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Episode3: The Classic Pinball Podcast -Pintastic part 2

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·56m 35s·analyzed·Jul 8, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Pintastic Day 2 coverage: Eric Stone interview, podcaster panel, tournament update, and classic/modern game play.

Summary

George and Dave from The Classic Pinball Podcast cover Day 2 of Pintastic, including an interview with top-10 player Eric Stone about strategy on classic games like Evel Knievel, a podcaster seminar discussion, tournament standings updates, and impressions of games played at the show ranging from classic Bally/Williams EM titles to modern Stern releases.

Key Claims

  • Eric Stone and Dave met in 1999 at a Twin Galaxies location 20 years ago

    high confidence · Eric Stone, in direct conversation with George and Dave at lunch during Pintastic

  • The World Pinball Championship (IFPA 17) will be held at The Pinball Asylum in Fort Myers, Florida in June

    high confidence · Eric Stone stated this during the interview segment

  • Johannes Ostermeyer won the 2023 World Pinball Championship on Dracula, coming from approximately $3 billion behind with one ball remaining

    medium confidence · Eric Stone recounting the tournament results; details are specific but Eric acknowledges he didn't watch the final in person

  • Eric Stone qualified #1 at the Pintastic tournament (at the time of recording) with 382 points, despite scoring $39 million on Black Knight and $3.5 million on Breakshot

    high confidence · Eric Stone reviewing his tournament standings in real-time during the podcast

  • There are 131-135 players in the Pintastic tournament

    high confidence · Eric Stone checking live tournament data during the podcast

  • Dave Marston hosted the podcaster seminar with participants including Ron Hallett, Jeff Teolis, Sarah (Mrs. Pin), and Jeff Parsons

    high confidence · George explicitly thanking speakers in the podcaster seminar recap

  • The Classic Pinball Podcast focuses on collecting and restoration history, offering a different niche from tournament-centric podcasts

    high confidence · George and Dave discussing their podcast positioning during the seminar recap

  • Evel Knievel (Bally, 1977) has weak spinners, a 15,000 max bonus, and no hold bonus

    high confidence · Eric Stone and Dave discussing strategy and specifications of the game

  • Dave has a restoration business known for high-quality spinner maintenance

    high confidence · Dave stating 'With my restoration biz, I'm known for my spinners that spin perpetual'

Notable Quotes

  • “Every ball means something. Play the ball.”

    PJ (Dave's friend, referenced by Eric Stone) @ N/A — Advice that influenced Eric Stone's tournament performance, demonstrates competitive philosophy in pinball tournaments

  • “I'm telling everybody, spend 10 minutes, find the feed on Twitch. Or on YouTube. It's probably there now. It's unbelievable.”

    Eric Stone @ N/A — Strong recommendation to watch Johannes Ostermeyer's final game at the World Pinball Championship, suggests high-quality tournament content

  • “With my restoration biz, I'm known for my spinners that spin perpetual spinners, spin forever kind of thing.”

    Dave (host/guest) @ N/A — Demonstrates Dave's market positioning and expertise in restoration; perpetual spinners are a desirable trait among collectors

  • “We're all connected by one thing, and that's pinball. And whether you like tournaments, you like restorations, you just like to play pinball, fixing them, there's something there for everybody.”

    George @ N/A — Statement of community philosophy bridging different pinball subgroups (competitive, restoration, casual)

  • “If you haven't been to this show, you're missing out. It's a lot of fun. Totally different.”

    George @ N/A — Strong endorsement of Pintastic as a unique pinball show experience, distinguishes it from other venues like Allentown

  • “I mean, this opened up the world. There are so many games. I'm so focused on my little niche. There's a big world out there.”

    George @ N/A — Reflects on broadened perspective after playing diverse games at the show; shows openness to expanding beyond specialization

  • “It goes back to what we said in episode one. It's a room. We did more talking than playing.”

    George @ N/A — Meta-commentary on the challenge of balancing content creation with actual pinball play at shows

  • “Oh, here, my friend.”

Entities

Eric StonepersonGeorgepersonDavepersonDave MarstonpersonRon HallettpersonJeff TeolispersonSarah (Mrs. Pin)person

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pintastic Day 2 comprehensive coverage including interviews, seminars, tournament updates, and game impressions

    high · George and Dave provide detailed blow-by-blow of Pintastic activities across multiple segments

  • ?

    content_signal: The Classic Pinball Podcast establishing its niche focus on classic games and restoration, distinct from tournament-centric competitors

    high · Explicit discussion in podcaster seminar segment about their differentiated positioning compared to Jeff Teolis, Ron Hallett, etc.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Eric Stone's tournament performance and real-time ranking dynamics at Pintastic; awareness of scoring volatility and competitive pressure

    high · Eric Stone providing detailed tournament standings, point updates, and strategy discussion in real-time

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Deep strategy discussion on Evel Knievel (Bally, 1977) including spinner mechanics, bonus structures, drop targets, and risk-reward play

    high · Eric Stone and Dave extensive discussion of game-specific strategy, mechanics, and optimal play patterns

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community bridging competitive, collecting, restoration, and casual play segments; emphasis on mutual respect despite different focuses

    high · George's statement: 'We're all connected by one thing, and that's pinball' and discussion of different podcast niches coexisting

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.170

0:00
Hello everyone, my name is George. This is the third episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. Dave joins us in one minute. This is the Pintastic Show, Part 2. In this episode, we have five segments. The Eric Stone interview, podcaster seminar review, late night pinball, Dave's day two, and something we call odds and ends. I'm here at Pintastic. This is George. I'm here with Dave. We're having lunch with none other than top 10 player, Eric Stone. Eric, welcome. Thanks. Good to be here. Dave wants you to tell the story of how you two met. Oh, does he really? I don't think he really wants to. I really don't want that story told, but we can tell it anyway. So basically back in, I think it was 1999. Gosh, that was 20 years ago. Can you believe I've known you for 20 years? Seems like yesterday. Fun spot. And Walter Day was up there and Twin Galaxies. They were writing down world records and whatnot. And I was up there playing a few pinball machines and trying to set some world records. And I met Dave and he said, you know, I've got a really good collection at my house in Massachusetts. You should come see it. I said, all right. So I went down there one day and down to Marble or Mass, which is about two and a half hours away from Laconia in New Hampshire, where I live. And I saw his classic collection, which was amazing. And I would ask him, so what's the high score on this game? and what's the high on this game? And literally, you know, I would just kind of go down the line, one machine to the next, and say, okay, I got it. What's the next one? What's the next one? And then after that, we became really good friends. Right, Dave?
1:57
And then I was so tempted just to, you know, reset the high score and everything. I said, well, no, I can't do that. I'm going to take him down myself. But I'm still kind of working at that. Yeah, that's okay. I mean, 20 years later, he's still working. I'm not too worried right now. But no, no, Dave's a great guy. And, I mean, you know, he's restored so many great games, some old school games. And I remember that Kiss Playfield that you painted. And, boy, I mean, that just played like butter. Still have that game. Do you? Well, let's talk about the old school game that was in your seminar this morning.

  • The Pastime Pinball Museum in Manchester, Vermont has 50 games on free play

    high confidence · George mentioning Marty, proprietor of the museum, during the show recap

    • Jeff Teolis @ N/A — Moment where Jeff Teolis welcomes George to the podcast community with a Fireball whiskey shot; shows camaraderie among podcast hosts

  • “RoboCop I'm telling everybody you are arrested people look at me like I'm crazy but I am crazy.”

    Eric Stone @ N/A — Humorous anecdote showing Eric's competitive intensity and psychological play strategy; illustrates competitive player personality

  • “I don't think I'm going to wind up anywhere near that. But there's two and a half hours to go.”

    Eric Stone @ N/A — Eric expressing uncertainty about maintaining first place as the tournament continues; shows awareness of ranking volatility

    • Jeff Parsons
    person
    Johannes Ostermeyerperson
    Bowenperson
    Jason Wardperson
    Alberto Santanaperson
    Mark Carverperson
    Martyperson
    Justinperson
    Samperson
    Anthonyperson
    PJperson
    Walter Dayperson
    The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
    Pintasticevent
    Pastime Pinball Museumorganization
    Extreme Cooler Talkorganization
    IFPAorganization

    design_innovation: Dave's specialization in perpetual spinner restoration creating market differentiation

    high · Dave stating 'With my restoration biz, I'm known for my spinners that spin perpetual spinners, spin forever'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Pastime Pinball Museum in Manchester, Vermont operating as 50-game free-play venue with strong community engagement

    medium · George's positive mention of museum and owner Marty, indication of well-maintained diverse game library

  • ?

    product_concern: Eric Stone experienced ball mechanism malfunction on Fire during tournament, highlighting potential reliability issues in venue machines

    medium · Eric's detailed account of game kicking out unexpected ball during Fire, affecting final score

  • ?

    content_signal: Strong organic recommendation to watch Johannes Ostermeyer's 2023 World Championship Dracula final on Twitch/YouTube

    high · Eric Stone's emphatic endorsement: 'spend 10 minutes, find the feed on Twitch... It's unbelievable'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Emergence of specialized pinball podcaster ecosystem with distinct niches: tournament-centric (Teolis, Hallett), collecting/restoration (Classic Pinball), players-focused (Parsons)

    high · Podcaster seminar participants and George/Dave analysis of differentiated market positioning

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Spinner restoration technique: cleaning and Teflon lubrication enables 30+ spins vs. 5 spins, improving gameplay experience

    high · Dave's restoration advice on Evel Knievel spinner: 'Clean it, Teflon lube it, off you go'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: 2023 World Pinball Championship (IFPA) held in Italy, won by Johannes Ostermeyer; 2024 championship (IFPA 17) scheduled for Fort Myers, Florida in June

    high · Eric Stone discussing recent Italy championship and upcoming Fort Myers championship at Pinball Asylum venue

    • 2:31
    It actually helped me. Yeah, right, Evil Knievel. It actually helped me win a game after your seminar. Oh, really? Yep. Wow. And Dave was just asking me. Did it help you beat Dave? No. I can't remember the podcast, but the guy's name's Matt. He's on Twitch, and he's out of Pennsylvania, Malvern. I forget the name of the podcast. Forgive me, Matt. But he was like, wow, where'd you learn that strategy? I said, Eric Stone. And then I asked. I missed your thing again today, Eric. Well, that's because you don't need, you know. That's true. I don't really need the tutelage. Because I wouldn't want you to start taking down those scores from 20 years ago. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's what you were thinking of me. But I was asking George, like, well, Evel Caneva is so a simple game. What kind of strategy can there be? Can he hit the spinner if it's greased up or drop targets? No, the spinner was not. Not in this game, was it? No, that spinner. Both spinners were actually horrible. Yeah. No, one gave you six and one gave you 11 or 12. Okay, well, still not Dr. Dave approved. No, not 30 or 40. Basically, I said if it was like a Dr. Dave game where you were getting 30,000 a spin, that's all I would do on Evo for Evo. But I said, well, you know, you could go for the 11,000, 12,000 spin. That's not bad, I guess, you know, on a typical game. Otherwise, go for the drop targets and get your double bonus and transfer the ball from one flipper to the other. Usually with me, I would shats pass it, which is difficult on some of those older games, but you can't post-transfer on that particular game. And, you know, you hit the drop targets down twice and you get an extra ball. And start all over again. Max your bonus at $30,000 and get a couple hundred thousand. Follow the lit spinner. That's what you told me. Yeah. And, you know, that's a couple hundred thousand is not a bad game. Center target, a sucker shot?
    4:26
    Yeah. What's the center target? Yeah. There's a center target on that? He's feeling super. He's feeling super, right, with that? Yeah. I don't know what it gets you. It might light a special. Oh, maybe a special. So someone asked me this summer, and I said, well, what happens if you spell cycle? And I said, I don't know. Let's try it. Wait, cycle. Right? And I did. And I spelled cycle, and it lit the special. And I said, well, I don't think it gives you much, because I haven't really ever tried to spell cycle before. But let's try to spell cycle. I figured it would take forever.
    4:57
    Is that all it does, Dave, is give you the special? Do you know? I don't know what the super does. I haven't played the game enough. I own the game, but I haven't done it up yet. Because Matt asked me the same thing. He goes, well, you know, Eric told you this part of the strategy. What do you say about this side? He goes, I said. Don't shoot it. Right. Leave it alone. Basically, if I didn't say to go for something. Well, sometimes you can turn these games into, especially the ballads and even the old sterns, you can make a novelty mode so the specials are worth 50K. That's true. Extra ball with 25K. Right. If that's the case. I mean, but the specials, the outlane, it alternates. So, I mean, that's pretty risky to try to get cycle. Right. And then, you know. There's easier ways. And I don't want to lose the ball for 50 grand. I mean, yeah, it would be worth it, I guess, but it's a lot of trouble just to get it lit. And then what are the chances of the three ways the ball could go down? It's got a 33% chance it's going to go down that special. The one thing that's a little shy on that game is the bonus. Don't you think the bonus should be a lot bigger on that game? It's typical Valley, mid-late 70s, 15,000. It's like Captain Fantastic. That's 15,000. 15,000 is the max. Well, no. April 15,000. Well, no. Mata Hari, 29,000.
    6:05
    Embryon, Paragon. But now you're talking 1979, 1980. That's 77. It's Evil Knievel. Right. So you're saying early. We're talking Bobby O'Carplay, Mata Hari. But we're talking later. Well, Mata Hari's 29. Okay. 79. No, he's saying 29. 29 bonus. But wasn't it made after Evil Knievel? No, 77. Around the same time frame. Evil Knievel, I think, was first. We're going to have to look it up. It's very close. Within months, I think. That was the transition. So you had the Captain Fantastics, the Evil Knievels, the 15 max bonus, Air Aces, which I think is... Yeah, but some of those are EMs. Right, so the first three, you've got Evil Knievel, you've got Blackjack, you've got Monohara, we made an EM style and solid state style. Right. But not many EMs. Well, either way, eventually, you know, you've got the 29,000 max. Either way, you want to max the bonus out. Once you do that, shoot the drops, try to get an extra ball. And no hold. No hold bonus on this early stuff. Only the Paragon. No. Play every ball. Eric, I understand from the broadcast a couple of weekends ago that you folks are going to be holding the world championship set. It's called the Asylum, right? Yeah, it's called the Pinball Asylum. The Pinball Asylum. In Fort Myers, Florida.
    7:22
    And that's going to take place when? Next June. It should be the first weekend in June. It's actually, they call it IFPA 17, I-F-P-A 17, which is the World Pinball Championships. This year it was just held in Italy a few weeks ago.
    7:38
    Last year it was Toronto. Did you watch? I watched some of it, yeah. Did you see the game? I didn't see the final game. Ostermeyer? Yeah, I didn't see the final game where he got $3 billion on one ball to win on Dracula. That's something else. I told somebody that I was about ready to shut that feed off, and then I remembered what Dave's friend PJ told me when we were at a tournament at Dave's house. He said, why do you keep letting that last ball go? We were in a flipper frenzy. I go, because it's not going to mean anything. He goes, every ball means something. Play the ball. And Johannes, he stepped up and just crushed it. And if you haven't seen it, I'm telling everybody, spend 10 minutes, find the feed on Twitch. Or on YouTube. It's probably there now. It's unbelievable. Which game was he playing? Dracula. But he was behind by leaps, bounds. Nobody ever thought he was going to catch it. I want to say about $3 billion he was down. Wow, really? I think you're right. He just turned it on. Somehow he just turned it on. I guess he just made all the shots and the feeds were coming back to the flippers. I mean, I wasn't there, but just watching it, you could just feel how it was building and building and building. And then when he passed it, everybody just went nuts. Well, you know, I played Black Knight where I should have gotten easily $100 million. I can't remember a game that I got under $100 million, and I got $39. That was terrible, terrible, terrible. So then I played break shot and got about $3.5 million, which is right around the middle of the pack. And so I'm very upset. Yet somehow qualified number one. You what?
    9:33
    I'd be dancing down the street. I'm telling you, that's going to change because everybody's going to beat that black knight score and a lot of people are going to beat the break shot score. So I don't think I'm going to wind up anywhere near that. But there's two and a half hours to go. I'm guessing there's lines now, right? There's lines, right? But pretty much every time somebody plays Black Knight, I'm going to lose a point. Because everybody's going to get over $39 billion. So where do you think the cut's going to be? How many points?
    10:02
    Oh, I'll make the cut. No, I know you're going to make the cut, but I'm asking. Right now, it's usually around $280 something. Oh, it's that low? Yeah, and right now, well, last I checked, I was $382. let's see I guess I'll hit refresh here see I lost the point 381 but the good news is well Jason Ward is 377 the good news is third place is 355 so I do have a 26 point lead on third place so that is I kind of like that because I want to get a bye I've got a bye the last every year I play bye is to the first eight the bye cut right now is 345 and the total cut is 289 and it just keeps on going down and it's going to because people will continue to lose points in uh in a papa style tournament you have to play five games in a row and use all of those five games so if you have a bad game chances are they call it bleeding it will bleed down to zero i don't think i'll have any do that but i think i'll have at least one go down to maybe 30 and another may go down to like 40 or 50. So will you play another card?
    11:19
    Can't. No. The problem is the lines, there's so many people in this tournament. I'll pull it back up on my phone how many people are in this. Last I knew there was 135.
    11:35
    Well, it says 131, but there's a lot of new people that came in today that haven't submitted. So I only had time to submit two tickets.
    11:43
    Wow. Really? Wow. Not bad. Wow, considering where you were yesterday, that's great. The pressure was on because, you know, as soon as I started my second ticket, I said, okay, if my first game is a bad game, I'm just going to pay another $10 and submit another ticket. And if that first game is a bad game, basically I was just going to keep paying $10 until I had a good game on my first game. But then I start with 24 million on X-Files, and that was second place. And then I rolled RoboCop. In fact, I didn't even realize when you roll RoboCop, it doesn't remember your score. Oh, wow. I never told anybody when I got to 9 million. Next thing you know, I look at my score and it says 1 million. And I cradled the ball. I said, hey, I rolled RoboCop. And Levy was watching me from sitting down. And he said, yep, yep, I watched him do it. So I was like, well, thank God for that. So anyway, I wound up with $14 million.
    12:41
    Great. Awesome. That was by far the number one. The old number one was $8.5 million. So I started pretty well. Then I played fire, and I had a malfunction. And I had $1.5 billion, and I was cradling a ball. And all of a sudden, the game kicked out another ball. So I cradled both balls. I waited, waited, waited, waited. and I wound up taking a ball out of the game. I try to make one shot. It goes right down the side. And the problem is that ball had to be locked again and the other side was already locked. So the middle shot would have given me a multi-ball, but instead I shoot the middle shot. It goes to the wrong side and it kicks the ball out right down the out lane and my game's over. And I said, oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding me. The kind of luck I get, you know? Yeah. So on fire, instead of getting three or four million, like I usually do, because of that, I got two. And so that was a mediocre score, so I thought, great. So then I put myself in a queue for Black Knight last night at 6.48 because I wanted to play it last night while I was on a hot streak. And by 8 o'clock, there was still somebody ahead of me, and they closed at 8 o'clock. So I had to play it this morning, and it didn't turn.
    13:58
    Right, you're starting off fresh. You're cold. you gotta get back in the groove you know I mean sometimes I cold and like you know during the finals up in Fort Myers you know I woke up I went to the finals and literally the first two games of the first round and the first two games of the second round I won And I didn't even need to play the third game on either one. So, you know, and sometimes I'm cold and other times I get right into it and I start going crazy, you know, and I thought for sure I was going to kill that black man. I wanted to get $100 million. But then, you know, break shot. I figured, and the way I look at things is, if there's a game that I'm usually good at or I usually play well and I have a bad game, chances are the next game I play, I'm going to have a good game. So I look at the break shot and I say, well, I got $622,000 yesterday. That's awful. So I'm due for a decent game. Eh, $3.5 million is okay. It's not bad. It's not great. But it gets me in there with, you know, 50 points maybe or 60 for now. and it's like, you know what, that's all I really needed.
    15:02
    At this time. Yeah, who's the competition? So who's around you? Who's around you for competition? Who's your real competitors that are close to you right now? Well, obviously Bowen's here. How is he doing compared to you right now?
    15:19
    I'm pretty sure he's got a bye. Let's see. Let me refresh this again. I lost another point. Bowen's in fourth. so it's 380 377 355 and he has 352 right now um 8th place is 344 and the cut is 289 still so who are the do you have the top 8 in front of you yeah what are their names any names that we would know or yeah we're all about dropping names here Jason Werger from Chicago he's well known Alberto Santana from New York he's well known Ed Giardina I think he's in New York Steven Bowden. Yep. Oh, Bowden's there. Okay. Yeah.
    16:06
    Mark Carvey. Oh, Mark Carvey. He's from the Sanctum. He's a good player. He's a good local player. Louis Bevan, I think, is from Pittsburgh. And that rounds out the top eight. And you've got Chit Sexton, Czech Webster is number 12. Yeah, he's 13. Yep. Good player. Zen is 15. Paul Karras is 20. Wow, there's a lot of teams out here. Yeah, no, you got some people there. That's great. Right, but I mean, like, Josh Henderson is 42nd. He's not even in the mix. Greg Pavarelli is 41. There's a lot of good names in here that Drew Sedolius, 31.
    16:47
    Joe Dugo is a Florida player. He's pretty good. He's 27. And so there's a lot of names here that I'm used to seeing at the top. Zachary Fraze, another one. I played against him in the finals last year, if you remember.
    17:02
    Ron Hallett, he's way down. So, you know, there are a lot of teams that, unless, you know, they're submitting another ticket right now. I was going to say, here we are, it's, you know, quarter to 12, two hours to qualify, and there's lines. I mean, it sounds like even if you wanted to play, you might not get your whole card in in the next two hours. Oh. I knew last night at 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock when I started my second ticket that that was it I knew I was only going to get one more in and so sometimes I put this crazy pressure on myself that I know I need to go crazy and when I do that and then I start talking to the game and I start mimicking the game and I start acting kind of weird then all of a sudden I'll just start blowing games up you know yeah I like doing that too I like talking to the game too sometimes it's almost like talking myself through the game you know RoboCop I'm telling everybody you are arrested people look at me like I'm crazy but I am crazy Dave and I were invited to participate in the podcaster seminar I'd first like to thank Dave Marston for being the host and kind of driving the bus for a while, asking questions of all fellow podcasters. We'll get that out. I'd like to thank Ron Hallett, Jeff Teolis, Mrs. Pin, I guess her name is Sarah. I've never met her before, but seemed like a nice lady. And Jeff Parsons, who has a pinball podcast called Pinball's Players Podcast. It was very informative for us, given that we're brand new to podcasting, some great tips, more technical, not something that this audience probably is even interested in, but we needed to acknowledge those who were there. Dave, you have any thoughts? Yeah, it was a great back and forth, a great collaboration of people with their different ideas they brought to the table about pinball and how they approach it and their passions and what they do with their podcasts. And I found that a lot of the people up there, they were mostly tournament player kind of podcasts or maybe it was some manufacturing. I would say all four of the people I just mentioned are definitely tournament players. And I listen to almost all of those podcasts. They're tournament-centric. They do talk about other news items and other things happening in the hobby. But there are some really good players there, and I think that's their primary focus. We're a little bit different. And if you look at what we do, I mean, it's free flow. We're not professional broadcasters like the two Jeffs. Yeah, the two Jeffs sounded really good. They had good pipes, and you can tell they just really do it for a living. And this is like a little side passion for them to do this part. And I like when Dave was going around and said, okay, how do you do it? What's your podcast like, and what's your central focus? And then he came around to us, and I thought we were the only ones that had our particular niche, which was great that no one's really covered this part. From a collecting aspect and from back in the day, we have a lot of history with all these different games and perspectives.
    20:29
    It just is a different take on things. It's a fresh take. And their podcasts are wonderful, too. But what I'm trying to say is that everybody has their own niche and their own audience. Well, I think Dave was trying to drive home, too, that it might be bifurcated that you have the technical people and the tournament people. And I make it a lot more universal, and I said this to Jeff Teolis afterwards. It's a big hobby. We're all connected by one thing, and that's pinball. And whether you like tournaments, you like restorations, you just like to play pinball, fixing them, there's something there for everybody. But everyone should keep in mind that we're all connected by the same thing and respect that. It doesn't mean you have to like the other aspects. Just respect it. That's all I look for. And, you know, we're going to give our comments, and some people might like them and some people might not like them. But it's just a comment. Don't take it. Try not to take it personally. I'll let you know how that goes. I did like the one aspect when Jeff, and I forget how do you say his last name? Teolos. Yeah, Teolos. Jeff Teolos. When George said something right away pretty quickly into it, and Jeff really liked what George said and said, Oh, here, my friend. and he pulled out from the bottom of the desk a big gallon of fireball to do shots. It was some shot cups, and he handed George a shot glass and filled it up, and they both did a cheer. So that was a nice moment of, like, welcome to the podcast club, you know, with a shot toast.
    22:05
    After Dave and I had a long Friday doing all the interviews, Dave doing the best in play, we finally were able to play pinball starting at around 11 o'clock. Dave, I'd like your thoughts on a couple of games we played. I thought they were quite fun and had never played them before. The first one was Dracula, the Stern Dracula. Not the greatest looking game, but it played well and I did well on it.
    22:36
    Your thoughts? Well, just clarification, that's 11 p.m., not a.m. and actually I had to drag George's butt back to the show because he wanted to I'm done, I'm burnt I'm going back to our place and I said, no, no, we'll go back to refresh we've got to play some pinball I've been working this whole show I've got to play a show I'm glad you did because we had some fun but that was a fun game the Stern game was fun that's a nice player especially if you dial it in a little bit it's a nice playing game I just, those early Sterns, the Stern 100, we call them, MPU 100 boards, they have that god-awful sound board, which... Well, you couldn't hear anything anyway. You couldn't hear anything, so it's fine. It really didn't matter. So we just got to play the game, which was cool, with the drop targets and that kind of thing. So it's a nice little layout. I like that game. The Evel Knievel that Eric had used for demonstration in his seminar, we got to play.
    23:36
    Nice game, except the spinners. I mean, it doesn't take much, and if you need somebody to give you a tutorial, it'll take about 30 seconds. Clean it, Teflon lube it, off you go. Well, I'd also say you can adjust that switch on there for maximum revs because spinners are meant to spin. In fact, with my restoration biz, I'm known for my spinners that spin perpetual spinners, spin forever kind of thing. So people like that. 30 spins versus a week five. Yeah, exactly. That was a fun game. How about I took Dave over to play Stampede? That Bolly, right? Wasn't that a Bolly game? With the balls caught up at the top and the saucers? No, wasn't it Rawhide or something? No, Big Valley. Oh, Big Valley. That's it. Big Valley. That's a weird game. I think it's like from 71. It's basically in the generation of Nippet, Bally Nippet.
    24:33
    But fun. Very different. I mean, if you like a multi-ball game. It's a multi-ball game, and you lock the balls up top there, and you do something else, and it releases the ball for two or three multi-ball. We'll do a dive on that at some point in time. I mean, we have so many games. I mean, this opened up the world. There are so many games. I'm so focused on my little niche. There's a big world out there. I mean, we played Grand Prix. I mean, I've heard people talk about that game. Dave was saying it's a tournament game. That's a lot of fun, too. It is. That's the Williams Grand Prix from, I believe, it's 76, right around there, mid-70s EM. A lot of fun, pretty deep game for its time. And it's a blast to play. I can see why tournament players like playing this game. Well, you also mentioned in one of the other segments the Flash Gordon with the hard top on it. Yes. I played that. That was a fun game, nice-looking game. The person took some time there. Yeah. What else did we play? Oh, let's go to a couple of the other winners. There's the Tradewinds game was just at the reverse wedgehead. That's a beautiful game and a fun game to play. Yeah, I'm going to play some, going back today and play some more of that. Surfer, another well done game. So I kind of focused on some of the tournament games from, excuse me, best in play games from what you were saying. I kind of got inside baseball and he said, you know, you want to go over and play those games. Very, very well done. I'm forgetting games but I played some other games when I had a couple of free moments during the day but we were so wrapped up in everything else we were doing that time didn't allow for that is there anything that you might have played that not with me that you want to talk about I'm trying to think we kind of you know what I really didn't get to when I'm going around invest in play the time is of the essence there's so many games to go through you know I don't really get to really play a full game, enjoyable game. I'm basically just looking for things and critiquing things to kind of narrow things down. So the only time I really got to play games for real, you know, full games and really have fun with stuff was with you, George. And actually a couple of people we had with my wife Maureen. And shout out to Bruce. Oh, that's right. Bruce played with us last night. That was fun. And Maureen. I look forward to it next year. New adventure. New place.
    26:53
    If you haven't been to this show, you're missing out. It's a lot of fun. Totally different. I'm not going to do 19 Allentown references, but this is an entirely different show. If you like to play pinball, this is the show for you. Great show, Dave. I had a lot of fun with you and Maureen. It was a blast. Hopefully we'll get some results later on on the tournament.
    27:18
    It's always fun having people that you know to play with. It was a great show. but it goes back to what we said in episode one. It's a room. We did more talking than playing. And it just happens that way. And Dave said this morning, and I said the same thing, our voices are just shot. This is Saturday morning, and I talk a lot, but I talked more yesterday than I probably talked in the last month. And you've got to talk really loudly and almost shout sometimes so your voice gets kind of raw, and then, you know, stay up late. And so I just had a big spoonful of honey and some warm water to try to make things nice again. I'm taking off. I'm not going to the show today. Dave's going to go to the show and play with his buddy PJ. Gabe did a great job. Thanks, Gabe, for the time and effort you put into the show. Yeah, you can tell a lot of effort went into this.
    28:14
    Oh Ghostbusters we played last night Never had played that game and that was you said a premium Yeah that was a premium and actually I only played the pro I have a customer who has that game and he plays a lot of it and I'm out there every once in a while, and I'm just doing a shop job on it. And I like the pro. I've never got to play a premium, and actually, the premium was actually fun to play. A lot more stuff on it than I thought there would be. A lot of different shots on it. So, yeah, that was fun. That was a fun little surprise for us to play that game. It was good. On Friday, I had the opportunity to play some of the newer games. I played The Munsters, which I thought was fun. Even though I couldn't hear it, it was fun to play. I played Oktoberfest. I also had the opportunity to play Willy Wonka. It just so happens that when I did play Willy Wonka, it must have been around 5 o'clock on Friday afternoon, some people were breaking down a video rig. And it just so happens that it's the people from Extreme Cooler Talk. I want to personally thank Justin, Sam, and Anthony for the swag. I also want to mention Marty, who I guess is the owner or proprietor of a museum called the Pastime Pinball Museum, which is in Manchester, Vermont. 50 games set to free play, fun for all. So we all had the opportunity to play the game together. What a bunch of nice guys. I'm hoping our paths all cross again. I want to thank them for allowing me to basically cut in and play with them. So we had a lot of fun. Sam and Justin were playing flippers, so all five of us could play at the same time. A shout out to all of them. A lot of fun. It's one of the reasons why I love going to pinball shows. You get to meet a lot of great people, and those are four of the finest. So shout out to all you guys. It was a lot of fun.
    30:49
    Dave, I left you and Maureen about noon on Saturday to go to an awesome brewery down the road called Treehouse. What did you end up doing?
    31:00
    What time was that again? That was noontime? Noontime. Noontime, yeah. So we were still, let me think. We were playing pinball, I think, of all things, at a pinball show.
    31:13
    Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Saturday because Friday was the best in play judging. and then Saturday I actually got to hang with my longtime friend Paul who I grew up playing pinball with and played a bunch of pinball with him.
    31:27
    Met another buddy of mine I was trying to hook up with the last couple days. Just met him on Pinside. Jason, his multi-ball maniac is what he goes by on Pinside and a real cool dude and played some pinball, did a lot of networking, a lot of talking and a lot of pinball playing and had some great games. I've played a lot of cool times I haven't played in a long time. So did you stay strictly in the big room or free play area? I don't know what they designated that. Or did you go over into the vendor area or to the New Hampshire Pinball Club or off?
    32:09
    Hit it all. A lot of free play area. Concentrating more on having big, some of the older stuff that was in nice shape. I went into the vendor area to play a couple games in there, but mostly hung out in the free play and a little bit of extra ball lounge. And then just hung outside for a little bit and just, you know, shooting the crap with a bunch of cool guys that I met at the show. Did you get to play Black Knight Swords of Rage?
    32:43
    Or you had already played that before, right? Yeah, I played a couple games in Allentown of that. I played Deadpool in Allentown.
    32:50
    But I did want to play in that stuff later. That's like later than Saturday. Well, at least you got to play it. Oh, yeah. I got to play it completely.
    33:03
    I didn't get to play either one of those games, and they were on my list. I didn't play Alice Cooper, that new game. I didn't get to play that either. I didn't even see where that was. So I missed, you know, Friday got so busy with all this.
    33:21
    This takes a lot of time. And I know we didn't do it until late in the day, but just, you know, time ran out.
    33:31
    One day is not enough, at least for me to do that pinball show. I missed a lot of stuff in the vendor lounge, even though I got to play a couple of the games. I didn't get to play the two I just mentioned. I wish I did. with three, actually, along with Alice Cooper. Yeah, I basically wanted to play, you know, my buddy Jason really wants to buy a new game. He got rid of, like, five or six, and he said, you know, what am I doing with about $25,000 worth of games? I should just sell these things and pay down my mortgage. You know, smart man. And then lately, a couple years later, he said, you know, I need a new game again. So he's asking me what I thought. You know, he's thinking, you know, Black Knight, you know, Swords of Rage or Deadpool. and at first I was leaning towards Black Knight because I played it and I really liked it a lot and Deadpool's cool too. But after playing them again at the show in the event area, I'm really leaning more towards Deadpool now because Deadpool's a cool game. It has all these Williams sound effects from the early 80s, from a lot of the video games from Williams. It incorporates really nice sounds, so it's very much a blast from the past. The video mode on it in the background has like a stern arcade from that time frame there's a sea witch back there a berserk and i think a frenzy um that dead that the guy deadpool's playing and so forth um so it has a good blast in the past great humor and uh and good and really good gameplay so i told him now it's like forget about black knight go deadpool so uh he's gonna be grabbing one of those down the road but uh i really enjoyed that game for one of the new games to play you know we need to talk about something that everybody's probably wondering right now, which is, what about the tournament?
    35:14
    We had the phone call, if you recall, from, I know this is a couple days after the show, but we had the phone call from Eric, and we haven't given a tournament update as to what actually transpired. Do you want me to go through that? Yeah, go for it. The tournament finals were played late on Saturday afternoon, and our man Eric made it into the top eight.
    35:40
    Unfortunately, Eric did not make it past his first game and he ended up coming in fifth. Our fellow podcaster who we met the night before, Jeff Teolis, took fourth.
    35:53
    Some guy named Karens came in third. And then this guy from San Francisco named O'Neal. You know, I know somebody named O'Neal. I just can't put my finger on it, who that is. Yeah, I won. I won the whole thing.
    36:11
    Well, you don't look anything like this guy because I saw – I think Cognito. No, I saw – I don't know his first name, and I apologize. But have you ever heard of Free Gold Watch in San Francisco? No. Uh-uh. Free Gold Watch is an arcade slash print house. They do T-shirts. so you're playing t-shirts in a print shop you're playing pinball in a t-shirt shop oh that's interesting they have some great games and they have some great players there i mean that's a san francisco is a pretty big stronghold as far as uh players go i believe that's where raymond davidson is from obviously this guy o'neill is from there uh but he was the winner He's number two. I gave him too much time. Number one was Stephen Bowden, and you're going to love the three games that they played for the finals. They played Black Knight, Master of Doom. No, what is it again?
    37:16
    Swords of Rage. Swords of Rage, yes. What do you call it? Master of Doom? Oh, my God. Anyway, that was one thing. Yeah, I'm going to continue to butcher that game up. That's right. Can we come up with some kind of acronym so I don't butcher it every time? I got a really cool number, but I probably can't say it. No, please don't. Please don't. We've done really, really well without.
    37:41
    Anyway, Hocus Pocus was game two, but the final game, and he swept all three, Frontier. He ended up with 400,000 on Frontier. So it was a great final. It was fun to watch. they definitely you would think we were in some third world country the way the internet worked at surbridge that's what everybody was saying that's the theme everything bad awful the drops that it was just it was crazy to to watch the finals only to be interrupted like 19 times and And it worked, but it didn't work well. So hopefully a change of venue next year, they'll have a much better Internet infrastructure to broadcast.
    38:35
    Oh, big time. I can actually – I can get a little bit of a point on that. The guys in Contessa, the crew behind the scenes, the network guy, he had to bring in his own network and set it up behind there to kind of boost it up because the hotel wasn't good enough. It was old and crappy. And even with that, he had some issues because of the hotel, you know, just like technical issues. And he had a hardest time getting it going. So he was really trying.
    39:01
    Oh, no, no fault of his. Was that the guy, Mitch, or is this somebody else? I forget the name they kept saying. Oh, too bad.
    39:15
    Yeah. I don't remember the person who was doing it. Hopefully next year a little bit better. Anything else that you did on Saturday that you want to talk about, or did you even go on Sunday? I'm guessing now. Didn't go on Sunday, but we actually stayed pretty late Saturday,
    39:36
    went out for a nice dinner, and, again, great, you know, some of the people never met each other I was with, you know, but it gelled so nicely. There was just, I don't know, just a great bunch of people. No, I agree. There were people I would have liked to have seen that I didn't get to see. There were people I didn't think I was going to see that I did see. I think some of the gripes on pin side were valid. The one that I would say is, people, you're bringing a game to Pintastic or any other show, rebuild or do whatever you have to to make the flippers right. At least you're part of the way there. so many games, weak flippers, just doesn't fly. Because, you know, that is your interface with the game. I know, and I learned how to do it. Trust me. If I can do it, anybody can do it. It's not that difficult. If you're going to own a game, you need to at least know how to keep your flippers going and keeping them strong. And it's mostly a cleaning thing. I mean, and the parts to do replacement like a sleeve you know for 50 cents or you know 20 cents whatever it is it's cheap fix um but enough of that enough public service announcement sure is there anything else that you want to talk about the show i've got some we we talked about this i'm going to call it odds and ends uh i think you or maureen had a another name for it if you'll indulge me i'd like to do a little mop-up with a couple of topics. Sure, go for it. Kind of unrelated. So Dave, I want to answer how many downloads. I was listening to Spooky today or yesterday, and they had one of their episodes on Elvira. Now, I don't know if she spoke or if it was a deep dive. I haven't listened, but they said they had over 10,000 downloads for that particular show. And that they had only done it once or twice other than that. So I got the impression that people aren't getting a lot of downloads. It might be in the thousands if you're an established show. They've been doing it for a number of years. but I think we should be proud given we've been doing it a short time. It seems like everybody's enjoying what we're doing. Yeah. We're something different. We're, we're doing, you know, find a need and fill it So the person always said and I like that Right So so listening to Charlie and his son Bug I going to say this root for the little guy they only do 500 machines a year they said they're not going to do more than 500 machines a year so compare that to everybody else out there like us we're going to root for the little guy I'm happy with that so they talk about some other stuff but we'll leave it at that I have something else. I hope you'll indulge me for a couple of minutes. Sure.
    43:00
    We're international. We have international listeners. Right. Well, yeah, they're north of us. There's probably two or three from Canada.
    43:14
    Okay, why? Yeah. I thought you would find that funny. It's good. But I'm asking you to indulge me because I'd like to try to get some European listeners.
    43:29
    Okay. Well, you're asking yourself, George, how are you going to do that? Yes. George, how are you going to do that? George, how are we going to do that? Well, I'm going to ask you to give me two minutes to talk about the IFPA Olympics 2019 that happened in Fulda, Germany, a couple weeks back. But on Sunday, the 23rd of June, they had their four-strike tournament.
    44:03
    You're asking yourself, well, what's the IFPA Olympics? over five days they did 11 different tournaments that's a lot yeah so the last day was the more modern games as you can imagine it was kind of the you know it was the crescendo of five days and the four people that made it to the end were frank bona from france a young guy named paul Englert from Germany, a guy named Nico Wicke from Germany, and then Emil Dreiberg from Switzerland. I just want to talk about the last game. So the last game came down to Frank and Nico on high speed two.
    44:51
    Frank went into the third ball with 256. I'm guessing it's thousand or is it million? that's high speed to the getaway so that would probably be million so million I don't think they were doing really well on this game so Nico comes up to do his third ball he's behind by 20 million he's got 236 beefed it 247 and Frank ended up winning it wasn't a very climatic end of game or end of tournament but anyway frank's a funny guy i've seen him on a lot of tournaments he does a lot of broadcasting he can speak like five different languages so it's always good to hear his perspective and he's one of the top european players but i wanted to focus on the young guy paul engler who um i believe he came in third right so frank came in first nico came in second paul is 12 years old wow you should see this right you should see this kid play he is he's unbelievable there's a couple of young well there's the other young German you heard us talking about the other day Ostermeyer Johannes Ostermeyer I think he's like 18 so you got these young bucks coming into the you know tournament world and I think that might be real good for pinball great thing yep so thank you for indulging me. I'm hoping that this little segment will get us at least one European listener.
    46:35
    Nice. Way to go, George. I'm trying to think if there is anything else that we need to discuss. Anything that you have that you want to talk about that, even if it's unrelated to Pintastic? I made a gaffe this week. on Pintastic I called our podcast Pinfest oh no you did not I did too and I didn't realize I did it and then I get this email from Dave Marston he didn't call me a bonehead but he did too much going on Dave trying too much to get us some listeners and just not paying attention to the details. Yeah. Let's go back to the previous show, Allentown, and how you, I don't know if we talked about this before, you turned me on to pho, or pho. And so, you know, it would be great if they have a Vietnamese place up in the box for a new place. And so I'm always looking for the pho that Allentown has. That's the best I've ever found. And servers does not have anything around that I saw for four or five.
    47:58
    It's an awesome V&E soup. Anybody's wondering what that is. It's like really cool. Well, I have a better idea for our organizers. And hopefully they'll do it at least one of the days. Bring in the food trucks.
    48:15
    Line them up out in the parking lot. They did it out at the Texas Pinball Festival. Yeah, I know that's a gigantic festival, but look, bring the food to the people. Just put it in the parking lot.
    48:28
    I'll go one better. Do the Deadpool taco or burrito truck that Deadpool likes. It's always a toy on the game. I'm sure there is. When I went to Treehouse the other day, there was a, I'm hoping I say it correctly, sopilla i'm sure that's mexican i don't know what that is but they had a sopilla truck they had a oh what the heck did they have they had a what's the p what's what's the soy not soybean chickpea they had some kind of chickpea truck i don't know what that was about and then some other some other barbecue truck but you know they had some different offerings and you know that place is just a circus you've been there man that place was just in full bloom on saturday and people walking out with with cases not six packs or four packs cases of beer you would have thought they were giving it away i saw guys with two wheelers i saw somebody take their grandkids stroller and he had four cases of beer in it and the kid was walking next to the straw. Well, you had priorities, you know. I thought I had seen it all, and that was quite entertaining. So we don't have that either up, well, I guess Hudson.
    49:59
    Hudson's close enough, I guess. It's within striking distance. You got a couple of micro brewers there. Not quite to the scale of that, but hey.
    50:09
    Medusa's there. so I'm done unless you had something else you wanted to add to this let's talk about the artwork for Pentastic the different posters and the different glasses they had and different artists we had Joel DeGuzman doing one and we had he had the print with the lobster which was definitely pertinent to the New England area. And then you had Franchi with his space woman octopus thing, I guess. I don't know. I think people took that too seriously. I like them both for different reasons. No, I do. I bought the T-shirt. I bought the Franchi T-shirt. But I'm saying, I think people made a lot more of it than it really was. Yeah. People get too uptight about the whole PC culture these days. I just think, you know, take a breath. You know, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, is it as par as Woe Nelly? I don't think so. No. No, you know what? It's on par for, like, Big Bang Bar. It's like I see Big Bang Bar in that, you know, and people are on par for that game. So, you know, whatever. I think there's a little tongue-in-cheek there, Dave, and a throwback to the old EMs and, you know, the graphics from, you know, quote, unquote, the day. That's probably what it resonates with me. You know, the classic, you know, the Bally's from the 70s, you know.
    51:45
    We'll get into that in a later show. But, yes, you're right. There are, we're going to do a show on that in all the different instances and all the different games. Sure. There's probably at least 100. Got to be.
    52:05
    Oh, yeah. And there's all kinds of, even the Godly back in the day, they got away with some stuff in the early 70s, mid-70s, and very subtle. And we can definitely go into that. There's tons of stuff to talk about that, tons of, you know, tongue-in-cheek things that an adult would see in that where a child wouldn't. So it's almost like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, you know, where two different levels, you know, one for the kid and one for the adult. They both can watch the same cartoon and go get something out of it, you know. So it's very clever. Subtle. Yeah, subtle, clever. And I love Joel's, too. Joel's take on it with the lobster, that's because Pin Mania had their lobster, which was great. But he kind of, you know, sets it up a notch with putting all these different pinball parts in there, EM parts, you know, all these linkages and so forth, and just really clever how he incorporated it all into that Pintastic poster and the glasses. Well, I'm going to look for you when we let everybody know that we've got a new episode of our podcast that you attach a couple of pictures when we do the announcement. This would be a good one showing, you know, Joel's artwork, if you would.
    53:18
    Here we go. Hey, you're back. I'm back. The internet gods like us. We must be in Sturbridge. I don't know. My internet's nice and strong here. No, I have strong too, but maybe we're exceeding the limit. I don't know. Do we talk too much? Probably. Probably, but hey, that's what it's about.
    53:42
    So where were we? We were talking about the artwork. Yes, the artwork. What did I go into about what the number on the lobster means?
    53:56
    What does the number on the lobster mean? Yeah, it says WKD-6000. And I'm saying, okay, if an artist puts something on a piece of artwork, it means something. You don't just put random things on there. Everything has a purpose. I'm trying to figure out, what does that code mean? Is it an address or something or initials for somebody he knows? And I messaged him while we were on the phone. It says, oh, no, look at it again. It says, wicked good. like oh WKD Wicked and 600D oh okay the calculator playing with the calculator numbers to make it look like letters yeah I'm sure you did that as a kid right yes okay I'm not the only geek here okay I think we're exceeding our time I'm going to try to bring this show in under an hour and the reason why is because I want to go hit the treehouse and have some beer. So with that said, Dave, would you like to sign out?
    55:03
    Yeah, let's sign out. Another show in the can, and can't wait for the next one. We have a lot more games to talk about and a lot more names to drop. Do you want to tease the next episode?
    55:19
    Next episode, let's see. How should I tease it? I could say it. How about the initials QS? We're going to do a little Quicksilver. That's right. Yeah, I think it'll make a good show. Look for our next episode probably a little over a week. We're going to try to do it Sunday, Monday time frames. And our next episode, we're going to do a deep dive on Quicksilver. So with that said, Dave, say good night.
    55:55
    Good night and peace. And I'm going to say be good and be well. And this is episode three in the can. Everybody be well. Happy Fourth of July to all in our military.
    56:10
    We'll see you in a little over a week. Good night. Happy Fourth. Happy Fourth, guys. Destroyed Center