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Musical Eff Chimes, or Arcade Expo 2016

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 17m·analyzed·Jan 18, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Blockade Podcast covers Arcade Expo 2016 venue tour and Farsight Studios interactions.

Summary

Chris Frebus (Shut Your Trap) recounts his visit to Arcade Expo 2016 in Banning, California, a large warehouse-based pinball and arcade museum featuring 600+ machines organized chronologically. He details the venue layout, attending Farsight Studios booth interactions with Mike Lindsey and Norman Stepanski, and extensive gameplay across vintage and classic pinball titles, emphasizing the experience of sampling diverse machines rather than deep play sessions.

Key Claims

  • Arcade Expo 2016 in Banning, California housed 600+ pinball and arcade machines across two connected warehouse buildings

    high confidence · Chris explicitly states '600 plus machines, people' and describes the venue layout with multiple rows of machines organized chronologically

  • The venue had zoning restrictions limiting it to event-only operation rather than permanent public museum hours

    high confidence · Chris discusses how the original plan for weekend public access was blocked due to warehouse precinct zoning restrictions for light industrial use only

  • Farsight Studios' pinball simulator is designed so all shots should be makeable on real machines, informed by consultation with industry experts

    medium confidence · Norman Stepanski told Chris: 'any of the shots that we have in Pinball Arcade should be makeable on a real machine... they're designing it' and consult with 'sharps and whoever else'

  • Admission pricing was $30 Friday, $50 Saturday, $30 Sunday, or $90 for three-day pass

    high confidence · Chris states: 'It was $30 to get in on Friday. I think it was $50 to get in on Saturday and then $30 to get in on Sunday. Or if you bought a three-day pass, it was $90'

  • Stern pinball machines from mid-2000s early era included Mustang, Star Trek, Metallica, and Avengers, but skipped Avatar, CSI, 24, and Big Buck Hunter before jumping to Pirates of the Caribbean

    medium confidence · Chris describes the chronological display: 'it basically went... Mustang and then... Metallica... Avengers... but once you got into... Pirates of the Caribbean... tables like Avatar, CSI, 24, not there'

  • Norman Stepanski observed that Farsight players explore the game more deeply than Farsight's internal test team due to dedicated wizard goal grinding

    high confidence · Norman said: 'you people clearly play our game way more than we play our game' after Chris demonstrated a five-ball bounce sequence on Ripley's

Notable Quotes

  • “Pinball doesn't need to be saved. It needs to be savored.”

    Museum of Pinball (slogan) — Thematic statement about the venue's philosophy, contrasting preservation with appreciation

  • “you people clearly play our game way more than we play our game”

    Norman Stepanski (Farsight Studios) — Reveals gap between developer testing depth and community exploration/exploitation of pinball arcade simulator

  • “we have enough time to test the game, make sure it functions, and then we're on to the next game. We're not sitting here for a week just pounding it hour after hour like you guys are”

    Norman Stepanski (Farsight Studios) — Explains development constraints versus player investment in mastering pinball games

  • “Your dictate to me was you need to always be playing a machine, never waiting in line.”

    Jared Morgan — Strategy suggestion that proved effective at the expo's high machine density environment

  • “could I just have like a five-minute timer on each one of these tables? You just want the experience.”

    Chris Frebus — Captures the sampling mentality at a venue with 600+ machines—focus on experiencing multi-ball/modes rather than deep play

Entities

Arcade Expo 2016eventBanning, CalifornialocationMuseum of PinballorganizationFarsight StudioscompanyNorman StepanskipersonMike LindseypersonChris FrebuspersonJared Morganperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Farsight Studios actively engaging with community players at conventions to understand skill level and gather feedback on machine functionality vs. player perception

    high · Norman Stepanski had multiple conversations with Chris, discussed design intent for shot makability, and expressed interest in player discoveries like the Ripley's five-ball bounce

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Wizard goal grinding emerges as primary method for players to discover pinball exploits, graphical glitches, and advanced techniques; developers lack time for equivalent depth testing

    high · Chris told Norman: 'how I discover most of these things is because of the wizard goals, because I'm just pounding, trying to get that one goal... that's when you learn these things or you find all the exploits'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Sopranos pinball profanity mode criticized as lazy execution—random F-word triggers on bumpers rather than musical sequencing opportunity like other games implement

    medium · Chris: 'you could have made it musical almost... instead it was just kind of like after the ball hits 15 tires, you're like, okay, I'm over this' vs. Xenon-style bumper musicality

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Farsight Studios constrains Pinball Arcade shot design to ensure all shots are theoretically makeable on real machines, validated against industry sharps and expert consultation

    medium · Norman: 'any of the shots that we have in Pinball Arcade should be makeable on a real machine... they consult with sharps and whoever else'

  • ?

    event_signal: Arcade Expo 2016 in Banning, California was well-attended with near-full parking lot by 2pm Friday opening, suggesting strong draw despite remote location and previous year comparisons

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.233

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization
0:44
You are listening to The Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frevis, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me, as always, our co-host, Jared Morgan. Hello there. Hello there, indeed. So I've been informed that my wife is getting sick and tired of hearing, you are listening to... Driving her nuts every week. Bumping. A personal bump. Yeah, but, you know, I don't know. Do TV shows change their theme song every week? Not really. We've been doing this for two years, though. Oh, yeah. It wasn't that.
1:21
No, but I have been doing this intro because I used to do the Spanning the Globe. Oh, yeah, that's right. Spanning the Globe. Because it really was global. It was global. I mean, it still is kind of global, but I think I heard an actual radio host then do that. And I went, did I get it from him? I'm going to stop using that.
1:44
Don't want to copy the dude. Yeah. This isn't my catchphrase, apparently. So we're going to do something different with that. Yeah. Right.
1:55
Oh, so I hinted at it last week that I was going to talk about it in the back room. And I didn't wind up talking about it in the back room because then I completely forgot about it. But I'll mention it just here because it's called, you know, how is your holidays? And I was going to say the day after Christmas, I got into a car accident with a drunk driver.
Walter Day
person
Twin Galaxiesorganization
Wizard Amusementcompany
TNT Amusementscompany
Todd Tuckyperson
Pinball Arcade (game)product
Big Bang Barproduct
Sopranosproduct
Pinball After Darkproduct
Ripley's Believe It or Not!product
Bobby (Pinball Arcade designer)person

high · Chris: 'I pulled in at 2pm right when it started and the parking lot was almost full already so I think they had gangbusters business this time compared to last year'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Farsight Studios maintains exclusivity licensing for digital pinball arcade simulation, positioning this as primary marketing angle to uninformed consumers

    high · Chris observed booth pitch: 'we are a pinball simulator. We're the only ones that have this license. And they kind of go into selling it of the exclusivity'

  • ?

    product_concern: Flipper strength discrepancy observed between Pinball Arcade and real machines; Ripley's backhand shot impossible on real machine but tested in simulator, suggesting potential tuning gaps or real machine degradation

    medium · Chris played Ripley's on real machine and 'couldn't even come close' on right-hand backhand to right ramp; Norman suggested machine may not have been running to snuff

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight Studios marketing Pinball Arcade primarily on mobile/iPad/iPhone platform as 'where it shines,' which Chris and Jared both critique as suboptimal for pinball gameplay requiring controller precision

    high · Chris: 'I was like, what? Where it shines?' when booth staff pitched mobile as optimal platform; both hosts express frustration with thumb-flip controls

  • ?

    venue_signal: Arcade Expo experience optimized for broad sampling (5-minute per-machine goal) rather than deep competitive play; players frequently abandoned live games to explore other machines

    high · Chris found people 'had just left games live' frequently; he adopted strategy of 'just want to see what's special about the table' rather than complete games

    • 2:14
    Yeah, and it was noon. Noon? Noon. Wow. So this guy's been chugging on all morning. Well, circumstances were that, you know, found out all this later, but it happened right in front of a motel because the person was pulling out of the motel, went in front of a pickup truck, pickup truck, clipped the back end, spun it into my lane, and then I impacted there.
    2:44
    The police, when they had her blow the breathalyzer, she blew a .4, which is just .4. Just below. So by the time they got there and did all that, it was just below the limit. Because is it .4 or .08? 0.08, isn't it? All right. See, here's 0.05. Okay. If you blow higher than that, you're over. Okay. Which is, you know, two beers plus an extra one every hour or something like that. Yeah. So that's a lot of drink on board. Yeah, they were impressed that she was actually still, you know, conscious.
    3:22
    Yeah. Yeah, blowing 0.4. that's a lot of that's more like a um an alcohol system in your blood yeah yeah and then um so i i drive a 2005 mini cooper and uh i made the impact maybe you know 15 20 miles an hour it wasn't i was on the slowdown um no it didn't set up the air be about 40 kilometers an hour for us down in the metric system okay i think and uh So, you know, looking at the front damage, it looked like basically, you know, the bumper was a little, not dented because it's, you know, all plastic and everything, but it was scraped up. And obviously it had been pushed in, popped off some of the clips, and the hood had a little wrinkle in it. You know, call the insurance, tell them, and they were getting ready to total the car. Yeah. I could drive the car and everything, but it was that whole factor of, well, it's almost 11 years old. You've got 106,000 miles on it. That's a lot. Yeah. Well, not in California. Well, all right. Dude, for me to have a car that's almost 11 years old and only to have 106,000 miles, I mean, that means I'm only driving 10,000 miles a year. In Southern Cal, that's minimum. Um, usually people are driving like 15, 20,000 miles. Uh, cause we, we love our cars. We commute a lot. Okay. There's a reason why our freeways are so packed.
    4:54
    Right. Okay. Yeah. I guess coming from us, we don't really like, we've got a Mazda three, um, sports model and it's got about 50 or 60,000 kilometers on it. And we got that about 10 years ago. so I think miles is like double every car there's like two miles or something like that I think it sounds like we've got about the same vintage on our, well on the cars so yeah we're pretty low users as well so yeah I get it so anyways after it had gone to the salvage yard and they priced it out they realized that oh they can repair it so it's one of those good news bad news. It was good news because now I don't have to deal with getting a much smaller check and trying to buy a car with it. That's the worst part. When I rode off my motorbike with the guy who put the wrong tire on the back all those years ago now, the value of the bike was something like $6,000 and to buy a new one was $10,000. I had to magically find $3,000 or $4,000 grand just like that so i could get another one or settle for one that was not the same bike so right it's so yeah so fortunately i don't have to deal with that the the bad part is is that you know my car has 106 000 miles on it and the repairs required are you know those mechanical failures are right there on their way so it's just oh yeah man you know it would be kind of nice to have it written off and kind of not nice but exactly i mean i really could have gone either way for me. I am happy because I do love my car. Right now, the rental car that they gave me is this Kia Sorento, which is just snooze-fest of a drive.
    6:50
    Yeah. They're not bad SUVs, though. No, this is not a... Maybe I'm saying the wrong car. Maybe it's not like an Optima. I don't know. It's a four-door sedan. A four-door sedan.
    7:05
    The Sorento down here is like a kind of like a four-wheel drive, sort of. Okay. I don't know. Four-wheel drives over in America are pretty nuts, so it's probably not like a four-wheel drive over there because you've got the Ford F30s and stuff like that, which it is like... Yet, strangely, you guys would have more call for a four-by-four than we do here in the land of concrete.
    7:31
    Well, you know, it's pretty much the same here. The four-wheel drives that you see driving around the roads here, they never really make it off the road. Yeah.
    7:39
    Unless, you know, the ones that do make it off the road are, like, usually the ones that cost you, like, $1,000 or $2,000 that you get secondhand that you bash them up, you know. Yeah.
    7:49
    So, anyway, I pile – oh, I just was informed it's a Sonata. Oh, Sonata. Yeah, right. Sonata. Somebody blowing their nose. um i did though uh take the drive in that 90 minutes away from me to benning california to benning oh man i drove through the land of the dirt people which is what we call uh what once once you leave uh i'm not gonna say civilization but once you leave the major metropolis area and heading out that direction, Banning is on your way to Palm Springs, California. But you get into Riverside, and Riverside is commonly referred to as the land of the dirt people, because there's just dirt. There's no grass.
    8:46
    It's also home to a whole bunch of meth labs. There's no river, is there, at Riverside? maybe occasionally. Maybe occasionally.
    8:59
    You got to understand, we're a desert. Any river that is here is only a river for a month or two, and then it's just a dry stream bed. Right. Sounds pretty much like Australia. California is like Australia's sister. No, you don't understand. The weather in Southern California is identical to Sydney.
    9:21
    Right. So if you go to Sydney, and it's just like Sydney, if you drive far enough away out of Sydney, then all of a sudden you're into that mountainous region, you know, the Blue Mountains and all that jazz. And then if you keep on driving beyond that, welcome to the desert. So it's very similar. Geographically the same. Yeah, right. Yeah. I always say, because I love this weather, I couldn't stand to move someplace where it was humid or too cold or anything else like that. and so when we visited I was just like oh my god I could live in Sydney it would be identical it would be great so you went through the dirt people land, the land of the dirt people to the pinball expo not pinball expo, it's the arcade expo 2.0 and you can look it up on their website just type in arcade expo dot com and there you can revel in the glory of what it was and still going on today, Sunday, with us recording this final day of their thing. But it was relatively easy to find. It was right off the freeway and right near Banning Airport, which is a municipal airport, not like you could really fly into it. But, you know, pulled in, smallish parking lot for where I was. I'd be curious to know how they handled the crowds of Saturday. but I pulled in at 2pm right when it started and the parking lot was almost full already so I think they had gangbusters business this time compared to last year but that being said, it wasn't terribly crowded inside so what you have is basically two not warehouses, but they were metal buildings whatever you want to call it but large floor space buildings and, you know, connected by a little hallway in between them. And so in the one, you had all the pinball machines, and in the other, you had all the arcade machines, which I think they dubbed the Walter Day Memorial Arcade. Well, not memorial, but arcade. Walter Day being the guy that famously wears the referee shirt and was responsible for the Twin Galaxies arcades. They are the ones that maintain all the high scores for Donkey Kong and stuff like that. Yep, yep. So this is their new headquarters, you might say. Cool. I'm checking out museumofpinball.org now, which is the link off Arcade Expo. Right.
    11:56
    So the deal with this place was that originally he was going to want it to be a pinball museum open to the public every weekend or whatever. and then because of the zoning restrictions found out nope can't do that you can only be open now and then oh it's very bizarre it's like because it's like in a warehouse i'd imagine or warehouse precinct therefore it's for like sort of light industrial and therefore businesses like this um probably wouldn't really be welcome there yeah which is i mean again it's like you do realize you're in banning. Nobody comes to banning out of choice.
    12:37
    It's out of necessity. So all of a sudden you have some place that's a destination. Why wouldn't you? I mean, who knows? Maybe they're still working on it. Maybe they can adjust it.
    12:48
    Say the least, it was all nicely set up inside. It didn't feel like a warehouse. It felt like there was real walls and you weren't just in a tin shack or anything. pretty well lit. It wasn't bright lights. They did let a little bit of the night quality fall over the machines, which was cool. I saw on the main banner for Arcade Expo that you can actually play pinball under the stars.
    13:18
    Yeah, I don't know what that was referring to, because I was looking because outside of the facility, they had a couple of food trucks and they had, it looked like to me what would have been garages for where you'd put your tractor in.
    13:37
    And they had a, so in that, one of those garages they had all the shooting gallery games. Yeah, that's right. The light guns that kind of give you feedback. I was really hoping for like some real BB gun game. I don't know what I was thinking. And they knocked down the targets. And then they had a tent set up that It had Marcos. Marcos Specialties. Yeah, Marcos Specialties selling some stuff. They also had a silent auction for a whole bunch of pinball machines that were very beat up. Very beat up. Definitely projects. Speaking of beat up pinballs, as an aside, the Pinheads Pinball Podcast shared a picture of an 8-ball deluxe that was basically devoid of art on it. it had been played that much, that the only art was just a little bit around the bumper skirts and under some of the factory playfield protectors, like slingshots and stuff like that. It was bare wood. Wow.
    14:41
    Insane. Yeah. I guess we're not waxing that. No, I commented in the post on Facebook, I'd spit it in an office, I'll clean that up just fine. Polish it right up. I like the slogan of the Museum of Pinball. Pinball doesn't need to be saved. It needs to be savored. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah, it's true.
    15:06
    So, yeah, it was a, you know, the place was set up really nicely. Rows, I think there was about three main rows. So you had your, call it Capcom Sturm row. Yep. and also in that row was some Atari game plan. Just off of that was Zagariah and the giant Hercules table. I think they called it their rare table section. Except for, I think I saw that once on a Todd Tucky video from TNT Amusements. He had one set up in a warehouse because it was that big.
    15:47
    It's a beast. The thing is huge. And I was laughing because there was some little girl trying to play it, and her arms were just stretched to the limits trying to get to the flippers. And then she was trying to nudge it, and it was like a full body thrust into it. So when I got onto it to try it out, no, you could actually nudge it without needing to do all that. But it was bizarre. Less bizarre playing with the cue ball, more bizarre the fact that the flippers were made out of wood and had rubber on them. um yeah and the the poor flippers man i mean they did not have enough strength to thrust that ball and you know add on top of that the mushy feel of flippers from that era yeah so you're trying to aim and it was you know where you normally would think to flip the ball yeah notch that up a couple of ticks, you're going to flip much earlier than you would think in order to get on the trajectory that you want because that's how slow the flipper would move the ball.
    16:56
    Wow. Yeah. It's a weird tableau. Oh yeah, the pop bumpers are huge. They sound like shotguns when they go off too, don't they? Right? Because they're so... Maybe with the glass off. Yeah, with the glass off.
    17:11
    So it looks like I'm having a look at the pictures here of the Museum of Pinball, and it looks like it's all token play. Is that right? Okay, the whole place was set to free play. Okay. Yeah. Because I'm seeing this big bucket of very attractive-looking gold tokens, which look really, really good. I'd like to have one of those. I'd like to covet them. You know, I love a fiction with tokens and a safecracker. Also, it might have been one of those things that that might have been what they were planning on doing if they were going to be open on a regular basis. But this was for the – because I did pre-sale before January. It was $30 to get in on Friday. I think it was $50 to get in on Saturday and then $30 to get in on Sunday. Or if you bought a three-day pass, it was $90 for all three days. And that's a bargain. Because I remember looking at the stock photo here on Museum of Pinball with the big row um and there is just an insane amount of machines which i know you're going to go into a little bit yeah i'll get into it and i'll break down uh how much of a bargain it wound up being i think you'll enjoy that um cost per table per um yes yeah yes so they had so they had that row um also off of that row was they had set up the uh never drains in um southern cal yeah for the tournament that was all roped off you couldn't go in unless you're actually entering the tournament, those tables all had cameras above them with the TV monitors showing what was being played. Yep. And then when you went over to the next row, it was nothing but Bally on one side and Williams on the other side. Right. And if you've seen the picture that I showed on Twitter, these are very, very long rows. Yeah. And I'll note, all the machines were set up in chronological order. Oh, very nice. Yeah, so you could definitely walk the history and see how things kind of changed. So what was that sort of early to late 2000 Stern Road looking like to you Yeah have we talked about that last time Well funny enough the very machines we were talking about weren there Oh, really? Yeah, they didn't have, you know, it basically went, see if I can, I'm never going to remember them, but it was like, it went Mustang and then Avenger or Metallica, excuse me, Mustang, Star Trek, Metallica, Avengers, you know, those were all, you know, were coming. But once you got into, like, you know, pre-Family Guy, all of a sudden it jumped to, I think, Pirates of the Caribbean. And then it jumped to World Poker Tour.
    20:07
    And, you know, so tables like Avatar, CSI, 24, not there. Big Buck Hunter, the Shack Attack, or whatever. I didn't see any of those.
    20:22
    Shack Attack is a godly, but I know the one you're talking about is like NBA or something. I think they call it. Yeah, they've redone something. It was actually, yeah, that's right. It was NBA. They've redone Shack Attack. They redid whatever it was, that terrible movie, Space Jam.
    20:40
    Yeah. And then, so then the next row after that was a mix of daddy east and sega not much there in the way of those i mean there was probably maybe i don't know 15 15 tables right so it was kind of a light showing of those and then you got into the both bally and williams ems and the em section was kind of like the row continued down from the Data East Sega stuff, but then to the other side of it, it was now split into a whole bunch of columns of, call it five tables deep, and the rest of the tables went along the wall, and those were all your wedge heads and EMs of that nature. I'm looking at the list now at forward slash collection on arcadeexpo.com. Yeah, heaps and heaps of EMs, man. And I don't even know if that list is necessarily complete, because there was a couple of tables that I played that I didn't see in the list. Because I went back later and, again, we'll go through the list of what I played.
    21:56
    Oh, and there was... They did have a curtained-off section. I was like, ooh, what's behind the curtain? So I opened up the curtain and, hey, it's Pinball After Dark! So they had Sexy Girl, which is the Playboy rethemed with the monitor in the play field that actually shows centerfolds. Then they had, I can't remember what the name of this table was. I'd never seen it before. The whole room they lit with black light and this table just glowed in the black light. It was really kind of cool looking for that. It was a 1970s solid state machine. And then they had Big Bang Bar in there, which also looks phenomenal under blacklight. I think it was designed for that. It just looks phenomenal in general, basically. And then next to that was Sopranos, which they did not have the family-friendly version playing. Right. I've never heard that game in non-family mode. Is it a little bit blue, is it? it's it's just them saying the f word every single time the ball hits something yeah really which is mildly amusing at first but then you just realize you could have made that so much better you could have you could have figured out a way to string them together because it was all different variations of how you would say it um you know with a jersey accent and then there would be a couple of ships dropped in now and then and stuff. But it's like you could have made it musical almost. And instead it was just kind of like after the ball hits 15 tires, you're like, okay, I'm over this. It was a specific mode that did it too. It was, I think, a big score or something like the mode that fired that off. So if they actually leaned them to the pop bumpers or something like that, you could actually have like musical F chimes. Exactly. right it would be great because there are some tables where the the the chimes and the pop bumpers change and then you know you hit enough times and kind of gets this different musicality going to it kind of what xenon does even yeah you know something like um when you got when you get super jets on um indy jones it actually changes to different sort of pulse sounds when they hit each bumper. And yeah, that's right. Yeah. I found it a little lazy on Stern's part that they could have done something really cool with it and didn't. But again, that was that era.
    24:33
    It was Stern trying to get things out the door and not die, not actually close the doors. Exactly. Worrying about the F-mode. How that sounds is probably lower than priority list.
    24:47
    So then I wandered into the arcade section that warehouse. And that's where vendors were and that's where Farsight Studios was where they had their booth set up. So Mike was there, Mike Lindsey, and Norman Stepanski were there. And so I got to hang with them and talk with them a bunch. Norman, I actually had probably four different conversations with him throughout the night because he kept on popping up on the pinball floor, squeaking in some games. And so then I'd go and talk to him and I played a couple games with him. I just imagine how that would have gone. It would have been like, oh, I'm just heading off to the toilet. I'll be back in two hours.
    25:30
    Yeah. So, it was interesting, though, going and kind of hanging with the guys at the Fireside booth just in terms of when people would walk up that had no clue what the Pinball Arcade was. And I got to kind of listen to what their pitch was and see how they sell the game to people that don't know what the game is. Okay. Well, how'd they go? Well, it's kind of a, they approach it from a, A, do you know what the pinball arcade is? And if the answer is no, then it's, ah, well, we are a pinball simulator. We're the only ones that have this license. And they kind of go into selling it of the exclusivity. Let's try that again. Exclusivity.
    26:15
    Words are hard. of what they have going on in the game and that they have, you know, 60 plus tables and stuff. To people that actually have heard about it but may not have ever experienced it, then that's what they're trying to get into is more of a showing of, well, hey, you know, you're familiar with these pinball machines, you may be familiar with some digital pinball, ours are, check out how, you know, what kind of recreation we're doing and selling it on that aspect. The part that I did find amusing, though, was, you know, because they had it set up with PS4s running, And I over one person was, you know, they're like talking to him about it. And they were like, oh, well, you can get it on Steam or you can get on the consoles. But where it really shines is on the mobiles. You can play it on your iPad or iPhone. And I was like, what? Where it shines? Well, it shines because you don't have to sit in front of a TV and actually, you know, sit there. And I think that's ultimately what the pitch is. What visually? Come on. No, no. So it's like probably one of the worst platforms.
    27:19
    That's my least favorite part about trying to play on a phone is flipping with my thumbs. It's like that's unnatural to me. I can't move my thumbs that fast. That's why I play with a controller. Exactly, right? Yeah.
    27:31
    But, yeah, so I was very happy to go to the show. I wasn't looking forward to it that much. I mean, it was kind of more like, oh, it'll be a thing, and then we'll see if I'm amused by it. but I've got my pinball league. I'm getting my pinball fixed. Then I walk into the building and it was like my head was on a swivel just ready to spin off.
    27:52
    I literally started walking the floor and I was like, oh, I've got to play that. Eventually, I just had to tell myself, okay, quit saying what you have to play and start playing something.
    28:03
    Just get up to a game and press stop. Exactly. Your dictate to me was you need to always be playing a machine, never waiting in line. Well, yeah, you'd see a machine. They're like, oh, I want to play that. And, oh, well, there's just one person playing it right now. You know, I can wait for them to finish. Meanwhile, there's 10 other machines right next to you that don't have anybody on it. Yeah, that's right. So I started telling myself, no, just jump on, start playing a machine. And then sometimes I'd be playing it, and the person would jump off and be like, okay, I'm off this machine. I'm going over here. And I found that all the time where people had just left games live. Yeah, yeah. And that was probably the most bizarre aspect of the whole thing. Because if you started having a good game of pinball, you were kind of getting disappointed.
    28:50
    You're like, oh, crap, I got to stay on this for all three balls. No, I got to sample some more of these tables because, like I said, 600 plus machines, people. Yeah, so you weren't there to show off your pinballs. No. You wanted to actually go, I just want to – it was almost like you wanted to have – could I just have like a five-minute timer on each one of these tables? Yeah, you just want the experience. It just turns off. You just want the experience. My whole goal, which is kind of my goal when playing pinball in general, was just can I activate multi-ball? Can I get one of the cool modes going? On Family Guy Pinball, it was can I get Stewie Pinball going?
    29:30
    You just want to see what's special about the table. You want to basically activate the playfield toy. You want to interact with the playfield toy. And once you had that going, then you kind of were like, okay, I've sampled this enough.
    29:46
    Let me sample something else. So, yeah, it was putting your head into a different frame of mind. It was definitely bizarre.
    29:56
    I was trying to play any, not any, but any of the pinball arcade machines that I don't regularly get to. yeah so if i would see those i'd be like oh i gotta i gotta try this out and see how it plays in comparison and of course you know that comparison is hard to make like for instance i got to play ripley's i haven't played ripley's in eons you know a real machine and so to the point that i really don't have much memory other than knowing that i probably put a quarter or two in and so i'm on the ripley's machine and i'm like getting ready to do my right hand backhand to the right ramp couldn't even come close. I mean, like, the flipper wasn't strong enough, the ball, there was no way the ball was going to be making it. I was like, oh, I guess you're not able to make that backhand shot. So I brought that up to Norman when I was talking to him, and he goes, or maybe the machine wasn't running up to snuff. He goes, because any of the shots that we have in Pinball Arcade should be makeable on a real machine. that's how they're designing it and i think that's where they get their their info from the sharps and whoever else they consult with where it's like no you should be able to actually make that shot or no that shot's impossible you need to adjust it so that that doesn't happen um yeah so i did get to show off my my five ball bounce uh trick of ripley's at the farsight booth uh because i I was kind of talking to Norman about railroads in the game. Oh, yes, railroads.
    31:35
    Railroads. Right, and I said, here, let me show you my favorite one. And so I booted up, I booted up Ripley's and got it into South America. And, yeah, it releases from the top. I got my upper flipper flipped. It rolls off that, does a kiss off the left slingshot. I got my left flipper up. It bounced off the top of the left flipper, lands into my right flipper. I'm like, great. Then I backhand it up onto the ramp. There it does the automatic kick into the shrunken head, bounces off the shrunken head where it hits the top of the right slingshot, bounces over to the left slingshot, left slingshot, slings it all the way over to the right side of the table, which bounces it into the scoop, and then the scoop kicks it, do a dead pass back to the right flipper.
    32:26
    I do that whole sequence and Norman's job was on the floor. He goes, have you recorded that? Can you send that to me? And I go, I go, well, I guess I could do a Twitch feed or something and, you know, record it. And he goes, yeah, I want to show that to Bobby. And he goes, or Bobby will probably change it. Then I go, yeah, I'm not going to be sending that to you. That's my favorite move. It's like, you can do it. If you can pull it off and repeat that, that, that sequence, then you could show Bobby, but I'm not going to do that. Well, and it was at that point that Norman said, he goes, you people clearly play our game way more than we play our game. Yeah. And I was like, well, yeah. And I told him, I said, you know, how I discover most of these things is because of the wizard goals, because I'm just pounding, trying to get that one goal. And so I'm concentrating on a certain shot just over and over and over again. and that's when you learn these things or you find all the... Learn the exploits. You learn the exploits, but that's also where you find the graphical glitches or the things that bother you.
    33:33
    And Norman just kind of went, well, yeah. He goes, we have enough time to test the game, make sure it functions, and then we're on to the next game. We're not sitting here for a week just pounding it hour after hour like you guys are. so it was kind of funny on that aspect just to be able to show them something and be like hey see but so yeah so I eventually started playing machines and was having a good time with that and I guess we can kind of get into all the tables I played so I'm going to go in not the order I played them but we're going to go just chronologically by year everything that I played mark them down if you want to um so i played central park which i would never would have ever normally played that but uh yeah i got into central park that's right uh they had big shot so i was able to play big shot um i will say that it does play pretty close to tpa other than the fact that it didn't send my ball out the out lanes nearly as much as pinball arcade does but the flipper strength is there there's no doubt about that because we know it's coming I played fireball and it's a really unique table there's no doubt about it the way they scoot in you have to play the table differently than what you're used to when those zipper flippers are activated it's kind of like holding the ball you've got to think of it as cradling the ball yeah you think effectively uh then i played i had to because you know whenever anybody whenever the table speculation page happens and people want to know uh you're putting out their guesses of what the next table is somebody inevitably puts evil kenevil so i played evil kenevil and not only did i play evil kenevil it's the first time i've ever turned over an em So, goody on me. I was very proud of myself.
    35:46
    My favorite part about that table was I tweeted out a picture of the slingshot plastic, which was a very well-endowed gal that was obviously in a very cold room. Very cold. And I noticed that it seemed to be a theme of most of the 70s tables art. Yeah.
    36:14
    Boobs a go-go. Boobs a go-go, yeah. So that was kind of amusing. But the ones on Evil Knievel were spectacular. It was just like, it was quite amusing. So go to my Twitter feed, at ShutYourTraps, and you can check out some of the pictures that I took while at the Arcade Expo. So I played 8-Ball, which was just a couple of tables away from 8-Ball Deluxe. So I was able to actually see how similar the layouts were, but then obviously what 8-Ball Deluxe adds to the whole thing. But the interesting part about that that I didn't realize about 8-Ball was it's Fonzie playing pool with another one of those heavily well-endowed ladies.
    36:58
    But I just kind of was like... I like Fonzie. Yeah, Fonzie would be a little more distracted than he was in this photo normally. That's not acoustic. Then I played Genie, and I had a long discussion with Norman about Genie because it plays so much slower than what Pinball Arcades does. That upper play field with the two flippers up there, you know when you play them pinball arcade it's just like you can't tell what's going on flippers like they behave like full strength full-size flippers oh but they just rocket that ball and so that was the thing i noticed with this was i was like hey i'm actually able to follow the ball now it didn't make it making the shots any easier but it was at such a speed that i was able to see the ball moving uh what norman kind of comment about that was they had so many complaints with the Gottlieb and Williams collection of the balls being floaty and seeming to not be touching the table that they purposely ramped up the tabling on these machines. So that's why the ball moves so much faster. And I said, that's fine if you were trying to avoid that criticism, but it's not how the table plays. It's not realistic. No, it's not realistic. So, whether that discussion actually hits home or not, it definitely played... The perception of the speed of the ball definitely plays a factor. Like I said, the table angles of where the ball goes, okay, that was still very similar to how Pimble Arcade plays. Like I said it just feels like you need to slow the game down somehow That all So slow the game down and adjust slightly the flipper strength in certain areas of the game I think the thing with those little mini flippers, not all flippers are the same. If you have smaller flippers, the strength behind them is different.
    39:07
    Well, it looks like Genie's flippers were really strong. They weren't like, because most of those tables from the 70s and early 80s, especially the Bally early 80s, they have kind of a mush feel to them. You know, they make a lot of sound, but they're not a lot of fury. Not as bad as what EM tables are, but they're still a mush factor. Yeah, if you play tables like Fathom or Embryon or Paragon,
    39:34
    you know what I'm talking about. Blackwell. So, yeah. Yeah, it just kind of has that, it's like the flipper kind of going, you know, to push the ball. It looks like it's flipping hard, but there's not a lot of strength behind it. No. So that's what's missing from those, as well as the table, the degrees that the table is on. The rank. Yeah, exactly. So then, of course, I mentioned I played Hercules. I played I feel like I'm missing a table it was right next to this, I'm looking at my list oh there it is, okay I played Xenon which looks phenomenal in person it just looks great with a darkened room and this was a beautiful back glass on it I can't get excited about that table on mobile, it's just flat a bit boring, no, it looked fantastic What were the flippers' strengths like on that? Because it seems ridiculously strong in TPA. No, the flippers are pretty good on Xenon, actually. Well tuned.
    40:42
    Yeah, there was a definite difference between the wide-body ballies and that style of ballies, even though they were right around the same years.
    40:55
    So, yeah, Xenon felt pretty good. I don't have any complaints about how it feels in TPA. Cool. I played Blackout.
    41:07
    Is that the one with the Blackout? Blackout is right around the same time as Gorgar, Firepower. It was all those same years.
    41:20
    I can't remember what the deal with Blackout was. If the whole table winds up turning off the lights at some point. but sounds like it yeah interactive GI yeah that's that could be it pinball whiz yeah I played this massive wide body stern called scorpion which so from stern electronics not stern yeah same era as um uh that what was it called the space one that we got in tpa oh flight 2000 yeah that one Yeah, give or take a couple years, but... Yeah, it was kind of bizarre.
    42:06
    No doubt about it. Then I played... Let's see, I played Gorgar, and I played Medusa. That was kind of a trip, I do got to say. Why was that strange? It's got... When you first launch, it's got an upper play field with flippers you're playing in, and it's all about the drop targets. and then if the ball and that takes up the entire top half of the pinball machine and then if the ball drops down now you've got some little U-turns and I can't remember if that one had zipper flippers also on the bottom. I don't know, it was a weird combination, it was just kind of interesting So a little bit like Black Knight or maybe Grey and the Lizard Kind of a Black Knight-ish, although probably more Grand Lizard, I guess. It did have Grand Lizard player, but it was not powered up, so I couldn't sample it.
    43:08
    Moving on, because this list is huge. I played Fireball 2, which really has nothing to do with the original Fireball other than some art. yeah isn't that Fireball 2 has multi-ball doesn't it? I don't know if it did I didn't activate it although it did have is that the one I think it had this weird thing where the balls were always captured on the left and right side or is that the one I'm thinking of? yeah and so if you got the ball into an upper saucer it would just kick out the ball right near your flipper and then that ball would roll down and lock in its place in return. Ah, yeah. So sort of like a, yeah, a juggler's doll. It kind of reminded me of what Steve Ritchie was doing with Star Trek Next Generation, where you know, a ball is already locked in, so you're not having to wait for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We had 8-Ball Deluxe, and I will tell everybody this. So when I was talking to Norman, and I was talking to him about a couple of other pool-themed pinball tables. And then I mentioned 8-Ball Deluxe. And he goes, you've got to tell me why is that so popular? Why does everybody want 8-Ball Deluxe? And so I just kind of mentioned, well, it's something of that era. It's a really great tournament machine. And he goes, but why do people want that table so much? What makes it so great? And I said, well, have you gone and played it yet? And he goes, no. I said, well, let's go. So I dragged him over to it, put him on the machine.
    44:52
    He started playing it. I said, look, it's all about those drop targets up there. You need to knock those down and just walk around with it. So he's playing it, and he's playing it, and I'm hearing him mutter the words of, oh, I'm so close. If I could just get that. Oh, I just missed that one. Let me try that again. And he's doing all that, and I knew then he's hooked. And so sure enough, he finished, and he looked at me, and he goes, I get it now. so folks, I may have done us a solid. I may have finally gotten a champion for eight ball deluxe up there at, uh, studios. Cause that's easy. Thanks you. Yeah. Cause honestly, Norman is the, he's the pinball fanatic. Yeah. And so if he gets excited about a table because of personal experience, then he'll go tooth and nail vouching for it. and as opposed to some of the other guys up there who might be just looking at the pinball database rankings and going, oh, well, this one's more popular. Or in the case of what happened with why we got, well, not necessarily why, but part of the reason why we got Q-Ball Wizard, which is they took a look at the pictures and thought, oh, well, that looks more interesting, never having played 8-Ball Deluxe. so that's what having Farsight at this expo is a big and at any of the pinball expos is big because they're getting to play these things and see what it's like and get personal experience behind them and then that brings the love up yeah so I think it's if we have an opportunity to like if we're stalking the Facebook feeds for pinball arcade and we see them going to a conference and it's in your area, it would be a wise idea to go up there and introduce yourself to them. And then drag them around to the machines you love. Yeah, totally. Because there's so many machines out there that they probably haven't had exposure to or don't actually understand why they're so popular. And like Chris said, go out there and actually do a bit of canvassing and tell them why. Because it's not like they don't want to do them. As Chris says, it's just they don't understand the appeal. So if you can show them and actually sell it to them, sell the sizzle, not the sausage. Well, what I've always said when they would put up these polls of, oh, which table do you want first? And everybody's just going on YouTube and watching videos. That doesn't tell you the story at all. It's about the feel of the machine and getting it in yourself. So my coming up next, what probably was I don't know why it stuck with me, but it's the one machine that I'm just like, we need this in pinball arcade. And it's called Vector. It has got a really interesting layout. It's got this double row of drop targets that you have to knock down before you can access the ramp that's behind it. I couldn't hear the audio, but Norman, who's also a big fan of this table, told me that it's the story of the table is that it's a like a pinball aptitude test is to check how good you are at pinball. So it measures it measures your ball speed and how fast you're doing loops or stuff like that. And that's what the story is, is that it's opening up this stuff as you prove yourself capable of handling the ball. Wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I encourage everybody to look up Vector. It is very cool, and it's a very odd kind of layout. And that's the other thing that struck me with the show. Some of the tables that were catching my eye, it was all these ballets and Williams. but they had a different layout than what we're used to in pinball arcade and i think it would be good to have this kind of variety uh for these layouts because it definitely offers a different approach to what we're used to on most of these tables yeah absolutely i think variety is something that's you know arguably a little bit sort of um limited in uh pinball arcade because we just don't had these early tables, which they were trying out new things. They were going, what can we get away with? What will operators actually buy? Yeah, so it may not be a popular table, but I found them fun. I mean, like I said, they were definitely interesting. Because they weren't a classic fan or a classic, you know, sort of design like that that started to proliferate in the 90s.
    49:32
    So, yeah. Let's see. Then I played Spectrum. I played another Stern called Split Second, which was circus-themed sci-fi. I don't know. It was weird.
    49:46
    I played Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man. I wish they could get this into Pinball Arcade, but I know it'll never happen because of that license. Right. Because they're really tough.
    49:59
    Especially with Pac-Man. Right. They don't fuck Pac-Man away. Plus, they're getting their money off now. Exactly.
    50:07
    Exactly. But it's an interesting layout, and you have to do this little – it doesn't have a video field, but it's got a whole bunch of inserts that are yellow dots, and that becomes a maze section that you can wind up activating. But anyway, it's pretty cool.
    50:25
    Played BMX, which was terrible. Played Gold Ball, Firepower 2, X's and O's. Yeah. Big guns. Fire, which... So Fire was in the arcade that I used to work in back in 91. And I hated that machine because it's the... A track mode, I hated the sounds that used in a track mode. And then when you're actually playing the game, to me it's got music that's almost as annoying as going nuts. Wow. But it is, it's a unique layout in that everything is kind of a dead end except for one orbit.
    51:16
    It's just a lot of dead ending the ball. So it's not much of a flow table, but it's a challenging table. So, I mean, I get why people want it in TPA, but I don't know how much fun people would wind up eventually having with it. Long term, you've got to realize that, you know, you're not just walking up to this in an arcade, playing it a couple of times and going home. Like this is in perpetuity. So you've got to make sure the game really has legs when you pitch it for TPA. Yeah.
    51:46
    What else? Let's see. Moving on down. Hard body, which is just got that Rachel McTish, I think. Anyway, she was a bodybuilder plastered all over the back glass. and it's a horrible-looking back glass just because it looks like it belonged on a premier table.
    52:08
    The City Slicker, that one kind of stood out again for a bizarre kind of layout. That's a ballet table.
    52:15
    Laser War, which was Daddy East. Monday Night Football, which was another Daddy East. That was kind of bizarre, very 80s. Swords of Fury. There's another one that I really now am a champion for getting in Pimble Arcade. Again, bizarre layout. I remember playing that when I was about 11 down at the bowling alley.
    52:43
    It was very interesting to see that game. It's around the same era as Big Guns, I think. yeah they're about separated by year it's 88 big guns it's 87 it's similar sort of era and that era tends to be quite fun yeah limited rule sets because they didn't really have a really huge processor to work with but fun just to shoot around yeah then we got to play Bonsai Run I still haven't found anywhere that has one of those like not in Australia. I'd love to play that.
    53:27
    Bad Cats, which yeah, I don't want Bad Cats. I want Mousing Around. Police Force, RoboCop. To all of you that want RoboCop in the game, go to hell. That game sucks.
    53:43
    It's terrible. Any Data East era before the 90s kind of really sucks. No, that's 89. Yeah. But it's terrible. It was just really bad. I don't see why people are hopped up on that one. The same with, you know, I feel the same about Phantom of the Opera. Like, the thing with Dada East tables back then is they really had... They're one-trick ponies? They were one-trick ponies. One major feature, and that was it. It was the game centered around that. It's boring as a player to have to, like, play that. Back to the Future, my God, is that horrible Marty McFly art. It's terrible. It reminds me, did you ever see that there was that fresco on the wall of Jesus and some lady decided to take it upon herself to touch it up and she basically blurred the entire thing and drew eyes and a happy face. It looked like something Dean would have done. It was just bad.
    54:52
    And I don't even, I mean, I know that they ran into an issue where they couldn't get Michael J. Fox on there, but boy. Or the Doc. They couldn't get Christopher Lloyd on there either. Yeah, they could. Okay, on the promotional flyer, if you have a look at the promotional flyer for that game, neither of those actors are on it. Well, on the machine, it certainly looks like Doc Brown. I mean, I had no issue telling with Doc Brown.
    55:19
    So they were they were festering things all the way back in 1989. Oh, yeah. Well, that's exactly what I was like. I was like, anybody that complained about our festering knew this was bad festering.
    55:32
    Played Diner, played Ballet Game Show, Whirlwind. I love that game. It's funny. it's just it's you know another sort of taxi era game that doesn't really have a huge deep rules that geez getting to showcase bonanza and the music in those eras i've already touched on the music in those games man they're fantastic yeah they are awesome uh as i said brad pinbot uh roller games uh which again i made sure that norman has played it likes it i desperately want it and uh uh he says he likes it so again we'll see um i played bally's harley davidson which i didn't realize that there was an earlier era harley davidson you know what truth be truth be told i think i like the storm one oh really yeah Although, I will say, it had the call-out also of, live to ride, ride or die, or whatever that thing is. But they at least had a manly voice doing it, as opposed to the stern one, where you're like, this dude's never sat on a bike in his life.
    56:48
    Let's see, he played Black Rose. Doctor Who was actually at the Farsight booth. They had that, obviously, promoting their Kickstarter, which is going on now, if you feel like contributing. go to the Kickstarter page for Farsight and picture dollars in.
    57:07
    But yeah, the Doctor Who was, it wasn't their own Doctor Who either. It was from the show and I had the color DMD on it, which apparently the show didn't want to give them because of that, but they were like, please. Please, Ken has, we need it. I like it how on all the games that they have color DMD on, they got like the little topper on. so they stick out really prominently when you're walking down the road. It looks pretty cool. Yeah.
    57:34
    Played Alvin G's World Tour. Yeah. And that was another one that I played with Norman. Norman apparently is a big fan of the Alvin G and Company machines. They're good. They're really good.
    57:47
    That one was pretty cool. It had reminded me a lot of Monster Bash just in terms of the theming. Not because of the monsters, but putting a band together. But the trippiest thing about it was that it has feedback in the flipper buttons. They push back on you.
    58:03
    Which obviously would never translate to pinball arcade. No. But it was kind of cool. It was interesting. They also had Alvin G pistol poker and that one sucked Didn like that one There also Alvin G Soccer Ball as well which is the two joust style
    58:20
    Right, which is probably what we're going to get into while they're kids. Yeah, we're going to be going to the TPA. So that'll be interesting to see. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they do that one, as an aside.
    58:31
    Judge Dredd played Last Action Hero, which, again, it's one-trick pony. Sorry. Yeah, that crane. It's a mongrel to try and get the ball into that crane when you need to. You can never do it.
    58:43
    Corvette. That was really cool. Enjoyed that. The shaking engine on the car. Yeah, that's all right. Do you reckon, compared to Corvette, what do you think about the Corvette versus Mustang?
    58:57
    You know what I mean? I liked Corvette better. I'm not impressed by Mustang at all. No, I agree. Corvette would be my pick as well. Now, if you said, which do we do with Corvette or Indy 500? now we're talking I'm not sure I kind of like both of them equally so I actually managed to play an Indy 500 or Grand Prix as it's branded outside of the US here in the arcade in the city and like there was some stuff wrong with it like the common thing is the little the car in the middle of the place wasn't going back down again which is a common fault and yeah it was a little bit beat up but you can make most shots and it's like seeing that ball race around the outside of the play field can get at the first time you're playing it. It's a little bit disconcerting sometimes when, especially when you got multi-ball going, you're going, well, what am I looking at here? It's balls racing. I kind of really Indy 500 to, and I don't know if they're the same era, but with world cup 94,
    59:55
    I think of them as like hourglass tables where there's this little narrow section. You got to get the ball through in the middle to get to the upper stuff, but it's just jam-packed with various shots. So it kind of makes a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, it's good.
    60:10
    Let's keep on cranking through. I played Flintstones. Yeah, let's not get that. I had fun with that when it was in the arcade. It was... It's one of those ones that... I don't think it would last so well in TPA. It's fun, though, to play, if you do get to play one. Played Guns and Roses, and of course I made my pitch to Norman about that one too where I was like, come on, now's the time to strike.
    60:39
    Played Johnny Mnemonic, played Frankenstein, No Fear, Pinball Magic. Dude, we need Pinball Magic. It's such a good game. Capcom Tables, man. Just get them all. They're fantastic. My comment with that one though is that it's a dark table. There's not a lot of general illumination on it and the corner it was tucked into didn't have a lot of light shining on it. And man, was it hard to see what was going on. Yep.
    61:07
    Yeah. Played break shot, played break, which unfortunately was tuned in such a manner that the ball would do straight down the middle drains. From the pops. From the pops, which made it virtually impossible to do anything on the table. I mean, it'd be like one, two, three, balls are done. Hey, look at that. You've scored four points.
    61:28
    Have a nice day. Yeah. Then that would pretty much be the last of the Bally Williams, everything else. Everything else is Stern. So play Monopoly, High Roller Casino, Austin Powers. Yuck. Yeah, that just confirmed everything.
    61:46
    Ripley's Believe It or Not, Harley Davidson, Elvis, Dale Jr. version of NASCAR, Sopranos, Pirates of the Caribbean. Terrible table. Sorry, folks. I don't care for the Disney deal. I don't need the pirates.
    62:01
    I did not enjoy it at all. World Poker Tour, though, I'd be down for. That's a weird table that I think has a bazillion rules.
    62:12
    It's Drop Target Central, too. It's pretty cool. We got there at our Pingball League, but unfortunately it needs to sort of go in and get shopped. The upper play field is pretty much like you can't see the pop-up is below it. It's just you can't see any of the lower playfield below it. It makes it really hard to work out what's going on. It looks like a big black platform. It looks terrible.
    62:40
    I'd love to get my hands on that one and really shop it. And then I play, let's see, Family Guy, Avengers, Hulk LED version, Mustang, and then they had off in a special tent a brand new WrestleMania kiss, and they had Game of Thrones, both the pro and the LE version, and I played both of those.
    63:02
    Both of the Game of Thrones they had hooked up with headphones, and that was really interesting to play because it's kind of sensory deprivation. All you're hearing is the game noises, but not any of the mechanical noises. That would be interesting. Yeah, that was really bizarre. good sound package I liked the lighting had no clue what the heck was going on couldn't figure it out to save my life they kept on telling me winter is coming and I had no clue what I was supposed to be shooting at nothing was blinking I was like what but the only thing I knew how to do was lock a ball and you know the play field art is terrible I really don't like the art package at all that being said I did manage to have an extremely good game and posted as the Lannister champion on the LE version for when I played it on Friday. So I was like, woohoo, I did something good. So what do you think, compared to the Pro and the LE, do you think having that upper play field makes a big difference?
    64:11
    It certainly adds a whole different style of play, I would say. The Pro version is very flow. Yeah, it is. It's just, the ball's just moving all the time. Whereas with the upper play field thing, you're stopping to do something.
    64:28
    You know, it's kind of like. It's a different game. Yeah, it's really it's two different games. So it's hard. It's hard to determine which. The funny story with that was there was these guys playing it.
    64:44
    And they were playing both of them just over and over and over again. And one of them then all of a sudden was like, hi, where are you from? and I'm like, why are you being friendly?
    64:53
    And so I kind of said, and he's like, oh, yeah, we just bought Game of Thrones. So we figured we might as well play it. And I'm like, if you just bought it, why aren't you playing everything else? Yeah, you're going to be having a lot of time to play this. Right. It's very strange.
    65:11
    Yeah, I will say WrestleMania did nothing for me. It was, I don't know, it had some interesting looks or something, but I don't know. It didn't do anything for me. That's the sort of general consensus I've heard about that table. I can't really form my own opinion because I haven't played it. And I was very disappointed. I was hoping with Kiss to be able to activate multi-ball because I wanted to see the balls flying out of Gene's mouth. And I had two balls locked. I just never got the third ball locked. So that was kind of – I was bummed that I wasn't able to get that going. So in total, here's the numbers breakdown for everybody. I played seven tables from the 70s or earlier, 26 from the 80s, 23 from the 90s, 17 from the 2000s, for a grand total of 73 different tables played, many of which I played multiple times. But if you're only factoring in on one play per time with my $30 entry fee, that amounted to 40 cents per play.
    66:15
    That's pretty cheap. And if you factor in the T-shirt that I bought from it, which was a twenty dollar T-shirt and add in the entry fee, it was sixty eight cents per table played. So still cheaper than what you would normally find out in the wild for any machine.
    66:34
    Yeah, absolutely. That's that's pretty good. You can't argue with that sort of value. No, no. So that was that was a really good time since this podcast is running way long like we used to do. it's a good solid hour this one it's nothing but pinball except for my auto crash in the beginning let me see what else I came up with so it wasn't there in the beginning of the day but I was there from 2 o'clock until 11.30 so 9 and a half hours and there was this smell in the air and it was wonderful it was electricity no but it wasn't just in the EM aisle that's the thing it was in all the aisles but it was that electricity and incandescent lights and you could feel the warmth from them and it was just that slightly you could just you know it was on your nostrils and ozone yeah there you go ozone smell and it just grew as the day went on so that was I mean the funk in the room would have been awesome yeah. They should put that on a scratch and sniff card. I'm just glad it wasn't the smell of BO.
    67:49
    Yeah, BO and farts. That often happens. Very glad I went on Friday because at the start of the day, it was most of the tables were lit up. By the end of the day, there were a bunch of tables that were no longer working, no longer lit. The entire Zacharias section was shut down.
    68:15
    That doesn't surprise me. You've got to figure this is only the third time that the pinball section has been open to the general public.
    68:27
    They're still trying to figure out what machines are functioning and what's wrong with them. There was a slew of technicians running around.
    68:35
    Yeah, exactly. It's staggering. 600. I only played 73. I mean, you consider that, you know, the Pacific Pinball Museum, they have 120 tables generally on display and able to be accessed. And they have to take a whole day off each week to completely go through and shop them. They close one day a week just so they can get through and fix up all the mechanical issues. So an 800 fleet of pinball, like 600 machine fleet, man, the fact that there's like, you know, a couple of machines down, it's pretty good. No, and like I said, they had technicians in red shirts running around. And if anybody had a problem, you could flag them down, let them know. They would put a note on top of the machine so that they knew what to fix, you know, what the person had told them.
    69:27
    You know, sometimes it was just a matter of putting credits in. Other times it was finding a ball. I mean, even by the end of the day, Metallica was having problems where it couldn't find balls.
    69:36
    So it wasn't just restricted to your EMs having a problem or anything. It was modern machines. Really solid. Yeah. No, it was across the map.
    69:44
    So I can only imagine if that was Friday with us pounding on them, the crowd that would be there on Saturday is going to be enormous and probably really put them through the ringer. And then if you went on Sunday, it's like, well, what's left? what's still standing that we can play um so yeah like i said i i'm glad i went on friday uh let's see what else was highlights from the show oh i i did see billy mitchell from afar and yes he was wearing his american flag tie okay there yeah i i it's like can that guy not go to an arcade expo? No, I don't think so.
    70:27
    There was this weird... They had a stage set up outside for musicians, but they were bizarre. One guy was playing everything on his phone.
    70:40
    The instruments on his phone. It was this 8-bit sounding music. He was funky and kind of cool, and then he started singing. He was so off-key, it was ridiculous.
    70:53
    You like made my ears hurt. So it sounds like there was like a chiptune scene outside. So, OK. Yeah. It sounds interesting. Yeah. Hard on the ears. Yes. And then later on, I went back outside when I was eating dinner. And and I'll tell you what dinner is. We got to talk about snacks. um the somebody was playing uh basically doing covers of gary newman songs which i mean i like gary newman you know he's very electronic of the 80s but you know you're pretty weird um yeah i'll just mention snack wise because how can you not eat like crap at one of these things they had a hot dog stand and i got the spicy bacon mac and cheese dog which was a louisiana hot link with mac and cheese on top of it and cheddar cheese in a bun.
    71:51
    And it was – What more could you want? Yeah, it was – oh, and bacon. And bacon. It has to have bacon. Everything is better with bacon.
    72:03
    Yes, everything is better than bacon. And let's see. The other things. Oh, the tournament that they were running, a three-day tournament, just on that one day they had over 130 participants um and that wasn't i don't know if that was including the pre-registered people or not but obviously the tournament was running very successfully um i only had one instance of seeing someone being rude which was some gal was hogging the sopranos table she was playing four player by herself and she was doing what is it a um there's a term for that um who is uh it's the eddie murphy being an eddie murphy remember where he was in big mama he's playing all the different roles oh right so he's doing it he's doing it eddie murphy she was doing eddie murphy and then um so she she had the four tables going and i'm standing behind i'm like okay fine she'll get off once that's done finishes the game nope puts in two player. I'm like, are you kidding me? So I'm like, maybe she doesn't know that I'm here. So I kind of approach a little more, do the you know, kind of noise. She turns her head, recognizes there's somebody behind her, right? Finishes the two player, punches in another two player. I'm like, really?
    73:18
    It's like, come on. Yeah, so I left. That was that was kind of terrible. Pimple etiquette at shows, man. read the rules yeah that in a nutshell was the show like I said I had a lot of conversations with Norman and Mike most of which I can't repeat because it was told in confident and you know we could go into talking about Zen Pinball and the new Star Wars tables I think we'll save that for next time because we are way over time this time, but I will just say, folks, Force Awakens, awesome table. Yeah, I agree.
    74:05
    And the other table, I forget what it's called, the bad guys. It's not bad. Not great. I quite enjoy it. It's fun as well. Those two tables, I don't think you'd be disappointed if you got them there. So I think we'll save that for next week, and Might of the First Order. Yes. We'll save those for next week and kind of go in depth, because I really have been enjoying them. I've been playing Force Awakens all week rather than playing anything from TPA. I think that kind of says something. I've been playing it a fair bit too. Zen in general. I've been trying to get into the Fox tables, but we can talk about that next week as well.
    74:43
    There's a lot to talk about. There is a lot to talk about. Who knew that this was going to take as long as it did? Next week will be a Zen feature, I think. I think so. I think it sounds good. I think so. So anyway, everybody, thanks for sticking around for this extra long, like I said, it's a podcast like we used to do. We're not used to that.
    75:02
    But we will be back again next week. And make sure you get your T-shirts, represent.com forward slash blockade dash shirt. Yeah, it's changed. Now you can get colors. So that's what the new one is. And, of course, it's in all of our links and tweets. I followed up with the Pinheads Pinball Podcast because I wanted to see it and I posted in a thread they got going and said it looks awesome so big thumbs from the boys down there in Canberra so thanks guys yep so again we will see you all next week I have been Shut Your Trap also known as Chris Frebus that has been Jared Morgan thank you for listening see you all next week see you later
    75:52
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    76:22
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.
    76:52
    you