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Jamie and Cale go LIVE on YouTube with special guests Jeff and Serge.

JBS Show·podcast_episode·2h 36m·analyzed·May 25, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

JBS Show live roundtable discusses Sam Stern imagery gaffe, Star Trek/Dracula rumors, operator perspectives.

Summary

Jamie and Cale host a live YouTube roundtable discussion with guests Jeff and Serge, covering pinball industry news including Stern's accidental AI-generated imagery on their website, rumors of an upcoming Star Trek game by Keith Elwin, speculation about an unlicensed Dracula vampire hunter game, and discussion of operator experiences with new releases like Transformers. The hosts debate whether the industry needs another Star Trek title and discuss manufacturing/quality issues with Jersey Jack machines.

Key Claims

  • Stern accidentally posted AI-generated images of women as placeholders on their website and Facebook

    high confidence · Jamie showed a screenshot and confirmed it appeared on Sam Stern feed and product pages; reached out to Stern contact who said 'LOL, that's not my department'

  • Keith Elwin next game after Fallout is Star Trek

    high confidence · Cale says 'Frank Sinatra released the information on Star Trek' via Cane Ateam's Saturday Morning Spectacular, where Cane 'tore up the official NDA from Jersey Jack'

  • There are rumors of an unlicensed Dracula vampire hunter game in development at Stern

    medium confidence · Hosts speculate this is an unlicensed property; Jamie used ChatGPT to generate unlicensed property ideas and 'Dracula' was listed first; speculation about Brian Eddy and Dwight designing it based on D&D success

  • Pokemon Pinball's Pokedex feature is delayed due to licensing issues with Niantic being a competitor

    medium confidence · Chat user mentioned 'George Gomez said Niantic was the problem and said IC is a direct competitor'; hosts note it may need to be renamed 'Collection' instead of 'Pokedex'

  • Jersey Jack machines have recurring light board issues due to off-the-shelf USB-C connectors instead of locking connectors

    medium confidence · Jamie/Rachel experienced this at Electric Bat Arcade; causes glitches and error messages that make casual players think the game is broken

  • Stern has staffing issues and people are leaving without being replaced

    medium confidence · Jamie speculates this explains the AI imagery issue: 'There's a staffing issue. There's a lot of people leaving, and they're not hiring people to take their place.'

  • Transformers Pro machines are shipping to operators before Premium versions

    high confidence · Jamie confirms 'I'm getting the pro' and notes Stern's strategy of 'getting those pros out right away' as 'the best move'

  • Van Halen does not have a large enough fan base to support a Stern Limited Edition pinball game

Notable Quotes

  • “So they had a cropped version... Stern's running his ass. What is that? ...It appears to me that they're creating these weird AI images with women in it to use as placeholders on the website.”

    Jamie @ early segment — Initial discovery and explanation of Stern's AI imagery gaffe, a significant PR/operational issue

  • “He tore up the NDA, the official NDA from Jersey Jack. He had some fun. It was fun to watch him. But he did say that Stern is the next Keith Elwin game after Fallout is the original Star Wars and Star Trek.”

    Cale @ mid-segment — Confirmation of Star Trek announcement via NDA breach, major game announcement leak

  • “I put it in ChatGPT and like, what makes sense?... The first thing it said was Dracula. And then it went down some other monstrous stuff.”

    Jamie @ mid-segment — Playful speculation methodology about unreleased game, shows community engagement with rumors

  • “I think the fan base is not as strong as Metallica. Metallica sells out stadiums. Metallica's the biggest rock-slash metal band in the world.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ later segment — Analysis of licensing IP viability for pinball games based on fan base strength

  • “Because once that code comes, you'll get another probably a few surgeries on the Pokemon, don't you think? ...It's taken so long, this is what I'm worried about.”

    Jamie @ mid-segment — Concerns about Pokemon Pinball Pokedex feature delays and impact on operator revenue

  • “They use just like off-the-shelf USB-C connectors for all of it... But they use just like off-the-shelf USB-C connectors for all of it's a vibration. It's not like a serious locking connector that most of all the other manufacturers use.”

    Jamie @ later segment — Technical explanation of manufacturing quality issue affecting Jersey Jack machines

  • “Star Trek has always covered the pinball demographic. No matter what generation it was. ...I think it's a worldwide known property that combined with a great designer... that's going to be that much more of a banger, you know?”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyKeith ElwinpersonStar TrekgameDraculagameJersey Jack PinballcompanyPokemon PinballgameTransformersgame

Signals

  • ?

    operational_signal: Stern posting AI-generated placeholder images on official website and Facebook, indicating internal process breakdown and possible staffing shortages

    high · Jamie confirmed screenshot from Facebook feed; reached out to Stern contact who had no knowledge; attributed to staffing issues and people leaving

  • ?

    announcement: Star Trek confirmed as Keith Elwin's next Stern game after Fallout

    high · Cale cites Cane Ateam's Saturday Morning Spectacular where official Jersey Jack NDA was discussed; multiple confirmations in chat

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Dracula vampire hunter game rumored as unlicensed Stern title in development, speculated to be 1800s Victorian gothic themed with RPG elements

    medium · Jamie used ChatGPT to generate unlicensed property ideas; Dracula listed first; hosts speculate design team, gameplay mechanics, and setting based on D&D success

  • ?

    code_update: Pokemon Pinball Pokedex feature significantly delayed due to licensing complications with Niantic IP

    medium · Chat user attributes delay to Niantic being competitor; feature may require renaming; hosts note it's been 'taken so long' and causing operator concerns

  • ?

    product_concern: Jersey Jack machines have recurring light board connectivity failures caused by use of standard USB-C instead of locking connectors

    medium · Jamie reports multiple experiences at Electric Bat Arcade; causes game crash messages that mislead casual players; compares unfavorably to other manufacturers' standards

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.471

0:00
So we're going to do something a little different tonight. Yeah, yeah. What's going on? You know, I just I got I got the bat signal. You told me to turn my computer on. Well, Janine's out of town. That's right. Janine's out of town. I'm bored out of my mind. Oh, you were available. I see what's going on. And Kale was not. So Ralph was not. So I know Ralph was not. Hey, I am. All right. Let's see how I get my chat up here. Yeah, I can see you. Oh, there it is, too. And there, Pimball Studio. Sterling, what's happening? Oh, there it is. Pimball Studio. What's up? We're new to this. Ozzy. Cool. I got it.
0:37
Oh, yeah. You see it now? I got it. Cool. I just can't see any Super Chats. I'm not asking for Super Chats. I just can't see it on Riverside. Yeah. Right. That's the humble brag. You know, I'm going to mention Super Chats, but I don't want any Super Chats.
0:57
Hey, Ozzy's in the house. Ozzy sent me a video earlier. Is Yuri Simones in your, is that your coach? It's pretty cool if that's a deal. Oh, no, I got you. That's some BJJ stuff, Jamie. I figured it was.
1:15
We can keep going. George Gomez in the house. We have one of them. Okay, good. I've known George for a while. It's the George Gomez that hangs out with Don from Don's Fimball Podcast, right? Yeah, I've met him. Nice to meet you. Yeah, I met him at TTF.
1:32
Yeah. So, roundtable. Here's what we're going to do. We've got two-thirds of the roundtable tonight. Ralph's hanging out with the wife, and that is much more important than what we're doing. We're going to go over some news. We're going to do it live here. And then later on, if you stick around, I'm going to give you the link and you can join and ask us questions live on the air. I tried to do a call-in show, Kale, but I couldn't figure it out within the hour that you said that you were available. So I was close. That's what I've been doing the last hour, thinking if I could get like a 1-800 number or 1-900. You know, not 900, but. Well, you can do that with the, what's it called? I just couldn't figure it out in an hour. But don't you literally hook up a phone to it? But then I'd have to have my number through there. Oh, man. Wouldn't that be fun, a call-in show? We have to figure that out. Yeah. As of that, that's your employee? How crazy is that? Yeah, you own a UFC gym. I guess you own a gym or something like that? This is phenomenal.

medium confidence · Jamie's opinion: 'I don't think Van Halen has the fan group anymore to get to L.E.' compared to Metallica's drawing power

Serge @ mid-segment — Defense of Star Trek as appropriate IP choice despite market saturation concerns

  • “Kudos on them, right? And then if there's something wrong, like there was on the Pokémon (Pro), you guys are so good you fix it... the cool thing about what Stern's doing for operators, dude, is getting those pros out right away.”

    Jamie @ early-mid segment — Praise for Stern's Pro/Premium release strategy and post-launch support

    • Jamie
    person
    Caleperson
    Sergeperson
    Jeffperson
    George Gomezperson
    Christopher Franchiperson
    Brian Eddyperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Electric Bat Arcadevenue
    Godzillagame
    Dungeons & Dragonsgame
    Avatargame
    Nianticcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern Pinball experiencing significant staff departures without replacement hiring

    medium · Jamie attributes AI imagery issue to 'staffing issue. There's a lot of people leaving, and they're not hiring people to take their place'

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern shipping Transformers Pro machines to operators before Premium/LE versions arrive

    high · Jamie confirms 'I'm getting the pro'; notes this is positive operator strategy; Electric Bat Arcade getting pro first with premium later

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community questioning whether another Star Trek pinball game is needed given market saturation

    medium · Chat asks 'Do we need another Star Trek?'; Serge counters with defense of IP quality and Elwin's ability to elevate any theme

  • ?

    business_signal: Operators purchasing multiple tiers of new games (Pro and Premium) across multiple venues to manage cash flow and maximize uptime

    medium · Eureka Heights buying Pro and Premium of Transformers; moving Pro to secondary location when Premium arrives; efficient venue portfolio management

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Designer quality can elevate moderately known IPs into major commercial successes (Godzilla example cited)

    medium · Serge argues Godzilla wasn't particularly huge fan base when made but Elwin turned it into best-selling Stern title; same expected for Star Trek

  • ?

    leak_detection: Official Jersey Jack NDA for Star Trek reveal was publicly torn up and discussed on Cane Ateam's Saturday Morning Spectacular

    high · Cale confirms Cane Ateam 'tore up the NDA, the official NDA from Jersey Jack' and released Star Trek information

  • $

    market_signal: Discussion of Van Halen IP viability; consensus that fanbase too small to support LE tier game compared to Metallica

    medium · Jamie: 'I don't think Van Halen has the fan group anymore to get to L.E.'; Metallica comparison used as standard; agreement from other hosts

    • 2:38
    Yuri is just a world champion. And, you know, he's constantly in ADCC, which, you know, considered to be like a world champion of no-gi grappling. It's a – actually, I saw him at the last one.
    2:52
    That's not me. It's okay. Sorry to derail your phone, Jamie. If somebody comes in and starts talking Celtic with me, we're going to talk Celtic soccer. So, Arsenal, you're – how crazy is that? Ladies and gentlemen, he's going to explain what's going on at Yucataprum. Go ahead, sir. We checked the – so, you know, they all meet up there like 5 a.m. or something crazy. You know, and that's when the matches start. When Rachel and I woke up and we checked the cameras at the bar, it was just wall to wall. It was absolutely packed. So you know more about this than I do. Apparently, Arsenal has done – Yeah, they won the title today. Like historically well. It's a huge deal. Today was the title trophy presentation for the EPL, which is the English Premier League, which is the biggest league in the world. And Arsenal haven't won in a long time. And my buddy, I have a few buddies that are Arsenal supporters and they love it. There you go. Yeah, they beat Man City. Arsenal and all the Arsenal fans in the chat. Can we start off making fun of someone a little? Yeah. Whoever's running the Stern website. That's where I was going to go. You want to go there real quick? Wow. We only have 17 in here so far. Tell your friends. We have to. We're going to make fun of this. Can you? I can share my screen. Let me pull this up. Okay. Give me a second, ladies and gentlemen. We just decided to do this. And I'm not Serge. Serge is the man. Okay?
    4:14
    But this photo right here is ridiculous. This is worth it, people. Just hold up. Share screen. Okay, so I was at home. What's up, Buck? What was that, Buck LTM? So just like an hour or two ago, I got a message from somebody, and it was a screen grab. And it's like, what's going on over at Stern? You know, as far as like with them posting photos to their website or app or wherever they do it. Because, you know, I mean, we all know now that, you know, somebody accidentally posted the Transformers photos to the IC app. So I get a screen grab and I'm like, is this real? Yeah. This is my screen grab, what we're looking at here. So they had a cropped version. And I was like, is that real? He's like, yeah, it just popped up on my feed. So I went to Facebook and I'll be damned. Stern's running his ass. What is that? So what? Please explain it to me. Okay, so I reached out to a buddy at Stern that deals on the software side and jokingly said, are you guys, is this how you guys are trying to get it? It clicks now. And, you know, and LOL, that's not my department. So he didn't know any details about what's going on here or why this is happening. It appears to me that they're creating these weird AI images with women in it to use as placeholders on the website. I mean, because when you actually go to the product page, it's the same thing, which is you have that image here. The product page.
    6:13
    Like, what's going on? What are they doing? I don't understand this. In all seriousness, I mean, there's a staffing issue. There's a lot of people leaving, and they're not hiring people to take their place.
    6:35
    Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff going on, but let's hope they keep going for at least another couple of years, because they have some banger games on the way. Frank Sinatra released the information on Star Trek.
    6:53
    Oh, I haven't seen that yet. You didn't see it? No. What's the deal? Cane Ateam released it on his Saturday morning spectacular yesterday. I had to watch it, re-watch it.
    7:05
    It was honestly his best one he's ever done. Oh my God. He tore up the NDA, the official NDA from Jersey Jack. He had some fun. It was fun to watch him. But he did say that Stern is the next Keefe Elwin game after Fallout is the original Star Wars and Star Trek.
    7:40
    That's phenomenal. And they are really, I think the choices they are making on games is A+. Like, why not do Star Trek? I mean, it's like it has always worked in pinball. They could do so much. They could do it like Batman 66. I mean, not the layout, right? But the way it was incorporated so perfectly with all those episodes and all that, they can totally do that with Paramount, don't you think?
    8:17
    Yeah, Ozzy. Oh yeah, the crayon. He's talking about the crayon NDA. Ozzy, are you getting OG Star Trek? Are you getting NLE?
    8:31
    Do we need another Star Trek? Jamie, what's your take? Do we need a Pinball manufacturer? From Trash Can Ninja 87. That's the real question, right?
    8:41
    Can I? Hold on, let me see. Hey, look, if you hover over a chat, there should be a button that pops up where you can put it on the screen. Love it. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Don't you like that?
    8:56
    So if somebody watches the VOD, they can follow along. Do we need another Star Trek? Well, look, I was going to say, we've got nine to ten pinball manufacturers out there spitting out pinball machines, and Stern seems that someone's going to do a Star Trek. And it's a good license. I'd play the shit out of it, right? Why wouldn't you play that?
    9:22
    Yeah. Not Star Trek Academy. He's right. You can't have that. No, it's got to be the original OG Star Trek or Wrath of Khan. How about Wrath of Khan?
    9:33
    Dude, I was... Yeah. That thing, whatever that little bug was that was in the fish tank, that terrified me, dude. Dude, I couldn't sleep that night because I was like, yeah, like 10 years old. I think it's fucking buggy's going to go in my ear. Yeah. I thought something was going to go in my ear. And I lived in New Orleans at the time. I mean, there's roaches everywhere, dude.
    9:57
    Roaches and mosquitoes. The Star Trek. Do we need another one? Man, you know, we don't need any of these things, to tell you the truth. But I am actually excited about this IP. I've got to turn my monitor down. I'm a little loud for myself.
    10:19
    There we go. All right. Check, check, check. We're doing it. I think this is a great IP, especially for pinball because it's always worked. For some reason, Star Trek has always covered the pinball demographic. No matter what generation it was.
    10:40
    Yeah, and Elwin. I think it would be dope. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, come on. It's Elwin. You can give him anything. But, yeah, this is a very cool IP, you know, especially since it's like, oh, gee, come on. I mean, this is where it all started. You know, this is original sci-fi when it was popular, you know, on television. All right, what's going on with that? We need a Batman 89 Stern from Pinball Studio from, I don't know, Batman's Jack Nicholson. Which one is that? Is that Jack Nicholson? Yeah. And Mr. Mom? Michael Keaton.
    11:19
    Michael Keaton. Yeah, who didn't? That's a good one. I had that on VHL, so that is a good one. That would be nice. Richie's Star Trek is amazing. Yeah, Richie's, you're right, Richie's Star Trek is amazing. That's a great game. That's one game we don't have at the bat that I always wish we did.
    11:41
    Yeah, Mark Pearson operated one at the bat. It was a great tournament game. It was a fun game. It was a pro, which the pro's great. Both versions are great with that game.
    11:54
    He had some kind of opto issue he couldn't ever figure out, so he just took it home. He does that with games. He's got so many games. If one breaks, he just swipes them out. Good for you to have as an operator. Yeah.
    12:07
    So let's talk Transformers. Did you get one? He's a great guy. For the bat? Yes, I'm in on the pro. Eureka Heights is in on the pro and the premium. I'm not even. They're going to do the pro premium. So they'll get the pro first. Oh. And then when the pro comes in, they'll move the pro to one of their other locations, 8th Wonder or – Yeah, so there are three locations that are John and Taylor.
    12:37
    I know, right? Amazing. I'm so proud of those guys. You know what? And you know what? Listen, they listened to the Electric Bat Arcade podcast. They learned all the tips and tricks. They took the tips and made them their own, right? And they're successful. That's why you should always listen to the Electric Bat Arcade. I would say they would say a lot of that is true, okay? Seriously. And you were so helpful in the beginning. A lot of texts I would send to you and Rachel and, you know, anyone that doesn't listen to Electric Bats out of their mind. But if you want to become an operator at any time, start at episode one and keep going. And they're really good listens, and the two of them are a great pod. There you go. But you don't need me to promote you. You're doing great. You don't need the plug. You're the number one podcaster. That's right.
    13:35
    Oh, pro. I'm getting the pro. Yeah, so Rachel and I, you know, the premium LE layout looks amazing. Yeah, they're going to get the premium later, but the cool thing about what Stern's doing for operators, dude, is getting those pros out right away.
    13:53
    And it's such a – oh, man. That's the best move. Kudos on them, right? And then if there's something wrong, like there was on the Pokemon Pro, you guys are so good you fix it.
    14:08
    That's right. Yeah, yeah, we have, we still have both Pokemon games on the floor. We're gonna, we're gonna have to sell one. It's just, we just don't have enough room. But when that code comes, you'll get another probably a few surgeons on the Pokemon, don't you think?
    14:27
    I mean, if it comes, this is what I'm, it's taken so long, this is what I'm worried about. For one thing, you know, I was keeping two games, two Pokemon games in the arcade because I thought once the code they were talking about on the Loser, I think it was the Loser Kid podcast. Yeah, I told the Pokedex. Antonio held up the phone and showed the Pokedex. Right. When we all thought that was coming, I was like, oh, that might be a good idea to keep two games around for a little bit longer. Because once that comes out, people are going to just be parking on the game trying to catch all these little creatures.
    15:11
    But, you know, something's going on. I don't think we know the details. Anybody knows the details, you know, outside of Stern. But it seems like they're having trouble implementing that. And if you just think about what's going on, I mean, they probably, like, approved, you know, licensing for, like, for them to build a pinball machine. And they did a bang-up job. I mean, the game's beautiful. Some of the coolest sculpts. I mean, it looks like the Pokemon license come to life, you know. Totally agree. Like just in the truest sense.
    15:50
    But for them to implement the gaming side of it on a mobile device, I bet they've run into issues. We'd be surprised.
    15:59
    Because Nintendo or Game Freak or the Pokemon company, whoever they're dealing with, I bet they would consider that a separate game.
    16:13
    Not an add-on. And so I can see there's, yeah, I can see where there's some things not so pathetic. You know, they're doing the, it's a licensed thing. It could be still. I'm not saying, we're not calling them liars, right? We're just saying it could be a litany of things. But, yeah.
    16:34
    Yeah. Well, that issue I'm talking about is a licensed thing. Like Dr. Marriott says, Pokemon Fever, my local pen has totally dried up. I see that, right? I mean, well, we're so in this hobby particularly because we're really at a spoiled time. I think we're spoiled rotten.
    16:53
    That I think that just started recently. I know. Man, we're so spoiled. If it's not here now, forget it. They just dump it.
    17:08
    You know, I'll pick one up later because they don't have to worry about it. It's not like a Winchester, right?
    17:16
    Oh, put Ozzy's thing up there. George Gomez said Niantic was the problem and said IC is a direct competitor. What the hell is that?
    17:31
    Oh, so this does sound like... He says they need to rename the Pokedex to Collection. See? So what I was getting is have an uncanny ability. I tell them this all the time off camera, but it's really freaking amazing. Like you pulled Dracula out of your ass.
    17:57
    Did it? That scared me. But, you know, I can't take the credit. Was it on? No worries. My tripod is messed up. No worries. Or whatever this thing's called, my boom arm.
    18:12
    Yeah. I told you how I got that, right? And you went through. Yeah. I put it in chat GPT. And, like, what makes sense? You know, Stern Pinball is working on a game to come out next year with a, what do you call it? Unlicensed property. A loyalty, like an unlicensed property. There you go. So what would make the most sense? And can you give me a list of unlicensed properties that would make sense? The first thing it said was Dracula. And then it went down some other monstrous stuff.
    18:55
    Because I think like generic Wolfman, stuff like that. Maybe Frank is – there was a whole list. But at the top it said Dracula makes the most sense. Yeah, but that was just a wild guess plus me slash me and Jack D'Etee. Pulling the Dracula. And are you hearing some more about Dracula?
    19:18
    So, I can guess like I did before. I want you to guess some more because you're doing really well with this. So, I mean, you're batting really well on your guesses. I imagine it being in like an 1800s, like a Victorian, like gothic setting. Well, you know, the success of Winchester made it dark, right? Make it, yeah. Okay.
    19:46
    Oh, it would be good. And I have a feeling you're not actually, you're not Dracula. You're a Dracula hunter. Yes. You like this?
    20:03
    Because you got to think this team, they just did Dungeons and Dragons. Pinball, can you do it? You want me to give Serge, if I send you a link, can you come in here? Yeah, let's get Serge in here. I would love that. He'll let me. Yeah, we got to get Serge. Okay, so 1800 Victorian, gothic looking, you're a vampire hunter. And I would imagine, since they did so well with the RPG elements in Dungeons and Dragons, I think you're going to see those elements here. So do you know it's Dwight, Brian Eddy?
    20:46
    I know it's Brian Eddy. I'm just guessing it's Dwight. Yeah, it has to be. That's the team. What else did they work on? Van Damme. A Venom?
    21:06
    I don't know if Dwight was on that. Was Dwight on that? Yeah, no question. Will Chad tell us? D&D. But I think you'll be able to select multiple players and go off. Like you'll have different areas to play in, like Romania, London. Now we're just guessing. Yeah, around places around Europe where you would. Doc wants to know like a Buffy or Van Helsing.
    21:32
    I'd say more Van Helsing, like old, you know, old. Right, exactly, Van Helsing. Yeah. And how, man, this is going to be a really interesting thing because This is going to be hard to sell. Yeah.
    21:50
    You know what I mean? Like, I think the pinheads will be into it, but it's a hard sell for, like, new pinball players. But I think the pinheads are going to be really into it. It sounds like, I mean, the whole premise sounds super, super cool. Hey, Dustin.
    22:09
    What's up, Dustin? Welcome to the show. We're going to have people join later. We're waiting on Serge to see if he can do it. But later on, you know, when we hit the 45-minute hour mark, I'm going to throw the link into the chat. If people want to come and ask us questions directly, come on in.
    22:27
    Why not? Yeah, hold on. I got you, Serge. I'll join if I'm not interrupting your bro time. Get in here.
    22:40
    Get in here, Serge. You guys are the best. Okay, cool. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, but we'll give that out later. Again, we were trying to do the call-in show, but we just couldn't figure it out. But I know who – there's somebody in chat who can figure that out, and that's Sterling.
    22:59
    Yeah. Jeff, Kale has not given – I mean, Jack has not given me in Harry Potter. But, you know, right now, I wouldn't want Harry Potter. What would I want? You want the new one. You want the Sonic. So check it out. In the chat, Frank D'Angelo, he, where was it? The Pokedex, there's trademark issues. So what I guessed was right. Okay, I see it right here. Yeah.
    23:42
    So they just have to – and the guys are stern and smart. They can figure out how to make this happen. I got to. You know what I'm saying? Because it is a banger. But in the interim – I know, but in the interim, at least let us see on the display, right? I mean, it flashes up slowly, but let us, like, pause it and scroll through it somehow. Christopher Franchi in the house. Hello, Mr. Franchi. Thank you again for joining the roundtable. We are two-thirds of the roundtable tonight. Ooh.
    24:18
    Yeah, you want to get in here, Chris? You need to download one of those call apps that connects your number and connect your phone to your ROGECaster using the Bluetooth setting. See, you're right.
    24:31
    He says you connect to one of those call apps. It gives you access to a number. Well, we're going to do it. We're going to – the next time we go live, we're going to do a call-in show.
    24:44
    I would love to – yeah. It could be like Art Bell. I would love to do that. You remember Art Bell? That would be an absolute hoot, having people call in, asking their questions to her. So, yeah, like only people who are possessed line. It's like stuff like that. Witches line. I don't remember. You remember all that? I just remember who he was. Only, I, I, I, do you know, Rachel and I listen every night.
    25:11
    Well, uh, the, yeah, the rerun, I will, all the stuff's on, um, uh, Spotify. I mean, it's on YouTube, it's all over the place.
    25:21
    Um, ready, buddy's ready, buddy Andrew's ready for Van Halen. You know, um. Yeah, I am. You're ready for Van Halen, Jamie. And you're also ready to give, you bet Kiney to $100 they could not get that IP. Well, I still want to see them announce that I'll demo them $100.
    25:42
    You know, right now they could have the IP and never make it. That doesn't count. They've got to make the damn thing, I think.
    25:53
    But he never even accepted the bet, though. The quote was that they'll never get it. What is... You can't... Yeah. He didn't have to. He said I bet you. Let's ask Chad. If I said to Kale, hey, Kale, I'll bet you $100 I can beat you in arm wrestling, and Kale doesn't say anything, then, you know, the bet's off. You got to, there's a, hey, Serge, if I bet you $100. Go on, gentlemen. How are you doing? Okay. And you don't accept $100, and then I wind up losing the bet. Do you come back and get $100? A box?
    26:29
    I'm not that kind of better. That's right. So, Kanita never officially took the bet. I've got the chat. I mean, I've got it. I said...
    26:37
    Hey, Jamie, that's not Christopher Franchi. Oh, I love Tranchi just as much. That's Christopher Tranchi. I don't... All right. I don't think Van Halen has the fan group anymore to get to L.E. That's my opinion on it. I'm not saying I don't like Van Halen. I'm not saying that people don't like Van Halen. But I'm saying I don't actually think they have the draw that the new Metallica does as bands from that era go. Do you disagree with that? I think the fan base is not as strong as Metallica. That's hard. Metallica sells out stadiums.
    27:16
    Metallica's the biggest rock-slack metal band in the world. And they're still playing. And they're probably the biggest American band ever made.
    27:28
    Right. I would have a tough time saying anyone else than Metallica. So, American-wise. Right. Not American. I mean, the Nudo? Are they smaller or bigger than Rush?
    27:41
    Metallica? No, sorry. Van Halen. Van Halen versus Rush. Like, just by brand name, popularity, fan base, devotion, that sort of thing. I think Van Halen is bigger. What do you think, Chad? I also think that's true. Yes. And I'm just trying to level set because I'm like, you know, it also matters, is it a good game and all of that. But also, thanks so much.
    28:10
    Hey, Sturge, can you turn your camera just a little bit so you're centered? Oh, yeah, you're right. Because it's, yeah, they. All right, one second. Let's see. How's that? There you go. Nothing remains at all. Wait, how about that? There you go. My technique was moving my chair. Pin says there's only two albums.
    28:27
    Albums. That's crazy. Come on. You know what's interesting? I was thinking about this yesterday. I was at a friend's house for a party, and there were a lot of kids around.
    28:43
    Were you the only adults? We were on an island, okay? Anyway, can I tell the joke you did on that Predator game or no?
    28:55
    Yeah, absolutely. All right, that's what I got to tell. Did you tell this joke already online? I told this somewhere on the round table. I'm sorry, I have to let you tell your story, Kale, but first, we get this game one night only at Left 4 Bat Predator, and so then they wrap it up and bring it to Expo or something. It was Expo. And so Kale cuts out a picture of Jeffrey Epstein and puts it on instead of the Predator on the Predator's picture. And then they ship it, close the game. He doesn't tell anyone. And they open it there on the floor. And I don't think they noticed for a while. I noticed it.
    29:33
    Oh, fair enough. Pretty funny joke, though. Just saying. You know what? Sorry, Kale. You have to have somebody like me around. A necessary evil. Now, you have to. What would this world be without the agents of chaos? Right, right, right. You're like chaotic neutral or whatever. Maybe chaos is good. If you want the rock and roll, you want the Rolling Stones, you want the Beatles, you're going to have to handle doo-doo in the street sometimes. I don't know what he's talking about.
    30:07
    Yeah, I'm just saying. Well, anyway, I think Rush didn't sell that well, did it? You know, as these things go. And so I'm trying to get a sense of the band against other band music fans. Do we know, is it Elliot Eisman doing? Not Elliot Eisman. What's his name? Mark Seiden doing Van Halen. Oh, Mark Seiden. Do we know that? We have no clue there, right? No idea. Were you an Avatar guy? Really? Okay. I think the crab was really kind of cool. All right. I thought that was kind of neat. Oh, the little lower playfields? I thought it was kind of cool. But it was definitely a beautiful game.
    30:49
    It just, yeah, I just couldn't get into it. Beautiful game, too. And there wasn't one around, so I'm a location player, so it's hard for me when there's not one around.
    31:02
    We had one at the bat that Game Room Goodies let us borrow. We had fun with it. That's the problem with Jason. Yeah, they can't really handle the play, man. That's why Jack needs to send me a Sonic so we can test it. What broke? Was it the guy's arm going up and down on the slingshot? I mean, what was their breaking? Oh, well, that did, but we were able to easily fix that. It was just a bunch of other issues. You know, they always have problems with their light boards. And I don't know if this is the problem. Some people hypothesize it is. Rachel thinks it is. But they use just like off-the-shelf USB-C connectors for all of their light boards. And I don't know if it's a vibration. It's not like a serious locking connector that most of all the other manufacturers use. Spooky may, I know they use USB-C for some stuff. Maybe they have gotten away from that.
    32:05
    But it just would cause the light boards to glitch out and not work. And then a big screen flashes or a big window flashes on the screen saying,
    32:18
    this lily pad, something's out, check it out. And so then casuals or even experienced players think, well, the game's broken, so they turn it off. And that always happens with Jersey Jacks.
    32:32
    We have the real Chris Clancy in the house now. And we want to see them fight. I don't think we need that. I think it's all love here at the JBS show and Kale and Jamie live.
    32:51
    A year ago, we set up a controversial art pinball podcast and Kale and I just never did it. We always found a reason not to do it. What are you going to say, Kale? We're doing it with Frenchie. This time we're really going to do it. Yeah. We kind of cataloged all of controversies from like recent different things in Sterner and J.J.P. all the way back to like 60 years ago. And with all these different categories of controversies and we're just going to show the art and talk through it. And I thought that might be interesting but it definitely is like the episode that gets canceled. It won't get canceled. Everybody loves the Pimpals. Who the hell doesn't love Pimpals? But also, we're not worried about getting canceled, because if we get canceled, we'll just go back to the election, a bad arcade, and play some games, and hang out. We're going to do it on Rumble, right? There you go. Go on about our life. Yeah, Rumble. All right, do you want to go to some topics with Surge?
    33:53
    Oh, we didn't show Surge the AI shop. No. The shop, the Stern shop. The shop? Let's go back to that because there's probably more people in the chat now that need to see this. Because you showed it at the beginning of the show. Okay, so Serge, somebody got in touch with me just like a couple of hours ago and sent me a screen grab and was like, what the hell is this? Store collection of all products. What is this thing here, Serge?
    34:27
    Interesting. Is that Lana Del Rey or something? I mean, what is this? Jersey Sweatshands. You don't need that. Okay, so. What's going on? Oh, that's Jamie. That's Jamie.
    34:39
    Jamie, here it is. Okay, here we go. So, the person sent me the screen grab. I was like, is that real? First of all, it's an AI lady. And he said, go check it out. So I went to Facebook and it immediately popped up in my feed.
    34:59
    So I reached out to somebody at Stern because, you know, I wanted to let them know this was going on. We'll put that on our A.L.N. Art controversy. Right. Yeah. Yes, perfect. Because I don't think that lady is real, Kale. No, it's not. I already spent her $100.
    35:16
    Yes. On Grindr. Yes, he's like top ten on the page or something. He wants to hear some juicy nuggets. I'm kidding. He doesn't like what we're doing so far, George.
    35:32
    Well, I know. Sorry, you go, Kale. Well, there was a rumor on Kaneda. We'll give the credit to Kaneda's podcast. Oh. Which I don't know if you talked about it right. I did, bro. After Fallout. Jamie did. No, no. Star Trek. Can we already bring it up here? I won't say it. We don't have to cover it again. Well, no, drop it real quick. Drop it real quick. There might be some new chatter. Yeah, so for people joining that, L1 is doing Star Trek. Which I'm excited about, I'd say, because first of all, like the themes he gets sometimes, Jaws is a huge theme, right? But I think that having like a branded theme that could be biggish on its own, plus Elwin can be really, really good. You know, like Iron Maiden, kind of some people not their cup of tea. I guess Jurassic Park is big enough, but I think... That's a great point, Serge. And because somebody asked in the chat, do we really need another Star Trek? And I think you're answering that. I think it's a worldwide known property that combined with a great designer. Like you take Godzilla. Now Godzilla, there was a lot more Godzilla that's come out, Godzilla minus one, and there's an Apple TV show or whatever. But when he made Godzilla, I wouldn't have said that that's a particularly huge fan base. Maybe you'll hate that. People will hate me saying on that. Like everyone knows Godzilla, but they're not like Godzilla bedsheets or whatever. And I think that he made it what it is, and he made it as popular as it is. So by giving him something that already has a lot of big fan base out there, I think it's going to be that much more of a banger, you know? And also, Star Trek, no matter which version or generation it was, has always worked in pinball. Right. Maybe not like the newest Starfleet Academy. Yeah, they were bringing that up too. I think people were bringing that up too. Nobody wanted Starfleet Academy. Right. If it's Starfleet Academy, it may not go as well, but the original series still has its favorites, you know. And you know, William Shatner is still alive. He's like 95 or whatever he is, but he's still with it. Maybe he could still do call outs. And he would love to do some call outs. You know who would do call outs? Danny Crane. No.
    37:45
    George Takei. Joe Takei. George Takei. Hey, you know what's going on? Oh, George Takei. Oh. George Takei. He's still in Labyrinth? No.
    37:55
    I don't know. I'm pretty serious. I play George Takei in Labyrinth. He's still in Labyrinth right now. Sorry? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, he is. Now, they want to know, is it the OG movies of the OG TV show? We don't know. I don't.
    38:11
    I bet you it is, too. I bet you it's all. It has to be. Just like Transformers is the TV show. But I don't think that's... I know people might be more into movies than TV shows, same for Transformers or whatever, the G1 movie. But I think that in Pinball, getting the TV show, which is usually another layer of corniness, actually works for Pinball. It's like... Oh, yeah, we're talking about Batman 66. It can't be that. Godzilla. Can't be that. Oh, that's good. That's it. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember Tribbles. Oh my. That's right. It was oh my. Is that Joe Cherovina? That looks like his image right there. Yeah, we got a question. Is Star Trek a nightmare to operate? Which one? I mean, the TNG is, right? But not, but I wouldn't think Stern Star Trek is. What do you think that really wants Well tell me Mark took the one we had at the arcade home because he couldn figure out what was going on with it And maybe just, you know, he has so many games, he just, if something happens, he'll just swap them out. So, you know, it may have been something somebody else could fix. But I think a lot of people operate... C.I. Joe over Star Trek. Why is there not a G.I. Joe? God, me and you talk about this all the time.
    39:44
    Star Trek is a better move for sales, but I would rather see Keith do G.I. Joe. Star Trek, you think, has better sales than G.I. Joe as well. Yeah. I agree with that. But, God, G.I. Joe.
    39:58
    Would I love that? Is my echo cancellation on again? I need to check something real quick. So, Kale and I are doing a podcast tomorrow, right, Kale? Yep. Tomorrow night we're meeting with Ray Day, Raymond Davidson, if you will. We're doing, going over the full Star Trek, Star Wars, Fall of the Empire, Deep Dive. No, I did it earlier. Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. That's in your box.
    40:27
    Yeah, you're right, right, right, right, right. It is. Which is a great coded game. I'll say that. Right. I know the layout is not for everyone, and I get that, but the code is based on it.
    40:41
    What could have been? Well, which one are you guys talking about? Star Wars. Star Wars of the Empire. Oh. We're doing the podcast tomorrow with Rayman and going into the deep dive of the code. And I was just saying, the code is great on that game. No. You don't like the layout, huh? I just don't. You know what's interesting? I heard that the Death Star shot, the notorious shot that everybody's like, you know, rejects and Tom has always been talking about this on Triple Drain. It's just like, it's a running joke, right? This is a very hard shot to hit, even after you install that new part.
    41:29
    And so originally that Death Star was at a play field level. That's how it was designed. And it was a scoop that was very easy to hit. You could even very easily backhand it.
    41:48
    Like on the Data East Star Wars that John Borg designed like 30 years before or whatever the time is. There you go. Which was also that kind of Death Star. Right, so it was like a last minute change just to get the Death Star front and center up in the air instead of on the play field. That's a mistake. Hindsight game. We're playing a little hindsight game, Serge.
    42:17
    I won't ask tomorrow about it, but that is interesting. Yeah, because it would be interesting to ask, like, you know, what's it like, you know, maybe you already had code for it in one location and then now the shot's more difficult. How does that change the way you think about code? Yeah. No reason to get into that. Serge, Christopher Franchi wants to see your other brain.
    42:45
    Do you, in fact, have two brains? That was a great Steve Martin movie. Now, my head, do you think my head is bigger than your head? I think with your hair, yes. My skull and everything. With the hair, definitely. The skull, well, you know, there used to be a science of phrenology where you would feel people's head. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. And understand what they were good at, what they weren't based on the shape of their skull or whatever. But you've been hitting me a bill a few times, right, Kale? That's what's wrong with the laser bill, if you're wondering.
    43:24
    You know? But your brain is more dense than mine. Well, you know, first of all, it's very kind, and I don't know that, but I would say that, you know, like, we're all good at different things, and I have my little things that I'm good at, and I have lots of things I'm really stupid at, you know? So I had some like like my family makes fun of me because I had like a deodorant that I was like trying to put on for like three weeks. And I'm like, you know, I just don't think this thing is giving me the coverage I need. You know, and then they looked at it and like I never took off the plastic piece, you know, under the cap or whatever. And like, you know, what does that mean? You can't win them all. That's what I'm saying. What does that have to do with memorizing? You can't ball code.
    44:06
    You know. So what, you know, now that I've got you here, technically it's somewhat of an interview search. Okay.
    44:15
    Okay. So I win. Don't you tell Dirty Pool this. I got you first. Yeah. Jamie and Kale, we got you. Right. That's very kind of you. It's been a running joke that, like, Kale, like, you know, like, Jeff asked me and some other people to go on. Right. I just feel weird about doing interviews or whatever. Like, it's just a weird thing. Like, it's such a niche hobby already, you know, and I'm just somebody talking about a niche hobby. I need to interview somebody who's talking about Nishambi feels like too meta for me or whatever. And so I was just like, I'm not going to do anything.
    44:48
    But you might technically have won now, I guess. So now I'm going to ask you an interview question. Tell the story of how you walked up to Kale. Oh, damn. And how you got into streaming with him. Tell that story.
    45:06
    Kale told me I should do it. And I'm like, nah, or whatever. And he's like, no, we should just get on and talk about it because we like to talk after league night about all sorts of dumb stuff. And I don't know, Kale, maybe you tell it better, but that's what I would say.
    45:21
    So I think, wasn't the first time, so we got all the rig parts together, me and John Schappel, like, did all the troubleshooting trying to get it together, and we still didn't have it dialed in. And as you know, Jamie, you know, it takes a long time when you start from nothing.
    45:39
    So I think we did one stream before Arizona State Championships. That's why we got the stream, the rig together, because the state championships were going to be at the Electric Bat, and they're going to be at the Electric Bat this year.
    45:57
    So you're ready to put that on your calendar. All right, let's do it. I mean, come on, that's where you need a second rig. Oh, hell yeah. Thank you. It's going to be a lot of fun.
    46:05
    So, Serge sits down next to me, and nobody had any idea what to expect. And we were just all, like, I mean, anybody who's seen the stream, we were just blown away. Like, Serge, he did his research. He knew the rules to every single game we were streaming. And we were like, like, immediately we were like, this is a thing now. Right? I'll admit it's a pet peeve of mine when people do commentary on very big tournaments, like really big tournaments, and they just don't know the games. And you know the games in advance in those tournaments. I'm not saying everyone's got to know all the rules of every game. I get that. It's hard to do. But if you know you're going to a tournament where you know the games that are going to be there and you already know you're going to be doing commentary on those games,
    46:51
    yeah, I think you should look up the rules. That's what I think. Well, because I used to stream a lot. Is that wrong? Is that not tick, Jamie? No, no. I made sure there was a surge. Now, there's only one surge. But there was a surge sitting next to me. I get it. Okay? And not particularly just the Kale. Meaning that Kale's job on the stream is to keep it flowing and not know everything about every particular machine. That's where you come in and help him out. Okay? And that's what a dynamic duo does. Okay? You know, Kale and I played the role of, you know, Joe Buck. How about that?
    47:31
    Yeah, I mean, that's fair too. But also, you also don't have to know the rules of the game, but there are a lot of these games that just have the rules online. And so you could have a laptop next to you of the rules while you're commentating. I don't think there's anything wrong with that either.
    47:45
    And you could say, well, you can't be sitting there and looking rules up or whatever. But then I'll hear people do commentary where they have five-minute discussions on trying to figure out the rules but not look them up. And I'm always surprised at that. I'm like, you know, it would be much faster just to look it up. It's okay. It's all right. You're very, very good at this, and that's why you want it. You know, this is your – I was a freak when I was at the old joint on quality of audio and video. That is what drove me to no entail was if the video quality wasn't good enough with the two rigs. God, just – I lost my shit. Couldn't handle it. We do have a trivia question in chat a little higher, which was, what was the first game to have a physical ball lock? I'm going to try to think of the answer to that. The first thing I would say when you ask me is, the first game to have a multiball was Firepower, 1980 Firepower, right? And that had physical ball locks. But you could argue that there was multiball before. That was the first solid state game with a multiball. There was, like, balls a-pop in from an electromechanical from, like, decades earlier. And you could argue like that kind of has physical ball locks. I'm not sure if that's what we mean, but I'll stop there. Are you guys now?
    49:02
    I have no idea, but it's probably some game where there was just like a saucer that held a ball and then, you know, you could play with another one and then it popped out. I don't know. After you drain, maybe. Like there might have been a physical ball lock where it's kind of like a ball save where it holds the ball and then. So this is the type of thing, if I was on some sort of live commentary, someone said a firepower.
    49:28
    Okay. So I think you got it right. There you go. All right, fair enough. Oh, thanks. Thank you, Bumpson. Is Matt from Barrels of Fun? He has a little Barrels of Fun logo. Do you know that guy? I know a lot of the Barrels people. You know all the Barrels people. I play pinball with.
    49:47
    What are they working on? They won't tell me anything. What are they working on? In fact, I don't even know if Matt knows, to be truthful. They keep their circles so tight. That's how they do it.
    50:00
    They are the only company that can do that. It's probably maybe it's a smaller team, but also, like, if you ask me if I can have my dream team made by any company right now, for me, it's Barrels. That's what we make my dream team over Jersey Jack or Stern or Spooky even. Yeah, that might well be a hot take, I know. And I know they've only made like three games. But yeah, I think it's also about what you want in a game. I'm not saying the answer from like an operator's perspective like Hale, but for me, they are very much about integrating a theme and making moments. That is, you could tell that that's the thing that they're going for. How many moments can we fit into a game? That's what I think. That's what I think when I play their games. And it's not like nobody else is thinking that or that's a new thing that nobody ever decided about trying for in moments. But I don't think anybody's doing it as much as they are. Ozzy wants to know if they have masters of the universe. Nobody knows, Ozzy.
    51:00
    I have no idea. Oh, Joe Chervino's here with some trivia answers. Baffle ball lock. What's he saying over here?
    51:11
    Yeah, it's a tricky thing, which is like there was, before even Flippers, And I saw this on a YouTube video not so long ago that we sent on the ElectroPath Discord. But they had on Expo the guy who collects all the flipperless Bagatelle type pinball machines. And they had a multiball in that one that had a physical ball. Oh, what is going on? You know what's really great about this, Jeff?
    51:41
    This is great. Because now I do nothing wrong. Does it look like Serge's hair? What's going on here? You know, I was just trying to do that. What the hell? I'm so glad you gave this to him. So fucking great.
    51:55
    What's going on here? What is going on here? What is it? We invited you because we thought, you know what, let's do it together. Let's interview Sirs together.
    52:08
    It's a collaborative experience. How are you, man? Great to see you, Jeff Johnson. I see that you've convinced Thurge to be on a non-electric bat live stream. I know. That's how good we are. Slash tournament.
    52:25
    Well, in fairness, I don't think this was an interview, first of all. It's turning into one. I asked him one interview. I thought it was just so that I could beat you to it.
    52:38
    Go ahead. Ask him. You should ask him, too. Oh, well, now, Jeff, before you do that, did you catch all the nice things he was saying about Barrels of Fun just now? Which I just realized I heard a little bit that you said that Barrels of Fun has tight-lipped chips, which you are absolutely correct about. That's true, but what I was saying was, and apparently it's a hot take and people don't love me necessarily for this, but if I had one dream theme and I could say which company I'd prefer to be made by, for me it's Barrels of Fun. That's what I would say. Oh, you didn't? You're just saying that because I did it before. No, no.
    53:14
    I mean, I don't think you're wrong. I think Barrels is funny. And he had a great reason for it. Real quick. Go ahead, sir. My reason is that. Can you turn down your audio just a little bit, Jeff?
    53:26
    Is it feedback and that's what I was thinking? I'll tell you what. I'll do one better. I'll put headphones on. Oh, okay. You cascade. There you go. Shout out to you, cascade. And for Chris Franchi, if I could have art from one artist on any pinball machine, it would be Chris Franchi. Ralph is not in NDA. He is, Ozzy, out with the wife. He's right. Yep. Yeah, he's traveling a lot this coming week, so he's spending Memorial Day weekend exclusively with the wife, which is a smart, smart thing because she's an awesome person. Yeah, don't get in trouble with the misses, right? That's rule number one of pinball. Right, right. How's Dirty Pool audio, everybody? Just a little. Am I too hot? I can turn that down, too. Yeah, turn it down just a little bit. Yeah, what are you using? You got like a shotgun mic or something pointed at you? No, I'm using a good old U87, man. Oh, damn, bro. Yeah. It's the same mic we recorded the call-outs for Winchester. He's flexing. Way flex. Oh, you should auction that thing. It's just in the arsenal. Part of the process. No, you're kidding, Kyle. Is that better? Am I not as lying? I appreciate it. Well, I'll say, because we like chat and we pay attention to chat around here, that a few questions on like, hey, what's a moment? What makes the moment? And also, have I played the new Dune Code? And the answer is yes for both. And to say, like a moment, you could make a moment out of a mech. That's easy to do, right? Like if you have a ship firing a ball like on JGP's Pirates, that makes a moment without a doubt. That's a very good and important way to make a moment. But what impresses me more is when somebody does it purely through zeros and ones on code. You know, like in Jurassic Park, the smart missile shot, three, two, one, fire, and you hit that smart missile shot. That is a moment. It feels like a moment. Of course, it's a cool moment when the premium T-Rex or LE T-Rex eats the ball and throws it, and that's, of course, a cool moment. But to make it out of just the smart missile shot, that's just code that's doing it. You know, so that to me takes another level of artistry, I would say, where it makes people feel like intense, spike in adrenaline in a single moment of the game. Pinball already has adrenaline going, but when you have this one thing you have to do and something cool happens in it, that is, for me, what makes a moment. And it especially impresses me when it's code-based. And so you take like Dune, for example. You know, like obviously I could say, oh, the worm mech is like really cool, and it is. You know, and that's a moment, fine. Desert Power Multiball and the ball comes up. But first of all, they do a lot. It's not just the mech. The screen goes big, for example. They get rid of all the display. They don't show any animations. It's just the screen and the desert power, and they pause for it. And then, like, non-mech moments, for example, like just the pain box idea, every game these days has two flippers and an action button. You know, you could drain a ball and then have the same moment happen where you have to hold down an action button and then move your hands left and right. But they thought of doing it, and other people hadn't. And so I'm saying you can make it, that's a code, that's just a moment purely out of code as an example. So that's what impresses me with Dune. To jump on that a little bit too, I think that moments are moments, but it's the choreography between everything that is what really makes a moment like absolutely sell. Because you've got to orchestrate all of the lighting, the sound, the animation, the actual physical max moving. And if you don't have all of those things triggering together, like that's truly what a moment is. Just having the ball dump off the worm is cool and all, but the fact that it builds up to that moment and all these different things play off, I think that's the modern pinball serotonin rush. Yeah, and 007 Bond is saying another one I was about to say too, which is the Coliseum mode. It's a white mode where all the shots are white. I think you get it after your fifth Mystery Award, B'nai Dessert Award on the left orbit. And then the entire game turns white, which is already cool because that never otherwise happens in the game with that lighting. But also the screen is white. These clips are in, you know, the black and white kind of thing. And then they do the thing. They sync it up to the movie clips where in the movie he's wearing this sort of, what do you call it, the body armor that like, you know, like it's like electronic body armor. What's new shields? There it is. Thank you. There's shields around it. And so for the first half of the mode, the game, every time you make a shot or certain switches happen, it does that kind of shield effect in the game. And your ball save is still on. But then eventually in the movie, he turns off the shield and similarly your ball save turns off. And so it's just like there's a lot of movie integration and theme immersion in those moments like that that is just next level on that game, for example, and tells me these people really care about integrating the theme. So what's your dream theme? That you want Barrels to make? No. Oh, Chance, you want to know. I wasn't ready for that. Jack's dying to know.
    58:27
    Man. Boy, isn't that weird? Well, I was ready. You guys talk amongst yourselves. I'm going to think about this for a second. I want to have a thoughtful answer. That's driving us crazy. Yeah, I need G.I.J. I want a badass Deathstroke with a hooded Cobra Commander. The hooded.
    58:45
    Come on. Do you think the Excessive Transformers is going to determine if the G.I. Joe Pinball Machine happens? And they're in the same, like, family.
    58:57
    Well, right. Yeah, but they always have been. In the comics, there were always crossovers. And there's two weird universes to cross over. But it does. And in the comics now, there's a whole new series. He's got it. Sorry, I was thinking about it for a second. All right, let me give you a few. I would have said Batman the Animated Series. First of all, sorry, that was interesting for me. I would have said Zelda, which is like not a mysterious one to mention that people have wanted, and maybe other video game themes that I wanted, like a better Mario or even Metroid, something like that. I know they're making Sonic or whatever, but I was a Nintendo kid. So anyway, I think I would say like Batman the Animated Series. You know, it was a funny circular thing with that. So the person that taught me my ear training and a lot of my music theory is he did two episodes of Batman the Animated Series. He scored them and then orchestrated all the rest of them. So that would be a cool circular moment. I would love to work on Batman the Animated Series. I think it's peak Batman. It also, I know there have been Batman games before, but I think the animated series particularly works well for Pinball. I think they've got a lot of episodes with a lot of villains and a lot of modes. They've got a lot of clips that can be used, you know, that can fill up. They've got orchestral music, and the animations are already there. So I think it just works well, and I know the voices has died, unfortunately, a few years ago, but I think they could do a lot with it. Sure. I'm in Stern just showed that you can make a pin out of, like, four animated episodes as well. It's Batman animated. He's in on art. Hey, Rachel.
    60:33
    But no to Zelda. I'm in on that L.A. too. Everybody said hello. Who's Zelda? He doesn't like Zelda. What's Zelda do to you?
    60:43
    You don't want Zelda? You guys know we almost had a Zelda. Gladiators was supposed to be Zelda. Really? The old Gottlieb game.
    60:54
    But, yeah, but something happened and they weren't, something fell apart while they were making it so they switched it over to just a generic Gladiator. Talk about yourself, I need a Diet Coke voice.
    61:06
    Yeah. All right. Are you going to pee, too? Okay, good. I'm just looking out for him. What do we got? You can frame the art in the background. Check out that Batman 66. I'm jealous. That's a great game. Isn't that awesome? I watched that show, too, a lot as a kid, and I love that integration in there, too.
    61:29
    But I'll tell you one thing. Alex Gomez just said that game is so awful. How dare you speak poorly of Batman 66? That's an LFS code that's a Gomez design.
    61:38
    Batman 66? Hopefully he's talking about Gladiator. Yeah, he's talking about Gladiator. He's talking about Gladiator. If he's talking about Batman 66, you have to ban him. No, because this needs to be done. This could be on my mouth. Seriously.
    62:01
    Okay, it's Gladiators. We should rest easy. Everyone calm down. I'm going to have to kick somebody out, boys.
    62:10
    You know what's weird? You both have Gomez games behind you. Yeah. Look at that. I have two, actually. I have a Lord of the Rings over there on the other side. Oh.
    62:23
    I can see. Ready? Let's go on a rotating journey. Oh, that's Shadow. That's Shadow. Lord of the Rings is under the rig. I forgot that I moved it today. We're trying to get Eleanor again for an extreme. Let's go to the Batman 66 Anniversary Edition. And they remaster it.
    62:43
    Right. Okay. Batman animated. No, he couldn't do the animation because, you know, you got Adam West and everybody, right? You got Crane and shit. You got Crane in there. Don't you think it would be a nice little add-on is if you lit Mystery, you could get a TV letter once in a while.
    63:03
    Because otherwise you're not playing those TV modes enough. I think that's a nice add-on for people who would like that. I think I would like that a lot.
    63:15
    Did I say that well? No, yeah, no, I get what you're saying. Yeah. Can we grill Serge a little bit? Yeah, some pop quiz questions. All right, let's do it. Serge, what do you think is a game that has the most underutilized modern code, like modern rule set? Like a game that had the layout to have potential but just like the rules didn't bring it to where it needed to be. I would say, well, that's an obvious answer. That's still in development though. I think that's still in development. There needs to be a complete game. I'm going to give you an answer, Jeff, but I'm going to give you another hot take about Pokemon for me, which is like people, like eventually they're going to have presumably more things in the code, including achievements and all of that. But I don't think they were ever going to have the things in the code that people thought they were. I thought they thought people thought like you were going to have Pokemon and you were going to evolve them and you could trade them with your friends and everything. Like I don't think that was ever part of the plan whatsoever. I agree. It was just like it was going to be what it still end up might be, which is in my guess is just achievements. Like, okay, I got this Pokemon, I got that Pokemon, and you're collecting several hundred of them. And every time you collect them, you're basically collecting them the same way. You're getting a bunch of switch hits, and then you have to spell catch by hitting certain shots, and then you hit the scoop and you get them. And it's just that recurrent thing and you would try to collect them all and that's fine or whatever. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But I think people have higher expectations of the code than were ever planned for, even though right now they have underwhelmed on just giving the standard code. I think even if they had given the code, I don't think it would satisfy people. I got a follow-up one for you then. Do you think expectations from IPs are damaging actual pinball releases? Because I'll use the example of Winchester. There's no IP, there's no expectation of what the game should have been. So instead of coming in with like a preconceived notion, it's a clean slate because nobody knew the fucking thing was coming out until the night before Expo.
    65:05
    Well, nobody's going to be like, well, they need to journey through a haunted house this way, you know, or that way. Like it's different than, you know, there's how many Pokemon video games are there? Like all the rules are like there in a different format. In a way, there was a preconceived notion with Winchester because there are 725 or whatever how many people that love Carl and want to get a piece of his first machine.
    65:36
    Yeah. Also, that's not his first machine. He's talked about it. He helped on Dune. You know, he was involved a tiny bit on Labyrinth. Like that knowledge is out there. It's not exclusive design, but... Did people know that? I didn't know that. It was on release, but afterwards it was discussed. Because Carl, you know, people were like, well, how long have you been working for Barrels? And like, you know, Carl's an honest man, so... Well, first of all, I think there's, it's not, you know, Pinball's a niche hobby, but within Pinball, there are enthusiasts who treat it, I think, like some people treat films versus movies, where there are people who really want the auteur, you know, who is the director and also the writer like your Tarantino fans or like, you know, Francis Ford Coppola or something like that. And I think when people see Carl, they're like, this is a person who's going to be the designer of the game layout, but also the rules designer. He's, you know, not every, most designers aren't that. You'll have like Elliot Eisman is doing the John Wick and somebody else does the rules. Jack Danger did an amazing job with Uncanny X-Men and the design. There are some issues with it, but like it's a pretty awesome, interesting design. But the rules weren't there and everything. And so when you see somebody like an Elwin or a Carl D'Angelo who is known in the hobby, is passionate about the hobby, and is not only designing a game but coming together with the rules, it gives people, I say like me, confidence that, boy, this is going to be a banger because I know this person. This person cares about what they do. It's obvious their passion. And they're going to try – they're going to be obsessive about the whole package. You know, they're going to look into it. And I think that's what you get with Winchester. And I think that came across instantly.
    67:10
    And Carl's too humble. Like I'll say it right now. Carl does quality control on it. He's like testing the game every day, like all the new modes that come out, all the new like releases for the code. He's in there trying to find as many bugs as possible. Like he is extremely the complete package. The document he put together that like explained all the modes has lore behind it and like all the different like backstory for the characters. I mean, like he is the entire package. He is like, I think one of the best things that has happened to Pinball in a long time. I don't know why he wasn't designing games sooner, but here we are. Right, and that's what I think when I, and I didn't even know all that detail, but I could assume all that detail, you know, with what Carl does. You could see it on the screen, but also you could see, like, when somebody has so much passion and they're going to oversee the entirety of the project. I mean, I don't want to say everything, obviously you do sound and all that, but I mean, like, the rules and the layout, that is an auteur, you know, in a certain sense. And that's somebody who, like, just like people follow Elwin and they're excited for what he releases and they trust in him because he kind of tries to control a lot of the process. Maybe less so, like in the beginning of Iron Maiden, he's not just doing the design, he's doing the rules. People talk about him as the best designer in Pinball, and probably he is, but he's also the best rules designer in Pinball, and people see that and they want that. So that's one element I think that worked in Winchester's favor. And then another thing is that there are some IPs that people have expectations on. There are some IPs that actually turn people off, and then there are some things that are fairly unlicensed. I know Winchester is technically licensed but not well known that you're not bringing in a ton of expectations for and it's hard to bring in a ton of expectations for. So it's sort of easier to not disappoint people, I would say, when it comes to something like that.
    68:52
    Anyway. I agree. So it sort of depends on, like, I think a game like, I don't know, Back to the Future, which I know is rumored to come out too, I think people have expectations around that. And there's nothing you could do to avoid people having expectations around that. You know, they want to see, there better be a DeLorean there. You can't have Back to the Future without Marty McFly. It's not like a predator thing. You just can't have the game without that. As soon as the game has expectations, it also has disappointment with it. It's unavoidable. Those two come hand in hand. What do you think, Jack? On our last podcast, we had Christopher Franchi on, And he said that he wishes more companies would just release it like they do a movie trailer. What's your thoughts on that, boys?
    69:44
    I saw that. Yeah, but then as soon as you plant that, then you plant the expectation seed. You know, by dropping it, all of a sudden there's an immediate, okay, this is what we did with the game. So instead of people thinking what it should be, they are just playing the adventure, the people that designed it, the intention they had immediately. There's no time to build a kind of like idea of what you think something should be in your head over a year or six months or however long it should be. I think there's certain IPs that would benefit from it. Like if the concepts leaked and like some art came out or something like we'll use Spooky as an example, right? Like there's like a very large implication that Goonies is going to be the next game based on those assets they found, right? So like instead of trying to make it a surprise, like build the hype, start the doot doot, start the hype train, you know?
    70:31
    Well, I think a few things. One, with Goonies, there's a lot of expectations already. There's going to be a ship in there. There's going to be a chunk multiball or whatever. And I think there is, to Jeff's point, I think there is a way to start teasing that. You don't have to show the play field, but you could just start giving the call. They may not have license or ability to do this. That's another issue. But if you can start showing the clips on the display or the sounds of a chunk multiball or maybe a chunk frenzy mode or something like that. Hey, you guys, multiball. Yeah, hey, you guys, multiball, and you just hear the call out. Yeah, I think that's going to get people really excited, and you could drop that. But Pinball hasn't traditionally done that with build-up releases. It's always a certain way that it's done for all manufacturers. Which is crazy that it hasn't changed in like 40, 45, 50 years. Like the only thing that's really changed is like they used to put games on location to test them out. A lot of the sales went through, you know, like operators and now most of it is to home users. So, I mean, like the business has changed, but like how do you successfully market a pin to show people that the best foot forward for it? Right. And a question from chat, which is followed from what you asked me earlier, Jeff, is just what about Munsters and other games? You know, asking me what code might be lacking. And yes, I would say Munsters is lacking. And I would also put Venom there too. And but what I would say is those are both fan layout games. And you could have a fan layout with great code. And we're talking to Ray Day tomorrow who did Star Wars Fall of the Empire. And that is great code on that game. So I think it is I think like Munsters, which has a very good feeling, fast flowy, two flipper fan layout game, It could have had great code. It just doesn't to me. I could be very specific as to why, which is to say I think people expect in today's modern day and age mostly expect a mode-based game, first of all.
    72:31
    Venom and Munsters is not quite, and you could argue what the definition of mode is, but they're not, and it's hard to make a non-mode-based game great. The exception would be Metallica, but with Metallica, that had built-in audience already, and people knew the game and loved the game. You don't need it for Attack from Mars. It's not a mode-based game. And by mode, I mean you get into a scoop or a saucer or something happens and a 30-second timer comes on and it's clipped from the thing you care about. Like a ladder game. It stacks the ladders all over it. Yeah, that sort of thing. And so, yeah, I'd say like Tron and Metallica don't have modes in that sense, but they are beloved games for historical reasons, you know, that way. And the code works for them. But generally, it's really hard to keep people entertained with a theme they love if you don't give them scenes through modes. Boys, do you prefer a Beetlejuice type of mode where it's random? Or do you prefer you have to hit a shot to get a mode? Or do you prefer picking a mode with your action button?
    73:40
    Yeah. Am I able to share my screen here? All right, I'm going to do something while you guys answer that question. You know, I'm prepared even when I'm asked improv to come on. This is the best.
    73:53
    All right, I have the answer to that question here. So here is a chart of all mode choices, of all modes and how you choose them. So, for example, does the game actually choose the mode for the player? Or all the way up to, hey, you can actually choose your mode, you know, completely. And there's all these, I won't kill you guys with the entire chart here, but what I will do is just, Kale, you can go to sleep if you'd like, and also Jamie too. I thought you were going to ask me to do this on. I'm here, I'm good to go. No, no, no, no, you're right. But what I mean is, yeah, basically I would say like this goes from most freedom, least freedom to most freedom. You know, random, like the game just chooses for you versus like semi-random. You can hit switches like in James Bond, pop bumpers change the mode. It's such a pet peeve. I hate that. Correct. I hate that. It is technically not totally random because you could change them, but you can't predict how it changes, you know, because how many pops will move the mode. So that's like semi-random. Semi-choice is that you could hit switches, but the switches are more purposeful. So, for example, in John Wick, you choose one of the shots. Let's say you want the leftmost mode, you make the leftmost shot. If you want the rightmost mode, make the rightmost shot, and then you hit the scoop. So that's like sort of semi-choice. Then you could choose by a shot. That's like Star Wars, Fall of the Empire, Stranger Things, or Jaws. As an example, Scars, you just hit that easy ramp, and then you're in the Scars mode. Or Ghostbusters has that mode ladder kind of thing. Choice via Flipper is, let's say, Elvira, House of Horrors, the light moves on the building. And it's also there in the new Transformers game in the same way. Lord of the Rings, actually, Jeff, that you have, right, is like this, too, where the flippers move the modes. And then finally, these are full freedom where the ball stops in a saucer, in a scoop, and then you choose what thing you want. And that's going to be a bunch of games, too, like King Kong, Foo Fighters, you know, what van mode do you want, that sort of thing. This is fucking great. I love it. No, I love it. Is this too much? Did I go too far? No. All right. So then games without modes are here's here's your games without modes. And these are all fun games. Like I love TNA, you know, for as one example, Elton John, super fun. Tron is great. Metallica is great. You know, I don't I'm not into Venom and Munsters, but I like Iron Man, too. So you could do you can get away with games without a traditional mode, too. But anyway, those are all of those games focus their mode basically on like a super multiball or multiballs. They can be like stacked with each other. That's exactly right. Right. That's the strategy. If you want to make a good game, like it's chaining multivalls together, like more scoring based, it should play fast. If a game doesn't have a mode, it should play fast, I would say, because modes are like 30 seconds, sometimes 60 seconds, and they're good for longer playing multiple flipper type games.
    76:49
    You know what's the most heinous offense, other than the random pops like changing modes? It's when a designer puts a stand-up that's hidden in the middle of nowhere and it's the change-mode stand-up. They couldn't think of anything else to put on that.
    77:04
    I'm going to throw Dune under the bus here. Dune also has what I think is probably the worst mode selection as well. Many people don't know that you can select your mode in Dune. And it's either if you hit the left or right orbit, it changes the mode one direction one way or one direction the other. Which, who the hell is going to want to shoot in orbit and risk draining over changing the mode instead of just shooting the scoop to start it? That's why I have it over here. Here I have it as Dune. Switches will change the mode by a purposeful choice.
    77:34
    You know, that sort of thing. Here's my least freedom. I was wondering why there was a hammer and a pickle.
    77:42
    But also, here's no choice whatsoever. That's North Korea, if you're wondering. Wow. Awesome. You get no more than you'll like it, and you better like it.
    77:54
    I do like the TNA, and I'm going to take a screenshot of this because you have TNA and the North Korean flag right next to each other. I'm going to sound up to Scott. Fine, but let me wait. No, no, it's okay. It's okay that it's TNA. I should just explain it.
    78:08
    No, I like TNA. This is hilarious. I want to stress. I think it's a great thing. Boys, thank you so much. I appreciate it. How much longer do you want to go, Kale?
    78:17
    All right. I don't know. I'm good for another couple of minutes. We're going to invite the chat to come in. What do you think of that boys You want to stick around for that or you want to uh I don know I didn think we expected to have what we have going on here We'll just stick with the four of us for another ten minutes. How about that?
    78:37
    All right. Yeah. Franchi sent a good question. He wants to know, Serge, what you think Lymansheets' like song song code is.
    78:47
    Lymansheets is, you know, just about the greatest coder ever, of course. I still wouldn't make an argument that Elwin is a great rules designer, too, that way. But what made Lyman so great, without being – I could be quite specific, but from a 20,000-foot view, is that was the first pinball coder that you could sense the art behind the code, I would say. You know, like a lot of people make movies and some people make films. And when you – you know, you could watch like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is like just a – in a sense, a dumb Western with a bad plot. But somehow it's operatic, you know, because it's like Sergio Leone if you're into films. But what I would say is similarly, like he can make Medieval Madness and you sense the soul of Medieval Madness and the soul behind Attack from Mars. And so like there is, you could really feel the, I believe Pinball Code can be art. It doesn't, it's not always, it doesn't, it's not on all games. But I think you can actually sense the art behind it and like a sensitive soul and you could with all Lyman games. More specifically, though, is what I would say, oh, Batman 66 or Elvira, I would say Batman 66 over Elvira, even though I love both codes are great. No problem with, I don't have much bad to say about either one, but I would say, how could I, right? But I would say what makes Batman 66, one of the things that makes it great is it has multiple mode trees. So when I say mode trees is you could play all the main villains. That's one mode tree. You know, you have to hit their shots and then hit the phone. And you can play one of four main villains doing that. But separately, there's a completely different mode tree. It's not just that the game has lots of modes, but it has different areas to access modes. So you can do a mode tree on the TV modes, and then you play all those mini villains. And Dune is like that, too. You have the prophecy modes, but you also have harvester battles. There are two different sets of modes with two different feelings and two different ways to access them, one in day and one in night. And I think generally games that are – I like mode-based games. I still like non-mode-based games when they're done artfully like Tron is and Metallica is, and those are great. But if you're going to do a mode-based game, I even like them – tend to like them more when there's multiple mode trees. So it just gives you other things to do. Jurassic Park, there's T-Rex modes and control room modes. And so I think – so that's one thing that Lyman did well with several of his games is that kind of giving the player those modes, giving them different places to start the modes. And I'll say another thing he did that was innovative. There's so many things he did that were innovative. But he was the sort of innovator behind kind of, let's call them side quests, things you do over the course of three balls, missions or side quests. Like in Walking Dead, there are modes, but at the same time you're killing zombies, you're killing walkers, and there's achievement for getting as many walkers as you can in the background. So anyway, that's my love for Lyman. It's hard to disagree with you, sir.
    81:38
    No. I think Batman 6-6, it's one of the first games my friend John Spates lets me rotate his machines in my house that he doesn't have room for, and I'm going to have a tough time giving this back, boys.
    81:52
    You know, because I play it the TV mode way. Okay, I could give a shit about the major villain. It's not really important. I kind of want to get through two of them so I can get an extra ball. All right. That's as quickly as I want to get through. And I don't know if you know, if you hold this flipper down, do you know this? If you hold the flipper down right before you launch and you let go and then hold it again, you can reduce the amount of jackpots that you can get for it takes to get the final jackpot for each. It's a very strange. What? It's a secret. Nobody really knows it. It's like a secret, huh? I did not know that. Now, Ozevede hooked us up. Thank you so much. He's like bringing gift numberships. Oh, my God. He's a great number. Ladies and gentlemen, we can't see it on Riverside Search. And Kale and I said that in the beginning of the particular podcast, that we can't see any Super Chats. We can't see any GIFs. I'm so sorry.
    82:58
    You know what you've got to do, Jimmy? That's why I mentioned it. You take out your phone and you just look at it. Yeah. You just look at it. Dude, Ossie is like the superhero fan. Like he is. He's on all the channels. He's supporting all the influencers. I mean, like he's just a rock star when it comes to supporting people in content. You got to meet him. Did you get to meet him, Jeff, at TPF? Yeah. I did a few times. TPF and he was at Stern Media Day too.
    83:31
    It was good. It was good. First and foremost, I don't think there's enough discussion talking about how Elizabeth Gieske is the first lead programmer that is a female in the history of pinball. The fact that that's not more center stage for Stern is kind of mind-blowing. They normally stand in front of the game and do a presentation firing squad style. They didn't really do that. They did the distributor video. So, yeah, which I was bummed out about. Like, that should have been, that's like part of the experience. It's like forcing them to give this awkward presentation in front of their game and talk about everything. Do you think David is nervous? Maybe Elizabeth and, what's his name, are a little shyer. Yeah.
    84:17
    Eisman? Elliot, yeah. She's not. Eisman seems like a lot more reclusive. Yeah. He's like very she was up and immediately up next to the game when people are playing, telling him what to do and like what to do. I think it was just they they forgot about it, to be honest. Did you ask him why the return right in lane guide rail looks like a can opener?
    84:42
    I did not. But I think it was cool. But why? Yeah, it does very much look different. Well, it has that like lip. Right. So we can dump off. Right. It seems like there's like both the way to feed the in lane and also it could like kind of fall off into the regular play field that way. The gun points down the middle apparently. I didn't see that because it can feed the upper right flipper and like kind of dribble the ball out in addition to launching it like on the ramp, which is neat.
    85:08
    But yeah, I don't know. It was great. It was a media day. Hey, Jeff, so when you played it, did the – what's that, Sid? But when you played it, did the cannon only launch it to that little metal platform or did it launch it to other places? No, it feeds the upper right flipper as well. So it aims up and shoots it over the thing and then it also kind of breaks down and dribbles it out. That's already in the code. So far in the code, my understanding, Jeff, is that when it fires the cannon by making the right ramp shot, which is a hard to hit right ramp from what I saw in the stream, That you hit the right ramp shot, it feeds the cannon. The cannon fires it to the left towards the left in lane through that kind of catcher's mitt plate. That's correct. If you happened, when it's coming back to the lower left flipper, if you happen to hit that right ramp again to refeed the cannon, that's when it will shoot towards the upper flipper.
    86:03
    Interesting. Okay. I didn't know what triggered it, but I did successfully get it to feed the upper right flipper. And someone else that was at Media Day said that it also shoots straight down the middle towards the right flipper, like the lower right flipper. Not like straight down the middle, but like, you know. So I think there's three locations that it can currently feed. And by that same logic, if it can do those three, then it could probably do a lot more if they wanted to expand on it in code.
    86:25
    Yeah, I mean, I think a cannon fire, anytime a cannon fires in Pinball, a ball across the playfield is a big deal.
    86:31
    That's what I think. And it's coming at you, not like away, right? Like how many games, like Houdini shoots it away from you, right? But how many games shoot it like physically at you? Very few. I know Final Resistance from P3 can do that, and not many actually shoot it at you. There's games that shoot it up the chat. What are the games that shoot it up the middle versus games that shoot it side to side versus games that shoot it at you? Right.
    86:56
    I know some answers here, but I'll let chat to the rest in the meantime. The Pokemon homebrew shoots it side to side.
    87:03
    You're right. Shout out to Luke Underwood. Oh, that one. I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about Pokemon Premium which shoots it out out of this little, it's not canon though. No, no, no, the Pokemon Humber that they have.
    87:16
    What type of example, give me an example. D&D is another one. D&D Dragon shoots it at you. That's another example, correct.
    87:26
    Rocket Shot, that's a kicker, you know, I'd say. I don't consider it a canon. It's not so different, Rocket on Guardians, it's not so different from Harry Potter in the Death Eater shot that kicks it at you. Iron Man. But I'm talking like a canon. Or Iron Man, isn't the whiplash? Or Iron Man. Right, War Machine. And it kicks it at you. Like, that's fine, too. But it's not the same thing. I'm saying, like, the cannon, we're, like, centimeters above or inches above the place. You've reached 100 people.
    87:52
    Isn't that good? Oh. Amazing. There you go. That's all of the pinball community. We're all here. The entire pinball of the niche that we are. We're all here.
    88:04
    Final Resistance. Yes, final resistance. A 14? Does that count? They're talking about the Jaeger shot. Yeah, that's kickers. And that's a kicker, and that's great. But that is the first, in a certain sense of how you define it, ball save and pinball. You know, if it shoots it out and you lose the ball right away, you get flight insurance and it brings the ball back.
    88:24
    Back then, they didn't have ball save at the beginning of balls, but that was the first time they implemented ball saving again. I feel like the rule needs to be airborne. An airborne ball that's being shot at you. Yeah, it has to be an airborne ball, I would say. Farthest distance, though, might be Houdini. Yeah, Houdini's pretty awesome. That was a nice moment.
    88:45
    Yeah, you could say Backbox. That's another, you know, if you want to use Backbox for shooting. But I'm talking Playfield cannons, T3, Circus Coltaire, there's Backbox stuff.
    88:57
    Next Generation. Next Generation counts. T2. Yeah. NBA Fast Break. NBA Fast Break on the back glass. Yeah, that's true. Cool. Big Guns. Quiz show. JVP Pirates. I don't know if we said that. Jamie, did you put this thing in the show notes about the Ron Jeremy pinball machine?
    89:21
    I'm looking at that right now. I can't have a picture. Oh, boy. Do you have a picture? Yeah, so is that a real thing? We have Pinball Zingy Bingy 2.0. Oh, boy. That's in our art episode that we were planning to do with Chris Franchi. So Great American Pinball had game titles that they had as dream theme lists, and Ron Jeremy's Land of Magic was in that list. Did you see this?
    89:49
    That's a... I'd call that a bad idea. I'm going to go out and say that. I mean, what are they thinking? You know, before he went to prison, he used to call me every once in a while. Is that what Jeremy did? Yeah.
    90:06
    He was very close to a high school friend of mine. And she's known Ron Jeremy for years and years and years. And whenever we were hanging out, he would call and play piano for us. He's a wild dude. But he's locked up now. He did some bad stuff. How can you have that as a pinball machine? He's a great American for doing terrible things. That's not a good idea. I think it was a bad idea before he lost it. But they put it in a post.
    90:45
    Great American Pinball had a list of interesting game titles, and the last one was Ron Jeremy's Land of Magic. And me and Kale were chatting, and we're like, what are these people doing? It's so weird. AI write this, and they slip through the cracks? I mean, it's just ridiculous. What are we doing here?
    91:04
    You know who would design that game, right? Nah, he's not. Don't for dope. I thought you were going to say that.
    91:11
    Oh, let's talk about that. He's out of prison. Okay. We know he makes great games. Can you make a game with him? I mean, how long does somebody have to be locked up?
    91:25
    Can you separate the art from the artist's tale? Yeah, there we go. There we go. I mean, it's the same thing with Michael movies. You know what? You're going to watch a Kevin Spacey film. Right. It depends. Do you know my buddy of mine just shot a film with him? It's like Kevin Spacey's Return. He shot it out here in Arizona.
    91:45
    I think it depends on three things. I think it depends on the severity of the crime, how good the pinball designer is, and how recent the situation was. Those are the timeline things. So if you're a really good pinball designer, you can get over a certain amount of heinous crime. So what's the line? I think the answer is – I'm not saying that's what I believe. I'm saying that's what sales believe.
    92:06
    I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm not condoning that. I feel like if Haggis Pinball was still around, they would pick up John Trudeau, right? I'm saying Trudeau is not as good of a designer as Elwin is. No one's going to say that. I'm saying that.
    92:22
    There you go. I don't think it's right. The other thing I wanted to talk about with you guys is sound. Okay? And I'm not crapping on the Loser Kids, Kale. I'm not. Okay?
    92:36
    Oh, no. I love Loser Kids. But Stern, we sent you a microphone, right? We did. The round table sent you a microphone.
    92:51
    I'm glad Jeff's here. We're going to have a professional give his opinion on it. And Loser Kids, they get the first podcast, okay? They interview and they do a really good job and they get us excited for this launch, right? Elizabeth and Elliot sound like they're in a phone booth.
    93:15
    Yeah, they're using a laptop microphone. And they're sitting like 15 feet away from it so they can both be on camera, you know? I mean, like how the distance to the microphone is like everything for low-quality mics. We sent this to them. Yeah, it's not. Like, Ralph spent money and sent it to them.
    93:35
    Okay. He sent them a very expensive Shure microphone. It takes, if it's USB, it takes a whole 15 seconds to plug it into your computer, make it the default mic, and then whatever Zoom or whatever recording platform you're using, use it. It shows a lack and kind of like unpreparedness for the actual interview. And if you know that you're doing an interview even a full day beforehand, I just don't think there's an excuse. Like 2026. 2020. What year is it? I don't know. Anyway, whatever year it is, this is the time that it should not be difficult to have good sound for an interview. Also, you can get a just fine USB microphone for like $30 or $40. Totally.
    94:19
    And also, don't they have Jack Pinker working there? We don't know. You know what, Zach just said the same way. I don't know what it does. Look what Cascade said. Okay? Jack is the sign. Streamed for many years. How do you not use them instead of an environment for interviews? Yeah. I don't know.
    94:39
    I mean, come on. So I'm not ragging on anybody. We're getting towards the end of the night. Okay? I'm, all right. I've had a few PCs. I've had a few Diet Cokes. I'm starting my loose lips. Like, you know, we have a group chat, me and Kale and Ralph, and we're like, what's going on? What are we doing?
    95:03
    Yeah, here's what I would say. Stern should have, they have tons of rooms there. Put a room in there that has the mic already plugged in with the shittiest little laptop you could possibly set up and just have it ready to go. And it's like, it's the interview room, right? And if people are from home, it's on them to make sure that they do it right. But if you're going into Stern to do an interview, just have it set up so no one has to think about it. You just plug and play.
    95:27
    Yeah, what really blows my mind is that these guys are not making pinball machines in the garage. This is a big, serious company. And when they do their scissor wheels for the games, they don't just do it with an iPhone and no microphone. You know, like George Gomez like combs his hair and takes a shower and puts a little lapel mic on. I didn't take a shower for this. But like, it's not horrible to be honest. Yeah, but every time you do an interview with anybody from Stern, it's like, it's just not computing with them that that's a big deal. But like me, you're promoting this game that you need to sell. You need to push this thing. You need to tell us how awesome it is. Thousands of people are going to watch that. And a thousand people in the back of their mind, at least 500 are going, God, they sound like shit.
    96:31
    There are definitely people watching it that if it's like an exciting interview where they're talking about the game and they seem really passionate about it, that will turn into sales. It makes your product seem more premium. If the presentation is nice, then you immediately, like, you know, lizard brain style, think that you're getting a nicer thing. So, you know, for 15 minutes worth of effort and $50 worth of microphone, I feel like I would just like to be able to hear it better, to be honest. Like, I remember, you know, there's been a few Elwin interviews where it's just like, you know, like you're talking to Charlie Brown's mom or something, you know. And I feel so bad for Josh and Scott, right? Because they're just like, you know, what do you do? Like, when we interviewed Gomez, Ralph actually bought a microphone and headphones, and he used it. All right. Anyway, that was my, yeah. What are we doing here segment of the JBS show? Okay. Because it drives me crazy, Kale. It's a public service announcement, really. It's a public service announcement. Okay. Grateful Dead Pinball. That's what Knapp is saying. Somebody, and I'm watching Jeff's face right now. Some company is making a Grateful Dead Pinball apparently. I told you, our next game is Raven 2000. I told you that already. I'm on the Grateful Dead. Are there any dead things here? No, I meant for Raven.
    98:09
    Raven. Oh, yeah, yeah, he had the old No Grateful Dead. I guess you'd have like a Dancing Bear roto target, maybe. Just trying to think what I'd do for a Grateful Dead.
    98:19
    Every bear could be a different mode, right? Which color of the bear would be tie-dye going to the ceiling? A lava lamp, something. A lava lamp. Okay. And it comes with you can only sell them in Arizona and California and states that have legalized marijuana. Okay. Yes. And just like the band, you know, the balls last forever. It's easy. Very easy.
    98:54
    20-minute ball. 15-minute modes. 20-minute ball. Yeah. You've got to have a spinning wheel. That's the tie-dye, too, in the center of the playfield, like a spinning wheel of color, right, like spinning disc. You take the dancer girl from Elton John and you switch it with, like, a skeleton marionette, you know, that dancing boy that they use or whatever. I'm just throwing out some ideas here. Casey Jones Multiball. Yeah, yeah, I like it. Do the lamp from Totan, right, like for the spinning wheel. Yes. Like the size of the playfield. Absolutely. The biggest spinning dish possible. And you have to have like the parking lot vegan burrito on there somewhere.
    99:34
    We tried meat. We truck multiball. Guys, it's up in style. Okay, no one's really into food multiballs and meat multiballs. It just doesn't work. No, it's not going to work. There's diner. That's my last food-based game that I went through there. Yeah, come on. I know there was a barrio, but I don't think we needed one after diner.
    99:56
    Right. You wouldn't play like Eat a Sandwich, the pinball machine? I'd eat a sandwich. It's not the American pinball, the old American pinball, not the new American pinball, but the old American pinball that was that David Fix was telling his salespeople to call barbecue joints and get these pinball machines in there.
    100:18
    Oh, God. What were they thinking? Yeah, it's like it's a bad idea for any restaurant, obviously. Like they're not going to do it. There's a bad idea. It's too expensive. It doesn't work for mom and pop restaurants. Obviously it's a bad idea, but it's in particular a bad idea for barbecue joints with the dirtiest, greasiest fingers that people come in. Like Ace Gogey in L.A., it's a Korean barbecue place and that's where the pinball machines are. I bet if you bought a game from Shane that your house would smell like barbecue for the rest of your life. You'd never get rid of that smell.
    100:54
    Jeff, I'm going to be... Jeff, I'm going to be there in July. We should go to A.S. Gogey together. Let's do it. Yeah, we talked about it. It's on, man. We're going to do the pinball tour. Let's do it. Can I make you stream with me here? All right. I'm down.
    101:09
    What game do you want to play? You've got to let me know so I put it under the rig. I'll still never have played Winchester. Do you have that? I don't have my Winchester. People are so ornery about getting their Winchesters that Carl and I are like, Don't you dare send us one because people hate you. What else do we got, boys?
    101:32
    What else do we got, Kale? Anything else? Any more information you dropped? Let's see. What did you drop today? Oh, you dropped Dracula, possibly, thinking that maybe we hunt Dracula. You guys missed that earlier.
    101:49
    Yeah. You're like a Van Helsing Gothic style. There's two Draculas out. What rumor is this? There's Stern Dracula Classic in the 80s, and then there's Bram Stoker's in the 90s. But this is a Brian Eddy rumored title coming out maybe next year. Yeah, it'll be the first game of next year.
    102:10
    I think that could work except for 750 LEs or whatever. You don't need an unlicensed theme. Before you guys came on, that's what I was talking about. That's a really hard sell to non-pinball people. Yeah. I mean, it is, but... But what's cool, I mean, if they can pull off what they want to do, it's going to have like RPG elements, you know, set in like 1800s. This is Dwight Cote, isn't it? It's already Dwight Cote, I could tell. It'll be Dwight. You go to different areas like Romania and London, and you'll have multiple playable characters. It would be almost like a Jack the Ripper style murder mystery.
    102:53
    You look like you're reading notes for this. I mean, that sounds awesome. My biggest disappointment with D&D was the layout.
    103:03
    So if they are making a horror themed Dracula game, it would be cool about it. Is it the lower scoop that then shoots it to the other upper flipper? Yeah, my biggest issue with D&D is that the entire flow of the game is that everything is about getting it to that upper right flipper and it's just the uninspired area of the play field. Like you shoot the left orbit, it goes to the upper right flipper. You shoot the Fismo shot, it goes to the upper right flipper. You know, you shoot the inner shot and you get it back to the bottom to get back up there. There's the inner right upper. Yeah, I just, it's a layout issue I have with D&D, not a code thing. Yeah, my opinion on the Kaneda thing there, shout out to Kaneda, no shade whatsoever, is that actually other podcasters get this information, but he's the only one willing to talk about it or talk about it first. I don't disagree with you. You guys can disagree or agree with that if you want. No. Did I say something terrible? Not at all. No. I don't think he's the only one who knows it. I just think he's the only one who's happy to say it. That's who he is. I'm not saying that's bad or good, but that's who he is, and other people won't do that. Wow. He's asleep. We could have gotten him on tonight.
    104:10
    What's the question? Do we have a question? Well, the question was, what about these leaks? Are they all from Canada? No. Oh, no. He actually doesn't get any anymore.
    104:24
    I mean, he has an unpopulated play field shot from Sonic, And he has photos of like an early back to the future, but he doesn't get information like he used to. I wonder why.
    104:42
    I don't know. I can think of a handful of reasons. All right, boys, I think that's about it, right? That was a fun little hour and 50 minutes.
    104:53
    Unless you want to go 13 more minutes. You want to go 13 more minutes and make it a solid two hour? What does the chat say? Well, if we're on 30 minutes, Jeff, I want to ask you, so you played the new Transformers, right?
    105:06
    Yes. One question I had is because you were just talking about how you have to feed the upper flipper, and Transformers also has this upper flipper, and it has like an upper flipper shot that's not a loop, but instead it's a ramp. How many times did you go for that shot? How many times did you make that shot?
    105:21
    Which one? The ramp shot on the left? Yeah, the side ramp. So you're on the upper flipper. Both, oh, uh. Side ramp that can only be hit from the upper flipper. That one's not as difficult as the, there's like a con, like dead end, like saucer shot that's right below it. That's the extra ball shot, and it is hard, it's so freaking hard to hit that. And, yeah, it's pretty much just like on shadow. Like, you gotta catch it way off the end of the flipper, and it's just for me. But again, like, I put maybe five, six games on it, so I'm like not a really good metric for it. The ramps on the left are further back on the playfield. They're not like way up in your face like Shadow. I think the playfield plays a lot like Jurassic Park. I was calling it kind of like Jurassic Park light because you've got your spinner in the center. You've got your, you know, you bang Optimus and just dong is kind of like hitting the T-Rex shot, right? You've got your ramp on the right. You've got your right orbit, which is kind of like the O-shot. That whole cluster on the left has got, you know, it's essentially like shooting the ramp there is very much like feeding the raptor pit. Even further left to that is the control room, but instead of it being a dead end, it feeds the ramp and then feeds the right flipper. But in terms of layout, there's a lot of stuff in familiar places, but it flows just a little bit better, in my opinion. My Jurassic Park has always been a little bit brutal and mean, and this game played a lot easier than that.
    106:45
    So, I don't know if that answers your question. No, it does. That's how I'm excited. It's so fun. Look, when I went there and played Fall of the Empire, like, I was just like, I didn't really want to talk about it. Like, I don't like family outs. I was having clunky shots left and right.
    107:01
    No, they put the camera on me. I was just like, good, thanks. Dude, I love, I remember your, what you were saying about Star Wars. It is really refreshing to get, you know, you're really honest. I try to be very honest, but back it up with, like, reasoning. Like, I talked about how the Death Star was rejecting, and people on Facebook were like, You don't know what you're talking about, blah, blah, blah. And like, it was a problem. It was a real issue. You know what's funny? People from Stern told me about that. They were like, yeah. And then Jeff realized what was going on because I don't think you were here for this. This will probably make more sense, the layout of it.
    107:41
    Originally, that Death Star ramp was not there. Interesting. It was the Death Star was at the play field level and it was a it was a scoop and it was very easy to hit. You could even backhand it. So they wanted to make it more difficult. No, I think they just want to probably want to make it more theme immersive. Right. Death Star. At the last minute, somebody involved was like, I don't like the Death Star here because it looks like it had crashed. So you need to raise it up. And so it was like a last minute thing. That's why it seems like that's the one disjointed thing in the whole game. Yeah. Well, I mean, they fixed it. They said there were three different things that were causing the rejections on it. And the person that Stern and I talked to ran through them and then, you know, they redid the mech and released it. And I mean, we have one at Ace and it's a lot easier to hit. I haven't seen any issues on it now. Plus, Ray Day had an interview and smashed that code out of his part. It's so fun now. Is that going to be live? Nice. Yeah. Yeah, we're doing it live. Tomorrow we're doing a deep dive of Fall of the Empire code, and it is like a real deep dive, so let's hope Ray Day is up for it. I need that. They've added so much shit to it, I don't even know what I'm doing on there anymore. It's one of the greatest coded strategies. It's so hard to get to these modes, okay? Because it's going back and forth, going bananas, and I don't know. I just, it's a great, I call it a warm-up game when I'm playing in a tournament, gents, because if I can put up $400 million on that game while I'm warming up, hitting balls on the range, then I know I'm going to end for a good night. Okay, if I'm shanking all day, all night, then I know I'm in for a tough night.
    109:33
    I have, I don't know if this is another, are you guys ready for another chart? No. Is it too many charts? Let's see it. No, no, what do you have? The chat wants it. The chat wants a marathon. How many charts do you have? Do you have just like all these charts ready to go, like a bag of charts?
    109:49
    That's what they called me in college, surge bag of charts. Nice. You know, I'm a data guy. I like analyzing things. And so if I think of something interesting to do a chart on, so help me, I will do that chart. All right.
    110:05
    So I was going to do this already, show this to Ray Day tomorrow, but I'll do a little spoiler on that point here. And we are going live at 10.15 p.m. Eastern. Sorry, let me show this. Whatever that means. That's really specific. Yes, that is specific, but that is 10.15 p.m. Eastern or thereabouts. That's what I would say. So I was trying to show this. Just focus on this. This is showing. Interesting. Four-player game, these are all times at the Electric Bat on Stern games that have the measurements of them in the audit. And so what this is saying is that fan layouts, like all of these are fan layouts, two flipper games, a ranged shot and a fan, all have generally an average four-player game time far less than non-fan layouts. If you add an upper flipper, if you add more shots, King Kong, for example, has these two upper flippers, and there's a whole mode there crossing the chasm where you can keep the ball going. If you're good enough on two upper flippers, you know, at the top half of the play field. And so generally speaking, fan layouts will always have shorter ball times than non-fan layouts. And Star Wars in particular had on a four-player game even less than John Wick. So it's a tough layout. I was just going to back up your point, Jamie, with this chart I presented. I love data.
    111:24
    I thought John Wick would have a four-minute average time. I'm shocked that it's in the 20s. Let me actually follow that up. So this data was from, like, this is our first episode, first or second episode ever, you know, of Kale and I's show, our Pinball show. Since then, in preparation for tomorrow, I've got more recent data, thanks to John Schaubel, our local excellent on-the-scene reporter for PinPals. Oh, my God. So here's the more recent data.
    111:55
    Whoa. And I'm getting better with my presentation, too. So the fan layouts, now we have many more. We have 12 fan layouts here at the bat, 12 non-fan layouts at the bat. And again, this is for single game, so single average game time for one player game. And it's like 22 seconds longer on non-fan layouts. And then specifically what you were asking there, Jeff, for John Wick, where the heck is that? Three minutes and 28 seconds is the typical one player average game time. Black Knight Sword of Rage makes sense. That sounds as fast as you guys have the pro there. You have pros. To be clear, that's much quicker. Right. Yeah.
    112:37
    I wouldn't probably put TNA on there and it'd be double digits. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fuck you, Scott. One thing I found interesting, though, here is, you know, pros of Stern usually play faster. But there's one game that at the electric bat, Kale has, that Kale and Rachel have, that's both the pro and the premium, and that's Pokemon. And so they have the Premium and the Pro, and the Premium has slightly faster game times, but statistically relevant so, has faster game times than the Pro. It's one of the only Premiums that might be faster than a Pro, and I think that's because the Premium has the magnet that shoots away from the center. That makes total sense. Because I was going to argue that the Premium is a little bit easier because you could backhand to capture your Pokemon.
    113:24
    But you're right. Yeah, I mean, anything else you guys, the magnet, it's the magnet, yeah, there is that catch, but the magnet just flings it more crazily. Kale, do you notice any difference on the premium versus the pro having them both there at the bet? For what, ball times? For ball times or otherwise? I haven't paid attention to it, but I will tell you, you know, we got more games on the way. We have to get rid of one of the Pokemon games. Right. Which one do I keep?
    113:54
    I mean, I don't think that from an operator's perspective, Fro were premium matters on that game, personally, especially because they both have the sculpts. We already have the premium. That's what I'm like. Disney's curious. Well, then why are you asking? Well, I just wanted your opinion. Which one's collecting more quarters when you do your reports? Do they both have the same amount of quarter drop, Kale, on a daily basis? Do they perform the same or not? Because I know you've got them at different times. The premium earns more. Interesting. Wow.
    114:26
    That's a bit surprising, actually. I mean, I know it has more in it, but I didn't know players even register that they're so different.
    114:34
    Could that be if it's in a different positioning at the bat? Well, they're both on end caps. Yeah, that's true. They're both on end caps. But they're in separate rooms.
    114:45
    You know, we had to put them in separate rooms because people during tournaments would get confused.
    114:52
    Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. All right, should I just not turn my charts? I want to mention the other thing with the media day. They talked about performance for their games, and Pokemon is, like, outselling everything by, like, a mile. It's the fastest launch, like, and most units sold than any Stern game in the history of, like, whatever modern Stern. So, I mean, they're tactical. I know there are people still waiting for their Pokemon games. So I'm guessing they built all they're going to build and then they have to obviously go into Transformers.
    115:29
    I would imagine that's why people are waiting, right? They had a sheet talking about what's on the lines for the rest of the year. I forget. It's like, you know, it's Jaws, Godzilla. I mean, it's all the stuff that you would imagine would be there. But, you know, they mentioned, you know, they listen to the market. So the more the distributors get told what games they want, then they change what they're going to be putting on the line for further down the line. I know that the real reason the code gets delayed is licensure approval, but do you think that the game selling so well puts more of a fire for them to get through the code or less of a fire? Less. Because the game's already selling well. Right. There's no sense of urgency here. The sense of urgency is for Kale because eventually people are going to – they've seen the game. They've done it. No, there's definitely a sense of urgency with the folks at Stern because all you hear about with this game is where the hell is the code?
    116:26
    You know, they can bring in some code, build a hype back up. I mean, the sticking point is that the Pokedex. Yeah, we talked about that earlier, James. I don't think you're going to let them do that. Kale and I were here and it was confirmed in chat that they're probably going to drop the name Pokedex, right, Kale?
    116:51
    Yeah. Yeah, because they can't use that name. What about like a furry animal collection mechanism? Yeah, yeah, because I would think... Back them? Got a back them? You heard what I said, Jess. The Pokemon company, once you put elements of the Pokemon world onto a separate device, that's basically like you're doing a video game. And they only did the license for, like, you guys make a pinball machine. So that's the sticking point right now.
    117:28
    The code release stuff, I think, is person dependent. Because Ray Day I think Mr Charts Serge you should do a chart for how long it takes a game to get code complete based on individual programmers And I bet because Ray Day is like a machine There are more code updates coming out for Fall of the Empire you know for what the hell was this the music pen Metallica I mean, like, he put in Rush. I mean, like, you know, the release schedule for him specifically seems to be higher. So I think it's down to the individual programmer. Well, first of all, let me answer to say that I will make that charge, Jeff. I appreciate that suggestion. And I don't have it ready yet. That would have been too hard to do while you were talking. But I will get that because I think that's a good one. And I know that they would say, and maybe this is the majority of the truth, that any delays are because of licensure approvals. But I also think there's something to what you're saying, Jeff, which is, and I would never ask Ray Day this because I don't want to put him in any uncomfortable position. But I'd say that it goes back to something I said earlier. When you have some coders who are really passionate about what they're doing, And I think there are differing levels of passion in all life, in all jobs, of what people do. And I think you see somebody like Elizabeth Gieske or Rayday or I'd say Elwin, who I know is not the programmer, but he's a rules designer. And those games generally, like Elwin games, come pretty far along once they're launched. And those can be some big properties too. That's my experience. Yeah. Retro Rete is also – sorry, Kale. Yeah, to answer Joe in the chat, Joe Chervino, from what I understand, it's the fact that the Pokedex is on a separate device, which is considered – they would consider that like a separate game, and that's like the sticking point. And then somebody who apparently had some knowledge earlier that was in the chat said that was the case. What they were naming the thing that was you could view all of your Pokemon on. There you go.
    119:43
    I'm already writing the prompt, Jeff. Are you in Quads? Because I'll tell you how I would do it. I'm in all of them. But I'll tell you how I do it is because on Stern's website they have their game code section, they have every update and the date that the update was launched. And so you can track that over time and then correlating with launch dates, and you can get a very specific answer. Not hard to get. Oh, man. So charts are coming out. Tomorrow night is a chart, gentlemen. Jeff, on that. I won't do it. But I was going to say that we do deep dives on our show, and I'll tell you whether I like the code, things I don't like the code. But with Ray Day coming on, I would only invite him on to talk through the code because the code is great. If I was going to say, like, I really hate this thing you did or whatever, I wouldn't even ask him to come on, and I would just talk about the code separately with Kale. But I think the job he did with this code is just so good on Star Wars that I really only have nice things to say about the code. I also suggest that I think that the releases for the code updates are probably programmer dependent, right? Like I think some people like to have really big updates and have a lot of specific things in them, and other want to have like really short updates that add immediate fun to the game. You know, I think Ray Day had a lot of like really incremental stuff as opposed to some of the updates for like, I don't know, D&D had like, you know, artifacts and all this like just huge shit. It's interesting that some of them are launched differently. Like, you know, the remaster of Walking Dead was launched with very little code. You know, really the same game. Yeah, it's updated. Did they update that yet?
    121:23
    Much better. Much more achievements. It's definitely become a better game. Did they make the changes? Do you happen to know, actually, Jindpoll, did they make the changes that they were talking about? I thought they were going to add mini wizard modes along, you know, walker tools. I haven't gotten that well yet. Yeah, I'm just still trying to bust ass on Blood Battle every time I play it.
    121:45
    Okay, fine. I think that they could have done better on sales. I mean, I don't think a lot of people who buy sales are like, how deep is the code? I don't think that's the case. But I think with Walking Dead specifically, it's like a game that's known in the community. So I think coming out and saying, here's what we have and if it were ready, I think it would have made a bit of a difference. I know they can't always get things ready on time for lots of reasons, but there ain't so much that brought to let us know that. It's not really updated enough yet, so. Ah, fair enough.
    122:15
    Well, I think the game was already 1.0 because it's a remaster, right? Yes and no. When the game came out, the code was actually worse than the original Lockheed Invent. It wasn't better. It wasn't the same, but it was actually worse. So there were things that it would freeze up on. And it wouldn't show you in the game if you got to this thing or that thing. And it would say license or pending approval or whatever. And that didn't do that in the 2014 Walking Dead. So it was actually in some ways worse, I would say. Yeah, and George, I think it was, I can't remember who. Somebody told us that the issue with that, they thought, hey, we've already done this game so we can just like redo it. But like they had to work with a whole different licensing company. And they were like, well, we wouldn't have approved what you did in that old game either. That's great. And so that was the issue.
    123:09
    Yeah. They have to change the deal. Recall all those games. Holy shit. From 2014. I mean, I'll tell you, it sucks, though. I feel bad for, like, you know, you start getting into the development with a certain IP holder, and, you know, they want the deal to go through, right? So they're going to be like, oh, yeah, no, things are cool. And then you get into the weeds, right? And I imagine, you know, Stern starts hitting these brick walls and you're just like, shit, like, well, now what? And I wonder, like, how many games, like, had decisions that had to get, you know, changed in not a way that the fans or pinball people wanted. And it's like, you know, it's licensor problems. Right. Jeff Witten. But like with, like, whoa, Nelly, what happened with that? Yeah. They've been waiting 20 years for that game. So excited for it. They got approval from the melons. And the cream. Yeah.
    123:58
    Jeff, did Winchester ever say, hey, that house, that's not our house. Get rid of it. I mean, there was, I mean, I wasn't involved in a lot of the IP discussions that gets talked about a little bit in meetings and things. But, like, you know, I mean, the Winchester house was just stoked to have a pinball machine. And for the most part, like, just, like, they saw and knew that what was coming from it was, like, really cool and interesting. None of these licensed people are pinball people, right? Like, it's not like they're like, hey, man, you should really change the art on that left orbit. It's not indicative of a staircase to nowhere or something, you know. Right. Jeff, I have a question for you that's an opportunity for a humble brag for you, which is, like, in Winchester, the layout, the call-outs have, like, a lot of fun, like, energy to them that they're, like, they really have acting to them. And a lot of, and in a way that a lot of 90s call-outs did, like Lord of the Rings was more recent, but, like, obviously that has, like, great call-outs and Indiana Jones. And Evil Madness. That's for the two references. Yeah, yeah. Real passionate call-out. Let me ask you this. Why do you think other pinball manufacturers have such a hard time with this, even when they get the actors from the shows or movies or whatever, with specifically the energy in the call-out? They don't have a technical director for it. They don't have a voiceover director during the thing. I did the directing for the session when it happened. They send that call-out sheet to some actor, voiceover actor, and they just say, I send these back. Or they'll sit in on a Zoom call and not interrupt them or direct them, and they just read it like it's a script. And it's not. You're trying to make these movie moments. You talked about these choreographed moments, and it's like you've got to go over the top. They should be ridiculous.
    125:37
    Like you said, it's a reference where you was Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness. Is that part of your direction to them? Did you give them those sources of call-outs before they got it? Yeah, I had it pulled up. I mean, we recorded it here. Tyler, the voiceover actor for Winchester Mystery House, came over and I was just like, look, he has my Attack from Mars for one. So it made it really easy. I needed space for other games and I gave him my Attack from Mars. And I was just like, listen to the jackpot callouts, listen to the enthusiasm that's in it. The other thing that I think is an issue with modern, I was going to do a video on this, but I'll talk about it now. I think one of the biggest issues with modern pinball callouts is they're two words. Shut the fuck up. It only needs to be like three or four words. Like the people that are writing these scripts are like think they're like these virtuosos. So they're going to like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm looking forward to going to the Metallica mansion and taking a voyage in the cemetery. It's like nobody wants to hear that. You want to let them hear? They want to hear hit the tomb soon. You know, like that's the call out. And each one of those needs to be memorable. And it's when you start talking too much. It's not memorable. Really good. That's really good. Thank you, sir. Well, you're right. You did a great job. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to give Dodson a big prop here at TPS. That was so fun. He set up. Anyone that did it, it's in chat. Let me know if you loved it. But I can't wait for someone to buy Jamie Burchill's pinball machine. How long does that take? Your voiceover is cut up. By the way, shout out to my boys. DJ R Pinball and Swinger, two of my Discord friends, cut all of it for me. I did the mastering and cut out the master sessions and did all the processing so that they were finalized. But they went through and did all the little segment cuts out for it. So they absolutely saved me hours and hours of work. So we're almost done. There was like 50 total like group sheets of it and each one of those have whatever 50 call outs. So it was not a small amount of work. It was it was really awesome. Yeah. Community, man. Dude, the cult of pinball rocks hard, man.
    127:50
    No, you have to. It's a nobile. Yeah, I think so. So, you know, dude, Marco hooked it up. They bought that entire like sound booth and all of the decor in it and stuff like Emoto. So, like, she took care of everything. She was just like, I was like, I got the call-out sheet. She was just like, I got the booth. I'll take care of it. I'll set it up. And I was just like, I will dedicate all my time to this and make it as cool as we can. So, it's not the first thing we're going to do. Well, awesome. Do it. I just found out that we have a corporate. My new gig has a corporate office in Chicago. So, guess who's going to be working remote the week of Expo? This guy. Hi. So I'll be there Thursday through Sunday now. I was only going to come up Saturday this year. Serge, are you going to Expo?
    128:39
    I am not. I don't travel for stuff. I'm sorry. Oh, no. I got too many things going on. I'm not able to. But one day. It's about 10 years. You've got to make these charts. I've got to make my charts. Well, who's making these charts? I know. It's almost midnight here. You don't know if you make charts. I spent five minutes and I keep saying ten minutes. This is what happens with Kale when I hang out with him.
    129:01
    Our lives go way too long, but I'll keep going. I don't give a shit if you guys want to go for a little while longer.
    129:08
    Well, I got one more. Jamie, I'll go into it. I'm sending it. I'm rocking this in, so I'll be okay for a little bit. There you go. I'm pouched. You're pouched up. Jeff, I have another opportunity for humblebrag question for you there. Oh, damn it. Which is that sometimes, you were just saying this too, like pinball call-outs are like too much, but sometimes pinball call-outs are like so informational, like hit the ramp three times and then do this or that or whatever, and it's just like so pinball-y and that can take you out of the theme version. One of the things I feel like I registered on Winchester is that you have some call-outs that are very much like go for the jackpot, like not telling you where it is, and then other call-outs that are more specific. And it seems like you alternate them and when they play so that maybe players get a sense of them, but you don't rely on it too much. Like you switch up between theme immersive versus non-theme immersive call-outs. Did I say that right? Yeah. No, for sure. So there's like two categories of call-outs in the game, speaking of talking too much. So since he is a tour guide, there are these call-outs which are just information about the house. It's totally not pinball related whatsoever. He's like, oh, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah room is like, you know, where Sarah Winchester used the blah, blah, blah. And it's cool because that's like color for the environment. But when it comes to like actual pinball call out, the only ones that matter are the other ones you're talking about. And most of those have multiple alts, right? So they'll be like, shoot the right ramp. Or they'll be like, shoot the staircase to nowhere, right? In this case, they're not the same shot. But in the format, and usually the first one is the actual name of the shot. And then later on, it'll just be like, shoot the ramp. So it condenses the amount of information to leave space for the rest of the soundscape because it doesn't need to be cluttered. And, you know, you're working with both a finite amount of mixing space. You're working with a finite amount of time. I mean, your ball time is, what, two minutes? Well, it's a D'Angelo game, so your ball time is 45 seconds. But, you know, you have to, like, really coordinate and choreograph how the information is getting to the player in that specific amount of time.
    131:01
    Hey, Kale, let's ask him some questions, right? We got Dirty Pool here. Let's ask him some more shit. Oh, God damn it.
    131:09
    Do you mind that I turned it into a game that I asked him interview questions? I hope you guys didn't mind that. Were we supposed to be interviewing you? No, I don't do that. You have Dungeon Crawler Carl. Does Barrows have it? Don't give me that. What's that? It's this bit that's blowing up all over the place, man. I've never heard of it. I've got more pinball people talking to me about Dungeon Crawler Carl than any other IP. They're like, does Barrows have Dungeon Crawler Carl? I get this all the time. I'm like, I don't know anything they have. They don't tell me a thing. Has anybody here read the book? Spates is reading the book right now, and he gave me the rundown of it. It sounds awesome.
    131:55
    Are you going to listen to the audio book? Supposedly he does the voice extremely well. Summer Beach Listening. I've heard because the audio book is good. I'm driving to California, and I'm going to be listening to it on that. It's supposed to be graphic. I don't want your kids to listen to it, buddy. Oh, all right. Okay. No, I put in the headphones so I don't hear anyone.
    132:18
    Getting cozy. You're putting your like, you know, sleeping mask on while you're driving. Get your earbuds in. So, Chapman, I just think we have Muppets. What are you doing? Isn't it early there? Muppets. You guys don't give anything. How do you do that? How do they do it? Because it's way cooler when people are surprised. It sucks giving, like, any information out. I'd rather lie my ass off and then when it comes out you're like, Jeff, you son of a bitch. Like, that's the moment I want.
    132:49
    I do think Muppets would do reasonably well. It's not, because I think it's like a harmless theme if people don't hate it. You know, I'm not saying there's, like, Muppet tattoos on people, except for Kale. But I think that people, I think it would do decent and I think it's like family friendly.
    133:08
    Do you have a full back like Kermit the Frog tattoo? When he does his lips, it turns into Miss Piggy. It folds. Yeah, that's my only tattoo. Kermit, huh? Rocking Kermit.
    133:23
    All right. It's 1 p.m. for Enzo. That's not bad. There you go, Enzo. Thank you so much for joining. This was just an impromptu stream. If you're joining us just now, where the hell have you been? We've been doing this for two hours and 15 minutes. But it was just going to be me and Kale, and we couldn't get Ralph because he was spending time with his wife, and I told him to feed her turkey tonight. Get the tryptophan to get going, and put her to bed and join us.
    133:55
    I'm sure it is, but I'm trying everything I could, Kale, to get... No, it has tryptophan, but so does steak and so does pork. I don't eat duck. But anyway. Probably duck.
    134:09
    So it was just going to be us, and then we were trying to figure out a way to do a live call-in show, but Sterling Martin's going to help me with that.
    134:16
    Wouldn't that be fun, Serge, a live call-in show? Yeah. Yeah, hell yeah. Oh, that'd be great. I think that's a fun time. I'll probably get a Google phone number.
    134:28
    That could work. Get a Google phone, right. Yeah, that could work. I think Jeff and I are like 80% of a Relf. Yeah. Together. Yeah. You just got to laugh more. We make a whole Relf. That would help me out. A little more. No, that's true. I don't get a paycheck either, but Ozzy gave us a nice super chat and I really appreciate you. That was a great, great, great. We can't see the super chats on here, so if you have done it again, I apologize. Oh, okay. No, I've been... That wasn't on an ask, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not Christopher Flores.
    135:06
    Earlier someone asked, what is our favorite unlicensed theme? Everybody, let's start with Jeff. Go ahead. That's already been done, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, what do you mean? Oh, to pick a game that has already been released that's unlicensed? Yeah. I mean, okay. Okay, I won't pick that.
    135:30
    I mean, most of my favorite themes are just single word like things like, you know, Viking, Sorcerer, Grand Lizard. Like, I like just a thing. Like, yeah, like fish, cup of milk. Like, cup of milk pinball would be like a really awesome pin. I want to see you. Kale. Sorcerer.
    135:52
    I'll choose a modern. I was going to say Sorcerer. This is going to be a hot take. Dialed in. All right, tell me.
    136:01
    Okay. Ooh, good choice. And I'll tell you, the reason he's saying it's a terrible choice is because of the SIM card shot. Totally agree with a hot take.
    136:13
    Oh, no, I was just, it depends on what we mean by this question. I thought what we meant was, like, what is a good choice for an unlicensed theme? Oh, okay. What's an unlicensed theme that's a great pinball machine?
    136:26
    Because dialed in is a terrible choice for a theme because nobody cares about their old phones. Pinball is in itself an act of getting away from your phone. You know, in itself. And then plus the mom jeans and everything. Is it a great game? Yes, it's a very good game. That I can agree with. I think some of the best unlicensed games are concepts, like Safe Cracker, for example. That's a thing to do. So not only does your theme have an objective, but it also is its own style to begin with. Good point. Who done it? Right. Another good choice.
    137:02
    I'll give a boring choice, which is the Latinx Canyon. Yeah, Cactus Canyon Western. It's a boring choice, but I think they do what they need to, which is just one incredible mech that makes you feel silly while playing it. You know, if you are a fan, there's a lot of TNAs, a lot of TNAs in the chat. TNA, the problem with TNA, if you go, if you're an operator, and I doubt Buckle Timm is still here because he's probably asleep, but it doesn't make any money.
    137:37
    People, you know, the game makes no money. Oh, the game? I'm just talking about it. In Texas? You're talking about in Texas? Okay. It didn't make any money. It's too brutal.
    137:50
    You know, Eureka's different than Electric Bat in so many ways, but one of it is just new, new players. There's so many new, new players come to a brewery, drink in, and go, hey, let me try these pinball machines. So they had a spooky row. They went from Roast.
    138:09
    From Looney Tunes. They had every one except Texas Chainsaw and Domino's. But I think they're getting a Domino's. They have Jetsons.
    138:20
    Oh. Jetsons makes no money. Wow. No money. Oh, that game sucks, though. Oh, I believe that. I think they just put it there for their own amusement is what I'm saying. I make fun of them. I'm like, are you guys operators or what? I mean, you've got the Spooky Row, which is great. I mean, Evil Dead, Beetlejuice, and then Halloween, they put the Ultraman. They put a code on Halloween for a week, which is kind of funny. Whoa. And they put a sign up there because that's kind of funny. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Kind of funny.
    138:57
    What was the Haunted House one they did? America's Most Haunted. That was America's Most Haunted. Yeah, America's Most Haunted. It was a purchase game. It was, what's his face? Like, they acquired the design. The one they don't have. It wasn't internally designed. Did Carl take inspiration with Winchester from America's Most Haunted? Not that I'm aware of, no.
    139:18
    You know, Scott Denisi is coming to the arcade next Monday. Oh, that's very exciting. Yeah. Scott Denisi is one of the nicest people I've ever met in my entire life. All right. He's just way up there with Rachel Best. Okay. Just he asked what was best on life to tell them better pants for Jamie.
    139:40
    Okay. I think that is. Pim Freak, a known commenter on most people's videos out there. I think he's representing the live version of Kale that we did in Arizona where I wore shorts and was very subconscious with my legs.
    139:55
    And I put a blanket on myself. Oh, and then you put a blanket on yourself. And you felt better, right? You know, when I'm on a Peloton, I got good legs, but at that point I was off the Peloton.
    140:07
    Jamie, let's see him. Can we see him right now? All right, hold on. First of all, let's see him. All right. Let's see him. Can you stand on the chair? That's not bad. Look at that, man. Are you kidding me? Hell yeah. That's beautiful. Oh, man. That is my dog. Is it a turtle that passed away? And I got his paw print put there. His name was Turtle. He had one eye. And he was my little buddy. My little buddy. Now that would be a great unlicensed theme. Turtle the dog, my one-eyed dog. Turtle the one-eyed dog.
    140:49
    I mean, Barracuda is like turtle with jelly, right? America's Most Haunted at Next Level in Oregon feels like a quality homebrew. Yeah, so, you know, my point of saying this was they got enamored with Spooky Row, And some of these machines just don't, like TNA and Jetsons, nobody comes in there and plays Jetsons.
    141:14
    It's a terrible game. No offense to Spooky, but it's just, it's really bad. Yeah, it's bad. They know it. I'm sure they won't take it. They know it. I don't want Francie yelling at me, you know, okay? It's just.
    141:31
    But, yeah. Beetlejuice is still cleaning up, though, right, Cal? Oh, yeah. It's killing it. It's loose. Quarter's loose. But, I mean. Oh, okay. It's the only one in Arizona. That helps, right? Yeah, that doesn't hurt feelings.
    141:48
    You know. Do you like Beetlejuice, boys? Do you like to play it? Crickets. Why is everyone quiet? Crickets. No. No, no, no, no. There's two shots on it that really bug me, and I don't like how many scoops there are. I think it's a fun game, and the theme integration is really awesome. It's a good game, but I'm not blown away by it. I just think that left orbit, dumping into the upper playfield and that left spinner is too hard. I have a weird tough time when I'm hitting that left orbit to realize I've got to get that off.
    142:26
    I don't know if this is always true, Kale, but last time I played it at the bat, It wasn't strong enough, the right flipper, to get it up that left orbit into that upper area. And so it just was making to the pops and falling back down.
    142:38
    I haven't played it enough to notice. Okay. All right. I'll put it on the Discord. I'm just saying. Yeah, you should. You should. I should have done it right away. I mean, I should tell you a lot. I don't ever play it. I mean, I'm playing like all kind of other stuff. I don't know. I mean, I think it's beautiful. People absolutely love it. And I just, nothing talking to me. Well, I'll say every day, 24 hours a day playing Berrios. Yeah, I'll say that it looks beautiful. The art is perfect. The theme immersion is amazing. The code is pretty darn good. It's got a lot of modes. This code is great even. The mechs are great in the game. I think what maybe people don't respond to as much is the excitement and the layout probably. I have a problem as a tournament player that I can't choose my modes and I'm stuck with Deo and this other guy gets to dig up Beetlejuice.
    143:38
    You know you can't let that upper left sling out to change the modes. It's not easy to do, but good luck, right? Yeah, you'd win. There you go. That's one of those. You can bring out your chart, right? It's in there. What a strange way to cycle the modes in a way that don't act like... Right. I don't think that's the way you should change a mode. Yeah. I think they should change that. You saw my communism flag. They can still change that, though, right?
    144:04
    Big flag. Yeah, they can change that. They can change it anytime. And I think, as I recall, they had the same thing on Looney Tunes where people just wanted to be able to play their favorite clips, and they initially didn't help you with your choice on the mode, but then they allowed you to in later code. And I think the problem with Beetlejuice, though, Jamie, is there's an insert that says mode change, you know, right there on the slingshot. So they could, it's not that they couldn't change the code, but the insert's already there, you know, so they're sort of committed. Like Buggles say on his streams, they don't care about points. Like they just don't care. It's just not their ballywick. I mean, it's just not what they care, and I care because I'm trying to score points. For how critical I feel like we're being, I do want to, I think it's a top three, so you can easily. Oh, yeah. They're ED and Evil Dead. It's a great game. I would take Evil Dead over it, though. What about you, Kale? I also would take Evil Dead over it, though. Right? So Evil Dead comes out, and it's such a banger.
    145:13
    I know. Well, it also has the call-outs, which are great, by Bruce Campbell. And they both have great code, but actually Evil Dead's code is better. Yeah. For now.
    145:23
    Maybe people don't feel that as much, but what I mean is... But Evil Dead's been out for... It's been out for a while. Eight months more, yeah. Evil Dead has the most mini wizard modes of almost any game in all pinball history. So much so that they have like a challenge screen where you could pick any one of them, you know, with spooky coins or whatever they call it. And there's just so much to do in the game. It has so much depth. And Beetlejuice is getting there too, I'm sure. And it's probably... Where do I put Rick and Morty? That's a good question. I like Rick and Morty. I'm one of the few that likes Rick and Morty. I like it a lot. I think you've got to get mega seats, buddy. If you're not getting mega seats, Alex Gomez, you're in deep trouble on a tournament. It's all about those mega seats. I mean, but I'm a weird guy. My favorite spooky game, I'm not going to get agreement here from people I know, is Looney Tunes. That's my favorite spooky game. Deal with it. I know. Everyone's looking at me like I said something. Oh, what? I know. You heard me.
    146:21
    But, okay, this is what I don't get. I'll make an argument for it. It's the same. Well, the code's better on.
    146:30
    I can change the change. Yeah. It's the same layout. So, wow. Well, first, I haven't played Texas Chainsaw, so I can't say. I can't speak to it. I want to say that. I know I've heard that, but I haven't played it, so I don't know. What I like about Looney Tunes, first of all, two mode trees and dozens of modes. So you could play all these scenes from the show up the middle, or there's these Martin the Martian modes on the left orbit, so I like that. I like that they have all these perk weapons and things you can use, and I like that it has all these ramps. Um, and, um, I, uh, I guess I like Looney Tunes too. Um, but, um. The hot take here is that you have not played Texas Chains on Asker. I think that you would be like Texas Chains on Asker is way better if you played it. That may well be the case. Look, I'm willing to give an honest opinion even though I know that I'm not going to give an honest opinion. That's what I mean. Chats hammering you on. I haven't played TCM. I haven't played it. Okay. Look, I haven't played it is what I'm saying. I would play it. Kale, get a TCM. Malcolm, you didn't get a TCM there. Because Mark, he went with the Looney Tunes because he didn't think the violent theme would make as much money. Do you think he's right? I think at a family-friendly place where you're bringing your kiddos, maybe, but at the bat.
    147:49
    And this ain't it. Electric bat on the family-friendly place. All right. Kids love tiki drinks. All right. I will play something. I'm sorry. First of all, we can agree with that.
    148:04
    Yeah, if there's one in Arizona, let me come over and play your TCM. Let me understand this code. Let me play it. I will come back. There's got to be somebody in chat that has to. Yeah, that'll be good. Do you want to go to a stranger's house and play TCM? Well, you have to move.
    148:17
    Well, I love Stranger is more. That's fair. I mean to you, William. When I first got into the hobby, I went over, you know, I went to Pinside, and I was like, I wanted to play all these games to learn, hey, what games should I get or whatever. And so this guy, I want to give his last name, but Greg, local player in Arizona, like famed collector in Arizona, let me come over his house to play his games, and I just showed up to his house, you know, randomly to play his games. He had the nicest collection, beautiful games. And he told me something that changed the trajectory of my pinball hobby career, you know, within pinball, which is like, I was like, wow, look at all these, like I never saw all these pinball games before, and I just wasn't, this was like, I don't know, years ago. And he said, and I was like, oh, these designers, they must be like really so smart to make all this. And he's like, no, it's not the designers that are smart. It's the coders that are smart. You know, that's what you're going to be impressed by when you get into the hobby. And he was absolutely right for me.
    149:09
    You had mentioned like games that had soul and you kept listing the ones that had like the best code in the world. Do you think that the code is like what gives the game its soul?
    149:18
    100%, I think. That said, this is, it's a team effort. Pinball really is collaborative. I think you need the sound and you need the lighting and you need the design and you need the mechs and you need the theme and the theme immersion and the code. But I would rather play a bad layout with a great code than a green layout with bad code.
    149:39
    But you can change code. You can't change a layout. Although you can change code, you rarely do. And when it happens, the game can get much better. There are not that many games if you really go back and say, hey, they radically redesigned the code. I could say 007. You could say Walking Dead is an example where they did that. 007. Yeah, I was going to say 007. MXV would yell at me for saying that because he would say, actually, we always had the plan to make that the code. That was not a rehaul. It just took a long time to get license approval. Isn't that fair, Kale? No, that's correct. That actually wasn't a 2.0 code. That was the code that's in that game, which is great code, was planned from jump. The only ones he came in and kind of took it in a different direction because maybe one wasn't going in any direction, X-Men and Wick.
    150:32
    Yeah, so I guess it comes to, let's put it this way, actually, and I will, although maybe it's controversial prior to speaking to Ray Day tomorrow. All right. All right. You might agree, perhaps, that X-Men has a has X-Men compared to Star Wars Fall of the Empire, which has a better layout. Let's start with that. X-Men, you know, these things are subjective, but for sure. And yet they're not. X-Men has the better layout. No, they're not. Which has the which has the better? Fall of the Empire. Fall of the Empire. Fall of the Empire. Fall of the Empire. No question. It's not even a question. And so then my next question to you guys is, and you might feel differently about this. Which one would you prefer to play long term? Oh, probably follow the Empire because I want to try to get to the speed racer code and some of this shit. But I can't get there. I'm not good at it enough. In your hypothetical... Is that unfair? Are they going to release another X-Men update in this hypothetical crazy wacky scurgey world that we're living in? They've already done it. This is their... They've done it already with X-Men. They did try to rehaul it or whatever, and they did a fairly decent job at it. It's still the case that Star Wars is the better code. I think that's objective, frankly. But the question is, now you can have both games for a year, you know, in your house. Which game would you rather? Forget about the theme and what you're more passionate about or whatever. Same question. Obviously, Star Wars.
    151:53
    Yeah, it's obviously Star Wars. There's only a limited amount of that, like, serotonin release you get from hitting a quality shot, right? It's a linear situation. Like, you hit the shot, you get the oof, oof, oof, right? But if you get good code and you start stacking all that stuff, you can have, like, multiple oohs, and that's way better. Yeah, and frankly, neither game, as I recall, is at 1.0 code now, Uncanny X-Men or Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. But there's just all the Star Wars, and maybe people don't have, and hopefully tomorrow if they watch the show, they'll appreciate what I'm talking about, the depth of code that it has and how good that code is. And I think if I'm going to have a game for a year, I personally would pick if I had to pick those two. So, I'm just saying that in this choice, constrained choice of those two and not the thousands of games that are out there, I would say I'd pick Star Wars, Fall of the Empire over Uncanny X-Men in a home environment. But Chad disagrees here. There's a lot of people for Uncanny X-Men.
    152:48
    All right. Well, I challenge you with a different question. Out of those two games, right, if you had them for 17 minutes, which one would you pick? Uncanny X-Men, no question.
    152:58
    Without question. It's got the better mechs. It's got the better layout. It's more interesting layout. And I'm not even thinking it's terrible code. It's just one is better, and the layout of Uncanny X-Men is much better than Star Wars. That's true. But especially for people who, like, practiced in pinball and have played a bunch of games, I also just wish... It's not that I... By the way, it's not that I don't like fan layouts either. I just don't pretty like that fan layout, is what I would say. Like, John Wick is a fan layout that I think plays pretty cool for a fan layout.
    153:32
    It's too hard. Yeah, I know. It's too damn hard. There's also enough things that trick you into thinking it's not really a fan layout, right? Like, just how the ramps and stuff are located, the car and the weapons crate. Like, you don't feel like you're playing a fan layout. Like, Jaws, like, is obviously a fan layout, but the side flipper and the, you know, utility pop give you enough of a, like, not really. People say that's a fan layout because I get that their shot's arranged in a fan. But first of all, there's an upper play field on a premium LE. That's its own thing, you know. Which is a requirement. You cannot own the Pro. There's just no point. I personally agree with that, unless you're an operator. Sorry, Kale. But also, and then you have that upper right flipper that does open things up side to side and does make this cool shot. And you could sometimes make the orbit, and the orbit flies in a weird way. And so I think it's maybe a twist on some sort of fan layout, but it's enough different that I wouldn't even put it in that category. I think it's just weird enough, you know, on its own. But yeah, and then I'd rather a game, frankly, like Jaws that has a great layout and great code. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Not a hot take.
    154:39
    That's not a hot take. The hot take was comparing Star Wars and Uncanny X, I think. And I didn't play Texas A. I think I'm faded. I'm sorry, I haven't played it yet. It's a wet night. It's 12.07. Right. That's enough. We've pushed in at the brink. Yeah, for sure. We're good. Thank you for having me on. I love my little surprise to you. Thank you, Kale. Always a good producer.
    155:06
    Thank you, dude. So everybody needs to hang out in here, right? So to upload? So when I shut this off. But guys, thank you so much for joining. We had consistently close to 100 people for most of the night, which is totally ridiculous. Just listening to us talk gibberish about how much we love this pinball hobby of ours. We are a pimple on a pimple, and who cares? We love it. And I thank Serge so much for joining and being at this interview here. For me to be the first to interview you is so exciting, and I really appreciate it. And Jeff, you know what? I'm going to do this. I think it's a joint interview, and I think we did it very well together, buddy. What a partnership. Can we also give credit to Enzo, by the way, in chat? He asked also around the same time that you guys asked. And I said, I can't, I'm not doing, I don't do things like interviews or whatever. And Enzo's in the chat too. I'm sorry. He's a great dude. And three more hours, says Sterling. Are you crazy? I got to go to a pimple on a pimple. Yeah, you know, Tom, we are. I mean, we're just crazy in love with this hobby. And I just wanted to do a stream where you guys can hang out with us live. Because we were jonesing. My wife's out of town. She's in Sedona living it up.
    156:26
    And if I had planned this properly, I should be in Arizona at the bat, but I didn't plan it properly. So that's on me. Thank you guys so, so much. Thank you, Aji, for everything. We really appreciate you all. And I'm going to close this, but these guys are going to stay here for five minutes, not even, two minutes while it uploads. God bless you all. Thank you, guys.
    156:50
    See y'all. Thank you.