Welcome Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 55 and my name's Martin and with me always, it's Ryan C. And we've got a very special guest on today, Martin. This man can be described somewhat as Pinball's journeyman. He has worked for companies such as Bally Midway, then Williams, Stern. He has his own company, Wisbang, responsible for such classics as Whitewater, Demolition Man and two Alvira games. Now he's designing pinballs for Deep Root. The tour designer in the pinball land, ladies and gentlemen, Dennis Nordman. How are you going, Dennis? Thank you, guys. Nice to be here. So, Dennis, your introduction and the way you got into pinball was a lot different than everyone else because you actually started as a cabinet designer and not designing pinballs, designing just the cabinets of them, and you somehow worked your way into designing pinballs from there. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. I went to Ohio State and majored in product design. And for one of my senior projects, I designed a really futuristic-looking pinball cabinet. Then I had to have back surgery before I could finish all my courses. At that time, back surgery was a lot more invasive than it is now, so I couldn't even ride in a car for six weeks after my surgery. After that point, since I couldn't take my courses right away, I built a full-size version of that pinball cabinet. I took it to Shaper Distributing in Columbus, Ohio, and they set me up with Chuck Farmer at Valley Pinball, and I hauled it out there in my van, and they decided to hire me to design cabinets. So I've heard that story before, and I'm always confused because, you know, obviously you've designed the cabinet, so it's already there. So why, instead of buying the design off you, did they have other cabinets in mind they needed designed for different projects with arcades and things like that, or was it just because the design was so good? Well, of course I'm going to say constant design. That's a good question. I never even thought of that before. Why didn't they just buy the design from me? I don't know. I was happy they hired me. It then became what was known as rapid fire, which was obviously the ball shooting sort of take on pinball. I guess some people say it's pinball. Some people say it's not. But also then became the design for a couple of other machines, including some of the, I guess, the special editions for Centaur and 8-Ball Deluxe. Is that right? That's right. The cabinet that I designed was actually very different than those two. The one I designed was to be made of fiberglass, but nobody wanted to deal with that fiberglass. So it was modified a lot and became rapid fire. and then you're right, it was 8 ball deluxe limited edition. I mean, the cabin was also a lot different because I think you said in a previous interview that it had like a pedestal, so instead of having four legs, it was on a pedestal and it was lower for kids. Is that the same design we're talking about here? Yeah, that's the same design we're talking about. There's pictures of it on my Facebook site somewhere. If you dig around, you can find them. Yeah, I've seen it. It's also, I think it's part of the interview that you did in the Pinball Magazine as well. So how does it go then from designing a cabinet to designing your first machine, which I think was, was it Special Force? Yeah, Special Force was my first machine. Well, when I went to Bali and became a cabinet designer, the other wonderful thing that happened to me was that I met my wife at Bali and got married. She was the president's secretary. That's handy. I got laid off. I got laid off a year later, and she knew I was going to get laid off, and she couldn't even tell me because she was very good at keeping corporate secrets. That's right. Wow. Was she hinting to you, like, hey, maybe you should be looking for other jobs just in case? No, she didn't even hint. That's amazing. I'm going to have to ask her about that. I think there's probably enough time that's gone by you can actually get the truth this time yeah so then I went fortunately I got a job at Gottlieb right away designing concepts for video games and the one game that came out of my time there was the Us vs. Them Laserdisc game and so then I got laid off from there good after about a year or a year and a half and um because they were bought by the coca-cola company at that time and they laid off a lot of people um so then i was home not doing much my wife was still working of course for valley so i thought i'd try my hand well i'm not doing anything at designing a pinball game so i came up with the special force idea because at that time the Rambo movie was very popular. So I based it on that. Took my little drawing to Bali and they hired me again. Was it weird walking into the company for kind of a second time? Obviously the company kind of changed a little bit since then. It was a little strange walking in there, but I already knew all the people there. They had merged with Midway at the time. then. So I was just happy to get back designing pinball, starting to design pinball games. There was just something about the whole industry that I loved. So how do you become a pinball designer? I mean, it can't be as simple as you just do a sketch and all of a sudden you've got a team around you that says, yep, we're now going to put that into a machine. What was that process for you like? Well, the initial process, I just had this idea of special force, and then somehow I had an idea I wanted to do a funnel in the game. That hadn't been done before, and I wanted to make it look like a scene, and that's how I came up with all the layered plastics on the play field. But I owe a lot to Jim Patla because he helped me a lot designing that first game and told me things I should do and shouldn't do, and he was very helpful. and then obviously you then go on to what i refer to and i think some people do as well the first of i guess of a trilogy i think you would say which is you know party animals i sort of put those together party animal dr dude and party zone is that right of me to put those in as a bit of a trilogy yeah that's right a lot of that was the influence of greg of the party stuff when i let's see party animal was party animals actually i think that was my idea because that term, Party Animal, was real popular at that time. But for me, that was the hardest game for me to design, because I used up all my good ideas on Special Force, and now I was forced to come up with some other stuff, so that was a difficult one for me. Yeah, the difficult second album, because they always, and the reason why I sort of say that concept is, you know, when you've got your first one, you've got all these years of you know, concepts in your mind that go bang, first one. Then your second one, you've got the clock ticking. You've got to come up with everything within a shorter period of time and the pressure's on, right? That's exactly right. That's exactly how it was for me. And then after that, it got easier and more fun, you know, because I had confidence in myself that, well, I can do it again and again and again. So the whole party trilogy wasn't planned. It just kind of happened. And my third game was actually going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Nobody at Williams really liked that theme, so it kind of sat on the back burner for a while, and then it eventually became Dr. Dude. Right, okay. So that was the design that you had originally had for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Is that right? Yeah. So Data East ended up making Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that was in May 1991. So did they maybe catch wind that you guys were going to do it? Because Doctor Dude was 1990. Yeah. So do you think that happened? Did someone catch wind that you guys were thinking about doing it and then grab the license off you? I have no idea. They wouldn't have grabbed it off of us because nobody at Williams was interested in doing it. You know, and there's obviously the next machine, And I wanted to talk about this one, Ryan, because I know Ryan doesn't necessarily play these machines from this era, but the next one after Party Animals is a really interesting one because it's Blackwater 100. And I believe that you've got a bit of a history with either motocross or motorcycles. And this machine's really interesting because it really is probably an unusual design for its time. And, you know, it's got all the mould of plastics and it's a very deep cabinet. did you intentionally go into this thinking that you wanted to make something that was really quite different or did it come from a natural progression of understanding motocross and what you needed to build in that environment it was a little bit of both actually the deep cabinet that was actually innovated and introduced by Dan Langlois on was it Lost World? now I forget the name Lost World yeah he was the first one to do it play field deep in the continent like that and I thought that was a brilliant idea so I wanted to do that with blackwater and I you know I knew from racing in the real blackwater well not racing riding and um and um so it had a lot of hills and mountains so I thought well that would be pretty cool I could make it deep and make it as much like a motocross actually that was a cross-country race make it as much like a cross-country race as I could So, Dennis, I mean, the cabinets of this game is obviously a little bit different than the normal cabinets. So, since you came into the industry as a cabinet designer, were you the one that were kind of mucking up these cabinets as well as designing the playfield, or was someone else at this point doing that? No, I had nothing to do with that cabinet, and I actually didn't like it. That was Jim Patliff trying to come up with a way to save money on building the cabinets. That's why I had that slanted bottom. Yeah. yeah and it's also got a you know fairly innovative rule set at the time because i mean obviously you're trying to get in multiball as much as possible to i guess kind of simulate that whole racing environment right right that's why i started with uh three balls at the starting line because the start of a motocross race was really crazy with you know 20 or 30 bikes trying to get to the first turn at the same time and so i wanted to start with three balls and make at like the start of a motocross race, and then eventually you lose two balls, and you're kind of like, you know, you're not racing in such a crowd anymore. You're racing kind of off by yourself until you pass somebody. Yeah, okay. And so then I guess we probably move to probably where you start talking about the games that you're really known for, and probably because they are now really sort of licensed team as well. And the first one we'll talk about is Elvira and the Party Monsters, which was just a major game at the time. And I know you've heard this before. It was a license, but it was not necessarily a license. And Cassandra Peters was fairly easy to work with and hands-off. So again, what was the process of coming up with Elvira and the Party Monsters? Well, I would have guessed that Party Monsters probably came from Greg because of our other party games. Did Party Zone come after Elvira? I guess it did, yeah Yeah, it did Okay, so because of the first two party games Greg, I think, came up with Elvira and the Party Monsters Sure There was a license that I don't think Stern I mean, Williams had done any licenses up to that point and so they were going to have Valley be the licensed games and Williams would have been the unlicensed original games and And Roger Sharp came to everybody with that license, and Greg and I, of course, were really interested in it. And so I presented a lot of ideas. I had actually maybe six months or a year before I had been at this novelty store, and I found these little finger puppets, and I bought some of those. And I thought, oh, maybe I could use these in the pinball game someday because I like the way their arms wiggle and stuff. So that's where that came from. So, yeah. Yeah, okay. And then obviously we've got Doctor Dude and Party Zone next. And I kind of think that, I'll put this into context, because up until, and we're going to go into the future and talk about Scarce in a minute, but up until that stage you have got Party Animal, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Doctor Dude and Party Zone, and they're very funny games. Was that a love of humour in machines or was that just of the era where people were putting humor in games? Was it something that you wanted to do? No, I like to put humor in my games. Yeah. To me, it just makes it entertaining. You know, I like to have a little bit of humor, which is just the opposite of Steve Ritchie. He's a 100% macho kind of game designer. Do you think it's harder now to put humor in games than it was in the 80s and the 90s. Like, we'll talk about Whitewater in a second, but Whitewater is just kind of like fun in a box to begin with, but is it hard to replicate that, you know, in 2018? I don't seem to have much trouble putting humor in the game. I just have a humorous attitude towards life. What else did you ask me there? Oh, but doing it, again, when I listen to Scared Sif now, I can't believe all the bubble entendres we got. No, we can't either. Like, how did you get away with those? Greg always tells the funny story that he had that game at home when his daughters were little girls, and they just thought it was a funny game. When they went off to college and came back home and played the game, they went, Dad! What was it? I'm having multiple jackpots? Was that the one? Yeah. There's been multiple. Yeah. Yeah. So then Whitewater. We talk about Whitewater, and I want to talk about this one because I think this is the first of your games which today fetches a really high price because it's considered an absolute classic game. Was it that popular when it came out in the day? Because it obviously sold. But it says here at IPDB that it's 7,000 units, so that's obviously a good number. But why does a game like that stand the test of time? Well, I wish I knew. I'd do it every time, wouldn't I? But did you know when you were... Because obviously it's whitewater rafting, right? That's not necessarily the most exciting or globally appealing theme. did you know that you were making a great game due to its layout and rules? I knew that the layout and rules, I knew that the layout was unique I liked making, I guess I liked trying to make environmental games that looked like it's taking place somewhere not just a bunch of mechanical items sitting somewhere on a playfield I liked the environment of Blackwater 100 I liked the environment of Special Force and I suppose Whitewater would probably have been the ultimate environment then. There's a term for that, Dennis, world under glass. World under glass, that's right. That's what I love about pinball, creating my own fantasy world under glass. Then I can escape from reality. Yeah, Dennis, I've got Whitewater. I was born in the mid-'80s, so Whitewater was probably one of the first pinball machines I ever played. My dad owns it. Oh, wow. Yeah. I was absolutely kind of blown away when I played it back in the day because it just had all these cool features that no other pinball machine had. And then now, as an adult, I've got enough disposable income that I re-bought the machine. And I kind of just look at it, and there's different things that people like about pinball. Some people like the social aspect. Some people like just art. for me, and I don't think some people know what they like, they just like something and they're attracted to pinball in general. And I've been on this kind of journey to figure out what it is that I like, because I never put my finger on it. What I've found, you know, after playing kind of your games and other people's games is there's a certain way that you design pinball machines and ramps and shots and shots that connect to other shots that is kind of like the ball flows in a kind of a poetic way and Whitewater is probably the greatest example where you've created a pinball machine that the ball, it seems like the ball is cascading down, you know, whitewater rapids. And, you know, it might sound lame for someone to say that, but the ball is the canoe going down the river, right? Well, first of all, thank you so much for saying that. And I did try to make the ramps like rivers, like it was a flowing stream, And like the ball was rolling down some kind of flowing stream or waterfall or something, I definitely had that in mind when I was designing it. When I look at that game now, I think, how the hell did I ever do that? And I couldn't draw it at first because there were so many different levels, and I wasn't sure, was the ball going to fit here? Was the ball going to fit there? So I made that foam core model of it that Tim Shelbrook has, I think. Probably everybody's seen that. and I built that first, and then I made my drawing from that. Well, I mean, another reason why I love this game is the upper playfield. I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of pinball machines at upper playfields or the balls kind of staying up there for a long time, but, you know, for me, yours is a perfect example where you hit a shot, and then the ball feeds to the upper flipper, and, you know, you miss, the ball's back down to your flipper, but you've got two shots to go for. One is that beautiful Insanity Falls jackpot shot, you know, when multiball starts, and I don't know. It's an amazing game. I don't think it's leaving my collection for a while. Dennis, when I walk people through my collection, I point to the Translight and say, look, there's Attack from Mars. Look, there's Tron Pinball. When I come to your pinball machine, I say, that's whitewater, but people are looking at it and there's no whitewater written on the Translight at all. So was that a mistake or was there an issue there or how did that come about? Oh, wow. I don't think we'd make a mistake that big. We forgot to put a title on it. Could have been a mistake. We put the name on the topper. We just wanted to do something different again. Ah, okay. My topper was like, my pinball machine came without the topper, which for some people is the best part of the pinball machine. Right, exactly. There's always a story where, you know, someone walked in to, you know, Bally at the time, Ballywinds, and, you know, he was a salesman and he set up and make it move like this. I mean, the story to me, when I hear it, it sounds like some guy just kind of came off the street, but were you trying to contract people to make this topper, like different engineering places, or? No, we had, I'll say at that point, I don't remember whether we were going to, I think that at that point, then that's a true story. A guy just came in off the street trying to sell this process. And what we saw, I don't think, was waterfalls. But we saw right away, oh, wow, this would work. And we could make waterfalls out of this. And so at that point, that's when we decided, I guess, to put the name on the topper and not on the back glass. Okay. I need that topper. Yeah, well, I guess it draws your attention right to that. if not already that the waterfall moving is there as well. Yeah, we were real happy with the way that worked out. I don't think people even make third-party toppers. I think there was someone that tried, but it didn't really work out the same way. I don't know. Yeah, I think you can get one that's static, but I don't think they've ever really been able to recreate the movement, which is probably just lenticular anyway. I've got the boys in there. Yeah, nobody's been able to recreate that movement. That's true. And I think even some people contacted the original company that did it to see if they still had the dyes. And then I kind of lost track of that story. But it was some kind of very unique process that they came up with that the chasing lights would then make it look like it was moving. Okay. Okay. So moving then on to one of Ryan's favorite machines. And I'm still yet to play this enough to know what I think. But what I do know is this is where, and Ryan and I spoke about this a few weeks ago, when we were saying, you know, Richie, Steve Ritchie is known as the king of flow, right? But your machines have just as much flow, but in a different way. But we're talking about Demolition Man, where you managed to make a wide body that has flow. Well, yes, I did. And again, that was fun for me. I just tried to make a lot of flowing shots. There's a lot of combo shots on that man. Were you forced to make it Keep the ball going Sorry Was I forced No I said Oh I think that'll be a cool license So that's for Stallone That'll be great So I mean Were you forced to make it Into a wide body Or was that your choice Because you wanted to put So many different shots On the play field I don't remember The answer to that Because I mean It gets played a lot In competitions at the moment And I mean I guess Games with a balanced rule set You know They kind of survive of a really long time in the competition scene. A lot of people kind of avoid those two left shots because the payoff and the risk-reward for them isn't great enough for them. So there's always this kind of argument that Demolition Man is a wide body, but it could be possibly a standard body pinball machine because you kind of concentrate on the middle and the right more than the two left shots. Yeah, I'm not the greatest rules guy in the world, So a lot of the rules were Mike Boon. No, it wasn't Mike Boon. Ted. Ted Estes. And that was one of his first games too, I believe. Well, this is the thing. We talked about Whitewater and we have like the ball cascading down the waterfall. Demolition Man somehow, like because obviously Demolition Man is a, you know, a 90s action movie. When you hit those rams in combos, it feels like you're fighting someone, you know, The ball comes back in an aggressive manner. So it's kind of rare in pinball, or to me anyway, that usually my interaction and the whole world on the glass thing is to do with sound and art. But for me, especially in those two games, that's kind of like the theme integration with the way the shot feels. Yeah. Another big question. Just a statement. Well, thank you for noticing that. because I actually tried to do that. That was the reason when I watched that movie or read the script, there was just so many weapons and shooting going on in that game. I wanted the player to feel like he was part of that shooting action. So that's why I came up with those handles on the side to make it feel like you were holding some kind of a weapon. That's unique. And you guys had to redesign the hinges and the cabinet, right? So that was a one-off design for Williams at the time? I think just the hinges had to be redesigned. Some of the engineers didn't think it was going to work, and then so I played around in AutoCAD and figured out a way to make the hinges work without changing anything else. So it's just a regular cabinet. Okay, so my last question on Demolition Man, and it's something that we always ask people when we talk about Demolition Man, do you know how the three seashells work? My. The what? The seashells. From the movie. I'm showing my age because I don't even know what you're talking about there's a scene in the movie where they don't use toilet paper anymore and everyone laughs at Spencer Stallone saying he doesn't know how to use a free seat we do want to know how it works Dennis, did you see the recent news article about Sandra Bullock kind of complaining in the interview that she'd never got a Demolition Man demo machine? I did see that, and I thought everybody got one. No, just the men. Just the men. Just the men. Yeah. That's terrible. Yeah. Well, if she would come over to my house, I would gladly give her mine. No way. Would you? No, I don't even have one. Well, because I remember in an interview that, I don't know when it was, it was probably about 2015, you said at the time that you didn't have machines at home. Is that still the case? That's still the case. I have no pinball machines at home. I always say by the time I'm done designing it and playing it 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day for 8 months, I'm pretty tired of it and I want to move on to something else and create something new. But, I mean, I would understand that in that year, but surely enough time has passed that when you see a whitewater pinball machine, it doesn't have that effect on you. You're like, oh, my gosh, I spent so many hours trying to perfect these ramps, this, this, and that. Surely enough time has passed, right? Well, you would think that, but, you know, I don't even play very much anymore. That's awesome. I just like to design the game. The one hobby that I have now is jukeboxes. I have, like, seven different jukeboxes I've recorded, and I still have more to work on. Before we move on from Demolition Man, I want to quickly talk about Sylvester Stallone's call-outs in there, right? I'm not sure if you remember, but if you play Museum multiball, which is the second multiball there, every time you hit a jackpot, the call-out is... Okay? But... Clever. Yeah. The game, obviously, is Combo City. You just hit combos all day long. So if you hit like a four-way combo, it's just... Was that... Was that... You do it so well every time, Ryan. Was that in the script? Did you say, you know, I'm not sure if you were involved in writing the script for Assassin's Throne, but did you say, please, like yell like you're about to shoot something, you know, during that museum scene, you know, during multiball? Do you remember how that came about? No, but I generally do write a lot of the script. And I wasn't involved at the sound recording at that time. Our sound guy went out, I think, to California to record them. And I think he was a bit intimidated by recording Stallone and Wesley Snipes. And I don't think they got a ton of direction. And he might have just grunted and we decided, hey, let's use that. It's as good as you're going to get, probably. Well, I mean, there's a swear-rum as well. So were you involved in kind of getting that taken out of the normal gameplay? Say that again? I believe there's like a swear-on. So there's an alternative ROM that you can put on Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes drops a couple of F-bombs, I think, at the credit scene and during some of the scenes. So did you write any of that script or was that just something that happened? No, that was Wesley and Stallone ad-libbing. Okay. I see. Wesley was having less fun at the reporting session than Stallone was. He didn't seem like he wanted to be there at all. Well, that's the interesting thing. I mean, you know, at the time, you know, so 94 is coming out. So let's say it's being developed, 93, 94. Pinball is going through a massive time at that time, right? Do you think that Stallone and Wesley Snipes were sort of really aware of how popular pinball was? or could they not really give a crap at all? I would say they weren't that interested in it. I don't think they knew at that time how popular pinball was with the normal world. Yeah, and I guess with movies, like, they've got to go through so much licensing. Like, there's, you know, figurines and lunchboxes and backpacks and all that kind of crap. They're probably just thinking, oh, yeah, it's just another one of these bloody merch things that we've got to do. Yeah, right. Moving on to your next game, which was Indy 500. Now I didn't know this And when I was doing a little bit of research Bally Williams released Nine pinball machines in 1995 Fear of Magic Dirty Harry No Fear Indy 500 Johnny Mnemonic Whodunit Jackpot Congo And Attack from Mars Which when you think about it now That is absolutely insane So how do you What was the mood like at Bally Williams When you were just one of these Nine pinball machines I mean Were you fighting over licenses Or you just kind of got what you got given and had to make the best out of it? Again, I don't remember that. I think Indy 500 is something was offered and was something that I wanted, so they let me do it. Was the reason why you sort of like would accept a license like that is because even though I know it's not bike racing, it's still sort of that racing environment that you create? Oh, yeah, I like that. I remember I used to always, when I was young, the Indy 500 wasn't even televised. It was on the radio, and I used to always listen to it on the radio. I guess I've always been interested in any kind of racing. Yeah, because this one, for me, I know Ryan was saying before about white water and how you've got the world under glass. So for me, this is the one where I think that the theme integration really works. And it's the orbits, it's the ramps, but it's the sound call-outs and it's the engine noise. This is the one that I think really, and I was on record saying that I think this is my favorite of your machines is Indy 500. What was the process for this one, putting this game together? Well, first of all, thank you again for saying that. You know, that makes all the hard work worthwhile when people tell you how much they love the games you've done. How many people have jobs where people come up to you and tell you, I love the accounting you did today? Oh, Dennis, all the accountants that listen to us are now facepalming and considering different careers. I'm just saying we're fortunate that we get feedback on what we do with our career. But it's not always good feedback. I'm sure you've got a lot of criticism for... You know, you can't please everyone, right? I've got a lot of people that like to criticize. Is that just water off a duck's back at the moment? Like, do you care a bit about what everyone thinks of certain games that you've done in the past? Well, of course I like it when they say they like it, and if they say they don't like it, well, you know, everybody has different likes and dislikes and it doesn't bother me if they don't like something I've done. I generally please more people than I disappoint. On Indy 500, I love the lock shot because it's quite hard, satisfying. It's also the jackpot shot. You know, I didn't play this game in the 90s. The first time I ever played it was a couple of years ago when I got back into pinball. So, you know, there's an issue with a lot of them that I've played where, you know, if you hit that shot perfectly, it kind of pops out. But, you know, this is a 20-year-old game that I'm playing, so was that ever an issue when the game first came out, or was that something that kind of developed 20 years after it got 20,000 players? I don't remember any specific issue like that, with the ball popping out of the turbo unit. Yeah, so you hit the shot perfectly, and the shot doesn't stick. So people kind of put, like, dead bouncer rubber and stuff on there now so that it absorbs, because the game is so fast. that if you hit that in a combo, the ball kind of has so much momentum, it bounces out. Yeah, I don't recall having that issue, but I'm glad there's a fifth. And, Ron, I don't remember that being an issue when it came out either. I think that is just where over the years and it not being perfectly aligned like it used to be, I'd say that's probably the case. Could be, could be. Yeah. Last question I have on Indy 500. Sorry, Matt, I'm coming in. No, it's okay. You're the designer, so you might not know about this because the software guys put Easter eggs and stuff in there and do whatever they want, but there is a call-out. I think me and a mate, Dave, asked you this at X-Files in 2016. You weren't aware of it. I'm not sure if you looked it up now, but there's a point where the pit crew says something like, shoot the blinking light, you wanker, if you can't hit the shot. Do you know who put that in there and how to activate that? I have no idea how to activate that. And Wanker came from one of the racing teams. And then he... Mark Wehner. Oh, that's terrible. I couldn't remember his name. And, you know, in the racing teams, in the British racing teams and stuff, they would always use the term Wanker. So we just stuck it in there. But with a game like Indy 500, and as I said, because I was saying like the sound and the call outs are really integral to you feeling like you're being in a race, how much do you work with the sound guy and the rules guy and the coder to bring your design and layout to life? I usually work very close with the sound guy and, you know, other people can help with the speech and everything. but I do a lot of the speech writing. But then I have, you know, input from other people on the team too. I think I work less closely with the programmers because they do a lot of stuff they want and nobody understands what they do. So if you want something particular done and they say that can't be done, well, then you're kind of stuck and you can't do it. Or do it yourself. Yeah, well, if I knew how, I would have. So your next game was Get Stiff and that is, I guess, a true sequel to Alvira and the Party Monsters. Were distributors, you know, back in the day, because I know distributors had a lot of power, especially the European ones, over what games got made and what gets taken out and put in. Were they excited for another Alvira game or were they kind of rolling their eyes and saying, you know, this isn't going to sell because Alvira and the Party Monsters already exist? I don't really know how the distributors felt. I know management wasn't that crazy about it, and Greg and I had to do a lot of selling to get them to allow us to do it. So we made several presentations to management. It sold, I mean, 4,000 units, which, I mean, if you can do that in 2018, you're probably a genius. But back then, were those good numbers or kind of in the middle of the road? Probably kind of middle of the road numbers. I think other Williams games at the time were doing six or seven maybe. I don't know, don't quote me on that but again, Scare Stiff is another one of these games and we always I guess you can, for us you can rate the popularity of a machine by how much it's getting sold for these days or obviously resold and Scare Stiff just has just a very high price on it these days and it's got to do with more than the thing we all love Elvira but what do you think about that machine when looking back on it that you think is pretty special? Well, I liked the monster slide plate, you know, monster slide ramp. I think visually it was very interesting. Greg artwork of course was beautiful again And the humor I think the humor had a lot to do with the popularity of that game I know the rules weren extremely deep but during those times we weren really making games for the home market We were making games for arcades, and super deep rules weren't really necessary at that time. Of course. It's still got one of the best, the coolest end-of-wizard-mode things to happen in pinball with it going absolutely bonkers, right? Yeah, I like that. I know. I did do that in front of somebody, and they kind of looked and said, you know, is there something wrong with the machine? It's like, no, it's actually meant to do that. But the first time you do that, you think, what the hell is actually going on here? Good, it worked then. So then, I mean, after Scared Stiff, there's a 10-year gap in working or releasing a game. I'm not sure if you were doing anything on the side, but you talked about before with your first game having all these ideas and your second game is harder. Was this that situation? Were you thinking about Timball on a daily or weekly basis in those 10 years and wanting to put certain things in Pirates of the Caribbean? No, actually, I got pretty irritated with Timball. That's where I got laid off from Williams. When you got laid off at Williams, was that the period where they, I guess they weren't making enough money, so they, I think I remember in an interview, I think it was with Cameron Silver saying he didn't know how he survived that period. And he thinks it was because he was new and he was getting paid like peanuts compared to someone like you, a more well-known designer. So they just kind of were trying to save money at that time. That was part of it, I'm sure. They laid off three whole design teams. Me and John Trudeau and Barry Osler all got laid off. And, yeah, I was making some decent money at that time, so that had to be part of it. Okay. So then after that, I kind of bounced around doing some redemption games. None of them were extremely successful. Well, Power of Power, I did for skeedball. That was in every Chuck E. Cheese and every Dave and Buster's for years. And then I went to work for Joe Callen at ICT for a couple of years. I was designing sort of mechanical bonus counting devices that would be like a bonus game. At the end of your slot reel game, there would be some bonus games, and they were mechanical. I got six or seven patents for that stuff. While I was working for IGT, Ray called me and asked me if I wanted to come go to work for Stern. And I said, yes, of course. Because to me, pinball is just way more fun than slot machines. I was just thrilled to come back and be able to do another pinball game and I thought the Pirates license was awesome. So again, I thought I was very fortunate to be in that situation. So Pirates of the Caribbean at that point was kind of a red-hot intellectual property, a license. So how do you kind of be absent from the pinball industry for 10 years and then land that versus some other title that they were doing, like a B-grade title. Did you ask for that? Or did they say, Dennis, come work for Stern, and you're also going to get Pirates of the Caribbean? I don't remember that either. So how the Pirates came about, I don't really remember, but I just thought I was extremely fortunate to be able to do that for my first game back in the industry again. You said in previous interviews that working with Disney was quite hard. They were very restrictive on what assets you could have. Do you scratch your head a little bit when you heard that another company, Jersey Jack, were interested in doing A Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine for a second time? Well, I wondered about it, but I knew there had been a lot more movies since the original one, so there was a lot more stuff to a lot more information to pull from to design a game. And, you know, I'm not one to criticize that because I did OIRA three times. So you work with, you know, David Thiel on sound, and I know you're involved with him at Deep Root as well. Pirates of the Caribbean sold, you know, in amazing numbers. Do you think it sold well? And maybe you don't know, and maybe it's just one of those things, but do you think it sold well because of the layout, the theme, or maybe the whole world under glass, that toy ship mechanism? Yeah, the ship's amazing. Yeah, I think the ship was a toy that everybody loved, and I think, like you said, it was a world under glass, it was a popular movie, and it just all came together. Okay. Okay, so then after that, we've got Wheel of Fortune. Now, this is really interesting because, you know, as far as the layout goes, it's actually a really good layout. There's a lot of flow. There's a lot of shots. But, obviously, you've got the really interesting flipper gap. What was the genesis of that? Why did we go with that interesting flipper gap style? Again, it's me trying to do something different just to keep my own interest up. And I like to challenge myself with doing things differently. and they did that a lot in the older days, so I thought, well, why not bring it back? If you play my game, you play in my world. So I really hated it. Right. I remember when I first played it, I didn't get it, right? But I remember it was probably about six months after that, I was in an arcade. It was actually in L.A., and a lot of the machines there, they weren't really playing all that well, but this Wheel of Fortune was. So I kept playing it over and over again until I absolutely got it, worked out that flipper gap, and found it to be a hell of a lot of fun. Oh, good. Thank you. Finally, somebody loved it. But there's a... Well, I know that Bo and Karens also likes it as well. But I think that there is, probably the challenge with it is that there really is a learning curve for that machine. And, you know, when you're first going to play it maybe the first or second time, you're really, it's probably not enough times to be able to adjust your play style to get used to that, because it really is very different. Yeah, right. You're absolutely right about that. So it would take a long time to get used to it and comfortable with it because the bottom was so different. But like I said, I was just getting tired of doing the same bottom over and over and over again, and I wanted to challenge myself and do something different. Well, did that come from... I mean, I heard in an interview previously that you wanted to do a slightly different bottom on Pirates of the Caribbean, and you said that the left out lane would have a jet bumper in there, and a bunch of targets kind of crowded around a jet bumper, and if the ball spells out parlay, then you get your ball back. It's a second lease on life. Well, I've never heard that happen. Yes, does that sound familiar now with another pinball machine? It sounds very familiar. Well, on Wizard of Oz, okay, now... Joe Balsamo. Joe Balsamo, I'm sorry, man. My old brain. You know, what I tell my wife is that every gray hair is like a dead memory. So Joe said, I want to do this thing with the pop bumper in the bottom. And I said, oh, cool. I said, I did that. I tried to do that on pirates. So I showed that to him, and then it got put into Wizard of Oz. Well, that's great, because my question when coming up to Wizard of Oz was going to be, obviously, I think you designed the spinning house. but the question I was going to ask was what sort of input or influence did you have on other parts of the game and you've answered it by there that particular area is your design effectively well like I said I didn't tell Joe I believe as my memory serves me correctly or not I believe Joe said he wanted to do something like that so then I showed him what I did So he came up with it independently, I believe. Yeah, okay. So really, what was the involvement with Wizard of Oz then? Obviously, the house design. What else did you have some input in? Really not much. I think the write-out lane, I think that was mine because there was a lot of space there, so we just put those rollovers in there that were a little harder to get. You had to nudge the game to try to get them all. And then the house design was mine. But, you know, jumping back to Pirates really quickly again, you also said that you had somewhere on the playthrough which got priced out was a bunch of in-line drop targets. Now, I might be wrong, but I don't think that any of your games still to this date have in-line drop targets. Is that something that you've been kind of itching to have a machine with that in there, or is that something that you kind of said, OK, well, it's going to be in Pirates, you know, it was theme-serated there, you know, let's move on? Yeah, I've always thought inline drop targets were cool. Well, they're kind of the labour of the month at the moment, right? Yeah. I actually use them on special force. Okay, so it is there. Okay. I haven't played that game. So then let's move to Woe Nelly Big Juicy Melons because this is a really interesting title at the time because you're effectively recreating an EM, electromechanical environment, with modern components. When did this idea first come about? It came about, I was unemployed and Greg was unemployed and we met again at the Seattle Pinball Show. And we were having breakfast together and Greg was talking and I think there were a number of custom games being built then. And I said, hey, we're pinball designers. Why don't we make a custom game? And we had nothing else going. So I had this old Continental Cafe game in my shop. And I thought, well, let's make a game out of that because we couldn't afford programmers. We couldn't afford hardware. We couldn't afford anything like that. So we thought we would just update an older game. And when we showed the game at one of the shows, that's when we met Kerry Emming, who came up to us and said, hey, I could design a solid-state hardware system for this game. And we said, cool, let's do it. So then it just progressed from there. But we had to stick to the Continental Cafe rules, but I redesigned the play field, but it uses all the same Continental Cafe rules. Wow, I don't know what Continental Cafe is after all. That's an old Gottlieb game from 57. Wow. It had three gobble holes right down the middle of the play field. So I eliminated two of them and moved one up to the right a little bit more. Okay. So how does the journey go then from coming up with that design and then taking that to Stern for production? That was like a long two-year, two- or three-year process for that. We got it built and we had it. And that took a lot of work for me and Greg. We figured out we have playfields printed at CTR, I think. And we just had to learn a lot. And we had a lot of guys from Team EM help us. We had a lot of help from guys in the industry getting these three games running. And then when – so we built one electromechanical, and then we built a free solid state that Terry gave us the hardware for. And then we took it to Stern, and they said they'd like to build it, and then two years later, they finally did it. Did you have to pitch hard to Stern, or were they pretty receptive to it early on? They were pretty receptive to it. Gary liked it because it was old school. The thing at that time that Greg and I didn't understand was the current political climate of humor and boobs. well yeah it did get a bit of backlash didn't it when it came to the fan yeah and we i was stunned i didn't you know i didn't know my wife thought it was funny my daughter thought it was funny greg's daughter thought it was funny but man we didn't have our finger on the pulse of what's going on at that point yeah i mean that i mean do you think that affected the sales of the pinball machine at all or or people putting it out on location like i think it affected it yeah okay so did you have any involvement with the re-theming of that to to cam crusher or is that stern just saying we've got kind of like you know too many parts or you know we didn't sell as many won't as we'd like to so um you know we're going to re-theme it and use all the parts that way um that might have been part of the reason um greg would know more about that me i wasn't i wasn't involved with that at all but i mean it's your design so do you you don't get any paychecks or anything for that? Any royalties? Yeah, we got royalties for that. Yeah, okay. So overall, are you happy with the Wong Neely Pebs Can't Crush Our project? I probably would have been happier if the theme had been a bit different. You know, we based it on old fruit crate labels. I love the artwork. I don't know if you have those in Australia, but in America, the old fruit crate labels from the 30s and 40s were just beautiful artwork. And a lot of them were very risque and had a lot of boob humor on them for some reason. Because he knows boob sell, right? Yeah. So we tried, I wanted the artwork to be like an old fruit crate label. And then I wanted to pay, Greg and I both had the same feeling about this. He liked old fruit crate labels too. We also both enjoyed Roy Parker's art. And Roy Parker always had a lot of happy, smiling people in the backlash. So that's why all those guys are in there smiling and having a good time looking at Melanie. Big juicy melons. So, I mean, there's a lot of other pinball. Like, we've almost gone through your whole history and we're up to the last couple of years, but there's still so many other pinball machines that you've kind of been involved in. So can we touch on what your involvement was with Alien Pinball? Because you were kind of briefly involved with Highway and then Utopartisans. You know, it's not on your IPDB profile, but my understanding is that most of that original layout was yours. Is that correct? Yeah, the original layout was all mine. They moved the upper flipper around a little bit and changed it a little, but not a lot. It was mostly my layout. Okay, so that's what I was going to say. If you look at it now, do you see that it is pretty much still your design? Yeah, it's pretty much my design. They changed, you know, a number of things, but the lower left flipper, I mean, you know, the two flippers at the bottom, and then, again, I had another device on the left outline. I forget whether that made it into the production game or not. So knowing what you know now about Highway Pinball, and I kind of, I don't know, I was probably reading between the lines at the time, but you did sort of drop the project pretty early. And from what I remember, it's because Andrew Highway had way too ambitious timelines to get these machines to market. Was that, sort of like, looking back now, was that like really early warning signs for you? Oh, absolutely. You know, I worked on that thing for probably about a year, and I never had a plane in Whitewood, and things were just going way slower than I could see. and when he announced at Expo that he was going to have games the following May and he was accepting, the part that got me was that he was accepting deposits on the game promising people delivery in May and I knew that was absolutely impossible and I didn't want people giving deposits thinking that it was one of my game designs and they were going to get it in May. I just couldn't live with that. So I left. Yeah, and we all know what kind of transpired after that. So, yeah. Yeah, and then after that, we know what happened. So, were you working with kind of... Because I said there's a whole bunch of kind of things on your IPDB profile around this time. I mean, were you working simultaneously anywhere else, like at Multimorphic on Lexi Lightspeed, or was that after? Multimorphic came after Alien. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But before then, I think, did you have much to do with the spooky machines like America's Most Haunted and Rob Zombie? No, I really had no design input on those. Okay. Your credit is for some reason as a designer on Rob Zombie. I'm not sure what... On Rob Zombie. I can't remember what I might have done on that. Yeah, you probably spoke about it once at a conference and people were like, right, we'll put him down on the... There you go. that's what happens so ok fast forward to now you get a call from Robert Mueller I'm guessing he'd be writing you an email and says hey Dennis I'm forming a super team of employees and we're going to make pinball and you accept that job and now you're working for Deeproot how did that come about well I took at first I had a contract with Stern to do Elvira 3. When my contract ran out, they were nowhere near getting the game finished. So was your work finished on that project? What do you mean by the contract? So they said, we're going to employ you for a certain amount of time. Yeah, I had a contract for a certain amount of time, and when that was over, I wasn't getting paid anymore. And I had expected the game to be finished by the end of my contract, but it wasn't. It wasn't even close to being finished. But since it was my baby and I loved the play field and it's got three pretty unique toys on it, I kept going to meetings and stuff, but I wasn't getting paid anymore. And then I had the offer come through from Deep Root, and he offered to pay me to design pinball games again. And so I took it at that point. I didn't have a job. I didn't have any income. And I thought, well, I want to do this. I don't know if he's ever going to make it. I don't know how serious he is. It sounds like not a bit of a sticky situation to be in because you said Alvira, the pinball machines are your baby, but you still need to eat, you still need to pay your bills. So is the Alvira pinball machine, it's not scrapped or anything, is it? Because it was kind of officially announced. No, no, no, it's not scrapped. It's going to happen. I have no idea when. I'm really actually not involved with it at all anymore. So you just hand over your design and they just go into production with it? Well, they may make some modifications to the play field, but, yeah, it was my play field design. When I left, they still had some work to do on some of the mechanical devices. So as far as I know, they're still going to make it. Is it an LCD pinball machine, or is it a throwback to a previous era? No, it's a full-fledged modern pinball game. Okay. And it probably goes back to one of the questions that we were saying before about humor. And we've discussed this in the past about, you know, an Elvira machine in today's, you know, sensitive climate. Do you think it will still have all that same sort of risque humour? I don't really know now since I'm not involved, but I can imagine it will. But if it does, it will be a separate setting. Okay. I think me and Marnie have talked about it. Elvira can get away with anything because she's the powerful, independent woman. And, you know, so... You said you put big juicy melons, you make an original theme, then, you know, people kind of crucify it like Lucy, you know, Lucy Arndt, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've talked about it in detail before, but Elvira seems to rise above that because she is in control of all of that, right? Yeah, and she's a real character. It's not something we made up. So I guess that has something to do with it. Yeah, but I also think the parent, But yeah, and she has been around forever, right? But also, she is a parody. Like, it really isn't about her trying to be sexualized. It's her actually making fun of people that find those characters sexualized. So I still think that that kind of humor, which is a bit tongue-in-cheek, is still quite relevant. Yeah, well, I hope so. I mean, yeah, she pokes fun at herself. So that's probably why that works a lot better. well we look forward to seeing that come out whenever, as I said it was announced at TPF a while ago I'm not sure if it was meant to be announced on purpose or if it just kind of accidentally leaked out but I guess it would be a kind of, not a mixed feeling but a bit weird for you because this happened at Bally Williams right, I mean you were designing Scared Stiff and you know, you weren't working there anymore when the game was released so you kind of didn't get to be a part of that final process of the machine rolling out onto the line. Is that accurate? It turns out that Elvira has been a curse for me. And they've been successful, so maybe me not being around when it's finished has something to do with their success. On Elvira and the Party Monsters, there's that story, you know, I crashed my dirt bike really bad and spent three months in the hospital. And then on Scarrett's death, I got laid off. And now on this one, I'm not part of the finished project either. Just never, ever, ever make an Alvira for Dennis again. Yeah. I never will. Okay, so can I then talk about licenses versus, let's say a non-license. And I'll give you a bit of an example, and then you can sort of, you know, take it or not. But let's say, you know, the original trilogy of Party Animal, Dr. Dude and Party Zone. Could you make a fourth in that sort of world? Or really, is it just about licenses these days? Oh, it's not just about licenses these days. I would not make another Dr. Dude, Party Animal, Party Zone. I'm done with party games. Is it the grey hair, Dennis? Yeah, that must be it. I love to do original themes, and the theme I'm doing for Deep Root is an original theme that I created that I just love. So I'm hoping this all works out and this comes out because it's going to be cool. So what's it like working at Deep Root? Like we hear just all this passion and enthusiasm and this belief that it's just going to be an absolute success. You're happy to be there, obviously. I'm happy to be there. I've actually only visited the place three times, and I've only been down there for like three days at a time. But the people they have there, I am so impressed with. They've got young, talented, aggressive, hungry guys working for them. The art department is incredible. The mechanical engineers are incredible. The electrical engineers are incredible. They're all excited and enthused to be a part of this. Is it going to happen as fast as Robert wants it to happen? I can't answer that, but it's going to happen. Well, he's not taking anyone's money, so I guess that's the difference with what you experienced. That's the wonderful thing about it. He's not trying to build his company on people's money, so really you can't give him any criticism. Just wait until he delivers. I guess the criticism was that no one knows what's going on, and we're not going to ask you deep probing questions about Deep Root and their methods and things like that because, you know, the company's going through its process and they're going to have their big reveal. But I guess the criticism is that, yeah, we don't know. And, you know, one of the first statements that came out, you know, was kind of about, you know, Robert being a bit bemused about the pinball hobby. And I kind of agree in a way because it's very easy after maybe one year of being into pinball and buying a couple of pinball machines that everything that happens becomes the norm. And you talk to pinball people all the time and, you know, Whereas when I first got into pinball machines, like, oh, someone bought a new pinball machine that has an issue, and you're just like, oh, yeah, that's a pinball kind of thing. And I'm like, what? Like, there should be a warranty on this and this and that. So do you feel like Robert has that kind of passion that he wants to take pinball in a new direction? Or do you feel like he just wants to be a company and share a piece of the current pie that's going on? Robert's a very smart man. He's made a lot of money. if he didn't have passion for pinball. Getting into pinball is not a smart move because it's not a business where you're going to make a hell of a lot of money. Robert is extremely passionate about pinball, and I actually like Robert a lot. He can be a bit outspoken at times, but he's young and he's brash, and he wants to do something new and different, and everybody there is working towards that goal. I'm really excited to be there, and I'm excited that Robert is letting me do this original theme that I want to do. Has this original theme been kind of in the back of your mind for a while and you haven't been able to do it with any other company that you've been involved with or is this something that you dreamed up once you started working at Deep Root? No, it's been in the back of my mind for a while. But since it was an unlicensed theme, it was never getting done. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. And who's working on your, I mean, so we know some of the big pinball names that work there. Are you working with any of them? Like, do you get help from any of the other designers? Because, you know, there's Barry there, there's Jon Norris, there's, you know, John Papadiuk. You know, there's David Thiel doing the sounds. And now, you know, there's Steven Bowden that's going to help write the, you know, design the rule sets. Are you working with any of those guys or is it more of a solo effort at the moment? Well, when I have questions about something or a drawing that I don't have, Barry's always there to help me and get me that drawing, or John Papadiuk will help me, too, if I don't have a drawing, because I'm doing all my work here at my house. And now John spends most of his time there, and Barry, of course, moved there. And I'm real excited to be working with David Thiel again. and I think he's a great talent. You know, we worked on Pirates together. Yeah, I'm just really, honestly, I'm very, this isn't just bullshit. I'm blown. I'm very impressed with everybody there. It's a more exciting environment than any pinball company I've been at. And I think that's because they're new and passionate, and they're aggressive, and they really want to do something great. and I love working with these younger guys who have a lot of ideas with technologies that I don't know a lot about. Do you think that's an important balance in a pinball company these days where if it was all kind of the same people that have been around since the 80s, pinball wouldn't be kind of progressing forward whereas if it's all new people, then the company might fail because they don't know all the pitfalls about you can't put shots here and you can't do this and this mechanical thing will break. Do you think it's an important mix to have both? Yes, it's an important mix to have both. I think so. And they're going to have failures and deep roots. They're going to have things that don't work, but they've got the passion and the energy to work through it and figure it out and move on. Yeah, okay. Awesome. I've got more questions. I was just letting you ask the questions. No, you keep going, right? Okay. I'm the kind of guy that doesn't have a lot to say. I normally express myself by the things I make instead of the words I spew. I want to talk about your pinball designs just in general, because as we've talked about just now, you design a pinball machine to try and be that world on the glass to represent the theme that you're integrating. And you've also said that you're not much of a rules guy. so how do you how do you collaborate with you know because when you say you're not a rules guy and I don't do much about rules you know usually that's kind of like a red light and you're like oh my gosh this game might not be that good but somehow it always kind of seems to work out in your game so you know how important do you think the success of your game is long term do you think that's in the hands of the coder or do you think that that starts with you well I think it starts with me I'm like all game designers, we're generally like the director of the entire project. I'm not saying I'm bad at rules. I just enjoy doing basic rules. You know, you do this, this, and this, and this happens, and then the programmers get in there and add all the depth to it. They're all important to the final product. Okay, so you're not designing games without a rule set. You still got the basic rules down pat, so you know, like... Oh, yeah, I always have a basic rule set of what you have to do to get further in the game. So are you working with Steven Bowden yet? Because I know that was a pretty recent hiring. Are you working with him on rules, or do you already have kind of the rule set laid out for your game? I'm not working with Steve yet. I don't think he moved down there. I was there last week, and he wasn't there yet. But I'm looking forward to working with Steve. but in addition Deep Root has a story writer and he came from the comic book industry and he is awesome his name is Quinn and he is helping me flesh out the storyline for this original theme that I'm doing and he's doing that for all the games that they're working on he's really great, he's got a zillion great ideas and with that fleshing out of the theme comes rule ideas also. So I don't even have a programmer yet, but we're getting far with the rules and the storyline. Obviously, there's a plan to launch Deep Root at Texas Pinball Festival next year. And as you just mentioned, you don't know, Robert's pretty aggressive with timelines. Is your pinball machine in the mix to be a part of that initial reveal? Or do you think yours would be a machine that would be available a bit later on? I think at the moment it's in the mix, but I think they're further along with John's games, of course, so I fully expect them to be at Texas. I'm not sure about mine. Okay. Do you feel like, as I said before, in 1995, there was nine games that got released at Williams. It's just kind of insane, and it's kind of heavy competition. Obviously, it's great to work with Deep Root at the moment, but do you feel like it might become survival of the fittest? I'm sorry, this is a horrible question, but do you feel like you have to prove yourself versus these other designers, or is it more of a collaborative effort together to just make as many cool pinball machines as you can? At the moment, it feels very collaborative because we're not at each other's throats trying to get the most sales and trying to keep secrets for our own game. So at this point, it's very collaborative and very friendly. Could it get that way? I suppose, but I don't know if it will. You know, I'm just happy to be designing a game and getting a salary. So if the game's good, it'll be good. That's awesome. And there's another quote from you. Okay, I did some research. I listened to some of your previous podcasts. Well, hey, we've interviewed some designers, but they're mostly new designers, and you said you're responsible for, you know, nostalgic memories from my childhood, so it's important to me. So you said sometimes when you experiment too much, you can fail. But you also have said in other interviews that some games can be too intimidating, so you have to kind of make, like you made the conscientious decision to make Pirates easier on purpose. You've been around since the 80s designing pinball machines. So where are you at? Where's your mindset at in 2018? You said you've designed so many different games. Alien, Woman, Alien they're so different, right? So are you making a pinball machine for the masses? How do you approach a game at the moment in 2018? Wow, that's a good question. You know what? I approach a game as to what makes me happy and like a lot of songwriters and stuff you don't do it for other people you do it for yourself and if you have the passion and the excitement and enthusiasm that will come through in the game, and there will be a lot of people that like that style of game. If I didn't enjoy working on a game, then it wouldn't be fun for anybody. Well, okay, what mindset are you in at the moment? Do you enjoy a game that is more like, you know, Demolition Man and Whitewater, where you've got this, you know, kind of fast-flowing action, or do you like more of a Pirates of the Caribbean stop-and-start game? I like both. The current game I'm working on, I believe it has a lot of flow, but it has some places for the ball to stop, too. My main complaint about modern games is the play field and the play field art. If you look at the games from the 50s and 60s, you could look at every shot, and you knew exactly what you got, and you knew exactly what you had to shoot for. A lot of modern games, it's just not well labeled. The instructions just aren't clear to the player. Now, I understand there's a lot more rules and a lot more going on, but I'm trying to get some kind of a balance between the playfield directing the player and showing the player what shots are important without a lot of other junk on the playfield to distract from it. That's a hard thing to do, and I've never been totally successful at it, but I keep trying. Well, you can also direct them with call-outs. So if they don't know how to shoot forwards, just tell them to shoot the blinking light, you wanker. Yeah, there you go. Or like whitewater. Get the extra ball, you wiener. You wiener. All right, Dennis. Unless there's any other cool stories you can tell us from your extensive pinball history, we just want to thank you for coming on the show. We know you're a busy man. We've been trying to get you on for a couple of weeks. We really genuinely look forward to see what you're going to come up with at Deep Root. And, yeah, I hope to have... Oh, I'm looking forward to. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. And I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing what you do and designing awesome games that, as I said, I played when I was a kid, and I'm still playing now. So, thank you, James. Well, thank you so much, and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks, mate. Okay, bye. Bye. Bye. So there we go, right? That was Dennis Nordman. What did we learn? What I learned is that people in pinball, besides Dennis Nordman, have an insane memory. Like, when Dennis Nordman said, I don't remember, that's normal. But in pinball conversations, it's not normal because you ask someone a question about what they said to someone 30 years ago, and they're like, oh, yeah, I said this, and the Greg Neil Fraser, and I'm like, what? Why do you remember that? So it was refreshing for me for someone to have a normal memory. Thank you, Dennis Nordman. Yes, that is one of the human concerns. So, look, I tell you, one of the things that I, I don't know, I guess the whole Elvira thing for me was kind of off the radar. You know what I mean Like it was sort of announced and then we haven really sort of talked about it for a while Sort of talking to him now sort of really sort of understanding what he goes through in his thinking process when it comes to designing pinball, and then the fact that, you know, there's a third Elvira machine coming out. I'm kind of excited about it now. Well, yeah, because everyone... I mean, there's a rumour that Lime and Sheets would be working on it, and the reason why it kind of got shelved was, you know, he's taking pretty long on Batman. So, I just got the memo right now, Marty. Can you imagine Alvarez for Lyman? Like, that is a huge game. Like, Alvarez on his own, in the pinball world, and then to add Lyman F. Sheats Jr. to the mix, people would just be throwing money at it. So, I hope for his sake it comes out however he made it. I mean, we could have probed deeper, but out of respect for kind of, you know, Stern not really wanting to promote it now since it's not on the line and not in the mix at the moment, we let him say what he wanted to say. Well, and I guess that was probably also the cool thing about that interview as well, is that it was just kind of nice for somebody to just, you know, shoot the shit and just say what was on his mind, albeit, you know, there was gaps. But, you know, it was kind of cool for him to go, yeah, you know, this is what I think. I kind of like that. Yeah. As I said, he's responsible for one of the first Tim War Machines ever played. I guess the other three people that made Tim War Machines that I first played was Mark Ritchie, Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler. I don't know if we can ever get those guys on the show. Not that we've asked any of them. That's one. One checked off the list, Marty. Yeah, you do sort of like, you know, carry a big one for him though. Why not? Why not? Yeah, hey. Demolition Man. It's a fucking good... Okay. Let's talk about... Yes, it is! Let's talk... Everyone, by the way, Marty's a little bit intoxicated, so... That is not... That is not completely true. Okay. Deadpool, Marty. Yes. It's coming. They've changed the pinball machine this week with just an array of information. I can't keep up with this one. Yeah. I had to watch it about five times to really sink in all that information about Deadpool. Again, you know, one of the worst kept secrets. We knew Deadpool was coming. Some of the art had been released as well. So here it is. And I'll tell you the funny thing about that little teaser video. When I first heard it, I went, oh, my God, that is Jeff Teolas. They've managed to get Jeff Teolas to do the voiceover. And I think that's a testament to Jeff Teolas. So if you're listening, Stern, you need to get Jeff Teolas to start doing some of your call-outs. He is great when it comes to that stuff. But it wasn't actually him. Yeah, it was someone that we've interviewed before on episode 46, I believe it was. It was Jerry Thompson. Jerry Thompson. Yeah, he did the audio for Ghostbusters call-outs for Mustang. That little teaser, I mean, the more you watch it, the more you get different responses. The first time you watch it, you're like, oh, is that it? and the second time you watch it, you're like, ah, that looks so cheap. And then you're like, wait a second, it's a bash toy, so what do you want a bash toy... I mean, I don't think you're bashing it, you're bashing the drop targets underneath from that big feature. It's so funny. Yeah, I mean, if you had, like, a Wolverine, like, you know, cut off at the torso, like, moving left and right, that wouldn't be as cool. So I still think it still looks cheap with the springs. I know. It's really funny because everyone has sort of said, you know, first of all we had the TIE fighter on a spring and this one they're like well you want springs we're giving you fucking springs here they are and I mean there's rumours that Suna's just taken the piss and that's just like some little bobble heads that's available off the shelf and they put it in there and the real one would be a lot better guess what I searched for a good 20 minutes online massive waste of time when I was looking after my kids she was just like she was doing something when I, you know, it was one of those parenting moments where you just, you know, go on your phone. I could have just surfed inside, all right? I was looking for this Deadpool bobblehead. It doesn't exist, Marty, okay? Unless I'm really bad at Google, which I am, it doesn't exist. So that is either a custom-moulded bash toy they got rid of, or that is it. Which is fine. I mean, I hate talking about things when it's teased because it's just like, it's just a game, and I don't like to be a part of the game. you know, except for all the stuff we did before about rumors and stuff like that. Except everything that's kept this podcast successful for the last four months is just all this rumor speculation. You know, I'm not bothered by it, if I'm really honest. I mean, if you think about those, the leaked images, they did have a bobblehead on it. at least it looks better than the bog standard bobbleheads that you're going to get. Yeah, and we can see, anything we can really see in the background is, well, in those leaked pictures we have that giant sword cascading down the right side, the katana. We can see one of them. As you can see, you can see the handle of that in black and red, it's kind of laced, katana, whatever. I couldn't even see that. I couldn't even see that. The background was so blurred, I couldn't see anything. Stern Marketing, always different. You know, just letting them know if they're listening, my three-year-old loved it. My three-year-old laughed. I literally had to watch it. Or possibly... You know when people say a hundred times and they're exaggerating? I'm pretty sure I've watched it close to a hundred times. Because she just... I don't think she's ever seen a bobblehead before, so she just thought it was hilarious. So now that they have officially said that it's coming out, how long do you reckon it'll take until we actually start seeing sort of pictures and details of it? Well, the dead flipstream is in 11 days, so I'm guessing this week. This week they'll show, who knows if they'll do the same thing they did with Iron Maiden. I believe it was a licensing restriction that didn't allow them to show all of the art at once. Apparently it worked out okay for them, so let's see if they try and follow that model and only show the models that are going to be on the line, the pro, then the alley, then the premium, or if they'll just show everything at once. And, yeah, I guess we'll be talking about it and giving our... We always give, like, reviews on games, like, reviews on the reveals before playing, which means absolutely nothing. We're aware, OK? We're self-aware. We know that when we review stuff... We know we are literally click-halls. We are. That's why we're doing this. Look, I'm really, really keen to see this for a number of reasons. this is the difficult follow-up to Iron Maiden. It really is. And I kind of said it before, but, you know, everything's now going to be compared to Iron Maiden. And, you know, it was kind of the talk of Pimberg, whenever anybody would talk about Iron Maiden, and I think Nate Shivers said it on his last Coast to Coast Pinball podcast as well, is, you know, is it too soon to say that this is the best Stern machine they've ever made, Iron Maiden? Yes. Is it possibly the best game ever made? No. Of course, it is too early. It's way too early, but time will tell. It's an absolute classic. So this next machine, Deadpool, is the difficult follow-up to Iron Maiden, and this is just me. remember me who doesn't like Goonies and doesn't think Goonies should make a good theme. I'm not really fussed about Deadpool as a theme either, so I'm kind of keen to see whether they've made an amazing playing machine with an okay theme. Yeah. I do it all the time, I hear it, but judging a film machine on a theme or on a teaser trailer is stupid. But I'm almost the opposite. I didn't really care. Like, Deadpool, yeah, it's a filler title. you know, it's hard to follow up, I made them, blah, blah, blah. But then, this is how stupid the teaser was. After watching the teaser clip almost a hundred times, I'm like, I hope they just go all out and just make, like, the dumbest, most self-aware pinball machine ever. I mean, like, it has to talk to you about how crap you're playing and, oh my gosh, you should be doing this. I mean, a lot of pinball machines do that, but it just has to be the best at doing it. It has to be insane humor. It has to be good music. And it's going to be. There's a Jerry Thompson there. You've got zombie-y art. It's got... There's no reason why, you know, oh, yes, it's a difficult follow-up because Iron Maiden is good. You know, Iron Maiden, I don't think, was meant to be, you know, like, selling as much of it as it was. So I don't think this is just meant to be a suicidal. Well, and, you know, we talked, obviously, with Dennis Nordman about humor in pinball. and if ever there was a license for Stern, where they can go to town with humour, it's Deadpool. And not only just humour, one thing that's, you know, the Deadpool movie's eyes, you know, where he breaks the fourth wall, where he actually talks to you as the viewer directly. So that's a really good opportunity for them to do that in this pinball as well. Yeah. As I said, that happens in pinball machines anyway, you know, even in Iron Maiden. but this is, yeah, the perfect opportunity to do it. And because it is not based off the movies, you won't have all of those crazy licensing restrictions which has kind of, I wouldn't say plagued pinball recently, but it has a bit though. Yeah, it's been a talking point, right? Bobbly Bobo, this, this and that. What do you mean? Which, let's not forget, was actually your ringtone for some time. What are you talking about? It's still my ringtone. I'm not going to ring you to find out because that'll cost me a fortune. I am still in America, I suppose. Hi, by the way. How's the Carl Weathers over there in California? Oh, look, honestly, San Francisco has just been amazing Carl Weathers. Just amazing. I could move here. I could literally move here. Marty, you've said that about every city you've been to. Chicago. Chicago is the best, Ryan. Oh, my gosh. Toronto, Ryan. Toronto's amazing I'm pretty sure I never said that about Toronto oh okay Jeff Teolos hashtag Jeff Teolos let's move along Marnie because I'm the okay I've edited the last two episodes in a row this is my third and this is my third and last so this doesn't require the most editing the Dennis Lom interview us talking shit for how long and all the other crap I have to edit in I'm going to edit in the Deadpool after every time we say Deadpool okay Deadpool or I'll have that that tune playing in the background. Doop-doop-doop-a-doo. It'll be like Pinheads, just full production quality. And then we just won't release it. No. Next news article we want to talk about is Gaza. Gaza at Pinstep. The big G-bomb. The G-fest. They should just rename it Gaza-fest. Gaza-fest. Gary Stern, who, I mean, he rocks up to a lot of shows in the US, but he doesn't often come to Australia. Pinfest is a big pinball gathering It's being held somewhere else for the first time Because it's a very small venue And it's in Newcastle I have no idea what the dates are I will link it in the show notes But Gaz is coming along and he's doing a talk Apparently he's flying in, doing the talk and flying out That's pretty cool Yeah, but you know He has done that before I know he has come to Australia a couple of times So it would be good to see him Yep, or he can just come on the podcast and reach far more people and not have to go through customs and all that kind of stuff. The invitation is open, Gary. Come on our podcast. If we ever get him on the podcast, Marty, I am making him say that whatever is on the line is his favourite game. I'm going to get him during a transitional period where he won't know what to say. There will be two or three things on the line and he won't know what to say. and I will ask him what does the ball do and he'll say the ball is wild. They're the two things. If you ever get on the show, I'm getting you to say both those things. Yeah. It'll be Gary Bingo. Or Hannah. Or a drink. A drinking contest where whenever I get to say something big, everyone has to drink game, we'll just get everyone blind. Oh, shit. I'm leaving that in. I'm not eating that out. Okay. Pinball Hall of Fame. Have this for Clickbait, Marty. Pinball Hall of Fame is closing down, Marty. Clickbait. React to it. That was the worst Clickbait ever. It wasn't. I fucking clicked on it. Of course I fucking clicked on it as well. And I felt dirty for clicking on it because the first thing you read is and we're reopening at another location, you dirty bastard. So, Pinball Hall of Fame. Am I else thinking about this? Is there... Would there be another location in the world that more pinball is played at annually than the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas? Well, I think there would be with more working machines. Yes. No, no, I just mean just people playing games. Which single venue has the most games played on it annually? It'd have to be Pinball Hall of Fame. It would have to be Pinball Hall of Fame, no doubt. I went there at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday. I can't remember when. It was like there shouldn't have been anyone there. Yeah. I went there three times, and it was packed each time. So they want a bigger venue. I'm not sure why they need bigger, because there's enough machines there. But they want to be close. A better location. Yeah. It's going to be on the Strip now. So, I mean, the Strip is huge. You know that, Marnie. I know that after being there. I mean, you could take 45 minutes walking from one end to the other. Or maybe longer. I would just pull that cigarette out of my ass. It's actually about an hour. About, okay. But the good thing is that it's right next to Harley-Davidson, and it's right next to the Pimble, the Las Vegas sign. Have a look on Google Maps. It's a huge plot of land. There's nothing on there. And he told the whole story. I love how much detail he went into about how he was bidding on the auction and thought he was going to get outbid, but he bought it for $4.6 million, which is quite a lot, but it's a massive plot of land. but the old venue's being valued at 2.7 so they get a bridging loan and have all this money in the bank. And they're going to stop being a... Well, how do I say this? They're going to stop donations for some time to be able to fund the new location and the new build. They're going to stop giving donations. Yes. Which are fine. I mean, you've got to make money to... Yeah, it's there, Marty Snakeman. Yes. So, he's going to be appearing at Chicago Pinball Expo, and he's going to be talking... Have we done the Patreon yet, Marty, so I can get a free flight over there? No. No? Okay. You know, write in to us and just give us your credit card details, and that'll pay for it. I'm emailing Rob Burke, and I'll do a talk about, you know, my three painful weeks of editing, and that'll be a good show. No one's thought whinging about this editing. I do it every week. Yes, but you suck. Okay. That's all. I don't really have anything to say. I mean, I'll leave the thread. I think it's just very interesting that this is, as I said, it's the most popular pinball place in the world, I believe. Fine, just throwing that out of my house. But maybe even more. How will he use the space and will he make sure that pinball is shed in a good light to make all the machines working more? Hopefully. Fingers crossed. Yeah. If there's a lot of money in the bank, Marty, that's a lot of money in the bank. $3.6 million in the bank. Maybe pinball is just impossible to get, like, every single machine working, because pinball and shipwrecks. Yeah, look, you know, there's been many discussions about Pinball Hall of Fame, and, you know, it's a challenge, because it is, I guess, a not-for-profit, and everything goes to charity, and so, therefore, it's sort of done on a very sort of shoestring budget. So that's probably why. Alice Cooper, Marty, did you watch the amazing stream that was held by Desi? Oh my God, I absolutely did not see any of it. Because you were too busy living your life? Because I've got like a life here and also I've run out of data. So unless I'm walking past Macy's and getting their free Wi-Fi, I've got no chance of seeing many things. So when you get free Wi-Fi money, just sit there and post Assassin's Creed selfies. Is that what you do, Mark? What, um... OK, this is off-topic and I'm sure no-one cares, but what data plan did you get when you went over? Did you buy a SIM for there or did you get roaming? No, I actually... Because I'm on a premium plan, I actually get a certain amount of data allocated and it's all gone. As part of your plan, you get international data? Yep, 5 gig. Wow. You must be on a very good plan, because if you try and buy 5 gig in terms of roaming in Australia, that's like over $100 or something. Yeah, but remember, I'm on a premium plan because I use that for streaming. Yeah, okay. Okay, so I tune into the stream. I was working, so I was just kind of on the background. It starts super late. Like, I checked three times. It wasn't available, and then Stacy messaged me and said, the stream's on. They go, plunge a ball. Okay, check it out. We've got this new skill shot thingamajiggy. black screen of death you know it's the the machine or the stream the machine the machine just like just conked out like there was some bug in the code like ah yeah you know we just added this code like an issue five minutes ago we'll try again black screen of death okay let's swap out the SD card or whatever it is and let's try again and then I said that was working so I wasn't really paying attention I'm like okay now I'll give it five minutes I watched Bowen Kieran's brick shots for about three minutes I found those three minutes it could have been like 20 seconds but I'm like I know Bo and Kieran's just tired but why why can't you find the shots okay and then I look away and I do some more work and then I look back and then the flipper dies I'm like alright I'll go through some work and I look back they fix the flipper the flipper dies again and it's the three times the flipper died and I was like holy shit and it was it was literally just a flipper screw it was nothing and it's just pinball I understand it but it was just like it was a shit showing of the pinball machine and it deserved more after you know and we've been talking about Alice Cooper like hey this is going to be the big reveal the second coming you know So luckily they, and I didn't watch any more, and apparently after that it was completely fine, but they didn't save the video. I couldn't go back and watch it. I tuned out after that. Carl D'Python Anghelo was streaming it at Ace Gogi. Is that what it's called? Ace Gogi, yes. Ace Gogi. Hey, did you go there, Marty? You're around there somewhere. No, I was nowhere near Los Angeles. That's actually nowhere near San Francisco. Okay. Which one's the one that's really close? California. Okay. Carl Vienzo, what a boss. The stream looked amazing. The machine was fine. And I'm pretty sure they left it up there. So I'll link just one stream, I guess, because the other one isn't up. It still looks quite hard to get going, Marty. They were playing in a... It was a launch party competition. And it was... You know how, like, on some games that are set up in tournament play with, like, you know, tight tills and stuff like that? Like, you just... Like, whoever starts multiball, like, it's going to be in the last ball, they win. For Alice Cooper, it was whoever started a mode. So, as we've discussed before, starting a mode is left orbit, left orbit, right orbit, right orbit, or any combination of those four shots, and you're in a mode. How do you know that? Because I played it when... No, I know, but it's one of those things where it doesn't really spell it out that easily to you. Well, we've discussed that there's a little math there. No, I know, I know. But I also think, and I don't know whether you're getting to this point, but I also think that that's probably a lot to start a mode. That was my complaint, my only takeaway from initially playing it, and it still looks the same, but as I said, I haven't really watched a lot of the stream. I saw something about some secret passage. It would be cool if you can somehow create a shortcut or something to get there. I don't know. As I said, I'm not complaining about it because there's 500 games. Probably 90% of them are going to go to collectors. Hardly any of them will be on site. But, I mean, Bowen Kerins was on our show saying that Simpsons is hard because, you know, to start a mode, you have to get the ball up into the house, through the garage, and then hit a shot. But when you think about it, that's one shot to open the garage, two to get it up there, and then one shot to the TV. Of course, if you miss that, you have to do it all again. But this is harder than that. This is four pretty hard shots. And, I don't know. you can't this is the thing that you can't really make it like easier we talked about it with Houdini and stuff and ended up doing it you know make the first magician act easy how do you make the first monster easy because that means you have to like all the monsters are different with different scoring I think you can't you can't just have like who bought the dog every single time people get sick of that yeah look I'm I I don't know I maybe have some blind faith here that Bowen will work on this you know he actually had Pinberg in the middle of all of this as well. And the reason I make that as a point is that, I don't know if I mentioned this before, I didn't have a game of doubles with Crystal Kivnik. Hi, Crystal. Love you. And there was actually a sign on Alice Cooper at Pemburg that said play a single player game only. And we sort of looked at each other and went, we're going to, you know, for caution to the wind, we're going to be rebels and we're going to do a two player game, right? Yeah. And as we did, Bowen came up to me and said, oh look, now by the way, we've the second player, some of the monsters, the animation's not showing. That's why we sort of recommend playing one player. But hopefully if I get time later tonight, I'm going to fix that. Okay. And what you've got to understand is that this is in the middle of freaking Pinberg. But when Kieran says, look, hopefully I'll get to it later tonight, it's like, dude, there's only so many hours in the day and you've also got to get some sleep. So, you know, You can't be coding and being one of the tournament directors of Pimberg at the same time. So my point is I'm sort of giving him a bit of a lead path saying he'll get to it, that kind of stuff. Now that, you know, it's out there and people will start giving feedback, you know, he'd be the kind of person that would take that on board and make changes. That's my take on it. I mean, the thing is he can change the software only, so it's still going to be a tighter shooter than normal. and the argument out there is, you know, that we're all spoiled with how easy certain games are to shoot. You know, Steve Ritchie games and even like a Pat Lawler game or something. So it's not abnormal. It's just that everyone is used to a certain thing. My, I mean, and then I thought about that and I thought, well, how far back do you have to go to get like tight pinball machines? Like the whole 90s, like they're not really, like what's the hardest 90s game? There is none, right? You're popping your head. off the top of my head I can't think really I'm just thinking they're belly William games because I haven't played all the other ones yeah no no of course no nothing they're all relatively wide open I guess and I mean none of them were designed for the home market but I mean even I don't know it's uncharted territory so I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing it's just it's very different and I don't know I mean there are brutal games but like Iron Maiden is you can shoot that easily You can hit the orbits, like the widest orbits in the world, but it's still hard. It's just hard in a drain-y way, where this is hard in a missy shotgun way. Friggy shots, yeah. Yeah. But look, as I said, after, I think it was probably the third or fourth game on Alice Cooper, I started finding the shots. They're just not in the areas where you used to. I'm just so slow at that. I'm the slowest person ever with finding my shots. It'll take me 50 games to find my shots. so I have to have the game in my house. Well, and there you go, right? It's pitched at the home market so people will find a way. Apparently Deathlip is going back so I guess we'll see the third unveiling of the prize. Well, and it's kind of what we were saying about Houdini. Houdini is very similar in that it's got these really tight shots, not only tight shots but also shots that are in locations that you're not used to it took me you know six, seven games to really start finding those shots consistently and that makes for a good home game I reckon Does it take you that long to find the shots in Iron Maiden even though that's a completely different layout as well? Well to a degree I still can't find that right ramp as much as I try and the left ramp through the pops that's always tricky as well You've played you haven't played these three weeks without playing Iron Maiden the ramps aren't hard the hardest shot for me is that left spinner and it's risky as well it's a dumb shot because yes you can activate your revive, yes you can get double points on the spinner during whatever that mode is I just drain everything to time, it's either way too early or way too late let's move on to Godzilla mining, did you see what Charlie hear or see what Charlie Emery had to say about the Godzilla license? Yes I did And, I mean, you can summarize, but effectively what he was saying was that, you know, they desperately wanted that particular Godzilla license. What is it, Toho or whatever it is? Yeah. Because that particular one is his wheelhouse. That's what he really likes, that particular one. And also, it's not the big blockbuster version of the license. So it seemed really unusual that Stern would go for this lesser Godzilla license rather than the big one, which is what they normally do. So he was kind of saying it was kind of a bit out of character for them to go for this license. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a couple of groups of thought. So one is that Stern maybe also got the license for the other Godzilla. You know, the one that apparently there's a movie coming for next year, which is going to include other monsters. I don't know. I'm not sure if they... I mean, there's so many blockbuster movies at the moment, but there's also... What's that monster movie with the people fighting them in the big robot suits? You've seen it, haven't you, Marnie? Pacific Rim? Yes, Pacific Rim job. Number one was good. Number two, average-ish. I don't know. Yeah, this is a weird climate for another Godzilla slash monster movie, but everyone knows what Godzilla is, right? everyone knows what Godzilla is. You know, everyone is saying that maybe Stern got that and then they thought, you know, found out, caught wind that Stern was talking to Toho and said, well, hey, we can't let them do a Godzilla at the same time. It's a different license, different license holder. There could be two Godzilla pinball machines. Yeah, fair enough. Let's get the other one just because, hey, if Charlie's going to sell 500 of them at, was it $6,000 a pop or something, that's, you know, $3 million of revenue that's not coming towards our way. let's spend X amount of money to not let them have that? Maybe. We're just guessing, right? We actually have no idea. And you know what? It's that whole... We had a bit of a discussion about it last week, that whole, you know, oh, that's just business. Well, I think, you know, Charlie mentioned that he spoke to Stern as well and they sort of said, well, you know, we're also fans of Godzilla as well. You know, you don't actually have the monopoly on being a fan of Godzilla, right? Yeah. You could kind of hear Charlie getting riled up when he said, you know, I bet I know more about it than you, because he's, like, fully obsessed with it. Like, I'm not obsessed with anything in my life as much as it sounds like Charlie Emery's obsessed with that kind of version of Godzilla. So he offered to do free consulting for Stern. I don't know. It's weird, because he's kind of firing a shot at them. They're not publicly firing anything back, but obviously there's actions being done in the background. You know, there's a threat on Pinside, is Stern evil, and there's a lot of discussion going back and forth about it, and people are split, so I'm not sure what's going to come of it, but obviously there's negative... What's the opposite of goodwill, Marty? Bad will, is that a thing? Bad will. Bad will, yes. There's a lot of bad will going towards Stern at the moment. Obviously a lot of people are saying, well, he's in the group of, that's his business, but there's also a lot of people that, yeah, got their pitchforks out. Well, and as I said last week, I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't think that there is this black and white, they're either good or evil or it's business and, you know, you've taken, you've robbed somebody off their livelihood. You haven't. Spooky, you've got plenty of other licences that they'll be able to do great machines for as well. It's, you know, it's not the be-all and end-all. Yes, I understand there's a personal connection because he loves Godzilla that much, but, you know. You know what we should have asked Dennis Nordman? Was Elvira 3 meant to be done at Spooky? Because Charlie's a massive Elvira fan as well, and he hinted that we passed on a massive pinball license to Stern before because he thought they would be better off doing it. That would probably be Elvira 3, right? I doubt it would be like Aerosmith or Iron Maiden or something, right? It would be Elvira. Well, let's just put it out there right now. As a fact, it was definitely Elvira that got passed on to Stern. Let's just start it. Okay, done. Oh, gosh. I am never going to be invited back to Stern. I know. Zach Sharp gave you a personal tour and everything. Did we talk? No. That was after last week. How was it so, Marty? This weekend, Tim. Okay, okay. All right, Slam Top 100. I destroyed you again, Marty. America's Most Haunted is easily the better game than Game of Thrones. What was the actual result? I don't know. Just bloodbath again, okay? This one surprised me. I thought it was going to be closer. I was under the impression that people hated Game of Thrones as much as Ghostbusters. That is not the case. People really do hate... That is absolutely not the case. Oh, my gosh. People love Game of Thrones. Yeah. Evident by two things. One, the result of this. I felt like I comprehensively listed all the bad things about Game of Thrones. Yes. Yes. It shoots amazing. Okay, let's just ignore that. But I guess I didn't mention enough. I guess people don't really care that America's Most Wanted. And it's not even in the top 100 anymore, Marty. It's like 101 or something. Wow, okay. So just so you know, so Game of Thrones got 75% of the votes. And this is kind of what I said about Game of Thrones, and I'll say it again. When it first came out, it got... Like, I reckon in my... Since I've been backing pinball, of all the reveals, it's had the worst reception when it comes to artwork. Yeah. Hands down. Okay. Star Wars. Maybe in the same category. Yeah, okay. Maybe kind of like that. But over time, it doesn't matter. Yes, you can say that about anything, though. No, you can't say that about Star Wars. I can tell you about this. Many of them are madness, Marty. Amazing artwork. After all that time, though, it doesn't matter. You can say it's a good and bad, right? Oh, I understand that. But that's why I'm telling you that that's why I got 75% of the vote. Because people, like the only really thing that you've got that's terrible about Game of Thrones is terrible artwork and the flashing lights. Well, people sort of get over that stuff. Weird rules as well. But amazing rules in the sense that he didn't know how the... No one knows how the story's going to end because George... No, what's his name? Yeah, George Martin or something. Martin. Yeah, yeah. I think I was getting confused with the Tolkien guy for some reason. Yep, really smart. I am. so isn't it amazing that he didn't know the end and he was able to still formulate the game in a way that it's open to anything you choose a house and you battle the other houses it's got nothing to do with any of the storylines it's effectively just houses battling each other yeah I mean there's shitty clips playing when stuff happens but yeah I mean if they made Mose it would be like Walking Dead where it's just like hey this is the first two seasons of a eight season show Is it time to slam the top 100? Well, for this week, yes it is. Let's do it. It's time! Let's slam the top 100! Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Coming right up. 97. Oh, you fucker. Yes! What's 97? WHO dunnit? Have you done that? No. We have, surely. I don't remember it. I actually quite like WHO dunnit. Okay, sure. Do you want that one then? No, that's yours. You fucking bitch. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Alright. 67. Taxi. We did that with Jeff Teowas, but not our own show. Yeah, keep going. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Sure. 84. Earthshaker. Done. Earthshaker. Okay. Let's talk about Earthshaker. A fine Pat Lawler game. one of these disaster themes. I really like the layout on this. It's got a bit of a quirkiness to it, typical Pat Lawler, you know, vein. Some really interesting shots, interesting rules. I love it's got the, you know, the shaker. I think it was one of the first games that really had the shaker motor in it, wasn't it? It's got, you know, great sound, Great flow for a Pat Lawler game as well. It's a great game. There you go. Earthshaker. This is going to be the biggest low effort Sun Supply 100 ever. Whodunit. One of only, was it, nine pinball machines released by Valley Williams in 1995. And clearly their best. You know, AFM was in the same year. Push out to the side. Whodunit. A murder mystery, okay? Who did it? Was it Casey Butler? Was it Victoria? Was it Bruno? Was it Trixie? Or was it Tony? Who the fuck knows, because none of the clues make sense. You've got the giant ramp in the middle. You know, we were talking about it before, about tight shots. This is the untightest shot in pinball, okay? A giant fucking five-inch shot in the middle of a playfield that you cannot miss. Will it go to the left? Will it go to the right? Will it go to the center? Amazing. You've got awesome Dwight Sullivan rules, which allow you to... The pop-up, the reels give you awards, Marty. and now this rule was transported into Ghostbusters and it was so good that it was also in Game of Thrones as well, Marty. Let's just reuse it over and over again. Whodunit. Murder mystery. When you find the guy and he's like, it's great, great darts. It's murder she wrote for people and machines. Whodunit. Go for it, Marty. Tell me all the horrible things about Whodunit, Marty. The guy that you just said you love. Whodunit's a better game. Really? Yep. Give it to me. It actually just is. Earthshaker is a terrible game. I've never played Earthshaker, so I don't even know what to say about it. I have. It's actually not a bad game. I do actually really like it. Whodunit. I don't know. The thing, I guess, about these two games is, you know, Earthshaker comes from that era where it was a little bit tougher and therefore it made you a better player as a result. You know, not necessarily ball saves and all that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? Like, it was just, it was pretty brutal. The problem I've got with Whodunit is I think it's got, you know, very unbalanced scoring. It makes a terrible comp game unless you put it on you know the settings which makes it really boring because everybody sees the same thing I don know I don like the layout really of Whodunit all that much The art not great either It actually terrible art But I don mind playing it I don't mind playing it. That's what I'm saying. But I'm really, really indifferent towards it. Earthshaker, as I said, I haven't played it before, but what I will say is, Pat Law, I I think this is Pat Law's first game. He's got the shot to the... that shot up the middle, right? Not the middle, sorry, the middle flipper. He realised after that game that all the upper flipper shots need to be on the right and not the left because Whirlwind, No Good Gophers, Addams Family, Dialed In, probably about five other games, have that middle flipper on the right instead of the left. So Earthshaker, that was a mistake. That's all. Mm-mm. Okay. You might have a better gift, though, because your gift will be an earthquake. I'm sure there'll be something funny I can do with an earthquake. My gift will be... How do you make murder funny? I don't know. I've got to figure something out. Oh, Bruno. I'll do Bruno from... No, I can't do that. Do you remember that gay character that... That's from the movie Bruno? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I forgot they did a movie I thought it was just off his show okay no they did a movie this week in pinball I'm going first motherfucker because you're going to have another um I saw money that Jeff from the pinballs play podcast was trying to say that we cheated in the TTI and that he should win by default too bad money's already donated money you can't still win our charity wait how did he say that we cheated uh because uh David Peck otherwise known as uh Rob Peck from Australia You haven't listened to the Slamtel podcast, have you? Oh, yeah. Bruce was like, I had dinner with Roto Dave. It was really nice. He says, Roto Dave. Roto Dave, right? And, like, you know, who did Marty have on his team? It was Rob Peck from Australia. so I still don't understand why people are calling into question my victory sorry I just had to get that in there sorry because it really made me laugh apparently he was wearing headphones for like two minutes or something and Jeff is so desperate to get a win because his Pimberg medal for getting a 12 in the round wasn't enough so he's trying to disqualify us how dare you how dare you how dare you I played in the three-strikes tournament this week at Pixel Alley. I'm not going to go into details so much because of that, but I came third, which I was pretty pleased with. Mr. McMinn, who's never ever won a competition before, just destroyed everyone and won. And I left early after I got knocked out by him because of the strike system. It might have taken three more games, three more rounds to see. But now I kind of wish I was there because no one had any footage of him winning and apparently he was pretty ecstatic. I will say, thank you to Zax, that they fixed their Simpsons Pimple Party. So that Simpsons now has, one, a slight ball save, two, locks are on the default settings, and three, the garage door works mightily. So hooray for Zax and hooray for Simpsons Pimple Party. I know you still don't like it. Yes. I went over to Anthony Boopie's house on Friday and I played Guardians of the Galaxy and I really liked that Pimple Machine, mate. You actually really like it? I do. So, on top of their opinion money, I like plastic ramps way, way more than metal ramps. It's something about the smoothness of the ball. They are faster. Yeah. I know after a couple hundred games they get all ghosty and what did you call it? Yeah. But I don't know. I like that game. It's funny. I was playing pretty crap and then I messaged PJ, Mr. Paul Jones, the number one player in Australia. and said, what's your strategy? And he wrote a little paragraph, and I literally did that. And every single time, I had like three games after that, and I got Grand Champ, and then I got, like, you know, SkySquad number one, and then Grand Champ again. So I have my strategy for going to the Galaxy. Of course, I would never be able to execute that in the competition. But, yeah, there is a lot of strategy, because certain modes are easy to complete, and you get the biggest stat bonus, and you get that bonus carried on, and it's not all about just starting multiple and yeah, modes can be huge, Marty. Did you know, Marty, on Guardians of the Galaxy that you know how when you finish it then there's like mode number two? No. Okay, so say you're playing Yaka Arrow and you finish level one. It then goes to level two and you can play that. How much different is level two to level one? Is it the same shots just with more? Completely different. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's level three. I think it might just be two levels and I think the second one is just like it's just like a big payoff maybe of certain shots I don't know. But there's this rule, which I thought is too good to be true. You can then, instead of playing that mode, say Yaka Arrow 2, you can then choose another mode, say like Podchase 1, Yaka Arrow 2 is still running in the background. So if you, like you can really blow up this game because you can have like all these modes running at the same time and be getting this massive payoff. As soon as you lose your ball, everything's over kind of thing. Right, okay. So. So I haven't played any, I haven't played Guardians for so long and certainly not with any recent code. Yeah, and when you do and when I do, it's at Pixel Alley with like the grippiest weird rubbers that game just kind of, you know, it's hard to play that game. But I finished four modes, got into Cherry Bomb Multiple and then, you know, we talked about Multiple getting nerfed. When you finish the modes, that shot is like 5x or whatever for Jackpot. so that's when Groot starts a payoff, and I don't know. I wouldn't say no to getting a guy into the galaxy. Yeah, fair enough. Maybe I should get rid of my Metallica. Horrible game. What else? Okay, Marty. I'm running a competition, a tournament, this week on Wednesday. Are you back for that? I think I've asked you this already. I'm back, but I... You know what? When I get back, I get back into Melbourne 9.30 in the morning, I've then got to drive home, get changed and then drive an hour and a half for a two day conference oh god Marnie I guess you don't need your Iron Maiden back then not till the weekend so no I will be missing that sadly ok I hope everyone that has clicked like on Facebook isn't actually coming because there's over 120 people that have kind of Facebook RSVP'd, which, you know, you never know how many people are going to come, but apparently only like 30 people or so can fit upstairs, Marty. Is that what you said when you were running cops there? Yeah, that's what I reckon. Oh, gosh. I don't know what's going to happen, but they're promoting the shit out of it. $200 bar tab for the person who wins. It's a new style of format and, Marty, I hate explaining formats because I put myself to sleep. So, Marty, shall we get someone else on to explain the things behind it. Yes, please do. Listen up, bitches. This is Mrs. Penn, and I'm here to talk to you today about Riza's Righteous Rue Sac Rally. He's having a tournament, people. The format's a little different. He doesn't like listening to himself talk about tournament rules, so he called in the big guns. I'm here to talk to you about how it's going to go down. Listen up. This tournament is called Aussie Style Slash Kiefer Style Five Strikes Tournament. Kiefer Sutherland, my favorite Australian. Just kidding. He's from Canada. Anyways, in a five strikes tournament, you get five strikes. When you get five strikes, you're out. It's very similar to a three strikes tournament, actually, except instead of just three strikes, you get five. What's the benefit of this, you ask? Two more strikes, motherfuckers. Dr. Penn. Oh, my God. Stop laughing. You're shaking the freaking bed. You're shaking the house. Two more strikes, motherfuckers. You're going to be editing this shit. Okay. So, five strikes. The benefit of a five strikes tournament, according to Ryan C., is that not only you get two more strikes, But the tournament comes to a head at a quicker pace, and you allegedly last longer. He sent some data to some mathematician who did some census and shit, and basically when push comes to shove, the guy said that you might last a little bit longer if you don't suck. If you win in your group, you get zero strikes. That's the goal, people. don't get no strikes, okay? If you lose in your group, gosh, I've got bad news. Number one, you need to get practicing on pinball because you suck right now. Number two, not only do you get one strike, but you get two strikes. You get two strikes, people, okay? So in theory, you could still be out after three rounds, But, you know, that math dude basically told us that 55 out of 60 people should make it to round five. I'll believe it when I see it, but y'all are going to have to let me know how things go. Because you know how I feel about a three-strikes tournament. I think they suck. Okay, people. If in the end you are left with a three-player group, here is how the strike system works. The winner still gets no strikes. Again, you want to try to win. You don't want strikes. This isn't bowling. Okay? Strikes are not good. If you win, you get zero strikes. If you come in second, you get one strike. If you shit the bed and you come in last, you still get two strikes. If in the end there is a two-player group, the winner of the two gets zero strikes. The loser of the two gets two strikes. Don't want to lose. The benefits of a five-strike tournament as opposed to a three-strike tournament, from what I understand are that if it is a group like myself and Dr. Pin, and you are me, and you kind of stink, you are not going to be waiting around for seven hours for Dr. Pin to finish his rounds, okay? You're going to be able to get out of there faster and move on with your life. So go play, do some good shit. Rise's Righteous Roo Sack Rally can now begin. Booyah! It just makes so much sense now that she's explained it. She actually fucked it up a little bit. It makes no sense. Absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there's three strikes versus five. It's just for scoring. So instead of 0-0-1-1, which is what all the other tournaments do for four-player groups, it's 0-1-1-2 or 0-1-2 for three players and 0-2 for two players. So because of that, like these simulations that I run, it seems to let everyone stay in longer and then there's two bloodbath rounds that everyone pretty much drops out and there's a final four. So hopefully that is a good tournament structure for people that are new to pinball. And it's easy to run, right? Three strikes are super easy to run versus foot frenzy or match play or anything like that. Yes, certainly. Let's see how we go. I'll report back on that next week. Just one last thing, Marty, before I let you do a little bit. Sure. I wanted to make this a segment, I've already gone for a freaking hour, so maybe I'll ask people to email in. I was playing Ghostbusters. I couldn't be bothered playing two or three play games on Galaxies of the Galaxy, so when Anthony and Nima were playing, I was playing Ghostbusters. I still hate that game. But I was just thinking about how bad the Scolari drop targets are, because they don't really do anything except that they're the worst. Yes, and yes, the characters are annoying, blah, blah, blah. I was thinking, in Captain's Canyon, they're really fun because the post comes up and it's like, three, two, one, draw. Yes. Dang. A plate of the pinball. It's fun having those targets. Yes. Okay. And then let's go to, say, the medieval madness trolls. They were kind of cool, innovative. And then the hobbit trolls, which kind of like get in your way and is double as many. So I want people to email in and maybe we can have a little segment. Things that worked on the pinball machine, someone tried to replicate it in some form, okay, maybe the same mech or the same software rule, and it wasn't as good as it was in the original. So there's two examples, you know, the Sclery Brothers versus the Cactian Drops, the Hobbit Trolls versus many... Sorry, yep, versus many Manus Trolls. Email in head2headpinball at gmail.com and let us know any other examples you can think of. Awesome. How was your week, Marty? Look, I've had an amazing week. So after Pinberg literally got on the plane the next morning, as soon as I got to the airport in Chicago, hired a car and drove straight to Stern Pinball for a factual tour with the Honourable Zach Sharp. Okay. What do you want to know? How's Deadpool? Look, I mean, it should have been on the line, so you would have seen it, right? You know, here's what's good and really annoying about Zach Sharp. You ready? He's really professional. What's really good is that he's professional, and what's really annoying is that he's professional. Okay. So you know nothing? No, I know nothing. Well, not about anything sort of secret. And because people knew that I was going to this tour, I had so many people messaging me going, come on, you can tell me, I won't tell anyone. And it's like, really, honestly, that's how those pictures of Deadpool got leaked. So you have seen it, Marty. So you have seen it. No, I haven't. But what I got to see was, I don't know how to put this, but I'll see if I can. So a year ago, just over a year ago, I did the factory tour of Jersey Jack. And now I've done the Stern factory tour. and it's night and day. I mean, it really shows the difference between a company that has, you know, one machine on the line and, you know, a smaller line and does it in relatively small batches versus a company that is a freaking machine that has so many workers and so many different elements along the line and can produce so many machines per day. It was just phenomenal. And, you know, I know that, you know, in recent times, people have sort of talked about, you know, quality control and all that kind of stuff. there is at every step along the way all this quality control that happens so take take that as you will it was just it was really interesting to see it all in in action um and then there is this there is this door that's got a you know a number keypad on it and the windows next to this door are all covered up with brown paper so you can't see it and basically he said well that's where all the interesting stuff is can't let you in there yep same thing yeah pretty much the same tour that everyone gets so but you know it was just with with Zach and you know what was actually really quite good was that you know it wasn't all scripted he went off script we had you know chats about Pinberg and you know about some you know his favourite machines and what he likes and what he doesn't like and all that kind of stuff so you know it was a fantastic tour so we should get him on the show it sounds like an interesting go well we have um the other thing that happened in this week was on wednesday night i went to logan arcade in chicago now i've heard all about logan arcade for so long um and jimmy nails good friend of the show jimmy nails did a flip frenzy at logan arcade so this was the first time i got to see logan arcade obviously but it was the first time i actually got to see um jimmy and barb's software in action. It's amazing. Yeah? It's amazing. It just does everything for you and you know exactly where you need to be. That's really cool, but can we use it? No, we can't use it. Not just yet. They said that a year ago, okay? No, I know, but it actually went without a hitch. They didn't actually have to do any corrections this time, so I think that also relies on good people as well. American Disminer than Drunk Aussies? Is that what you're thing, mate. Possibly. But yeah, software and it managed to queue so efficiently that the wait in between games was no more than two minutes, like two, maybe three minutes at that. And it was a queue of eight to nine people. So it was phenomenal. Great collection of machines. Really good to catch up with Crystal Gemnick. I love her. Jack Danger was there. He was streaming. Does she work there? Yeah, I think she's a tech there as well. Okay, yep. So, got to catch up with Jack as well. Some other people from Pinberg. It was a great night. I didn't do so well. So, I had 11 wins and I think 6 losses. So, I didn't end up anywhere near the top. And a person called Jane. She came first. I think she had like 17 wins and maybe 4 losses. Absolute powerhouse. So, well done, Jane. How's this for a rule tweak on on slip frenzy, Marty, because something needs to be done because of all that, you know, I mean, Americans assume they're playing it properly, but you know, you know, the, the Aussies have been, you know, played every, every week or every month, whatever it is, they've, they've figured out the kind of flaws in the system before it possibly gets nerfed. Right. What do you think about if you lose a game, you get like half a point taken off. So that forfeiting a game or agreeing to, a one ball game doesn't really have as much benefits as it has had before. Yeah, okay. So I guess what you're trying to do is reward people for not giving up so easily. Yeah, punish them for losing basically. Because someone might win with a lot less you know, the most wins but you know, five more losses than the next person. But if those losses count for half a point taken off then it might slide them down a couple of places. Yeah, again comes back to the fact that when they're having to do these rules because people can't play this game in the spirit that it was intended yeah but they just you have better rules and then and then it's fine right yeah i guess that's a better resolution than nerfing the whopper points for these tournaments because you know we want to get more people into them at the end of the day that um Flip Frenzy at Logan Arcade was so much fun, and it was so loud. Everybody had a great time. Jimmy put on an amazing tournament. You know. I watched a bit of the stream. I was looking at the chat, and then people were kind of blown away by the amount of games played. That's what me and you have been kind of saying this whole time. Like, yes, this is what pinball can be like if you don't have to wait around for 45 minutes in between rounds and this, this, and that. It is the most fun format. and I saw the Facebook page and I was like, we have to do this more and this, this and that. So I really hope that Frenzy can survive by, one, the software somehow getting out so everyone can use it and it's not just something that they have to bring around on the laptop and, two, some tweaking of the rules maybe so that it can be run in a more fair manner. Yep. Cool, Frenzy. Okay, anything else, buddy? Two more things. I managed to go to Free Gold Watch in San Francisco. That's where I am. Did you find out why it's called Free Gold Watch? No. Do you know why it's called that? No. No. Didn't bother asking. Sadly, I did turn up about 10 minutes after a comp had just started, so I missed out on that. But what an amazing location. I think there's probably about 50 pinball machines there, all in great condition. What was really interesting, because I sort of missed the start of the tournament and they were pretty much playing on all the new games. I pretty much had, I don't know, maybe 30 games at my disposal and I only played one game and that was Black Knight 2000. Okay. Isn't that a really long playing game? Well, it is and I put 50 cents in and just kept getting free game after free game after free game. So I was only there. I didn't have that much time. So I was only there for half an hour, played the one game maybe four or five times, and then left. Okay. But of all the games to play, like all these games, that was the game that I was drawn to. I just went, you know what? I loved this game, and I haven't seen it around for a while. Why don't you just reach out? You know, I did it to Dennis Nordman. That was all me, Marty. Reach out to Steve Ritchie and just, you know, I know a lot of people love Steve Ritchie, but just tell him how much you love him and get him to come on the show. Man, it just, I mean, everything you just said, it just reminded me of why I really like Steve Ritchie games. There you go. You've only got one of them, Marty. You've only got one. I know. but what I'm really getting at is I'm hoping that he's doing a new Black Knight. That's all I'm saying. Okay? And last thing... Wait, have you put your name down, Marty? Because you know these things can sell out. You rang an email now. Like, I wrote an email for the Bills. I did. I wasn't joking about that. Oh, jeez. No, so this is my last night in San Francisco. I'm heading back. And on my last night, what's the best thing you could possibly do your last night in San Francisco? Go out and get wasted with Gene X Wong. Exactly what I did. I went and had cocktails at a place called Trick Dog, I think it's called, with Gene X Wong. And it was a great night. It was him and his partner, and we just talked. Some of it was pinball, some of it wasn't pinball. Had some amazing cocktails. and managed to have a bit of a chat with him, a bit of a mini interview. Would you like to hear it? Sure, Marty. I will edit it in. Here it is. So one of the things that I've often talked about is coming to America and coming to Pimberg, we meet some really good people. And tonight is no exception. I'm here with friend of the show, Gene Exwong. How are you? I'm excellent. We just had a couple of drinks at Trick Dog, so I think we're having a good night, right? Yeah, I think, you know, they're pretty strong drinks as well. If I'm, yeah, no, great, trick dog. You've really got to go in the Mission District. So I really wanted to get you on really to talk about the scene in San Francisco because I went to Free Gold Watch. It's amazing. But tell me about the scene and elaborate on the league which floored me before. Okay, yeah. So at Free Gold Watch is the main kind of San Francisco City League. It's called the San Francisco Pinball Department. that Pair Schwartzenberger runs. He has been doing that, I think, since 2012 or 13, because that's when I got into pinball and the league was kind of new. It's capped at 80 people, plus or minus a few. That's 80 people, Australians. Yes, 80. And there's a wait list that's usually about one or two years long, because basically everybody loves playing pinball and nobody wants to drop out. So mostly people drop out if they move or they just had a kid, so they've got to take care of their child or something like that. But basically, it's a very cool group of mixed people. It's not just for hardcore players. We have people like Andrei Masenkov, who's won the Pop World Championship. And we have a couple of, maybe like three or four top 100 players. But we also have people who are just totally casual. And everybody just comes, and it's very chill, even though it's very intense. If you win it, as far as people that are really into Whoppers, I think the league winner gets like 48 or 50 points for first place. So it's worth a lot. And also, this actually, they meet every fortnight, every other week is what you said. Yeah, yeah. So we have two seasons a year, like a spring and a fall or spring and a winter. And they last about 10 weeks, and the top eight rounds count. So you get to drop your two lowest scores, and then it's divided into divisions, usually like an A, B, and a C division. And it's really fun, really great. People are very friendly and helpful. People are always, like, willing to kind of tell people how to play the games. Everybody who's been to Pimberg knows sometimes people won't share information maybe right when you're playing because you don't want to give that advantage away. But at League, it's much more casual. And even though it can be very competitive, it's very friendly. People are drinking and enjoying other things during the League nights and such. And so what's the Pimberg scene in San Francisco like overall? Overall, it's pretty good. We have a lot of different diversity. I'm going to talk more about Bay Area because there's a lot of stuff that goes on. Like, Velsensheim started in Oakland. Eka started it there. and it's grown internationally now. And it's quite, you know, that's a Monday night thing. So a lot of times people try not to do anything on Monday nights. On Tuesdays, there's a team league that Jared Garvey started up, and it's super fun because it's not for Whoppers since it's a team league sort of situation. And that lets a lot of people play. And, you know, the teams are tried to be balanced, so it limits the number of top 500, top 1,000 players. And then Wednesdays, usually the SFPD League. Thursdays, Roland and Jane have started a kind of like a, I think it's a first or second or third or fourth Thursday at a buzzwords tournament. It's kind of a three strikes or now we do some progressive strikes. And then like you were at Free Gold Watch on Friday and there was that casual tournament. Aaron Nelson often throws a little. He's a beer rep. So sometimes there's a keg of beer, $10 buy in. Everybody just plays for fun and cash in. You know, but people don't care about the money. So some of them might. But mostly it's fun. And then there's a lot of weekend tournaments and selfie leagues. I run the San Francisco Selfie League. Jane runs the Oakland Pinball Warriors that Eka used to do. So there's those in Concord. There's a Concord Selfie League. There's a lot of stuff in the Bay Area. It sounds like there's actually an event on almost every night. Almost, almost. Not every week, but we're not like Seattle that has at least one IFPA event every night. But do you also then have lots of venues with fronted machines as well? Yeah, the location seems like the reputation of the Bay Area is, I think, a little bit bigger than the actual number of machines on location. Although if you look at pinball map, it does show a large number. And that's also because we have like Pacific Pinball Museum that's got a ton of machines. And then we've got Free Gold Watch. We have places like Alamo Drafthouse where there's like maybe eight machines or seven machines. But a lot of places have like maybe two, three, five, six, eight, you know, and like Outer Orbit's opening up Tuesday. We're doing a tournament there. That's the first kind of soft opening for it. It's a pinball bar owned by a couple that is into pinball. And so we're really excited about that. So there's definitely a lot of little spots. TJ and Greg Creech are two of the local ops that do a really great job, and there are some other operators here. So it's been growing. I think our reputation is maybe a little bit bigger than the actual location. Like if you walk into a random bar, you might find pinball, and it might not work that well. But I think a lot of cities are like that, and everybody here kind of knows where to go. Certainly not the city I come from. Like when I walked into Free Gold Watch, and I don't know how many machines there are, 40 machines? Yeah, maybe there's 50-something. 50 machines there? Like that's pretty unheard of in an Australian location. So that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, I guess sometimes we're spoiled because we hear about the best, and we're like, we want to be like Seattle or Portland. So, you know, we're kind of jealous sometimes of that. But it's definitely great, and it's growing, and it's only getting better. So, like, the scene is fantastic. Actually, the new mayor, she was the one that allowed Free Gold Watch to get the permit and change the city's permitting for pinball so that it wasn't like the old-school, archaic, whatever weird laws they used to have. So now places can have pinball machines a little easier. So we're always trying to push them for more. Awesome. So tell me about your experience at Pinburgh. Oh, okay. My Pinburgh was amazing fun and terrible play. I got my first zero round, which was miserable. But I like to play well, I think like everybody, right? If you play in tournaments, you want to do well. But I know I just had to keep it fun. I was there this year, it was my, I think, I don't know, fourth year or something, maybe fifth of Pinburgh, And I definitely played my worst. But I had fun still. I mean, a lot of that is like we had friends that did well. Like Andre, you know, he got second at the whole thing. And so as far as local people. And so I had a great time. I was up in JJ's room playing some pinball late night and doing other things. Probably shouldn't have. But it didn't matter. After that zero round, I was just like, okay, I can pull it out still if I get some tens and pluses. But then all I got was sixes or maybe an eight and then a three. And, you know, it was just terrible play. but I had a good time. So, you know, I wish I would have played better but I'm not really one to harp on the past and especially that past. So, you know, I'm looking on to the next thing. One of the things that we spoke of earlier, I can't remember which cocktail we were on at the time but it was one of them. We were talking about how amazing it was and it was my first pinball. So for me, I kind of expected that it was always like this but we were talking about watching the final and how much of an amazing experience that was. Can you talk about that? Yeah. I mean, so over the last couple of years, they keep improving it. Like, I think two years ago, the stage was on the ground level. There was no stage. It was basically like just a bank that was kind of set aside, and they had the broadcast booth just kind of next to them. And that was fun, you know, because, like, in pinball, we all just, you know, we all love it. We'll take what we can get. So then last year, they had it on stage, and it was pretty great. They had screens above the machines so you could see that, but you couldn't hear the commentary real time, which is fine. Some people would listen to it on Twitch with the delay, which is kind of weird. And this year was fantastic. I know Mike Premo from Path of Play got involved, and he really stepped up the production. It was fantastic. It was like the two screens on either side of the stage, being able to hear the commentary and see it real time was amazing. I mean, my favorite part was when somebody did something amazing or had a terrible drain, how we were all there with them. We would cheer or be like, oh, because we all knew the feelings of what's going through, or like the crazy Harlem ball that Keith had. It was just like, you know, that was like the most kind of stadium feel of pinball as like a sport or whatever. You know, that's the first time I've ever seen that and felt that. And it was amazing because I actually had to do an entry in Intergalactic, so I had to leave. I was like, ah, I'm up. So I went up there, played my game, and I could hear cheers. And I was just like, oh, man, that's so cool that people are that excited about it and everything. It was absolutely amazing. And also one of the things that you're also known for is orange photography. So you do photography of a number of things, including pinball. and we've seen that you managed to get some good snaps on the event as well. Yeah, I mean, I've always just wanted to, like, the first time I started taking pictures at pinball was just to kind of give back to the scene because I'm like, oh, this is something I like. What can I do to contribute? That's the kind of person I am as far as when I get involved in stuff. And so the first thing I did was, I think, a Metallica launch party, and I got too much close to the side, and Andre told me to back off, and I was like, okay, I learned something. I didn't even know who he was. I was just like, who's this guy? But I always knew not to use Flash, and it's like a fun thing to photograph because I you know it's like one of the ways I can contribute so I like doing that and you know the thing I try to find the most is like I love when people drain and they have a reaction because we all know that we can associate with that and sometimes I feel guilty when people have like are screaming at the machine or looking you know dejected but but I think it's a it's a very universal feeling that we all know we know what that feels like you know because there's a very few times where you drain and you feel good but there are those times too but those are even harder to capture because you don't know when people are going to drain or when they're going to blow it up and when they're blowing it up it's a little boring because i just sit there waiting for them to drain or some sort of emotion um so it's just like something and i'm actually kind of working on a book project with it but i haven't really fully fleshed it out so i'm gonna kind of newling on that yeah well what i i guess i i know about that is you know obviously the tti which i won just because i hadn't mentioned that already tonight but ryan will probably remind me as well i i won the tti um but what was really interesting like when you're in a tournament and you're in the moment, all you're thinking about is in the moment. And then what I remembered was that you actually posted up some pictures of the TGI at a later stage. And I kind of went, oh yeah, I was in that tournament. Rather than thinking about I was actually in it, it was a really good way to be able to think about it after the event. And I can imagine anybody that's had their photos snapped by you is feeling the same. Yeah, that's something that if I'm able to do that for people, I'm really happy. I know sometimes people will come up to me like, oh, I wish you got a picture of me. And I'm like, I kind of want to make people understand. I'm like, I just take pictures of whatever, whenever I have the time to do it. It's not like my job job. It is my job as far as like my real life. But when I'm at pinball, I'm going to be like, the reason I caught you guys at TTI was like, we were playing dollar games next to you. And I'm like, look at this giant pile of money. I'm like, what is going on? I mean, we knew it was TTI and it was funny. So that was like great moment with all that, you know. And then, you know, you blowing up hot tip was like a pretty amazing play there. Thank you for mentioning that. Well, awesome. Thank you very much. Really good to catch up with you, Gene. Thank you very much for buying me a few cocktails tonight. That was awesome. It's been pretty amazing. I knew that it would get me on the podcast. You did well. So thanks, mate. Yep. Thanks. So what did we learn about that money? Because I haven't listened to it. What we learned is Gene is a freaking awesome guy. And what we really learned is that it's really interesting that they sort of say, oh, you know, we sort of look to Portland and Seattle because they've got these massive pinball scenes up there with all these tournaments and competitions. And he rattled off everything they've got in San Francisco, and I'm like, oh, my God, if we had a third of that, we would have ten times what we've got at the moment. There's so much pinball over here. They've just got so much more access to pinball. there's a lot more what are you doing Marty to grow Tom and Pimble in Melbourne I'm doing this podcast what I'm saying is you should totally help me run all these tournaments I know that's exactly what you're saying okay let's run a flip frenzy at at Timor Paradise and we'll be doing two things one we'll be running a tournament there and two we'll run it down we'll run it downstairs so people have to walk up and down those fucking stairs for three hours and everyone will just be super fit afterwards. Super one. Done. There you go. Let's head to the mailbag. Do you have anything else? Yes. Mailbag. We've got an email from Dave Peck, otherwise known as Rob Peck from Australia. And basically, after a lot of consultation, he says, with myself and the main tournament director, the, what's it called? The Australia, the Australian, New Zealand. Southern Hemisphere. Yes. Southern Hemisphere pinball competition has now changed, and it will be a full mini-Pinberg format. So, you know, people have been talking about it. Why is Pinberg being what it does, Pinberg? Guess what? It's being done. So apparently it's already almost sold out. There's only 25 spots left. So I'm guessing, yeah, it'll be sold out soon. So I'm just giving through the email. He's just saying it's really expensive to go to the US, and for Aussies to go to New Zealand, it only costs a couple hundred bucks. which is true, and you get the same experience. Yep, so that's almost sold out. So get your tickets soon. You can email Roder Dave at, no, I don't know his email address. You can contact him on... We'll be in the show notes. Yeah, sure. We've got another super long email, Marty. Maybe we'll read that next week. I'm not sure if it's even meant to be read out. It's pretty honest. Did you get to see that email from Mike? Source from middle America? Yes. maybe we'll seek permission and read it out at a later stage. Yeah, I'm not sure. It's almost one of those too honest emails that, yeah. Any other emails you can see, Marty? No, that's it. I've got to go to bed, man. All right, before you go to bed, I've got a last-minute message from one of our favorite followers. Let me just play it now. Nice episode, 54 losers. 70% skill, 20% luck, and 10% t-shirts.