to The Walking Dead and ended up putting up several nice games on there to where I got a few replays. But if you're in the Fort Lauderdale area, highly recommend. I think it's like Oakdaleville or some sort of crazy area. Just look up on Pinball Map, Funky Buddha, or Satellite Pinball Lounge. You will not be disappointed. So you think Walking Dead was your top pinball that you played out of those spots? It definitely, yeah, it was my favorite that I played in those spots, one that I've not put a ton of time on previously. We need to get one in on trade. Yeah, we've not had one come through on trade. and when I've played them on route before, like, if they're not playing right, it's already a brutal game. And then if it's not playing right... I used to have one, I feel like. That's the only other place I feel like I've played. Marvin used to have one. I played Walking Dead at Waltric Bat. And? Love it. I mean, it's hard. It is hard. It's very hard. But in a good way. It is for the world. I don't think so. I don't think I've seen one. This is a board. It's a board. Okay, that's what I was thinking. It's a board, yeah. It plays like a board. It does.
    12:15
    But it's almost like... With that one... No, that layout, though, none of the shots feel repurposed like some of his other games do. Where you can go like, ooh, X-Men is a lot like Rush, and Frankenstein is a lot like this. Like, that game I felt like was very unique in a lot of ways. No, I agree. Very good game. Definitely one I love. And I also did the same thing in the bad. I just played weird shit. Yeah. You know, like, I don't want to, ooh, they got a Metallica remaster. I'm like, I don't. Right. Yeah. It's fine. I think we're all the same in that way at this point, where it's like when we go play New in box, spoiled. Right. If they have something that we don't normally see, we're much more likely to play that than something that we know that Corbin's going to end up adding to the collection.
    12:58
    Andromeda. That was a good one. Yeah, you never see that. I love the art on Andromeda. It's like very, like... The left lane's all weird, too.
    13:08
    We're supposed to fix a phoenix tomorrow? Is that what it is? Yeah, so tomorrow we're going to be doing a little Columbus Way swing, working on a Williams Phoenix. What Ben is finally getting. I wasn't here for it. You guys tell the story. You want to talk about that? Yeah, we should talk about Ben getting his monster. It's a pretty cool story. It absolutely is a really cool story. One of the crazier birthday presents I've been a part of in a while. So for months now, so we have our buddy Ben. He always emails in. Regular contributor. Yeah, regular, long-time listener. He wants to get on. Long-time caller. He'll get on eventually. he lives in Columbus he usually comments on like the trailers I think people remember the generator talk we had he was a big contributor to the generator talk for sure so anyway his wife Shannon has been texting me for a couple months now about she's like you know he's going to turn 40 this year and I really I think I want to get him a pinball and I don't think Shannon listens so I think I can tell yeah and so So Ben had already been, like, talking about, thinking about getting a pinball anyway, you know. Right. And so, you know, she keeps going back and forth. And so we're getting closer. His birthday is New Year's Eve. Oh, nice.
    14:25
    About two weeks out, she's like, you know, she told me a range or whatever, and so we ended up getting a Munsters Pro-In on trade. Nice. And she was like, oh, she was excited about it. She was going to like it. So she's like, just set it up at Zach's house, you know, in the row or whatever, and we're going to come up because we were doing a New Year's Eve record exchange party or whatever. And so they were coming up to do that, and we were playing pinball and all that. And so, yeah, they come up, and they're playing it, and she's like, well, Ben, you know, I said I forgot. She had told him apparently that she forgot his birthday and really hadn't gotten him anything. Yeah, you forgot New Year's Eve. Right, right.
    15:00
    And so they get up, they're in their plane, and she's like, well, I got it for you. And he's like, what? And she's like, I'm just kidding. She's like, no, I really did. This is yours. you get to, like, take it home or whatever. Wow. And he was, well, we're going to deliver it tomorrow. Yeah.
    15:15
    Yeah, and so it was really fun. We ended up playing Midnight Madness on it on New Year's Eve. So end of the new year and everything. Tank ended up hitting it. But, yeah, no, he was super stoked. And so, like, they were finishing their basement at the house, but he made room for it in his first floor, like in the home office or whatever. So he's going to have it there until they finish the basement, and then we'll go help move it down there then. It's another range of folks. He's super pumped. You don't see pros either. No. We got it in. I was really glad that they ended up with it. It's real clean. It's a fun game. Yeah, it came in from one of our regular Pittsburgh customers, so whenever he offered that trade in, I knew we'd find a home for it quickly. And it's even more exciting that it's going to somebody in the circle. That way we'll still have access to it to enjoy it on future visits to Columbus. Yeah. And he's just excited to get some timing on it, and then we'll probably end up with it back. Oh, yeah. I have no doubt. So in addition to that, we're going to swing by and see our friends over at Pins Mechanical and wish them a new year and see what plans they have for 2025.
    16:21
    Dave is the inventor of the term of Pinside Terrorist. So anytime you hear us use that, you actually have to give him a dollar.
    16:31
    No, no, no. Dave. Full credit. Full day. Full day, 100%. I use this term all the time. I'm just hoping to spread the good word because it's spot on. It is. Spot on. And then on the way back, we're going to swing through up Mansfield Way and make a little repair on a gentleman's jaws premium, get his boat and his shark rocking and rolling again. Hopefully. Well, that kind of leads me into, let's do a little downtown Canton Finney's Arcade update, Corbin. You've been placing some equipment down there, meeting with the folks, the powers that be. Yeah, yeah, no, it's coming together.
    17:07
    We, I think the target opening date, I mean, I think it's probably like March. Yep, we're looking at March. Like they want to be open by first Friday in Canton for March. There's going to be a lot of soft opening stuff before that. Beware the eyes of March. I was just like, oh, be open already. It's like, oh, shit, they're actually doing a ton of really nice things down there. Oh, yeah, I mean, they put a ton of work into the place. To seeing it from like when we saw it, when was the first time we were in there? I mean, maybe two years, 18 months ago. They're not just putting, like, vinyl plank down there. Like, let's do, like, a mosaic floor and shit. They tile. A lot of tile works. And then they refinish a lot of the original hardwood floors. They have a local bar in there. The one wall, they strip back down to the brick. When you say they refinish the hardwood floors, it's not what I expected. They completely strip them down, and then basically, like, they didn't put a bunch of poly and color clear on it. Yeah, they just put clear on it, retaining that original life. And it looks so cool. And Dale's swearing up and down that it's rock hard. Like, it's good to go. We've given it more than enough time. So we'll see. But they have. They've used some pinball schematics as some wallpaper. Yeah, they printed a whole bunch of schematics. Our other sponsor, Everything Education, printed a whole bunch of schematics. It looks really cool on the wall behind the bar. And then they've really leaned into, if I hadn't talked about it before, it was originally back in the day, like a 1920s drugstore. So they've really leaned into that. with, like, all the lettering that they've done is in that same old-school vibe. They've went with a lot of, like, dark burgundies and brasses and things that really kind of keep you in that era. So we're very, very excited to be a part of that, and I think we're probably going to try to get Micah and Ryan on the podcast here. We might do one down there, I think. Yeah, set up the equipment down there and have them hop on and talk about the arcade. See if we can pick up some ghosts in the background. Seriously, man. That's some old shit down there. Oh, without a doubt, I'm sure. The basement's great. Like, the whole building, when we went through it, it's a crazy building. Yeah. No, it's an exciting project. Excited to be a part of it. And I think it'll be a real awesome space for, you know, to contribute to downtown Canton, you know, as it's being revitalized with, you know, the palace doing its expansion. You already have Basil down there. You have the new NFL Centennial Plaza that they've just done over the last couple years. I think some things down. Some exciting things are happening down there. Do you know what's going on with the Canton Brewing? I drove by today after I left. So, Hilter Clark bought it. Is that a sell-out? Yeah, Hilter Clark bought it, and they're going to put their corporate offices there. Okay. But they were talking about possibly leasing that. I thought it was Saucy Brew Works. The story was Canton Brew Works bought it. Brew Kettle purchased the building. Okay. And that's who... I thought a booming stole it, and they were initially going to put in a brew pub down there. Right. And that was all over. The rep talked on it. That's what I thought. I saw all right. So then it sounds like they've ended up, they're one of the few breweries still consuming others, and they ended up buying two other larger breweries around. So it seems like maybe they took in that money and they're pushing that capital into something else. Okay. So then I saw exactly what Kyle saw. Hilscher Clark bought the building. Which is a big electrical contract. Yeah, huge. and then they're going to lease out that second floor. There was a rumor. There was a four-lease I saw in a screen or whatever. Because the front used to be Rite Aid. The very front of it was Rite Aid, and then you had Canton Brewing Company behind it. Is it Rite Aid still in the corner? Well, it's all Rite Aid is. So it's all in here. Well, yeah, it's all. So that's empty. R.I.P. And it didn't make a ton of sense for them to do another brew kettle downtown, and they already had one at the Hall of Fame. I thought it was those strange things. Well, in my head, I'm with you both. I thought that they were going to turn it into a production brewery down there because it's so big. Yeah, a lot of space. And then, you're right, once I saw them pop up in the Hall of Fame Village, I'm like, ah. But part of me wonders if Topgolf just lured them in. You know, that's who they partnered with in there. So it's a brew kettle slash Topgolf. Hey, anybody downtown, if you need some amusements, email my friend Corbin at madpinball.com. Jukeboxes, pool tables, ATMs, whatever you need. Vinny's is about to be the spot down there. Whatever you need, Corbin at pinball.com.
    21:21
    So we updated Finney's. Let's do a little Kid Force update. I'm not sure we've talked about it on the podcast before, but Kid Force, Cleveland Pinball, obviously, in Ohio, Klee Pin, Don Johnson, all of that, huge staple of the community for 15-plus years.
    21:38
    Kid Force Collectibles had expanded to an adjacent space to include a pinball-exclusive area called Kid Force Pinball. Very cool space. Yeah, here in 2025, we are going. They're in what, Berea? They're in Berea, yeah. Right on Front Street. Literally, you can't miss it. Right by BW. Cleveland Browns have their training camp up there, all of that stuff. The original Boss Chicken Beer is right across the street. It's an awesome area. I mean, if you want to go in for pinball and lunch and whatever else, there's actually a really nice metro park in that area, all that stuff. But we're going to be a part in 2025 of Kid Force Pinball, who for many years had the nation's largest pinball league, and I know they're going to have 100 people again here for the winter session. First time, if you join the pinball league for the first time, it costs you absolutely nothing to join the league. You just pay your admittance fee, your cover charge to get into the arcade, and that's it. What is the cover charge? Do you know? I think it's $10, and then it's all. That's like all day? I don't know if it's all day. Maybe like a couple hours. I need to get the details. I probably shouldn't have come on here without all the details. Yeah, you know you're going to bring up so many details. You know how this is going to end. I know it's a flat rate you pay, and then there's no point dropping it. I've always thought the places would do it hourly. It's just so hard to monitor that. Then you're doing wristbands, and now it's like all the pink wristbands are out. You need to get in and just make it a price that's like you're good. You walk in, and somebody just has a can of spray paint and just hits Jeff's head. It's horrible. That means an hour, Mitch. You got an hour.
    23:10
    Oh, what if I do it another hour? We'll give you another credit. The really neat thing they do with their league, though, is you do have state champions who are playing in that league, and you have people who are playing pinball for the first time. So it's really nice that you're playing along with some people who are advanced players who you're going to learn from. But then when it's time to play in the league championship in the finals, they break it down into divisions. So you're then competing against people that are of your similar skill set. So I'm not having to play against Steve Prusa and Zach Bowers and Rob Lawrence and all of these former state champs and awesome, you know, pinball players. Or the rich. The rich duo, man. Oh, my God. I saw that both Jaden and Aaron are going to be in. Jaden, the IPA rookie of the year. Rookie of the year. Holy shit. He went from zero to, like, 400 this year. In, like, a couple months. Yeah. So, yeah, the state championships for Ohio are going to be out at past times. He's been secretly training for years, right? Yeah, he's got to. Waiting to this moment, and Aaron was like, it's time. It's time. I love it. And he released him on the world. Absolutely. It's unbelievable. So some exciting things there. I'd like to see a one-two father-son combo. Oh.
    24:17
    Aaron has been grinding and grinding and grinding. Like, nothing would make me happier than to see him and or Jaden take the trip. I hope Jaden beats him. I do, but I got to tell you about when we got into it and started, you know, met you guys, played the first league and started doing that. Aaron was always part of it. And he was one of the few, and you were too, Jeff, that Aaron would take the time and explain to you as a new player exactly what you need to do. He knows. Walk you through it. Tell you what you're doing. You want to know how to get the highest? He'll tell you how to do it. He would stand beside you and tell you how to beat him. And he'd be super nice about it. And then after you'd, like, learn some shit, he'd be like, hey, dumbass, you're supposed to hit the drop targets.
    24:55
    But I just always appreciated it about him. He's super approachable, super helpful, come over, help you. And then also, as he coached you into beating his score, and if you did, he would be just as excited if you did it naturally. Yes. No, I always appreciated that early on, going to rack it up about Aaron, while he was just amazingly awesome and competitive. Like, the dude wants to win. He was also, like, he wanted to make you better. That way, that competition was even higher for him. For sure. He gets tired of beating us all. Oh, yeah. He likes the competition. I want to out-train you, and then I would be... For competition. I would break you.
    25:30
    All right, so a few of the fact-check items here that we had sent in to us. So the kineticists let us know that the Roger Sharp action figures, there were 100 of them made, and they were $130 each, and they sold out the first day. And all of those arrived to folks in time for Christmas. So your Roger Sharp action figures, 100 of them. I saw a lot of, like, pin-side ads and stuff people were looking for. People looking? I thought you were going to say people reselling them. No, I don't know if I saw any. $1,000 Roger Sharp topper.
    26:01
    It's just a lesson. I need three of them. All right, so someone had commented on the last episode that we were accepting resumes for a fifth member of the Fresh Pinball Podcast. You said that? So I have four names of people who possibly want to be considered for this.
    26:21
    So the first one is our friend up in Buffalo, Dave Sousa, wants to be considered for the fifth member of the Fresh Pinball Podcast. You know what I think we should do with Dave? Yeah? We should put him on every episode. But all it is is we call him and we're like, how's the weather? And he's like, it's fucking snowing. And he hangs up. And that's it. All we really needed to do it once and then we could just. That's true.
    26:46
    We'll be like, okay, it's minute 27. It's the Seuss of Sector. We could call. We could give him a call. We could make him a regular call. How's the weather? We haven't even heard the other applicants yet. Yeah, exactly. You love Dave's app. But I do want to congratulate Dave and the folks up in Buffalo. They have a space leased, and they have pinball machines in the Buffalo Pinball Collective. So congratulations to the crew up there, like having that communal group space to where people can contribute games all into the same area. Very excited for you guys. We'll have to go up in the springtime and get beat on some gauntlets. Once the snow is melted. You can head up in July when the snow melts. Exactly.
    27:26
    So like a week or two window, right? Yeah. Second applicant, our friend from lower Michigan, near Toledo, Flippin' for a Cure friend, Jason Krakar, is applying for this. Okay, what is he bringing to the table? So, big-time contributor. It's an application. Like, what's on the application? Big-time contributor to Mad Pinball, big-time enthusiast. Obviously, he could be our charitable arm over here, you know, Flippin' for the Cure for epilepsy. It's a really important part of that. I'm not sure that he brings any coding skills. I said, what are we looking for, a coder? But his day job is that he works at a Ford dealership. So, like, if we need some parts. For what? Broken-ass Fords? No. Maybe. And we already have Keith in the circle. We already have some race. I don't know. We've won Fords, so. But Jason has Flippin' for the Cure coming up here. That I'm all for sporting, yes. I've posted it across social media for the Facebook event, and I'd like to try to get Jason on to the podcast at least the next episode, briefly before the event. Yeah. When is the event? To have him talk about it. I'll circle back to that at the end. Yeah. I have all of the notes here. We'll talk about that when we talk about all of our events and everything else. Okay, so that's applicant number two? Yeah, that's applicant number two. Applicant number three, newer to the circle, Rob Lansdale. So he hooked us up over at New Berlin. We've been seeing him over at the Hoover Pinball League. He's a man amongst town. He works downtown Canton already. Where does he work? He works at Tom Todd. That's his day job. Is it Tom? Tom Todd. They work with middle schoolers and do all kinds of in-school programs and things like that. Does he teach coding? See, that's what we need to get each one of these applicants on the podcast. That way we can talk about it. They can introduce us.
    29:11
    What's your understanding of C++? Right. Well, how do you break WBC 95 into you? Dave Sousa can talk about this a little bit more, but I know his day job is he works for a very – Whenever you think of cell phone companies, you think of probably one before most others. I think he's like an engineer for that company. A software engineer? I'd like to think maybe, you know. You can figure it out. This seems close. Go on. Fourth applicant. You're really talking to Dave here. Jared Cook. Oh. Now, Jared, I'm not sure what his day job is, but again, we need to get him on here. That way we can give him the full interview. You've got to go do his pool table anyway, so. That's what I'm saying. He's the most local, too. He is pretty local. But then Keith can't come.
    29:56
    Oh, yeah, I can just drop it in now. There's too much pressure to be a permanent fifth. I like to just come in. So those are the first four applications. Yeah, I feel like Jerry would show up, too, with, like, a nice, interesting six-pack of beer. He would. So, like, I could.
    30:10
    Don't give these guys things. He already sounds more attractive to me than anybody from Buffalo, because he's here and local and can deliver beer. I'm sure Dave would probably bring some, like, wings or something along. He probably would. He may have snowballs or something.
    30:21
    With dry ice. What's the Buffalo pizza situation? It's not good, right? I know we talked about it on this episode. Pizza? Yeah, we actually grabbed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    30:31
    That's why they call it Buffalo wings. There's no Buffalo pizza. All the pizza wings. There's got to be a Buffalo pizza. So those are the four that we have so far If anyone else wants to apply Zach who should they email Freshpinball at gmail That right Thank you very much All four of those people are going to go ahead and move to the next round of interviews though I say Yeah. No, they should all move on to the next round. We need more information. So you talked about Buffalo-style pizza. Our person who told us about macaroni and cheese then chimed in about Chicago-style pizza here. So what is Chicago pizza? And this is, I'm going to directly quote this from what I received. It's no secret that crust is king, but what else is Chicago-style pizza known for? The most unique and recognizable element of Chicago pizza, deep dish crust, has to be at least an inch deep, allowing room for extra sauce and toppings. with its even higher crust, stuffed pizza resembles a hot pot pie or casserole dish more than a New York-style thin crust pizza.
    31:35
    That seems like a pretty good question. I can give you my opinion. Speaking of which, so in our travels, we swing through Pequod. And any time we bump into anybody I've known through travels, through work, they're like, oh yeah, you're in Chicago? Yeah, where'd you get pizza at? And the second I say Pequod, it's immediate respect. Oh, you got the good stuff. How'd you know about that place? That's what I knew about that place. Everybody knows about it. It's on TripAdvisor. No. I feel like that's all y'all know. That's what my trip take told me. Yeah, they're at Luna. Gia Dordano's and Lou Malinotti's are the three that most tourists, that's where they go. I feel like Pequod's is like you've been to Chicago a few times and you know what you want. That is the Pequod's I have all day about. Pequod's is the one I think about. And by the third time that Corbin was there, he knew where he was. So, I mean, it's a real world. And we go to the different location. That really throws you off. Kyle sleeps in the car. It's a whole thing. Yeah, you can talk about it.
    32:32
    All right. So we're going to do a quick here trailer talk with Corbin. I just want everyone to know that he's so many more. I need so many buttons. Yeah. I'm 20, 25 is going to be very late. Make a list. You remember to write them. But trailer talk with Corbin this week is sponsored by Nezzy's Pinball Prints. Looking for some pinball prints, some corner protectors for your game, some sugar lane fixes. You printed me a spare tire for the trailer. Some Indy 500 fixes.
    33:00
    Hop on Pinside, Nezzy's Pinball Prints. You can find it off our website, too. Or you can hop on the map, pinball.com. Nezzyprints.com. Hop on, too. Oh, he has a website, too. Oh, my gosh. Nezzyprints.com. It's happening, folks. It's happening. So, Corbin, I wanted to talk a little bit on, we talked a lot about the trailer. We talked a lot about, you know, the enclosed trailer. Yeah. Everything that goes along with it. Why don't we talk about lift gates a little bit? I hear there's been some lift gate drama in your life here recently. There has been. So on the one truck, Watergate lift gate?
    33:35
    It's a motor from 2002, so it's a 23-year-old motor here. Yes, those are facts. That, you know, didn't fit. Yeah, it didn't have a lift gate on the one truck. It actually was from the truck before it. we cut the thighs off and rewalled them on to get you the wire bed and because when we went to we bought the new truck and it was a 15 I think that's our point so it is all the black truck yeah the black truck the only way to move a hot tub without a doubt I'll never move a hot tub anywhere well and so anyway we've been using it so like a couple maybe a month ago the motor went out on it so we're like ah whatever so it went out in the down position so it's really inconvenient so we pick it up latch it Strap it or whatever. We pull the motor, figure it out to the motor, run it out to a local motor shop. They rebuild it for us or whatever. It took them like two or three weeks. Right. I don't know what the heck was going on. Get whatever part of it. Right. And so we throw it back on.
    34:30
    It sounds totally different, but it's working. So it works for like maybe like a dozen rounds, a dozen lifts. Down position again, shit's out.
    34:40
    Yeah, really inconvenient when you've got like a game on it you're trying to move. Not ideal. No. so move the game pull it out again then we just we ordered a new one so now I'm just waiting for the new one to come in it's just really inconvenient because there's a lot of stuff I've been trying to move is it just the motor is it the motor over dude we got yeah it runs the pump we got 12 volt try it at the mother of a child right right yeah yeah so it runs the pump then yeah it runs the but anyway it's a bunch of stuff that's too tall for the trailer so it's like we can't it's just really inconvenient because we're trying to get Finney's set up super inconvenient but liftgate giveth liftgate taketh away That's just how it be sometimes. There's another one somewhere. All right, follow-up fact-check item that we had messaged in when we were talking about cargo sheriffs and cargo containers, and this is an article that I'd previously seen, was about, in the 1970s, the Chevy shipping the Chevy Vega via railroad. Oh, Chris put that in, yeah. Yeah. So what it was is they would build these cars, not put oil in the engine or anything, and then they would tip them into railroad cars and then they would go. Maybe they were on their nose. The nose was forward, I think. Correct. So they'd drive it into like basically. Like a little slot, like a hot wheel holder almost. And then it would flip up to where the car would then be vertical. I'll post a picture on Freshman Ball on Instagram. And I'd actually seen, I think we both, Corbin and I had seen this article before. So when he pointed that out, it was like, man, that was a genius move. but it must not have been too genius because, you know, it was short. And I know one of the biggest challenges they had said in the article that I had read about it was that then they also had to train all of the employees that were unloading them off the train cars because there was no fluids in the engines or minimum fluids in everything. Because when it was forward, it would all leak out, so then they had to train them to, like, hey, you can't start them, you can't do anything until you do X, Y, and Z and add all the fluid. So come in, you just start that fucker up. Exactly, yeah. So they had to make sure everyone was, like, you know, getting oil in the engine before they fired it and everything like that. So that was, like, a big challenge of it. So in shipping of cars, back in the early 90s, Toyota was shipping cars from, you know, Japan over. Right. And how they had them strapped down on the boat, the rocky motion back and forth wore into the wheel bearings. And so every single car that they pulled right off the boat, they instantly had to put wheel bearings in because they all howled. Interesting. They give it worn into them. That's fascinating. I had a teacher that worked at Toyota. He goes, no, I just, a brand new car rolled in, you ripped and put wheel bearings straight into it. I would imagine it was like just a regular roller bearing. Yeah, like an in-or-out reveal. Huh. Yeah. Right? Have you guys ever seen any of the stories of the towns where when these ships, because shipping containers fall off of ships all the time. Right. It's a regular thing. And then there are certain towns or islands. Not the Gary Starr. We'll talk about that soon. Okay. Container talk. they'll fall off and then they'll wash up on shore in these different areas. It was like Yetis in Alaska or something. You can get like crazy. Yeti coolers in Alaska. There's this beach in France. This is Lego ones, though. The Lego ones. I'm just going to bring that up. Did you see the Lego shark? Yeah. And then there was one. One of them has been like 30, 30, 30 years. That was the Lego shark one. Yeah. Lego even confirmed like, yes, we lost that crate about 30 years ago. It's so nuts. It came up in a fishing net. There's a whole website that tracks that. I think that's still too. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. So I definitely wanted to shout out that little fact check. And then we probably need to be careful here, Corbin, because it sounds like Scott Dye might be a listener of the podcast because he texted over to me that the soup that we were smelling is from Thailand, and it's called Tom Yum is the soup, and it is actually the national soup of Thailand. So he offered some up the next time that his wife makes a batch. I don't believe you. This is 100% true.
    38:34
    100%. We will be getting ourselves some of this soup. This has to be the most ridiculous beer can I've ever seen. Oh, that's our number one beer. I think basically the lesson learned here is he doesn't want his children to be abducted, you know, since we're regularly in his home. So he's going to pay us with some soup. So I'm pretty excited for that one.
    38:53
    Take my soup, not my children. Not an unreasonable request. It's not. It really isn't. All right, some Pat Lawler fact-check items here from our last episode. Pat Lawler started in the amusement industry in 1980 working for Nutting and Associates, which was actually a subcontractor for Bally Midway. So they would create a lot of times the games or the programs as a subcontractor, and then Bally Midway would produce the games. So that was kind of his gateway into pinball. So then they picked him up at some point or he interviewed him. Yeah, so 83, whenever there was the big collapse of the arcades, of that side of it, then that's when he transitioned over to pinball. Because he was working on stuff in his workshop, I'm sure. Yeah, so... Just tinkering a little bit. So the first arcade game that he worked on was Adventure of Robbie Roto. He also worked on a game called Ten Pin Deluxe, which I thought was interesting. Have you ever played either of those? Adventure of Robbie Roto, yes, because it's based on the same system that Gorp runs on. So you have that board stack that's inside that cage, which is a super big pain in the neck. But if you have to work on it, but it's on the exact same system as that. Interesting. So then someone had messaged in all of the games that they knew of that Bob's things show up on. Oh, yeah. Which I thought was super interesting. Crazy Bob. Where does Crazy Bob show up? Crazy Bob. So according to this person, the first appearance of Crazy Bob is actually on the play field of Mouse and Around. Oh. And on the play field, he's Crazy Bob the Batty, and he's smoking a cigar. So I need to find that game and find him on there. Then he shows up. You don't see that game that often. You don't. It's older. I'd like to grab one. It's like, what, late 80s? That is 89. 89, yeah. 89. So then he shows up next in a Pat Lawler-designed 1994 road show, and it's Bob's Bunker and Freebie Shot. So then in 95, he shows up in Johnny Mnemonic as Crazy Bob's, the little up-kicker there. 96, in Junkyard as the Escaped Crazy.
    41:07
    Bob's Junkyard, and you fight him in space. So then he also... I'm about to play some Junkyard tonight. Yeah. How do I make that madness, dude? We'll see. Double show up in 96 here. He shows up in Safe Cracker as Bob's getaway rentals truck featured on the play field. So next time I'm playing some Safe Cracker, I'm going to need to check that out. It must be over there on the left side where it kicks it out. And a couple times I've played that game. It always tends to be in a dark space or the game itself is kind of inherently dark. So I'd like to see one. Is it over on the left side where it kicks it out? I'm pretty sure you're right. On what game is this? On Safe Cracker. I just need one to study it for sure. Obviously. For science. And then he shows up in 97 in NBA Fast Break, Crazy Bob's concession stand on the play field. This one I didn't know until I got this list was he shows up in 1998 in Champion Pub. It's a call-out only, though, of Bob Fly the Bar Fly as Crazy Bob. Okay. I honestly, I can't even say that's a first for me as well. I hadn't heard of that. I was sitting here drinking this beer. Yeah. And then his final appearance was in 2017. Jersey Jacks dialed in as Crazy Bob's cell phone store. Yeah, we knew that on the beeper. So that's pretty cool. I definitely now am going to need to check him out for Champion Pub, Safe Cracker, and Mousing Around the next time I'm near one of those games. He's probably still sitting down there in Columbus tomorrow. I'd say that's what we take with us. I don't disagree. Felt King just picked one up from a gentleman in Cincinnati, and I was oogling it today when I was over there taking him his X-Men fix kit from Stern. He picked up that one and a few others that I was also oogling.
    42:49
    So, Corbin, my question to you, we talked a little bit about the different ratchet straps last episode for moving pinball machines, so I went ahead and ordered the Torx straps. It wasn't what I envisioned. Okay. Have you tried it yet? Yeah, we used them. I used them with you, too. I thought they seemed fine.
    43:08
    I mean, nothing's moved, so, I mean... That's a loose spring or a chow's bumper in them. Exactly. So it's like a... Imagine a normal ratchet strap with the ratchet, but then there's a big spring in it. It's not even a normal ratchet. It's like the pinch kind of ratchet. Yeah, so you pull it at... You know what I'm talking about. It's not a ratchet. That's what it's in. It's like a quick cam. So you pull it as tight as you can, pulling it out. That's my problem with it. I use it. No, no. So I see Corbin driving down Whipple Avenue with a couple new in-box games strapped on the back of the 3500, and what do I see up there holding up the boxes? Do I see the torque strap? Oh, no, I'm not using it on the back of the truck. I see some rope, Corbin. Some rope. Where the hell are they going to go? Come on, Jeff. Uh-huh. I've heard where they're going to go before, and then they go somewhere. So, tails from the grip.
    43:55
    That was a ratchet strap, I think. That was lack of ratchet strap, my friend. In the rear of the truck.
    44:03
    Where are they going to go? Crunch. What was that? I don't know. I'm sure it's fine. other fact check items. So when we were up at Quarter Up, we ran into Adam, who is a multiple generational runner. He would be what I would consider the local butter milk dairy king, in my opinion. As far as the people that I've ever met, this is the So he had opinions on my milk that was supposed to last two months. No one's supposed to drink raw milk. His opinion was if it's triple pasteurized and whatever these other things that they did to it, they literally at that point just like ripped and cooked all the nutrients out of it. And you might as well just be drinking water.
    44:46
    Which you probably didn't, but I did not. Which also, though, he did enjoy a very expensive glass of water. Speaking of which, I need a little sipper. Yeah, fill it up for you. That's R.O. right there. This is actually from Zach's Brita right here. I just got a new one. Yeah? The old one was leaking everywhere. Zach built a bridge. All right, Zach, let's talk a little bit about... We're going to pour all the alcohol out. Let's talk some pinball. I remember doing that out of choir in Corbin.
    45:15
    And then wake up the next morning, oh, water! Tequila. Not that we haven't been talking pinball-adjacent things, but let's talk some real pinball here. Our stern adventure, you're saying? Yeah, Zach. So Corbin was a little under the weather, wasn't able... So how'd you have a nice... Did you have a nice Christmas and New Year's there, Corbin? Sure, it was all good. It was all good. I had a good time. Poor guy. No. So I didn't get to go on a stick. Corbin doesn't mind isolating with Floyd. It's fine. Yeah. So Zach and I made the journey together out to Stern in order to check out the new Dungeon of the Dragons. That's pretty sweet. Yeah. So we left on Monday night, made the quick six, six and a half hour drive out to, what, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village. Got some late night hot dogs. Grabbed ourselves some late night quattios. got ourselves a good night's sleep and then ran over to Stern in the morning and got a brief factory tour which was very strange because they were doing inventories for the line. It was empty. It was a total new view. They said they'd never done a tour without nothing on the line. It doesn't look that impressive. It was still impressed though. It was a moving machine. It was interesting to see. I want to see from both views. totally it was neat and then we got to play Dungeons and Dragons with yeah the designer and the coder yeah so Brian Eddy he played all three models yeah he played Ellie Jeff put a GC on the Ellie first game just smacked one up no problem because nobody else had played it yet so it was a pretty fucking good game yeah there was another group so they dropped them to two groups is that the one that was recorded and Dwight was yelling at you the whole time yes so he was literally telling me exactly what to do It was too much pressure for me. I played terrible. I was like, could you just be quiet? Just step over there. Don't look. Don't watch. I don't want to know the rules. I don't want to know. I do better if I finally shoot. So the tour itself of the factory I found pretty fascinating because from the Factory Friday videos and whatever else, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. Right. I seen the decals being installed and things being screwed to play field. But it was cool to see the parts area where they pull. like if I put it in order of something of where they pull stuff from. They had another area of where if a game... Was it just like a machine that printed off tickets and just dumped it into the air? Somebody grabbed it? It was a cannon fired in the air. Literally, like, imagine like an old library with a really tall ladder that like slides along shelves. That's more of what it was. I can imagine Shirley up there pulling parts. But the area that was fascinating to me was the games that get damaged during shipping they had in like a little caged-in area. and then when they caged them in. They did. And they're like, oh, you guys are misbehaving. There was a Metallica LE in that caged area that was ripped. It sounds like the lot behind the impound lot or something for pinballs. Because we've been fortunate to where, like in my time with Mad Pinball, we've only had less than a handful of games that have had to be returned to Stern for repairs or whatever else. I think last year we had maybe two, maybe three, but two max. Two or three a year is about our norm. and usually it's like a ripped decal. Like, it's never been anything. Like, that Metallica Zach was. It was fucked. It looked like it just had been, like, dropped off the truck. Usually Zach's pretty optimistic, too. Like, we could just body hammer that out. Oh, yeah, no, no, no. It's going to be fine. Back to truck. Boom. Like, oh, this is sorry.
    48:43
    So then they had it. Like, it fell down a fucking mountain. Yes. Full total. They were totaling that thing out. So then at the other end of the line, they had a bunch of test rigs. Which were used FedEx. It was really cool. on the test rigs what they're using for the heads in the test rigs. So there was an Elvis head. Elvis.
    48:59
    Ripley's. There's some interesting ones. Did you see Spooky's test rigs the other day? Yeah, those look cool. It's similar to Stern has, I'm sure Spooky probably I kind of want just one of those spooky back glass. I still want one post-warning.
    49:12
    When are you selling the test rig back glass? Yeah, seriously. 50 bucks, just give it to me. Yeah, just like the ghostly thing. So the test rigs at Stern were pretty cool and then we make it down the other side and they have a bunch a game set up and there's a cardboard cutout of Gary Stern. Have you played your 15 minutes of pinball all day? Yeah. So literally. Why don't they distribute those? Yeah. So literally like everyone who works there, it's the expectation that you're going to go play test a game. Whether you're in administration, you're an administrative assistant, you're an executive or you're on the line, it's expected that 15 minutes of your day is going to be playing a game, which is phenomenal if you ask me. So we did. It's a long break time though, I'm sure. I haven't been to a paint time, man. I bet. They had the banner wall, which was pretty sweet. I definitely saw some banners that I'd never seen before, like ones that were LE-specific and some international ones that I'd not seen previously. Yeah, it was really neat. Yeah, they had an Aerosmith one that I was like, hmm, I wonder if I can Spider-Man my way up there. It was pretty cool. Get everything out of here. Except when I had to stand on my shoulders. You'd have to be that guy that's like wearing a trench coat. Yeah. People stacked on top of each other. Don't look over here at the man taking down this banner. I got a glimpse of some little machine shop in the back. I saw a Bridgeport sitting back there. Yeah. But they didn't want to go back there, though. I think when we go back the next time, the three of us, that they'll probably give us a little more of an in-depth tour, I think, since it was so many people. Right. I want to see the test rigs, too. Like, oh, the dragon's been back here getting the shit beat out of it for the past two weeks. Like, oh, that's what I want to see. Well, that's the area that we got into. So Zach and I, the tour's over. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and they had a, I think it was like a five bank of games kind of out in a common space. It was a Metallica LE, two different versions of Jaws. X-Men. And a version of X-Men. I'm like, oh, cool. And they had little, like, signs on them that said dev test. Play me, play me, they said. Yeah, exactly. So we went up, like, oh, let's check out this Metallica LE.
    51:09
    And then Jack Gaines was sitting at a desk. He was like, hey, what's up, guys? Like, oh, just check out these pens. He's like, cool. and then some other guy came like this is a restricted area you can't be hurting Jeff's last Adam and he's like I thought he was joking no seriously you guys need to leave get the fuck out so we left that area we left but the key to it all was we did get to play all three versions of Dungeons and Dragons so we played our back to the back I don't know why you got kicked out though because you didn't have your yellow vest with you I should have said my security badge yeah so we are we're on the LE first And let me just say, the back glass is super cool on this. The art, they did, like, the Elvira Blood Red, where they do, like, the sparkle inside of the lettering and whatnot. So, typical awesome LE back glass. The artist that they had to do the art on all three versions is a legit Dungeons & Dragons artist. Like, book covers, posters, all that stuff. I thought that was pretty cool. You know, it puts it in, like, with the rest of the stuff. But didn't the art, I felt like the art popped a lot more in person than in pictures. Oh, it definitely did. And the powder coating was real nice on the LE, like always. Yeah. So we get on the LE, and Dwight Sullivan is standing to the left of the game talking about it, talking about the modes, talking about the pin save feature, talking about the mechs, all of those fun things. And then we start up a, I believe we played a three-player game to start. And, man, let me tell you, like, this game flows like crazy. The dragon mech on the premium LE is so awesome. Like, whenever I heard, oh, it goes up and down and then left and right, I'm like, okay. Like, that doesn't sound that cool. But in reality, the dragon learns what shots you're hitting. If you hit the three bank a bunch of times, he goes down and blocks the three bank. You start hitting some of the shots to his left, he starts blocking that. You hit the shots to the right, he starts blocking that. And the whole time, the light show is going off as you're hitting them, as he's talking and taunting you and telling you he's going to defeat you, all of this light show, it's just absolutely fantastic. I liked how it could also be just casual come up and play, or you could be doing your campaign and get really deep into the dungeons and part of it.
    53:22
    I completely agree. Because on the pin save side of it, like you said, you can go in and continue your character's quest, or you can just go into it and literally just be starting a new game. So then one of the other big mechs on the game is the gelatinous cube, which has a two-sided magnet, essentially, that can grab the ball or freeze the ball inside the gelatinous cube. Or if you hit a scoop, get into a scoop on the far left-hand side of the game, similar to, like, the scuba area on Bond, it then kicks the ball left to right all the way across the play field underneath the gelatinous cube where the magnet grabs it for a second, staging the ball, and then dropping it to that upper flipper. So then with the upper flipper shot, you can hit the dungeon if it's popped up. You can hit a little turnaround, several shots that you can hit off of that. And then on the premium LE, you have the physical dungeon that pops up out of the play field, which I thought was a neat little... Which changed when you go down and it changed the modes weekly. Yep, so every Sunday, regardless of if you're online or not, it randomly... If you're offline, it changed every time, they said. It was just random. Correct, but if you're online, then everyone has the same dungeon every week, But if you're offline, it just gives you a random one. So it's like 10 different dungeons or whatever. There are limitless, like... Is it? Yeah. It changes it, like it can just... Yeah. So it's not like Congo where you're playing... Coding, see, here's our coding person. They can tell us something about this. Well, like Congo, you know, okay, on the first one I have to go left, and on the next one I have to go to the far one to the right, and so on and so forth. Whereas this, as you're navigating the dungeon, literally every week that dungeon is going to change. So is it something that's programmed in?
    55:01
    It's programmed in to randomize it. But is it just like a magical generator? I'm sure. It's like a number generator or whatever. It's like anything else. They're going to call it AI or they're going to call it whatever, but it's literally just like a randomizer. Yeah, exactly. It's just a buzzword sort of thing. And then the shield down between the flippers, I thought was different than any other ball-shaped shield I've ever seen. The shape of it was cool, and it lined it pretty much back to your flipper for you. Was it metal? Yeah, it was steel. It almost looked like if you just let it rest there, you could just flip and it wouldn't make a sound. Yeah, it would. So your premium out in LE gets you an eight-ball game, so you get, I believe they said six. Two in the dragon at all times. Two in the dragon at all times and six in the trough. So when you're in the dragon battle... And the pro just has six balls. None in the dragon. Because it doesn't shoot out of the dragon at all in the pro. It doesn't stage anything back there on the front. But shooting out of the dragon... That's a serious match to be missing. So when you're battling the dragon, you can build up your shield, So then you hit the shield, and it's staying up for 5, 10, 15 seconds, whatever you've earned at that point. And then... Depending on your character, too, it may stay up longer. Right, you get different buffs based on which character you have. So if all eight balls come out as the ball save is down, you can wait until they all are sitting on the flippers, because it'll feed off of that stamped metal piece, and you can literally shotgun all eight balls, all with one quick chimp flip, which I thought was absolutely phenomenal. It was real sweet.
    56:34
    So, yeah. So then we went down the line and played the Pro after that. And for a Pro, there's not as much stripped off as, like, a normal game. You still get the full dragon sculpt. He still goes up and down. You still get the bash all across his jaw, which you can get it from all different directions. So it's kind of similar to Star Trek. It is, yeah.
    56:53
    What they take away on that game, you still get the ball save, the little shield down at the bottom. You still get the full gelatinous cube with all of the magnets. double magnets. There's nothing that's just flat plastic, I felt like. Nope. Even on the pro. We knew you'd be happy, Kyle. We were sitting there playing like Kyle's going to be happy. So you lose the side-to-side motion of the dragon and him being able to block some shots, and then the dungeon doesn't open. Those were the two main takeaways. I need to remind Zach, I only buy two-year-old premiums. I'm the premium guy now. When he buys his pros, he buys them from Jeff Bezos. Hopefully he'll someday have proud sponsors. I literally had a guy message me on Elvira, if anybody wants to know Elvira, by the way. Yeah, anybody looking for it is really nice. I don't know. $8,900.
    57:38
    Dialed in, powder-coated, ready to go. If it doesn't go, I'm still tempted just to take it somewhere and stock one. So if anyone wants to stock one and wants to buy my stock, I'll buy Kyle's. Right, right. Yeah, hit us up. Your choice. Freshpinball at gmail.com. Completely stock or completely decked out. Oh, you must just be a premium guy. I'm like, oh, they don't listen to the podcast. You have no idea. I just end up with premiums. So Zach and I got to talk to... And there is no ProVar. There's shit on there. People never understand that with the studio ones. Like, I want a ProBatman 66. Like, yeah, go ahead and find one. Yes, I do. Hi. Limited number. Go find one. It's all beat to shit. So we got to talk to Brian Eddy for a good ten minutes. We used to have that for a while. And we got to talk to Alex, who's Corbin and I's sales guy. So that was nice. We talked to Dwight Sullivan quite a bit. We did. Elizabeth Gieske was there, who's doing some of the coding on the game as well. George Gomez popped into the room for a bit to talk accessories and, you know, things that are coming around the corner, which was cool. Dwight Sullivan's son works at Sturnout, too. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was interesting. So since Corbin wasn't able to be there, I always feel like I need to, in his stead, say the things that Corbin would say. So when I had some alone time with Dwight Sullivan, of course. Did you ask him if it had Midnight Madness? I did. I said, asking for a friend, but is it possible that there is a midnight in Dungeons & Dragons and there could be Midnight Madness? And having forgot what he told us at Expo. I didn't forget, but I would have asked anyway. That every six months, every time someone asks about it, then he won't do it. You know, you add six months onto the sentence. So we're like 73 years now or something. He said that one didn't count. He said it didn't count from Corbett. Because I was asking for a friend. He didn't realize it was me, so it didn't count this time. So just to be clear, Midnight Madness has been requested. It wasn't completely denied, so there is the possibility. Since it's in two Stern games, three, two and a half, if you will. Yes, yes.
    59:43
    It seems likely. It seems like it should be on the table. I just need to stop asking about it. That's the lesson learned here. I think we do. Who do we need to talk to? To his son, obviously. Gary Stern. Gary. Or if you know, T++. Yeah. So final little nugget here from the Stern visit is they were actually going to provide lunch for everyone. They were taking everybody over to Interium. Lunch provided, play games, all of that. Zach and I both kind of wanted to get back to Ohio sooner rather than later. Get back to Porto's again. Yeah, so we're like, hey, there's a porto. We were sitting in the car. He was like, well, I want a dying beef, dude. He was like, okay, cool, let's go. So we jetted over there, and we're sitting on a couple stools right at the window, and I ram my elbow into Zach. I'm like, Zach, it's Keith Elwin. And Keith Elwin's walking down the sidewalk with his stern ball cap on. We're like a couple of, you know, starstruck celebrity watchers. And immediately I'm thinking to myself, no one else in this place. I have no clue. I have any idea. I mean, it's never like, oh, there he is. What do you think he's eating? Right. But then Zach's like, all right, I'm going to hit the restroom real quick, and then we can get out of here. And he's like, I can see with Zach's eyes. He's basically saying, while I'm gone, don't bother Mr. Elwin.
    60:53
    But, you know, I'm inching closer to him and closer to him. And all I want to say is, hey, I really love your game. And then just, like, scamper away. But I didn't want to be that guy, so I didn't say anything. You don't want to be that guy again. I don't want to be that guy again. I didn't want to bring it up, but, yeah. Just so you guys know, Keith Alwin eats at Portillo's. So if you're looking to... Fun fact on my little Arizona trip. I passed on going to Portillo They have it out there Yeah Yeah And then There one in Dallas Worth too It was 18 miles the other way I was like I went to the bat again instead Okay. Oh, you went a second time? I didn't know that. Yeah. Very cool. Me and my friend, we went with, when I went with. Was it a morning trip, afternoon trip? Yeah, it was like noon or something. I want to be there at 6 a.m. when they open. Right. I want pinball and like coffee, pinball and orange juice. I want something like that. Do you have a tap water? I'm feeling a little tired.
    61:52
    I'm in the desert and I want some tap water. I need something. All right. You also missed out on Chiba Hut out there, which is a crime, just so you know.
    62:04
    Anyway, I had no say over it. I know. You didn't know about it until we got back. I should have warned you.
    62:08
    So a little mad pinball news here. We're sponsoring a couple of fun things this year so far. There could be more that get added. but one of them is Kyle's basement for sure. One of the major ones is the Twippy Awards. So this weekend, Pinball does their annual awards. Yeah, this year they're hosting down at the Wormhole in Houston.
    62:33
    And Fresh Pinball Podcast was nominated in two different categories. So I would have thought, you know, you get nominated for an Oscar or Golden Globe, I would think you'd get like an email or a letter or like something. I'm getting on there to vote for like all of our friends, you know, Electric Playground and, you know, different locations and whatnot. And I get to content creator of the year. Fresh Pinball Podcast is on there. I'm like, I'm voting for myself here. And then I get to the best podcast category again, nominated. So I'm like, hmm, voting for my guys here, the Fresh Pinball Podcast. So what if our little buddy Matt might have something to do with it? Matt Owen, I know, is hooked up with the Kineticist. Geneticist. Obviously, we know Colin over there through different things that we've done. He hosted the little get-together that me, you, and Phil, Kyle, went to out at Interium. So, yeah, it was cool to kind of be recognized a little bit and put out there, you know, this little thing that we do in Kyle's basement and, you know, Zach's barcade that must be a few people that listen. Because a few people messaged, like, as I was talking to a few, they're like, oh, yeah, Dan the man was like, hey, dropped a vote for you. Jason up in lower Michigan was like, yeah, drop the vote for you. I'm like, holy cow, you people are crazy. You must listen to really terrible podcasts if you're voting for us. So thank you very much. It's cool for us to be a part of it, for sure. Cast your votes for your favorites in all of the different categories. And then tune in to the warm-up. Are they going to broadcast it live? It'll be broadcasted, yeah. Just hop on to itstwippy.com, or you can hop on the channel. I'm treating this like a presidency. I'm not telling anybody who I voted for. So, speaking of them, they made me think of when we were at Stern, they had all their Twippy Awards across behind their Playfield bar. Wasn't that room amazing? Oh, it was so awesome. I wanted to hang out there and have a few beers. They were flexing hard. No, no, we were Italian beefs.
    64:30
    That was the greatest time in a row. They had beer at the Stern factory? Shit. Time to go. It was cool. They had some couches in there. They had Playfields back foot everywhere. They had some great merch. Yeah. Yeah, it was a neat, cool, comfortable space. Perfect for streaming. Jeff posted a bunch of pictures. Go look at it on Instagram. I've posted across Anjali Stark, Novelty, Mad Pinball, and then my personal. So it's all out there for everyone to see. I posted up some videos and some pictures. And a bunch of other content creators were in there after us that posted way better videos and pictures than I can take. So all of that stuff is out there. But while we were in town, big American pinball news. So literally, Jack and I were emailing, trying to get in, like, hey, I'll stop by. Well, you know nobody that works there anymore. No one. Ron's all we know now. Steve is gone. Mr. Six is gone. The HR lady's gone. Everybody's gone. Oh, yeah, that HR lady was nice. The one that followed us around and hung out with the kids. Oh, yeah. She was super cool. They fired her the next week. The main problem with the HR lady is she put the kibosh on the pajama pants. So that was the real problem, is when she wouldn't allow people to wear pajama pants into the office. That's right. And now, and then that's her. And then employment line. So I'm sure, as everyone has heard, David Fix's contract with American Pinball was not renewed. So now it looks like Ron is over there. Ron Swanson. Yeah, he's the man. He's the captain. He's pushing forward. They've got a lot of cool things coming. His three ex-wives, Tammy.
    66:04
    All the Tammys. There's a VPs and shit. Is that from Parks and Rec? Yeah. So everyone knows sales guy Ron over at American Pinball. I'm not sure of his marital status or divorces. He's moving with his wife to New York. That's right. Yeah, we know he's married. That's right. You were at his wedding. But I don't know if he has any exes named Tammy.
    66:25
    All the Tammys. But, yeah, it sounds like from all accounts, because I talked to him whenever we got back. You're telling me that Nick Offerman does not work at American Pinball?
    66:34
    If he did, I think it would be a different story over there. I think he should put his resume in for the fifth for us. And you know, one ex-Pammy on there is Megan Mullally. That's his actual wife. It is, which is hilarious. Yes. I feel like the pinball I would picture if Ron Swanson made a pinball would be the one that we always see up at Vengeful Roar with the dude with the canoe. Yes.
    66:54
    That's the one with the beer in the back. That is the one. That's the one Ron Swanson would make. I think that's the one. And it would be completely carved out of wood. Oh, yeah. Very nicely done, of course. He's got a chainsaw on his back. Yeah. Anyway. So back to the... No, just things are... It sounds like as some management has changed and some people have come and gone, it sounds like the next game is still on track. From the conversations that I was having with Ron, it sounds like the game is there. The big thing right now is the licensor really wants the code to be as complete as humanly possible when this game launches, so essentially finished, which I think is a bit refreshing in the pinball space whenever we see some of these games get out there that are... They're not ready. They're half-baked. Not even half-baked. So I thought that was refreshing, and I'm excited to see. He said it is possible, don't quote me on this because this isn't official, it's possible that the next game could be at the Texas Pinball Festival in March.
    67:50
    Which none of us are going to. I'm going to miss out on CPF. You're going to be out in that way. We'll see.
    67:58
    We shall see. Being that Corbin and I work together, we talk often, Usually, probably daily. And I had a dream. Literally a dream that involved Corbin recently. That's all right. I didn't know about you. Oh, all right. Well, let me share mine, and then maybe you could share yours. I only have dreams about Keith. So this is... Because we're getting closer to Valentine's Day.
    68:23
    I don't always remember my dreams, but this one was during a day nap, you know, a little nappy nap. So when I woke up, it was like super HRs letting you do that again. You know. A lot of quiet times. What HR doesn't know doesn't hurt them. I wake up and as vivid as like watching a TV show, I can remember the stream. So Corbin and I are out in Arizona or New Mexico or some like desert-ish like hot area. This is the racing one. And we're moving games. And we get to the first stop and we're unloading the homebrew for Dukes of Hazzard. I'm sure you guys have seen it at Expo. Very specifically. Jake Danzig's. Jake Danzig's game. Was his dog there? So he wasn't there, or his dog. Just we have his game for some reason. We're going to be dropping it off at an arcade or whatever. So I dolly it off of the truck, and I'm about to need to cross the street for whatever reason to get into the arcade. Cross the street. Yeah.
    69:19
    I'm waiting. Hey, man, it's a dream. I can't control this. I'm waiting to cross the street, and as I'm waiting to cross the street, this Camaro pulls up and starts revving its engine. And in my mind, I'm going to drag race this Camaro with the Dukes of Hazzard on a dolly. So I start sprinting, like, as fast as I can, pushing this game down the road. And, of course, you know, in reality of how things happen, the Camaro blasts past me. And when it blasts past me, I hit the shoulder, and I flip the game, and I ruin the game. And then that's when I wake up. I thought you were going to say it was Zach and it was a 3-1 Camaro and you won. If it was the 3-1 Camaro, I might win. The 3-1, I'd still be trying to blow the tires off.
    70:07
    So, yeah, that was my Corbin dream. Corbin was there. He was doing what we usually do, delivering games. How much did it cost to fix that? I think it was like... I know you had a number for me when you first told me that. I did. So it was, in my mind, I thought, you know, well, we can just buy and fix and repair this game and whatever. And in my mind, I thought, oh, it would be like a couple thousand dollars. Jake wanted like $12,000 or something for the game. And then I was freaking out, like, oh, my God, I don't know. Like, I don't think this game's worth $12,000. I was thinking more like $5,000 for this game. It was wild. So that was my pinball, Dukes of Hazzard, drag racing dream.
    70:49
    Wild times. Corbin, is yours appropriate to share about Jeff? All I can remember at this point is we got locked in somewhere. Like we were fixing something or doing something. Was it the Stern cage? Or was it a basement with a bunch of teacups? Stern had multiple cages out there. They did. Yeah. There was a cage to get to the emergency exit, which I found very awkward. Very interesting. Very, very awkward. Were people trying to run out of there often? We got to see the press. We did. The Michael Press. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be. Electric over hydraulic. He didn't know many facts about it, unfortunately. Alex knew as much as the signage told him. I wanted to ask more questions, but I could tell when he was reading the sign like this behind him that it wasn't going to go far.
    71:35
    All right. My final little item here before we move on to talking about, I guess, what would be considered the main topic of this podcast is a little container convo. Everybody's returning in favorite segment here. So this is what was messaged to me was Kyle referred to the ship as being the USS Gary Stern. And apparently it can only be a USS if it's a United States ship that is commissioned by the United States. Well, I'm sure they're down for it. So they're giving us their blessing. It counts, right? So then that sends me down the rabbit hole of what makes something... HMS? Yeah, exactly. There you go. Okay, yeah. So HMS, His or Her Majesty's Ship. Do you guys know any of the other ones?
    72:27
    Is there like a Royal something? There is a Royal something. There's the RMS, which is the Royal Mail Ship. Okay, okay. Okay. And then I remember... Is it still on a ship still? Is it the USPS ship? Not that I could find. No? But I thought of the SS Minnow from my favorite childhood show, Gilligan's Island. Great head ball. You don't see that one. You never see that. It's a late System 11. It might be the last System 11. Is it D&D? Yeah. I thought it was D&D. It was D&D. Somebody look it up. I'm looking.
    73:00
    That's what we hired you for. We paid you in two slices of pizza. So I found out the SS Minnow couldn't have been SS because SS stands for steamship. There's no way that ship was a steamship. Why not?
    73:12
    Come on. It might have been, dude. Steve Shep? I've never seen this. You think Ginger was down there scuffling coal? You've never seen Gilligan's Island? Dude, I don't watch TV. Is it a movie or a show? I can't say. You never got sick when you were a kid? I got sick. We just didn't watch TV.
    73:28
    It was a movie, Pinballs. Yeah, they're like, oh, you're sick. They're like, you can shop out of this Addams Family.
    73:33
    He's like eight. Gilligan's Island 100% D&D. It's a 91. It says WPC for sure. But what does it say? Does it say WPC? It doesn't matter. It's Play System 11. Fun House is the first WPC, and it's alphanumeric.
    73:49
    Is this pin side? Yes. Go to the splash page, man. I'll tell you what it is. It's very self-sufficient. So then you have the PS, which is a paddle steamer. It's not S, it's just WPC. MV is a motor vessel. A TB is a tugboat. And then all of the other ones that we've already seen. So what would ours fall under, then? Unless we get, like, somebody... WPC. Dot Matrix. So... It even says Dot Matrix.
    74:15
    Yeah. So I don't know what ours would be. But, I mean, I think we could petition... I think we could get down. Yeah, we could petition for an HMS. I don't know. His Majesty should. I think I'd rather... I mean, Gary Stern is royalty. Pinball royalty. Yeah. We just need to start on... We'll just go FPP. Oh? Fresh Pinball Podcast. Ooh.
    74:32
    It's Zach-powered. Yeah. So we were talking about how we're going to afford this cargo ship, how many containers fit on it, all of that fun stuff. A 20-foot container on average on a cargo ship is $2,500 for the transit. A 40-foot container is $5,000 per container for the transit. That's good money. Yep.
    74:56
    They may own their own containers. We're just moving it. Correct. Yeah. And then the final little thing here was we talked about transiting the Panama Canal. It has cost up to $4 million for a single transit through the Panama Canal, but the average for a container ship is somewhere between anywhere between $60,000 and $300,000, depending on the size of your ship and how busy the Panama Canal is at the time. Yeah, but, I mean, if you're getting $5,000 per container, you can fit 30,000 containers. Do we have a need to go to the Panama Canal? I mean, really, I don't know. Yeah, you're going to spend fuel to go around. Well, I'm just saying, we're just taking it for fun. Are we importing some cars, too? Yeah, I mean, if we have a ship, we're importing it. Whoever wants to put whatever on there, that's what we're importing. Whatever you're paying to do, we'll move it. That's fine. That's a slogan. We're not asking questions. We're moving it. We don't have the budget. We'll just ship it. If it fits the ships, guys, let's go. If it fits, it ships. So I wanted to recap some fun 2024 things, some games, at least for me, that came in, some games that went out. We had a year. I feel like it was quite a year. Some events, all of those things. So 2024, one of the highlights for me, obviously, was Pin Brew Fest. Agreed. Doing that spooky American pinball booth was just absolutely epic. I'm really excited for this year. It's just the get it done and take it up a level. Yeah, spoke to Keith Campanelli last week, and he's excited to have us back. We're going to get the same spot that we had last year, which I think is perfect. Kyle's already talking about turning it up a notch with the Rob Zombie experience, so hopefully we can make some more money for the chanty. If you have an Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle, please let us borrow it. Yeah. We don't need to buy it. We'll bring it along. Oh, of course. We'll get you some show passes. We're talking about doing some Mad Pinball beer glasses, too. We are. Now we're talking. With, like, Pin Brew. Do them, like, a Pin Brew Mad Pinball. I love that. That'd be nice. I'd be very excited for that. Yeah. So that was a highlight for me, for sure. Hanging out with Kyle and then Darkroom John up at Cleapin was a really good time. Had a blast up there meeting all kinds of local people. And then just people that came in from all kinds of different necks of the woods to play some pinballs. I finally fixed that Ultraman the other day. Oh, yeah, the Ultraman. on that ball track. The ball we lost? God. It's always just a mystery whenever a pinball, you think... It has three play fields. Right, that it eats a pinball. You're just like, it hit a vortex. Where did it go? Time has folded in on itself and this ball's been transported away somewhere else. You've got some weird ones where it like, jumps through a plastic and it's like in a no man's land or whatever, I'm sure Corpus. Under the apron's one that always gets him. You're like, how the hell did it get here? No. Yeah. That wouldn't be spooky. Buzzar. Well, talking about new games that I acquired in 2024, Ultraman was one of those. My buddy Sam Bowman hooked me up with that one. Got a killer price on there. The trading of the Iron Maiden Premium for the Black Knight LE was a big score for me this year. In a couple of ways. Got to meet some cool people down in Louisville, New Albany area, and then also just have been... I still haven't invited over to play. You guys all have a past. I had to pick him up all the time. He doesn't let me come in. All have codes for my home. We can wave them. Just be aware, I may or may not have pants on. You never know. That'll be exciting. Yeah, right? And then a game that Kyle and I split as an acquisition from You Like Dave, America's Most Haunted. Still love it. That's a great game. Still on location? No, that just came back in. It's in the showroom. I just need to swap it out of this house. I haven't done it yet. Yeah, that's going to come into the Jeff T. and Noren home for a while. Is that about 10 quarters in it? I don't know how much jingling it has going on. Thousands. So that one came in. Probably the one that I was most excited about was the one that I tried to keep secret from everyone in the group, and then it got ruined for me. Yeah, I got a phone call. So have we told this story out here? I don't think so, because it's happened since last year. It was like between Christmas to right around Christmas. Okay. So Rotation 8, we've talked about it on here before probably briefly. It's a cocktail table that's four players, and the entire play field turns from player to player. So that's kind of the briefest of rundowns. Like you don't move. It moves to you. It spins left. It spins right. It does all of those things. We had run into it at Pinsonati two years ago. It was back in the green room. Played it with our friends from the electric playground. Fell in love. And Corbin did, like, a super deep dive on it, trying to figure out where they were, if we could get one, whatever else. And it just, you know. It quickly went on the list of, like, okay, where I need to find them. Yeah, when this one shows up and the time is right, we need to do it. So then prior to going out to Pinball Olympics in 2024, I was looking through my 2023 pictures, and I'm scrolling through, and I'm like, oh, shit, there's a rotation aid at Pinball Olympics. Of course they have one. Which I shouldn't have been surprised by. So it's late November, early December, and someone that I knew from the arcade community had bought some games. He mostly went for arcade games at like an estate sale, auction sort of thing. and I can see in the truckload that he has a rotation eight. So I messaged him right away, and I said, hey, that rotation eight. I think you mentioned it to me at that time. I did. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit. I oversaught. Because then it popped up on Pennside right after that too, yeah. So I messaged him and said, hey, what are you thinking on this? And he's like, you know, it's not something I'm going to keep. It's definitely something I'm going to sell. I'm like, are you open to an offer? So I made an offer. He's like, eh, I don't know. I feel like I could probably get more than that for him. I'm like, yeah, no problem, cool. So then he posted it up on Pennside. And this was over Thanksgiving. Yeah. So then I reached back out. It might have been Thanksgiving Day because that's the neurotic person that I am. Or the day after, I was like, hey, you know, any takers on this? He's like, yeah, I have two or three people that are interested in it. But they're saying after the holiday, and I don't know how serious they are. So I throw out another number. And he's like, yeah, I'll take it. So immediately I zell the money over to the guy. I hook up. Send the shipping deal. Send the shipping deal to get it picked up and all of that. all of this unbeknownst to anyone around this table or Corbin. I'm thinking, man, this is perfect. This game will come in. I'll bring it in. It'll be like my big Christmas present to the group. It'll go into the showroom or the pinball lab or wherever for everybody to enjoy.
    81:20
    Well, that was the original vision was to put it in Corbin's living room because I love pissing off Anna.
    81:27
    So the game shows up, and instead of calling me, they call Corbin. I get a call out of the blue, and they're like, hey, we've seen you ship into the wrong place. And I'm like, oh, like, what? I'm like, where is it? And she's like, in Cleveland. I'm like, well, what is it? Like, where was it supposed to go? Like, what is it? And she's like, it says, like, this flip says rotation VII something. And I'm like, really? I'm like, what's the address? Where are you at? And she's like, she gives me an address. I'm like, oh, you're up just in Cleveland. I was like, well, I'll just come grab it from there. I'll let you there until. I'm on the way. You know, like... So Corbin calls me. Where was this supposed to be? Was it a terminal? I think Columbus. Is that what you said? It was supposed to be the terminal in Columbus. They ended up in Cleveland. Oh, fine. Which is close. At a terminal that's open until... She's like, we're there past 11. I'm like, okay. It's like 11.30 at night. So Corbin calls me, and he's like, hey, man. So I just got an interesting call. Did you buy anything? Yeah. Did you buy anything recently? And immediately, you know, it's like you're a child being, like, confronted by your parents. Your mind goes to, like, all the bad things. Where your hands all sweaty and you start grabbing your clothes. Oh, awkward. And he's like, something to do with rotation, V-I-I-I. And I'm like, oh, man, like who ruined that? And he's like, well, good news is it's up in Cleveland. I'm like, oh, awesome. He's like, I have a couple things to do. Do you want to run up there tonight and get it? I'm like, oh, absolutely, I want to run up there and get it. So he swings by, picks me up. It was after 8, I think. Oh, it was. Because I came to put the bathroom door up where Zach tried to, attempt number 50 or whatever. It's finally in. It hasn't fallen off.
    83:01
    Yeah, we ran it down. So we drive up there, and we walk in, and bless his heart, there's, like, this Hispanic guy in there. Corbin walks up to him and starts, like, talking a million miles an hour. This guy does not speak, like, a single word of English whatsoever, and he just, like, points us to the office. So we go into the office, and Corbin introduces himself, and they're like, oh, well, we thought you guys were coming tomorrow, so we didn't take it off the truck. Corbin immediately, like, his face, you know, kind of droops, you know, I'm not getting my rotation eight tonight. I'm like, maybe we can get it off the truck. How far back in the truck is one loaded? Like, what's it looking like? I'm sweet-talking the lady. I'm like, let's go on the truck. I'm like, yeah, but how far back on the truck? Like, maybe it's on the tail. Maybe I, you know. We'll jack it off. You guys don't have to do anything. I'm good with a pallet, Chad. Yeah. Like, we can get this game off. Absolutely. She lets us, you know, back into the warehouse and then lets us back into the truck. And I'm, you know, shimmying between pallets. I'm halfway, you know. All the way in the nose, of course. I can't even see it. Like, if I could have laid eyes on it, then I would have done something.
    84:02
    So we left that night without rotation aid. We drove to Cleveland for fun. Came back the next day after running through Columbus by way of Cleveland. We went, didn't we go into Columbus over to Kill Box, then to Cleveland? We did. It was the most indirect route to Cleveland ever. Get up there, get it scooped up, get it over to the showroom and got it set up, and we're able to play some games on it. Yeah, let's get in there. So it's going to need some repairs and some love and whatever else. I don't know. I might get crazy. I'll tell you what. This game literally looks like something. So clean. It looks like it broke day one or very early, and they just shrubbed it in the corner. Pretty much. That's what it looks like. The play field on it is insane. You'll never find another one that nice. That's what we were talking about. Maybe we should just strip and clear now. We should.
    84:49
    Do we strip the bottom side off when you do that? Wait, wait, wait. Keep seeing this, and I have not. You know where the lab is. Something I employed my family. I had to swing in.
    84:59
    So true. But, yeah, Rotation 8's in the mix. Once it's ready to go, it's probably going to make a debut over at Finney's Arcade when it opens up. We'll probably do a little short, little run over there. Dale over there is obsessed with it. He keeps asking me about it every time. We're going to run it around a few different places, and we'll take it to some shows. Pin Brew is definitely a possibility. Cleat Pin is a possibility.
    85:23
    It'll get passed around. It might not be out for everyone, but it'll be out there. So if you ask us, we'll probably. Yeah, when you see us. Put it behind us. The second tent. Put it in the bus. The two most important. There are two things you should know when you see me. Number one, ask about rotation eight. And number two, know the expiration date of your milk. Which I do realize that I think maybe Adam deserved a prize because he kind of did know. He may have. Maybe that's what he was telling us. I've got a translate for him the next time I see him. Let's do it. Adam, next time you see me, ask for that Metallica Translate, because I've got your makeup, buddy. You have a Metallica Translate? Mm-hmm. You know I do. So that's for me. That's 2024. Shows that I loved and had a good time at. Games that I brought in. Games that went out for me for my personal collection. Sega Godzilla moved on. Yeah. But the good news on that is it's now up at Kid Force Pinball. So it's out there for even more people to enjoy. So get up there to Kid Force Pinball and play some Sega Godzilla. And then the second game that left the Cernova collection was the Williams Pitch and Bat Slugfest. That went to our friends over at the Stone Age Gamer. Corbin was kind enough to drop that off for me over in Salem, Ohio. You have some cool projects in the works out there. I wonder, have you heard from him lately? I haven't. I think we should reach out now that we're into the new year and kind of see what's cooking. He did some cool projects. I'll be curious to see how it all comes together. Kyle, do you want to talk about any year comings and goings of 2024? Obviously, you talked about Arizona, which was a good time. We've already talked about America's Most Haunted coming in. What other sort of goodness?
    87:00
    He sold his goods, too. Ooh, yeah. And Party Monsters left. The whole Unholy Trinity was broken up this year. If you want a really nice House of Horrors premium. You know what to do. Get at us. No, I'm happy with my lineup right now. As small as it is that I actually own. Yeah, but you've had some stuff come and go. I mean, like Safari, obviously, I think is one that will probably never leave the collection in terms of ownership. We've already talked about TNA as one that I don't think we ever have any intention of moving. You sold Jaws this past year. Jaws, yeah, Jaws for food. Which then became Food Freedom. Which was a good last call. I mean, I sold Pro and got Freedom. Yeah, which is a fun time. Two years later. Well, obviously we've talked about it. I'm a scared stiff, but I can go play any time I want. Yeah, so any locals that want to play a super buttery scared stiff, head up a quarter up in Akron in the Valley.
    88:02
    It's definitely been a hot commodity up there. No doubt. I hear it was one of the boys' favorites of the year. It was. No, Max was just talking every day like kids do, you know, like kids do. My favorite pinballs are Scooby-Doo, A Virus Scared Stiff, Haunted House, and Munsters. The pro and the black and white. I like both.
    88:27
    If I had to pick. Yeah. Your kids are adorable. I appreciate your horror theme. And he wants a Luigi's Haunted Mansion thing pinball. Dude, I want a Luigi's Haunted Mansion thing pinball. So, Stern, if you're listening, make it happen. Make it happen. Or the Fresh Pinball King, right? The Fresh Pinball Kids. The namers of Fresh Pinball. Yeah. Keith, you had some cool stuff come through your game room this year. You added, what, Turtles this year was an addition? Yeah, I guess that was. That was January of last year. Yeah. Turtles. Probably a year ago. You've had it for a year. Yeah, it'll be a year in January. I just thought I'd bring it up. And then you've had, what, Whitewater come through there in Indy 500? Whitewater with Scooby. That's right. I forgot about Scooby. The one that Marvin has. and then we have Indy 500 in there now that we're getting ready to tear through. Whitewater was there for a little while. Whitewater was there a long time. So you'll notice a trend when you go to Nezzy's Pinball Prints of the games that rotate through Keith's living room are the games that there are parts for. So there's definitely a correlation between the two things. Maybe that's where Ultraman should be. Yeah, it could be. Can you make this game play better? Bring it over. No, but you pick up that Turtles. You and Phil went on a whim to pick that up, right? Ted and I went. It was you and Ted. Yeah, so I was super whim. We were sitting there. I was working diligently hard, and it popped up on Facebook. Working diligently.
    89:53
    And the price was crazy. I called Jeff, like, Jeff, are you seeing this? Could this be legit? He's like, yeah, man, that's wild. So it was one of those, hey, we're going to come right now in a second. The guy wouldn't take cash ahead. We go down, get to this guy's house. Was this out Columbus way, if my memory is correct? It was out of Columbus, yeah. And it was in a seedy neighborhood.
    90:21
    And the guy just goes, look, man, I need cash. As you can tell by my driveway, I make poor decisions. And we broke a down car, like a half-souped up old S-10. Just a lot of dreams that hadn't come to fruition. That's right. So he left Ted and I in, who many of you have probably not seen. Ted is a 6'5", giant human that is, you know, could look very intimidating. Giant teddy bear. Without knowing him, I would not mess with him, but, yeah, without a doubt. Very intimidating. The guy's just like, I'm watching the hockey game. Sits in his Lazy Boy and continues watching the game. He's like, game's over here. And we're in this guy's house. It was the weirdest thing ever. So we get the game. This is the only game in this guy's house? What's that? Do they have any other games? No, this is it. And he bought it new. He claimed he did. He had everything. So we get there, and I'm like, hey, man, can you send out an Insider Connect? And he's like, I don't know what that is. What's that? I'm like, there's a thing. You can scan it. Oh, the thing that lights up? No clue what that thing even is. I'm like, you bought this, right? Yeah, I bought it new. They never even set it up? No. So we leave. Well, good for you. We get it in the truck, and we're loaded up, ready to pull out. And I look at Ted, and I'm like, hey, we never paid this guy.
    91:33
    He's like, are you serious? I'm like, yeah, the guy just disappeared. Like, we owe him. So we squared up the guy, and it was such a weird transaction. The entire way home, Ted and I were convinced that he was house-sitting for someone and just sold their pinball machine out from under him, and it was going to somehow end up being stolen or whatnot. So we got the game home. It had never been updated. It was on original code. He had never logged in. We corroborated all serial numbers. Everything was kosher. he had you know I had the receipt for the game the Apple ID was clear yes it was everything was good I mean by the time it would be Insider it was pretty much code was done anyway Yeah it was just wild though to buy a game new He did some ads. He did some mods of himself that, you know, my kids have made stay as some of them. And the guy was into it. Yeah. It just blew my mind that he would go buy a brand new game and just not use a lot of the, you know, didn't know about any of the modes. It just was a thing in the corner. There are definitely some like that. I went up on Chris slightly before Christmas to make a delivery of a Rush Pro, and the gentleman already had a Foo Fighters Pro. And, you know, we're talking as I'm setting up the game, and I'm like, do you want me to connect this to Insider Connect? He's like, what is that? So I'm explaining to him it updates your code automatically. If you set it that way, you can scan and get achievements and whatever else. He's like, I really only have these pinball machines that way because he had a teenage daughter. I know that whenever her boyfriend's over, if I hear the pinball machine's going, I know they're playing pinball and other things aren't happening.
    93:04
    So I end up connecting both of his pinball machines, updating them, doing all of that sort of thing. But I thought it was one of the more amazing reasons to have pinball. That way you know that, like, my parents, like, it's not a good excuse to get a pinball. Here's one for you. So anyone with teenage children, if you're looking to know what they're doing in the basement, as long as you hear them. That guy loves Al Lane.
    93:26
    As long as you hear him. Oh, boy. eat some pinball machines hit us up I would say a couple other moments to stick out Phil on a whim winds up yes talk about this Mando Premium and hey do you want to go it's a I don't know Friday night we're not leaving until 7 a.m. and we have to drive down literally to the Kentucky Ohio border south of Columbus to pick this thing up so we get down we pull into this guy's house because this is just east of Cincinnati right yes just barely and And we get there, get the game, everything goes smooth, game's exactly as it should be. So we're leaving, and we're in the middle of nowhere coming back, trying to get back up to that Columbus leg. And we start seeing these lights out the windows, and he and I are like, what is that? Are you seeing this? And I'm looking out, and the sky's green and red and pink, and I'm just kind of like looking, like, what is happening? Here, the northern lights were poking up down there, and neither of us had any clue about it happening. Right. They weren't supposed to be that south, and they were incredibly vivid. Right. People were just pulling off the road everywhere to see them. Because during that time span, everyone's taking pictures with their phone and, like, in hand. Phones all look better. Yeah. You're seeing it with your eyes. Yeah, it was literally, like, lighting up around you, and that's what, you know, we're talking at home. They're like, no, my phone's exactly what you said, Jeff. Let me see it. And I'm like, no, this is wild. So that trip was it, you know, as far as just completely unexpected. It helped that, you know, 3 a.m. drop off. The best part of that trip was that you and Phil immediately became Mad Pinball salespeople. Oh, yeah. We've been playing a game while buying the game for Mad Pinball. Literally, they're leaving, and they're texting and calling me like, I think this guy wants a Jaws. As soon as that's why he was selling this game, I connect up with the guy, and literally the next day, he wires us the money, and now he has a Jaws. It's like, man, we need some more Mad Pinball ambassadors out here selling games. Wow, you could do a cash over in Canton, but none of that deal. We tried. But by far, I would say the highlight for me of last year, all the trips were awesome, but the pinball Olympics. It was one of those things where your friends talk it up, you hear it, and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm sure it's cool, you know. And you get an idea in your mind of what it should be. And then I remember just vividly walking around in there for maybe the first 45 minutes of just every corner, everything I turned, just whenever you thought you saw the thing, there was something else. And it was unbelievable in the way it was ran and the setup. And the mindset of everybody there was just such a fun experience and something that, to me, everybody has to do at least once. If you're in the pinball, you know, if you're thinking, wow, I'm going to drive all the way to Chicago or fly forever from, is it worth it? Is this really worth my time? Get out of that. It's the best you'll ever do. VFW, same thing. I love hearing you say the first 45 minutes you're just, like, trying to take it all in because that's totally how it was for me. Like, I'm trying to pick my jaw up off the floor, and you're just like, there's so much to take in. In the entire day. I mean, even to the end as we're leaving, there's still something different or new, and you're like, it's good. The time frame it is, it's exactly long enough to take you and appreciate it, but short enough that it leaves you wanting to come back. Oh, 100%. Yeah. It's a very well-run event. I mean, they have it down, like, just perfect to the timing, to the refreshments, to the food, to the events, to giving out the awards. Like, it's all just. The way they bused people in to kind of, you know, respect the neighborhood and make that smooth with all the cars was fantastic. And then just the general camaraderie sense of people there. You know, there was no drama. There was no – everybody was happy. Everybody was in that same mental, like, this is amazing. Just a good vibe. It was. The vibe was amazing. It was cool to have the Lazars and the Cooks there. We saw – Corbin and I saw people from Stern, like, one of the parts ladies, Rebecca Hinsdale, was there. And it's like, oh, man, like, I email her all the time. Ryan McQuaid's over here. Blowing up TNA. Yeah. It's such a good game. I mean, just all kinds of people that I knew by name or recognized by reputation. It's definitely a cool event, and it was – I like to think that it was partially because we talked it up so much that it sold out so fast. But maybe we should talk it down a little bit. That way we don't get, like, locked out next year. No, we'll get our tickets. As the reigning treadmill champ, I think I'm entitled to my round of tickets every year. Absolutely. You know, it was great. with royalty, a previous champion, a medal holder.
    97:54
    And the thing, we're standing in line, we're waiting to get in, and this guy just keeps talking to me, and I'm looking at Corbin, I'm like, I'm so overwhelmed with what's happening. I finally turn around and I'm like, who's that guy? Why did he keep talking to me? And why did he care so much about whether I liked what I was doing? Oh, that's Scott Denise. Yeah, that's Scott Denise. You're an idiot. I'm like, dude, what's happening?
    98:14
    I went back later, apologized, felt like a complete idiot, Which then he thought was much, much even funnier. But then it would be no different, like, if the four of us were with you at SEMA, and there was some big person in the automotive industry, like, talking, we'd be... Sure, we'd know the name, but we wouldn't know the name. Right, I'd know the name, but I wouldn't know them by themselves. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Like, oh, fuck. I think I'd know who organized it. You would. That's the guy from Texas Speed. I'm like, oh, cool, all right. Great. Gale Banks.
    98:39
    Yep, everybody knows Gale Banks. Of course, everybody knows Gale. All right, Corbin, what were some highlights for you from 2024? for any events or purchases or things that could come into the fold. Agreed with Pen Brew. Pen Brew was awesome. Pen Brew was just such a good time. I'm excited for this year's Pen Brew, for sure.
    98:56
    Olympics. I'm taking my mug, and they better fucking fill it. For sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I got to fill it every time. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be a problem. One ticket is one mug filled. That's just how it is. Still got tickets left, though?
    99:10
    Yeah, I mean, acquisition-wise, Rotation A was definitely a fun one, Just in the way, the manner and all. I just really wish I could have, I wish I could have just shown up at your doorstep with it. Can you take in my pinball? It's weak. It's cold. And let's be clear, that is your game. Yeah. You bought that with your own money. I did, but with the intention of, like it's for the group.
    99:34
    And it wasn't supposed to be a complete surprise. So if you guys ever break up, you get what I'm saying. Yeah. I know. Makes sense. We're going to have to figure out a reason. I'm going to have to pull it out of his, like, power. It's better than being buried, actually. It's somewhere you'll never find it.
    99:48
    Or the severance pays. I'll buy you out on it. I'll buy you out. Anyway, other acquisitions. I don't know. We've got a few games.
    99:58
    I think bringing in the Berrios to me, like, I know as we're, like, looking at the list of things you brought in, I have since seen only one of those for sale on the secondary market. So they have sold at this point, I believe, all 100 of the LEs. Well, I'm pretty sure they have because every time I talk to Ron about games that are available, he never mentions that one. And I've seen one sense for sale. So that leads me to believe the other 98 are in places where they're being appreciated. Yeah. I would buy that. When we took it up to VFW, I could not believe the amount of excitement over it. I remember the, I can't believe it's here. Thank you so much. And I remember thinking, all the games up here. This is what you're saying. Talk about VFW a little bit because Corbin wasn't there at the front end of that. He kind of came in at the back end. He had to pay to get in. We're not talking about that. No, when we show up with Pulp Fiction and Barry O's, it's like we were celebrities all of a sudden because we show up with these two weird-ass games. It was, and the red carpet was rolled out. They were so appreciative and helpful and rolled it in.
    101:02
    It went all week, and I'm like, ah, these guys are just hyped up. This is their club. It's new games for them. That's why they like it. And as we're loading them up to leave for the weekend, they're like, just random people. Thank you so much for bringing that game. I just enjoyed it so much. And I remember the whole ride home. I cannot believe that was the one. The thing that people got hyped about. I'm not shitting on it. It's just there's so much there.
    101:25
    But what was cool on that game for me then in addition was whenever you upgraded the coils on it and the first time that I played it and I hit the ramp and it was like the spinners went bananas. Go play that one at Holy Moly. It's the best playing barriers I've ever played. Holy Moly, Denison, Ohio. Get down there. You can rip those ramp spinners all day and all night. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if that would be my top bring-in, personally. It was good at 11. Barry Osler would approve.
    101:56
    I think Congo was cool because I know it was one that I feel like just because we've been looking for it for so long, and then we got such a nice one that, and it's playing so nice now. That was a fun one for the year. I kind of forgot that was earlier this year. Remember what? Germany via... Yeah, to get the plastics. Oh, yeah, yeah. The P.O. Box. Yes, yes, yes. What country? See, as much as you give me a hard time about hiding games from you or not talking about certain things, I lead you to water sometimes. Congo was... More than enough, yeah. That was one through like a person, you know, coin op amusements up in Cleveland. Hey, let's go up and check out this game, figure some stuff out, because we ended up pulling that one out of there. And then the Ghostbusters Pro we had. That was one that I want to see. I just want to see that one that came through that I'm proud of myself. It was a pro for everyone, for the record. It doesn't matter. I'm just saying that was one that I'm surprised that I bought. I brought in, we brought in a Midnight Madness game that we don't have. And then, I sold that shit. Well, you're really going to. All right. I'm going to give you one thing, though. What's that? Magnus Lines are fucking stupid. It is. Have you ever played a premium or LE with the Magnus Lines? I mean, I have. It's so stupid. The LE's at Logan. It's stupid.
    103:19
    It's your opinion, bro. I've got a standard set at this point. It's true. I can't. I've got a big end. I sold that pro, so I obviously have to hold out now for premium LE.
    103:30
    White water, man. That white water we got in is exceptional. Is that at your dad's right now? No, it's at my house. Is that your house?
    103:39
    Honestly, I put that high score up on it the first time I played it. I played it maybe like twice tense. I actually was thinking, I'm going to take Willy Walker from his house. I was thinking maybe I could take that over there. I think you'd enjoy that. That'd be three games out of my house, so I have some space. Three slots? Yeah, plus the two in the litter. The tree's gone. That's five slots. That thing is super impressive. Oh, it's wild. So that definitely is on the top of my list. That was the cool one we got in.
    104:05
    I think Jetsons. You got that in, and I'm like, hey, Corbin, I need some, like, post for something. Can I stop by?
    104:12
    We're, like, just sitting there drooling on that thing. So talk about Jetsons. Why is that one that makes your list of exciting ones? Just because it's a cool random one. It adds a glow to it. It's just a beautiful game. I'm glad you feel that way about it. It was one that I felt like I was leading you to with bad intentions. No, no, no. Ill intentions because you just didn't want to pay for it. I was all in on it. I mean, you offered to pay for it. Yeah. I was happy to pay for it. At the time, I'm like, hey, how do you feel about this? And he's like, oh, just like we'll roll it into the Stark Novelty stuff. I'm like, oh, cool.
    104:47
    I'm always down for that. I feel the same about that game, and I think it's cool that we've already gotten it out some because we took it out to... We haven't taken it anywhere. We haven't taken it anywhere? Wasn't it just somewhere? It was at my dad's house. It was here? It was here at my dad's house. The dad's. Yeah. That's it. You guys unboxed it here and it went to dad's. Well, then you need to take it to my house. That's right. That's fine. It needs to be over there. It needs to be taken there. It'll be at Pembroke. No, that was one that I was excited. I just thought it was, because it's just one that's similar to Domino's or some of those ones that you just don't see that often, and we were able to end up with it. No, we didn't have Jetsons last year. No Jetsons last year. know Alice Cooper last year. We had just acquired America's Most Haunted. So I was there. It looks like maybe Texas Chainsaw might still be hanging with us around that time. And we should have. Evil Dead would be a good one. That's one of the things I'm most excited to check out when we go to Pinball at the Beach is Evil Dead. Maybe we should talk to them about if they want to get in our glass. If they want the spooky ghost. Just the ghost or something on there. Lemmy? Isn't that Lemmy? Is that his name? Yeah. Yeah, it's from Motorhead or whatever. Did you guys see that? It was not affiliated. Did you see that sick side armor for America's Most Haunted? Yeah. It did. That was pretty sick. Yeah. I sent it to you. Oh, man. I need to check my messages. This is a group chat. I think it was Sunday. You might have been doing laundry. Oh, that is my laundry day. Who was he doing laundry? He's checking his phone. Playing pinball. Laying around doing nothing. Scared Zip is one that I'm just happy that... I'm just glad that when you were going to sell it, but it just didn't go to some other random person that I got to use it. She plays nice. I wasn't going to sell it to anybody else. I know. Thank you for that. Wonka was one that surprised me that I tried really hard to sell, but... That one, if you wouldn't have brought into the Stark novelty fold, I would have probably bought. And there was actually, like, real customers who wanted to buy it, too. There were several real... Because there was one guy that came into the Mad Pinball family this year who ended up buying several games from us that that was on his list. So, like, every three days I'm emailing Corbin, like, hey, man, when you give me a chance, like, send over some pictures. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
    106:54
    I'll be over on my day. Oh, sorry, man. I forgot all about that again. Then it's about three weeks later. I'm like, you're keeping that idea. I had a lip gate problem. Yeah, he's like, yeah. A trailer problem. I think we're probably going to keep it. I'm like, dude, I don't blame you at all because I kind of wanted it for myself. Yeah, I was excited about that one, too. I'll tell you one that I am slightly sad that I didn't order, but then still optimistic that I could end up with one.
    107:18
    Ninja Eclipse. I agree with that. I'm with you. I wish they would have just sold us that prototype. That would have been perfect. I would have definitely been, I would have bought that. And if he would have just gave us the price, even if we already had it. If we just took the full price, I would have loved to have just bought the prototype. And that was the thinking is, hey, you're not going to have to pay to ship it back. That I would have 100%. I agree, and as I read through other stuff, I think Ninja Eclipse is definitely one that I wouldn't mind. I think we'll end up with one. They don't come out on the second round. I think we'll come. Or we'll go in and trade it or something, and it'll hang around then. Yeah. Pokemon will come out. We'll have one or two. No, it's just one that we were involved with since basically the get-go. You know, Chris and I talked a lot about strategy and everything else, you know, and then over two years. Pin House. I don't know if people know this. Like two years back. It's one of those things where it's like. Spent letters to the man. Money Express. Pin House. As hard of a time as Tia and Norton give me about talking to people on the phone, like, Chris and I had some serious, like, hour-long plus conversations about shipping and containers for the boxes and parts. You're always supposed to talk to us about containers. Yeah. I don't know. I seriously can say I connected with the dude right away of knowing, like, he was in this for real. He wasn't one of these people that's, like, fly by night and he was super committed and all of that. So it was exciting to be involved very early on, and then it was super exciting at this year's expo to see him branch out to some more distributors and get all 100 units spoken for, because that's the sort of success. Let's say we tell him with the next game that he comes out with, because obviously I see him already getting a prototype again and everything. We'll just let him know, like, hey, listen, just off the get-go, the deal is, like, we're just going to, we'll buy it from you, but we'll just, we'll keep it. Because I think his concern with this prototype was there are some differences from the production version. Right, exactly. He was worried about knowing that we would route it, that, hey, you know, something goes wrong. We're not sure that we're going to be able to support it. It's like, we're really not that worried. No, we're not. We're not going to get around. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A little bit. And when we routed it, it was solid. It was. Yeah, yeah. What, flipper rebuild? Yeah. That was it. Between quarter up and standard flippers, right? It was WPC stuff. Yeah, of course. Yeah. No. You don't need to reinvent flippers. No.
    109:39
    But no, I thought that was one that was exciting this year. Anyone else? Here's a list of what else we got. What did we get this year that you liked? Well, so what came over the barcade this year was Rick Morty, which was pretty sweet. Rick Morty was pretty sweet. And I had that with Jetsons and TNA all sitting next to each other in line, which was pretty sweet.
    110:02
    But now I have Rick Morty. You do. I had three players and X-Men sit next to each other at one point. That was pretty sweet. Having the double danger. The double danger was awesome. Yeah, I'm going to have to get an X-Men sometime this year. We'll see. They're going to bring you one coming up. But event-wise, too, you know, like, we can talk. Olympics, Venice Flipper World, Pembroke, those are all good times. I like that we got to go out to Stern. I think that was cool. That was this year, though. Yeah, but still. It was still really cool. I had a great time with it. It was a lot of fun. I think it was a lot of fun. and it was cool to see. It was nice to connect. I mean, there was nothing like playing a game with the designer standing over your shoulder and the coder telling you exactly what to do. Right. There's a little too many nerves, though, for me. I couldn't play good. It's like an out-of-body experience. It was pretty sweet.
    110:51
    Pulp Fiction, though, we got this year. I think I actually am going to upgrade internally. Yeah, so Corbin is... They're out there now, right? They are. We're starting shipping, and people are backing out on deposits. Like, well, you know.
    111:05
    So our friend, Bo, who passed away this year, he had a couple games on order here locally. And Corbin and I had went over earlier and set up the Jaws for his family. I haven't heard about them lately. Yeah, so I was speaking with Tricia today, and his final game was coming in, which was a Pulp Fiction Ellie. So I'm going to go over on Friday and set that up for them and go through all of the other games because they have and they do and have been playing them. So I'm going to clean them up and go through them and make sure everything's good to go. Take your little pin snake with you. Take my pin snake. A little bit of Novus and, you know, maybe clean and shine everything up, make them look good. but I'm always, yeah, it makes my heart feel good that, you know, that, you know, he had little Bo, his son is now going to grow up with pinball machines in the basement, and we get to be a small part of that, of keeping them running and all of that fun stuff. So excited to do that, but that's my little Pulp Fiction-elly. Belt King got his last week. It came in and was set up when I was over there today. How's the topper look? The topper, as much as people were complaining that the female figure on it looked weird or whatever, from standing at the flippers, it looked perfectly fine to me. Like, if you got... It's got your old clothes. Yeah, like, if you're meant to be an inch away from it, yeah, I mean, it's not... Treadmark deep down, 2021.
    112:33
    No, but I didn't get to flip any games on it, because he was waiting on some protectors for some different areas that he was hearing that were getting beat up on the game. But, I mean, it's not going to play any different than a regular one. I can't imagine. What do you get with the LE? The topper? Like the speaker grill, I think, is different. Chrome or something? No, there's like a little thing on the apron. Something on the apron. The topper's the main thing. That's all I really wanted. The topper. If they would have done the SE Plus, I would have bought that. SE Plus minus. Yeah. I just want the topper. Then we could go to Expo next year and you can have them about where it is. Because yours has a mirrored back glass. Came with it. Cool. Because I know on Cactus Canyon you upgraded that. Yeah. But yeah, 2024 was a fun time. Definitely hung out with you guys way too much. My family not quite enough. I don't think that's true. No? No. Thanks, Tia. It's bar or tap. If you're still listening, one hour or whatever.
    113:30
    This is going to take her months to get through this one. So on the last episode, whenever we were talking about Christmas trees, and then there's like a long, awkward pause of me not saying anything. and no one else saying anything, she was texting me at that point something, and that's why I was distracted. But I thought, like, somehow she knew I was talking about her, so that's why my phone was blowing up. Love you, honey. Her ears were ringing. She's on the live feed. She's been mic'd in. She's been really busy the last couple years, so as she's been busier and Noren has been getting older and needing us less,
    114:05
    my time with you guys has been expanded, which is not a bad thing. So all good things there. But I'm excited for 2025, excited what we're looking at. What, Corbin? Pinball at the beach. We're looking at Pinbrew. Conor's a launch party at Quarter Up. Yep.
    114:23
    Vinny's Grand Opening. We've got launch parties and stuff down there. Yep. We've got, what did we talk about? We talked about doing, we're going to be sponsoring an event for Pinburg this year. Yes. So let's talk about that a little bit. So Jeff Chilis approached us about this really cool event that they're doing over at Pinberg. So this will be the second year that that is back. Let me find my notes here.
    114:56
    It sounds like kind of a pin golf kind of a setup for time. It is. It's called the Stern Pinball Gauntlet, the SPG. Is this like an official Stern sponsor kind of event? It is. So we're one of three sponsors for this event. It's going to be Mad Pinball, Stern Pinball, and InDisc, which is another event. So here is the rundown. It's the world's most popular and in-demand pinball event, Pinberg. The event is scheduled for July 23rd through 27th at the Resine Esports in Bridgeville, PA. Pinberg will once again be an IFPA major tournament, one of only five. It will feature $42,000 in cash and prizes and include up to 244 players. So that's up 100 players from last year, which was 144.
    115:48
    So they're going to have the main match play. They're going to have the biggest women's event. They're going to have the Bash at the Berg and the Steel City Strikes event. And then the one that we are sponsoring is the Stern Pinball Gauntlet. So it'll be streamed on Twitch through Fox City Pinballs. Here is the rundown of the Stern Pinball Gauntlet. It's a timed charity event. Entries are $5 with up to three entries, giving you the opportunity to complete five specific tasks in the quickest time possible. So essentially, there'll be five Stern games. There's a Godzilla, a Rush, a Venom, a Mandalorian, and a John Wick. you'll start at the first one and you'll have start this multi-ball or lock a ball here or do this or do that. And you want to complete each one of those pin golf type events as fast as you can. Lowest time wins. Do you only have one game to do it or one ball? Yep. One ball or one game? One game. So as many balls as it takes within that game. Obviously, if you don't complete it, then you don't get to move on to the next one. Three balls. Thanks. So that'll be a cool thing. When Jeff reached out, it just kind of made a ton of sense for us to be involved with as much business as we've been doing in Pittsburgh. And as close as we are, you know, already talking to the powers that be over at PGX and wanting to be more involved with that this year, it just made sense to be part of Pinberg.
    117:18
    So we'll be doing that with Pinberg, PGX, Cleapin, and then... Maybe they can import some of this North Canton pizza that was delicious tonight. Thank you, Jeff. Yeah. Absolutely. And then I think our final event for the year will probably be a little more involved with Pinsonati this year. They're due at the beginning of December. We've got a busy year coming up. Dude, as I was starting to lay out all of the things that we've kind of committed to already, it's going to be a lot. We're going to be touring some shit and doing public events. As these games are launching and coming out, there are all kinds of crazy rumors of the next couple Stern games that are coming out, which if the rumors are true... We're going to be in JJP. Oh, my gosh. There's a lot of rumors going around. It's going to be a wild year. We know Evil Dead's coming. We obviously know Dungeons & Dragons is coming. I'm excited. I'm excited for Evil Dead that, A, we're going to have one by Pit Group, and, B, that it's shipping with the extra topper. If you got the upgraded topper, it's shipping with that automatically. That's not down the road. They're actually building them in tandem, apparently.
    118:22
    Yeah. Oh, well, speaking of Evil Dead, final little note here on it. One of our customers has number 275. He has reserved the game and the topper and was able actually to get a lower number directly through Spooky. So he's looking to move his number 275. So if anyone out there is looking for an evil dead spot and topper, email Jeff at MadPinball.com, and we can get you transferred over to number 275. So final little spooky note of the day, which is exciting for us and a long time in the making, is our friends over at Pins Mechanical later this week will be receiving their Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes Standard Editions. And then once those games show up at the distribution center, literally, when I was talking to Morgan, she was saying, like, she didn't give me the exact number, but the tone of her voice led me to believe there was something. There was that Rick and Morty standard I saw the other day. I was like, hmm. Well, I know. Because there wasn't already a Rick and Morty in my basement. Yeah, right. Well, I know at Expo, Bug had told us that the few Scooby-Doo standards that they had done were like, it was like 10 or less. That's what I thought. It was a tiny number. So it makes a ton of sense that they... The actual LE. Yeah. It would make a ton of sense of why they just went to the one edition for Evil Dead, of like, why are we going to even bother doing these other ones? Let's just do all the high end. Oh, it's a smaller run, so... Yep. All right, final thoughts. Keith, anything to throw in here at the end, buddy? I don't. I'm good. I'm keeping you up late, way past your bedtime, buddy. You're going to have to get those boys up into school tomorrow. I do. It'll be all right. Zach, any final thoughts, man? Just get out there and flip some pens. Flip some pens. Kyle, what do you got for me? Just looking forward to the year. I'm looking forward to the year. I'm looking forward. Yeah.
    120:17
    It's going to be a good time. It's winter. We got to start doing our friendly competitions a little more. We do. He's talking about this. It's nice and quiet. I need to get that creepy back glass out of my garage so I can get someone else to win. That's my real goal for 2025. I think the real champion of 2024 was winning and still leaving it in your garage.
    120:38
    Accurate. Not wrong. Corbin? Yeah? What do you got here, man? Any final thoughts? No, I think we're good. I think we're covered. I want to give a shout out to Annie if she's still listening.
    120:47
    She's the one who that video came from today where she was playing us in the background. That's just hilarious. There he is.
    120:53
    Other than that, yeah, no, nothing. Just getting ready for Finney's, getting things moving, hanging out. Metallica is going to be headed up to quarter up here soon. Yeah. As soon as I move it from Unhitched to there. Thanks for everyone that listens. Thanks for everyone that supports our events. Thank you to everyone that supports pinball in general, obviously. Keep flipping. Yeah. Get out there. Keep flipping. If you have friends that you think might be interested in giving pinball a try, bring them to an event. Bring them to a little location or whatever, and get this little drug that we call pinball passed along to everybody else because the more people that are in this, the more successful it will be and the more excitement that there is for everyone because we want to. And then we get to continue to do this. We do. We don't run into those valleys that have happened traditionally in the past. We only see up and up and up and more peaks because 24 was a banner year for me, a banner year for Mad Pinball. I did get asked the other day why we don't monetize this podcast. I was like, because Mad Pinball pays for it. I have been asked many times. Yeah, it's like, no, we don't need it. I don't even, I'm surprised people are even listening to us for free. Yeah, let's go. I'm pretty sure no one's going to listen to us for money. Let's put up a paywall so nobody will listen to it. There literally will never be a Patreon. There will never be any of that. There's going to be some restricted episodes. Yeah, there might be ones that aren't safe for children. Are in the deep recesses. After dark episodes. No, like, never seen the light of that.
    122:21
    They just hang out on my hard drive. Jeff listens to him when he's sad. He's like, oh, man, this makes me feel better about my life. But, Kyle, if you want to play us out here with the Mad Pinball jingle, again, thank you all for listening. Let's make this an epic 2025. Happy New Year, everyone. Yes, happy, happy, happy. Happy, happy, happy.
    122:47
    Thank you.