you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Thank you. Thank you. Monday night. Are you ready for the pinball? A Monday night party, yeah. Let's go, bitch, I don't want to get you too high. It's time to go. Let me spin my prong, I don't want to be right. So all my friends are here for Monday night. Hey, what's going on, Pinball Land? Welcome to Monday Night Pinball on the Flip N Out Pinball Streaming Network. I am Ken Cromwell. To my right. Go ahead. The world's strongest sales and marketing manager at American Pinball, Dave. The world's done. And to Dan's right. And Josh Kugler from American Pinball. Woo-hoo! And to Josh's right. What's up, guys? I'm Steve Beattie. And tonight, we're going to do something that's crazy. And Pins Rule, thank you so much for the sub. Let's hear one. We're going to stream Oktoberfest in October. As we round out October, as we get into the holiday, Halloween season, there's been changes to this pin, and this pin has been moving along very nicely. Thanks for the sub. Benzik Pinball. We're excited to bring it to you as, again, we close out October, and I'm excited to have these two gentlemen to my right and to Steve's left walk us through the game here for the next couple hours. We're going to play for about an hour or so, and then we're going to get into after hours. But during the course of the evening, feel free to jump in the chat, ask any questions that you may like, and feel free to give a call when we open up that number a little bit later on. But Dan and Josh, welcome back to the stream. Appreciate you guys coming back in. Well, it's great to be back. I can't remember when we did the last one. It's a little foggy to me. A little fly. Is that what it is? Yeah. The lasting impression of Ken Cromwell and Stevie. Well, you know, these things blur a little bit. Yeah, I know. I know. We were crammed in and we played a lot. I think it was also right when we had some new animations. I think it was the last time. Absolutely correct. I think we were sneak peeking those again. So it's kind of fun that we were able to do this again and show off the latest changes and get a chance to flip a little bit. It's going to be a fun night. Steve, now, were you here when we streamed Oktoberfest last time? We streamed it for a few weeks. I was, yeah. Early on, right? So you were still here. I have a few weeks of streaming on this game. That was in our original studio. This is Studio C. It's a part in our dust as we still try to get things rocking and rolling here. A little bit of a change of pace. If we have any issues tonight, we encourage you to let us know as we get caught up in chat. Flippin' on pinballs here. What's up, fellas? American Pinball in the house. Where's Inga? I've got a duck for her, says Zach. Now, there's been an adult mode that's been growing and has been evolving. Josh, can you tell us a little bit about that? And will we be able to experience that tonight on the Flippin' On Streaming Network? Yeah, we should check the settings. I don't know what the settings are in the game. We should check that before we get started. What I will say about non-family friendly, it's not bolder in any way. Right. In fact, I think a lot of people would look at what's in there and say, gee, nothing wrong with that. Yeah, that's right. Because the reality is a lot of the humor is if you get it, you're an adult. And if you don't get it, you're not an adult, so it doesn't matter. I got you. There's quite a few things in there. But, you know, we did at least have one line that turned Zach bright red when it came up. When we were down at Southern Pride Gaming, I asked Zach to do our presentation with us, and we played family-friendly or not family-friendly. Family-friendly or not family-friendly. And I would play a clip. Thanks for the sub, HiRef Red Eye. I would play one of the voice calls from the game, and we had Zach predict whether or not the audience would feel it was family-friendly or not family-friendly. And not surprised that a lot of the things most people felt were pretty comfortable with. But at one, we played one call, and Zach kind of turned bright red. So I'm thinking, all right. If you made Zach blush, there might have been something going on there. I've not seen the man blush. And I think it just kind of caught him by surprise. Sure. He was having a good time. It was a fun presentation. and I wish it had been recorded, and then part of me is glad it wasn't recorded. Hey, believe me, we had a Malort stream that I'm pretty glad wasn't recorded, too. Oh, yeah. We did have a gentleman came in with his kids for the presentation, and at the start I said later on we're going to do family-friendly or not family-friendly. And when we got to that point, which was fairly late in the presentation, I brought it up again and reminded him again and said, okay, I'm not responsible if you're a family. Leave him now. Over the years, I'm sure a couple of the things just went over the kids' heads. Absolutely. It was fun. It was great for Zach to do that with me. I figured it would get a bigger crowd if I had Zach on stage with me than just being up there by myself. It sounds fun. Dan, how is it working with the very talented and very highly sought after Josh Cougar of American Pinball? You know, the management, in their infinite wisdom, put a loudmouth salesman in with a loudmouth program. Ah, right. So when he needs me to be quiet, I'm not. And when I need him to be quiet, he's not. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, Dan spends a chunk of his day, every time his phone rings, he answers the phone, he says hello to whoever it is. And if I know the person, I usually yell hello. And then Dan leaves the room to go have his conversation. My car is my office 90% of the time. Oh, that's awesome. As long as you're not living out of that car at any point, then you're probably in pretty good shape. So I think Dan, more than anybody, is looking forward to the new offices to get out. And now Jim Patluff has recently come on board, at least on a part-time basis, as an advisor to the company. So Jim has been camped out in my office slash conference room as well because we're so tight on space. Okay. That would be more crowded in there. And having Jim there, who's in the industry for many years and worked on some legendary games, I'm constantly asking him questions. So it's probably making Dan a little crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a tad, a wee tad. But it's probably helping Dan on his education of pinball history. I'm picking up a lot of tidbits from the past that I'm going to, you know, store away for the future when I need Blackman material on a variety of people. That's good. I know how the mind works over there. Now, you guys are opening up the new place in Palatine, Illinois, right? So, AIMTRON is relocating. American Pinball is relocating. And then you guys are converging into this huge, massive place. Or how is that working? Actually, our building is Kitty Quarter from AIMTRON's current business. They have another company up in Wisconsin that they're moving down. And we're splitting our building in half and sharing it with them. They've actually already moved in. Gotcha. Cool. So, they're all comfortable while our site's still getting finished up. So it's right around the corner from Ametron. It just makes it a little easier for meetings and resource sharing. And I'm looking forward to it because it's closer to home. Now, you're running an open house there too? Is that going to be a public open house, Dan, or how's that working? Yeah, Ametron Fest is Wednesday. This Wednesday? Yeah, so two days. That's an invitation. Once we're actually set up and have everything in place, then we're going to do the open invitation to American Pinball. Okay. Our distributors. Right now there's nothing to see. We're still in the process of moving in. Okay. The line has not been migrated there. We have a half line there. Half a line. Right. So once that gets set up, and, you know, there will be timing. Things will have to work through because we'd like to be able to show the line. And that potentially could obviously create some impact on when we're able to do the open house. We're waiting for January to move because we want it to be. Nothing says moving like the cold winter months of January. They barely heat my office now. I know. I know. So it's like a refrigerator. So the sooner the better for me, assuming they do books. The best gift for you in the last couple years has been those hand-warming packs over at American Pinball, right? Keep those coating fingers nice and warm. Well, and then when I'm in there and I start talking, I want to give them a little hug. First cuddle sometimes. No, not only that. First thing every morning I do is turn on the machines because I figure that'll help get some residual heaters here. Well, why don't we go ahead. Let's start a four-player game of Oktoberfest. because we're anxious for everybody to kind of see the changes that have been made to the pin. And we've got new, we've got a little bit of new everything. We've got some new animations. We've got some new adjustments to the game, some new music. And why don't we just go in order, if you want, Steve? Do you want to go right down the order? That way we're not going to get confused. And then we can start addressing any questions in chat. Thank you for the subs, and thank you for the bits, Kerry Hardy. Really do appreciate that, Kaz. Thank you. Let's check the settings real quick. All right, so Josh is going to check the settings here. On the Flippin' On Streaming Network. Why don't we do this before we get going? We'll pay some bills here, and we're going to play some pinball. Back live as we look at the mastermind. What are the masterminds? The co-mastermind. Because Joe, Joe Schober's not here today, but he's here in spirit. Maybe he's here in chat answering some questions. Do you know, will Joe be joining us tonight at all? Joe is on vacation. Oh, there you go. I'm not afraid we will be seeing him. No worries, no worries. Tickety-tock. So let's get some foreplay going. All right. So in our last release back in July, we did a complete update to the out-of-mode screen, which is that screen you see when you're just in between activities or doing things. Okay. So that was the first big thing we overhauled. That's a scene we overhauled, too. People actually hated the – it was a placeholder, and it did look terrible. Southwest Pennsylvania Pinhead, thanks for 1,000 bits. But I have to love that we're starting with juggling. I see people start with juggling all the time, and it is, well, it is a multiball. It's really not all that lucrative if you haven't stacked it with a food mode or unless you complete it and get through it. But, you know, you can go back to juggling once it's selected, so it's not like it's canceled out. No, you can keep going back to it, but, again, not a lot of points there. But what I will say, I guess the advantage to playing it, This recently came up. I was playing at Oktoberfest, and I did absolutely terrible my first game on it because it played differently than the one I'm accustomed to. Right, right. And that's when you're talking with somebody. I can see the benefit of juggling is a nice, safe way to get familiar with an unfamiliar machine. Yeah, that's true. And I think it's always advantageous for a machine to allow you to get into an easy multiball, especially on location. Somebody can jump in without knowing all the rules or being a pinball maniac, and you can still get a two-ball multiball going. I always appreciated that because I'm probably that guy that's going to want to get into a multiball sooner than later. So what are the first tips I'll give him? He's not paying attention. He's playing. So here are the ones he's not getting. Right. When you go to select a tent, you want to look for one you have a stein for. Preferably even two or three steins because the stein acts as a multiplier. So if you do a tent with one stein, it's going to double the score. Right. It's kind of like a power-up for the mode if you're using your steins that are married to the mode. So each stein will increase a mode and also has another power. Right. Hey, Josh, if you would like, would you like to turn the volume up on the pin just a little bit? Because I think one of the more impressive changes that I noticed on the machine right away when I played it recently was that there is a nice variety. Oh, yeah. There you go. Thanks, man. Love me some looper mode stacked with the Kugler steins. that's flipping out pinball. Thanks for the business. Yeah, Kaz, thanks. What up, pinball mag? Joe's in Virginia. So, Kaz, are you hanging out with Joe? We got coos here. Now, let me ask you this, Dan. You've got Houdini. You've got Oktoberfest. You work at American Pinball as the world's strongest sales and marketing manager. If you could have one of these games that you had to play for a year without playing anything else, which one would it be? I would be Oktoberfest. October Fest? Yeah. So you're an alcoholic. Yeah. No, that's good. I would also choose October Fest. No, no, no. Alcoholics go to meetings. That's true. You've not been in a meeting in quite some time. I totally get it. Rocking Express. Hey, and not to get... Now, as we watch Josh get into Rocking Express, new episode of, or bonus content of Pinball Cribs went up today, Steve. Did you see that? I have not seen it yet, dude. Oh, you should see it because you might know somebody that's in there. I had a couple people reach out. I was like, oh, dude, we'll have to check it out after the stream tonight. I didn't know if that was going to make it on the Internet. So it's on. I guess Zach found something worthy in there. Tuna Delight is asking if there are any new Stein changes. Any new Stein changes there, Josh? As I distract him from playing. Other than the animation, no. Okay. Kaz says, hey, great to meet you, Dan. Thanks for showing me around American Pinball. Oh, hey. Great to have you guys. Bye. Yeah, Kaz specifically said he had an awesome time at American Pinball with you guys. I had a good time. Yeah. Yeah. All right, now you're going to watch me embarrass myself. Hey, I'm right behind you, buddy. So again, make sure you're joining us today as we're putting some fine tuning and adjusting on lights and sound here. This is not the best light. It just kind of feels like we're about to get abducted by a UFO. I forgot my baseball hat. But it's fun. I like it. I like it. And if it's getting hot, just turn that heater off. Do it. Are you warm there, Josh? My face is red from windburn. Temperature-wise, are you all right? You good? Yeah. All right, good. Hey, nicely done, Dan. Kicking ass, Dan. Dad, I finally got comfortable. I sat back down. I think we're good. We're good. I give him the beer equilibrium. How many pins will fit in the new studio? I'm going to say, I don't know if we're going to ever put any behind here. The only sign change of this being a no is if you're in family friendly is off, Thor's hammer becomes castrated monkey. Wow. I didn't even know that. Some people like castrated monkey. I'm not sure why. If your child asks you about it, you probably need to explain to them what castration means. But if not, then so we kind of made that change. So it has the same capabilities and powers. It just, you know. The same powers as Thor's hammer. Right, exactly. Which I guess makes sense if you think about it. You know, Thor's hammer, the monkey falls. If you know the Houdini story behind the, you know, testicle removal of monkeys to attach to your own to make you stronger or vile. All right. Weird Echo says, Kaz. That's some new animation right there as well. Was Castrated Monkey really a great band? Wow, I did not know that. Good band name. See, if you don't want to explain to your kids what Castrated Monkey means, then keep Family Mode on. The monkey also now makes an appearance in the Max sequence. I don't know if we have Max turned on or not. Maybe I didn't want to bump Inga. She just asked me. Interesting. That's a strange choice on your part, not wanting to bump into her. Taking a little by surprise there. Weird echo. Are you serious, Kaz? Is there a weird echo? Because if there's an audio issue today, I'm taking all of the streaming gear that we have, and I'm taking it out back, and we're going to start a bonfire. Okay. I'll make sure that we remove the Oktoberfest first. so all right so are we in like a semi-adult mode right now as far as the call outs josh or is it just kind of yeah we've uh turned family friendly to no okay so we look at some which is uh i'm not sure if you do want to bump into it's high technically considered not family friendly but i think that would be a great example of you know it's probably fine for most people There's nothing bolder in there. No, no. It's fine. I'm not offended. There are a couple of ones that haven't made it in yet that are maybe borderline, but they'll probably get in there in some way. I love it. If anybody has children watching under the age of three or 13, you might want to be careful. So this is like a PG-13 or rated R? Yeah, I would say it's PG-13. Yeah, PG-13. All right. You know, maybe, you know, because most 13-year-olds would probably get the jokes, and if they don't, then maybe they need to have that chat with their parents. They need to get an Oktoberfest and start having some conversations. Most 13-year-olds of any age will appreciate the jokes. This is true. Most 44-year-olds also, I've been told. You know what? The music sounds great. It almost sounds like there's a subwoofer in there. It sounds really good. Yeah, so the music is, again, this pinball machine has really evolved since the last time I played it, five months ago. Right? Yeah. It's different. It is definitely different. It's huge different. It looks different. I'll ask Josh when he gets back to explain more of one of the mechanical fixes we did. Okay. That we just finished casting. Don't forget to get up on that microphone. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm sorry about that. I won't do that again. Thanks. I didn't want you to drift away into the distance. Well, yeah. New studio's looking good. Thank you. It's getting there. It's getting there. I reset my Twitch app, and now the audio is normal. Perfect. Oh, okay. For those of you that are wondering, we're broadcasting at 1080p tonight, 60 frames per second, and with a bit rate of 4,600. So we're trying not to tax anybody at 6,000, but we're within the realm that we need for 1080p, 60 frames per second. So if you need to match our output settings to increase your viewing and listening pleasure, I encourage you to do so now because we're going to be here until about 9 o'clock tonight as we deep dive into the new Oktoberfest update code. And it's nice to play Oktoberfest in October. Yes, it is. I do enjoy it. It's great. It is enjoyable. So Josh is running those bumper cars, too. talk that dirty bit rate to me crummy it's me all warm singly i'm gonna turn the bit rate to 6900 let it go let it go live whatever it takes yeah so you're gonna notice changes again some of them are subtle but some of them are completely recognizable. For me, the music editions are definitely recognizable to the pin. And then when you're looking up when you can look at the animations, you do see changes. Looks and sounds good. Need to put down coasters. What's up, Dr. John? Beattie, what are you drinking, fella? No dunk away. You know, I have Oktoberfest at the house, too. Didn't even cross my mind to bring it. Oh, darn it. Here's some Energy City, a local brewery. There you go. Hop John, New Robert Englunds style pale ale. Good stuff. A little hazy going. You're into the haziness. I'm into the hazies. Here's another bit of improved animation on the ball locks. Cool. Choose a stein. Choose a stein. Now, Lord Helm says, look, it's a great can. You can continue to put in a ton of work on the stream and the show. And Steve, good job. Those french fries looked great on the stream last week. The French fries made it, huh? Cougar's on fire, says Zach. Dr. John, that left ramp shot, you know, tried it all weekend and failed, but there's an adjustment made to that shot. Okay. And we'll let Josh talk about that when he comes back. So I noticed I was able to hit that left ramp more. Yes, me too. That's where one of the pictures is, to that upper right clipper. Interesting. New Robert Englunds style. Everything on the can is misspelled. Yeah, it was a little pricey for a four-pack. We went like 16 bucks for four beers. Bam, bam, dude. Get up there. What? Nice. Is that a little better? Yeah. All right. That looks good. Had to make a little adjustment there. Blue dude. Love the lock animation. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of my favorite animations. Yeah. I have a new sub, and it's Nate Fogren. Fogren. Oh, no, it's not a new sub. It's been five months. What's up, Nate? Five months in a row. Five months. Woo! Yeah, buddy. Good to hear from you, buddy. Thanks for the resub, man. Josh is blowing up the October festival. Yeah, what's going on? I like it. What's up, you maniacs? ball lit. That's what he needs, an extra ball. Because he hasn't played long enough already. Uh-oh. Ducks. Is there going to be a risque call-out? I'm waiting for it. Did you hit the extra ball there, Josh? Do-do-do. I saw ducks and I just naturally felt as if something was going to happen. Audio-wise. I'll try to last a little longer this time for you, Josh. You're going to last longer for Inga? Yeah. That's good. Thanks, Dan. Five months. Dave Fahlgren, thank you. So we were talking about... It's so fun, man. It is fun. It's so fun. Dr. John from Australia said he was playing the game this weekend, and left ramp was a difficult shot for him, and I know that you kind of addressed a little bit of that with code, right? So left ramp or upper ramp? I think he said probably, I'm assuming the left ramp, like the coaster ramp. Typically, there aren't too many people having issues with the left ramp. We do increase the flipper strength when the ramp comes down. Okay. I haven't heard any reports of anybody having problems with it. The upper ramp a little more challenging. And we're actually making a design change on that with a slightly different coil stop. And the game we're playing tonight does have that change. Okay, so Dr. John is saying left upper. Interesting. Yeah, so that upper ramp. So we made a change. The Australian game that was at that show did not have the change. The games at Expo did. We had done a study. We had a game set up with a group of players. We did not know there was anything different between the machines. And over the course of 50 games that were played on each machine, so 100 total games, but 50 on each, the machine with the modified flipper, the ramp was made 60% more times than it was on the current design. That's crazy. Which is obviously a significant change. Yeah, it is significant. A little bit of a different coil stop. So we're in the process of getting a quantity of those made. Any Oktoberfest owners will be able to contact the distributor. Distributors will get notified in a week or two once we have the parts in stock. Oh, wow. And we'll get them out to distributors so people can get this. And it's basically two screws, or it's two Allen screws, just to change out the stop and adjust the flipper. and by all accounts it's really made that shot much easier to make usually when you play it enough you get good at it, but you'll find tonight we'll probably see that shot get hit funny, not by me I've already hit it I think 3 or 4 times I noticed just from the last few times that I played the game that I'm like wow I'm actually hitting the shot now that was a struggle to hit that shot for me and now I can hit it So on the new digits. I like that. Oh, new digs. New digs. My eyes are really bad. I can barely read this large screen of text here. Oh, you got it. You're kidding me. Yeah, this machine is built awesome, man. It's heavy-duty quality, man. It's a tank. Yeah. Play it. Play it. All right. But the walk there and back is longer than that ball. The other thing is just a personal preference. I prefer regular rubber on my games, not the newfangled fancy stuff. What kind of rubber does Inga prefer, though? Well, Inga definitely prefers old-school rubber. And I believe this game has that. I know we put that on the X-Bow games. I just think it shoots better, personally. especially for that upper flipper I think you get a little bit of grip on the ball and it just plays better again it's probably not true it's probably like a placebo a psychological thing and it makes sense exactly Zach get off my lawn with this damn silicone stuff regular rubber worked on pinball machines for 50 years it works for me it's what I prefer the silicone rubber does have the lower surface energy So there you go. And you need that extra energy to get the bounce off that flipper. And the game in my office, I put regular rubber on right away. I just prefer the feel of it. Makes sense to me. So they're talking about the weight of Oktoberfest. Do you know what Oktoberfest weighs in at? 300. 300 pounds? Okay. It's a very heavy game, and I'm not really looking forward to the fact that I have to help you guys move it back into my car. Yeah, so we're packing this game up, and it's going back with Josh tonight because it's got to go to the Amtron Fest on Wednesday. That being said, myself and Steve Beattie, we've moved so many machines recently. We're happy to do that for you there, Josh. Well, with your new setup, it's nice that it's literally five feet to get to the car. Oh, yeah. If it was in the basement, Josh, I would have just bought this Oktoberfest off you guys. so we didn't have to move it back out of the basement. We moved it out of there once. So it's not a light machine. And you can tell right away by trying to give the machine a nudge, it's not something that you're going to manhandle around. It's got some... All right, you better call me tomorrow. Well, we do use Churchill cabinets, which is what Williams used back in the day. They're really well-built cabinets. Right. We didn't cheap out on that. And there's so much in this game. It's between the wire forms and that huge metal ramp and the motors. It puts a lot of weight in the game. So, here we go. Hey, you two. That was a nice sound effect of a can opening up there. So, favorite modes, favorite modes. Mine is the dog going down the slide. Because I love when Inga goes, Oh, look at the poor heena dog. He's so scared to go down. I love that. Some people without souls don't like Serena, though. Really? Yeah. They have no souls. Welcome back, Josh. Josh, did you just attend on that? What happened there? He's sitting too close. He's got crummy. I think Dwight Sullivan was here and turned off my ball. I'm rubbing off on you, Josh. Juggler is still selectable multiple times, so that's not a problem if you are a man that enjoys the two-ball multiball. Josh was talking earlier, he advises stacking that with other modes. Right. It's the grip on the ball there. Well, I think the thing with juggling is it just doesn't score a ton of points unless you get through it and get to the add-a-ball. Right. By itself, nothing. But if you stack it with one of the food modes, one of the food stands, especially the second or fourth food stand, that's when it can really kind of pay off. You've got that food stand going. That's when I'll say, ooh, let me throw juggling on here to get more pops. Right, right. The second food stand is all about the pops, and the fourth one is all switches. So it's a classic frenzy. To me, that's when I'll look to use Junk Lunch. In your mind, as we hear rumors of a third pin in the works, where do you see Oktoberfest right now? Is it coming to the kind of sunset of code? Is it something that you'll revisit periodically? Where is the passion behind this project with yourself and Joe Schober? Well, it's funny. Joe Balcer came in today because he saw we announced that the code release was now official. He wanted a copy so he could load it on his machine at home. And he said, so are you done? I said, well, we're done for right now. Done for now. We're not done. Okay, cool. Hey, I'm sure some things will crop up that we just won't be happy with. I don't get to play the game, just play the game. This is rare for me to actually just play the game. Yeah, I can tell you. It doesn't seem like you've been playing very often. And so when I play. With your nine million points score. When I play, if I actually play and not be focusing on what I'm working on, then I see things. And I know she oversees things. And Joe's wife, Julie, is one of our best QA testers. Yes. And she has a very critical eye for things that aren't right in the game. Okay. So from that standpoint, she's very good at testing. But there's still some stuff we want to get in there. Absolutely. I think with this release, we've gotten a lot of this stuff that's been on our list. We finally got to, whether it's upgrading animations. I guess you'll start to find that with my games. When the match sequence goes in, you know we're close to where we want it to be. That makes sense. Because it's sort of like way down my list of priorities. You're like, where's the match sequence? I'm like, we'll get to it. But it's in there, so we'll find out in a minute if it's turned on. If not, we'll turn it on for the next game. No, it's good. I always like a free game in the studio. Quick shout-out to Lloyd Olsen, as does Bill Yates. Thanks for dropping in this week, Lloyd. Always good to hear from you. Is there a monkey on the next game? My goal is for there to be a monkey on the next game. He's in this game in a few places. He's in the match sequence. If you watch carefully during Duck Hunt, you'll occasionally see him popping up out of the water. There a stuffed version of the monkey that Inga holds at the beginning of Ring Toss He in the bumper cars as well as he is on the back glass If you look carefully you will find him high above October Fest Right. You know, Ken's just going for the wiener dog. And Lloyd, I couldn't agree more. You know, everybody should choose the rubber that feels good to them. It's an important, you know, message in life. So I prefer old school. But, you know, if you like the new stuff, you know, it's your machine. Do what you want with it. Okay, so if you see, Ken just stole the balls that I put into the barrel because you can steal the beer barrel locks. That is a setting you can control whether or not they carry between games. So I think I had one in there, too, so I might have loaded one. Maybe you loaded one and he could steal anybody's. Okay. So if there's one in there, then you'd have to have gotten the second block to be able to then lock it. But you don't have to physically do the locking. Gotcha. So he's not going to crush that because, you know, he can do anything with this multiball. Yep. Big points. Big points. Now, the key to the multiball is if you can get it back in the barrel, that's when it can really pay off. What you want to do is not do what he just did. Lucky for us. I see. I can't see the scores from here, but I have no idea what the scores are, not that it matters. Yeah, I can't. It's hard to tell. Yes, I think at least two of us put the ball in. I know I had a couple go in and come through because I hadn't earned the additional locks needed. So if there's one in there, you have to at least have gotten your second lock and then lock it. You have to have earned your, at least spell pro three times to then steal ball. Here we go. Listerina dog. Listerina dog. So one of the animation changes you can see here is the new clock in the upper right. Previously it was sort of these spinning blocks. We were kind of originally going for a little bit more of a full screen out of Cuckoo Clock. Okay, yeah, yeah. And then that didn't really work out, so we switched to this, which I'm much happier with. Our sound guy had already put in the Cuckoo Bird at the 10-second warning, so it worked well to tie that together. So you'll keep an eye. You'll see that Cuckoo pop out. And then we have that ring behind there to make it real clear when it goes red that you know you're running low on time. Sure, yeah. Good stuff. Who do we got here? I just heard the call out. You confused the anxious vener. I can't see what players up here. I think so. Looks like you got best ball champ. So that's the single best ball award. That was something that Joe Schober wanted to add in. Sometimes you have that just great, great ball. So we kind of capture that and you have that one time. What are you going to put in there? J-E-K. What's that? J-E-K. J-E-K? J-E-K. There you go. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Of course, J-E-K is frequently seen on machines, since it was one of the old default scores back, I think, in the Williams days. By the way, you can actually use the extra button to move down through the list. Oh, you hear that, Ken? Player one. That's me. That's me. Whee! Does it reset all the high scores? I think so. A player's first. Oh. All right, so now you heard me. Damn. All right, so let's go to seven. and turn on match. I know, my feelings. Turn on match? Is extra ball? Is that disabled too? Let me check that. Tiki Pinball, thanks for 100 bits, bud. I love Tiki Pinball. For those of you that don't know what's going on, we are streaming Oktoberfest here in October as we close out October with Dan, the world's strongest sales and marketing manager at American Pinball, and then the gentleman up on the machine right now, Josh Kugler, who coded this game with Josh Ober. Good times. Steve Biggie's all the way down at the end of the action there. We've got our little anchor desk going on here in Studio C. Oh, there, yeah. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. The clock is a nice touch, says Tuna Delight. What's up, Tuna Delight? Welcome back in. For those of you that are new to the stream, thanks for coming on in. We stream the newest games from Flip N Out Pinball, Zach and the Cole Many, who are owners there. And they come into the studio, we stream them, we bring in industry guests to talk about their games, and then we kind of rotate out every single week. We thought it was appropriate to get Oktoberfest in here because of the code updates, animation updates, music updates. The machine's kind of got a little mini overhaul as of late. For those of you that didn't get a chance to play it at Chicagoland Pinball Expo, we're hoping to kind of display some of that to you now. And if you want to get an Oktoberfest, you can contact Zach at Flip N Out Pinball at area code 847-778-4876 or Zach at FlippinOutPinball.com. He'll be happy to facilitate your order, so to speak. Sure would. So what else is going on at American Pinball, Dan? What else can you share? We had an infestation of elves. Elves? Yes. Elves. Does that mean you're having a Christmas pin come out next? Okay. I didn't know. I didn't know if that was a teaser. Was it some car keys? No, you know. Like elf on a shelf? Yeah. I keep getting yelled at because I inadvertently put teasers out there that aren't really teasers. So you had taken a picture of some car keys. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I had caught some wildfire online with speculation of the next release. Yeah. I had my Punisher spell on my keychain, and it blew up that we were doing the Punisher. And then people were like, oh, no, it's keys. And trying to find out what the keys unlocked. Oh, yeah. Exactly. So, meanwhile, Dan thinks he's being funny with that, but his life is now in jeopardy. We've already heard from one person who said, if your next game's not Punisher, somebody's going to die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay, that would be Dan who put that up there. Dan will be giving his life for American Pinball. Right. So you've got to be careful. You don't dance thinking, oh, it'll be fun. It'll just be a distraction. And people want to see things that aren't there. What's up, Birdo Drink One? So what's up, fellas? Popped beers. Ready to watch. Love the new music now. Absolutely. And yeah, and then Kyle just talked about the Matrix. No, no, Brian. It was not a Matrix tease. It was binary code. Binary code. Ones and zeros. But I noticed that the ones and zeros spelled out Matrix. So that was fun. Oh, yeah. I heard something about matrix. I don't even know what this is. So what do you do post now, Dan? What is that? Lloyd says, I'll miss Dan. And he sacrifices his life for the greater good of the American pinball. You know, what's good for pinball is good for me even if it kills me. So there was a post that was uploaded on the American pinball Facebook page that had binary code and sequence that kind of reminded you a little bit of the matrix, like trickling code. Yeah, the mayor may not have been intentional. No, but... So then there was some speculation out there that, hey, American Pinball... Yeah, that would be a good thing for Matrix. I agree. That would be a good thing. I also agree. I would enjoy working on that. I would, too. I'm going to go over that. I'm going to pause for beverage identification. I'm going to go grab something. Anybody need anything? Need another one there? I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. You good? I am good for now, man. Appreciate it. Beverage identification. Oh, skill shot. Yeah, the music is a lot more appropriate. It's great. The rock goes where the rock goes. I'm noticing, I don't have a lot of time on the game, but I'm noticing a difference for sure. At Expo, I had people who've been playing it a while say it feels like an entirely new game. It does. It really does. It shoots better. The light show is different. The rule sets are really fine. It's funny that you can make a game shoot better. Well, I mean, you have the little physical change. But, I mean, just code-wise, it's great. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Josh is, as much as I hate to admit it, masterful at his job. As much as you hate to admit it. Oh, that's great, man. Yeah, I've been into you so many times at Expo, man. You were everywhere. You weren't just hanging out at American Pinball. You know, you weren't just hanging out by the games. You were all over it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was in multiple places. You were having fun, man. I was having a great time. Yeah, it was a good Expo. Yeah, it was a great Expo. And you know what? The factory tours were great. We loved having everybody come through. That's awesome. Yeah, Cosner was talking about his time there, and he had a blast. He's really thankful for that. Oh, yeah. I mean, the door's always open to our distribution and players. It's always our pleasure to show people. Very cool. I need to get out there. I've never been to American Pinball, man. And you guys are 20, 30 minutes from here, right? You could miss a rock. Yeah, that's awesome. What are you doing tomorrow? I'm working. Quit and come back. What are you doing tomorrow? What are you doing tomorrow, Dan? Pretending to work. Pretending to work? Yeah. I can manage that. What town are you guys in? In Streamwood. Streamwood. Okay. Do you want to come back on Saturday? I could, like, run and have lunch if you guys are that close. No, no, we'll figure something out. We'll talk. I need to get out there and check it out for sure. we've done quite an amazing feat in cramming an actual full line into a room about the size of the studio here. That's wild. So when's the next building coming to place here? Are you guys moving stuff yet? Stuff is going over there. The people are over there getting stuff ready. First quarter, 2020 maybe? We're hoping by the end of this year to start moving. Okay. Give all the chicken. I love the music, man. There's a lot more variety. This game just puts me in a good mood. It makes me want to have a beverage. Very much so. It is a game that makes you feel happy when you play. Thank you, Dr. Mark. We actually brought in, We have three different accordion players that we brought in to get us music. And we had a clarinet guy and a guitar player. Okay. We have quite a few musicians brought in to the studio to really bring it to life. This is all original music. This isn't like you didn't go on a website and buy some license-free stuff for your tomorrow. No, it's all original music. Actually, that's not true. There's a few traditional songs in there, obviously. And I know some folks would have liked to have seen some of the common sing-along songs, but most of those are licensed, and that's not a budgetary feasibility. But I think Matt Kern, our sound guy, really brought it all together at this point with just great variety of music. One of the things that happened early on was Joe Balter sort of had this idea of Oktoberfest meets heavy metal. So we did a couple of those tracks and a couple of traditional, and it works. Everybody loves the quantitative traditional and the old-fashioned. The mixture works. So we try to have a little bit of the heavy metal still in there, primarily in modes like this. You're in a roller coaster mode or multiball. That's sort of where you get it. I don't mind the heavy metal, but I do like hearing more of what I think I would hear at Oktoberfest if I was visiting in Oktoberfest. It's the carnival feel. You want that lively, upbeat kind of a feel. If you want heavy metal, there's some rock band things out there. Yeah, right, right. Getting caught up on chat here. Visit American Pinball when you can. They love what they do, and it shows. There's Lloyd. Dr. John says, studio looks so homely now. Yeah, thanks. Nice job again. The bar would even double as a change table for Bill V. No, Bill's not changing diapers here. That's not going to happen. I love Bill. He's not changing diapers in Studio C. Yeah, this music. It's going to be stuck in my head now. There's four main tracks when you're not in a mode that it alternates through across balls and players. And they each sort of have a little bit of a distinctive feel to them. So it gives you the variety. and then there's actually five or six entry points into each one. So when we cut back to it, we're not always starting back at the beginning of the loop but at an appropriate measure within the composition. So that really helps give it that variety where you don't feel like it's the same thing over and over again. And a lot of this was in the latest update. Yeah, so it's been introduced over the last few updates. Okay. So this update introduced at least one new track, maybe two in this. I think one new main track and I think two of the other tracks changed in some of the modes, and we did some shuffling. So the beer barrel multiball now has a more beer barrel tune. It used to have one of the heavy metal tunes, but now it's in this one. I don't know if I remember. This is actually the shooter for one of them. This one's been released. Firecat Redeye, thank you, man. Lord Helmet, thank you. Lord Helmet, look at all this. Thanks, guys. Thank you, guys. We need to do like the wave in here or something, man. How do we do that? Thanks, guys. Good times. Haven't seen the tilt animation yet. I think it's on. Maybe not. We'll have to check if the boom-boom's on or not. I'll give it a good shake next time. If it was on at the show, because this came from Expo, right? Yeah, this came from Expo. I assume they had it there because they're from these people at Expo, right? Yeah, right, exactly. Did you put a little piece of foam in there? Thanks, Dave, and thanks to Double Dave's. When we first showed the game last year at Expo, it was probably 70% heavy metal or rock. I don't even call it heavy metal. It was 70% rock, 30% traditional. Right. And now it's like 75% traditional and 20%, 25% of the rock. It's really more in the appropriate times. Right. Like I said, it's mostly the multi-balls is typically where you're going to get it, where you want that higher energy and intensity. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, guys, seriously, I'm humbled. I can't thank you guys enough for the bits. Lord Helmet and Fire Cat and Red Eye going head-to-head tonight. Southwest Pennsylvania Pinhead, thank you. And then everybody else with Dave Fogger and David Dennis just coming in with a little cleaning effort. I appreciate it, guys. Any questions for Josh or Dan here from American Pinball? Why we're having them? Because we have them for about another hour. It's not going to be a late stream tonight. You got me for about 10, 15 more minutes. 10 or 15 more minutes? I got a long drive to deepest, darkest suburbia. Where do you have to go? Woodridge. Oh, Josh has a longer drive than you. No. Not by any purpose. No, you're just going to take 80? I mean, you'll get to Woodridge in 35 minutes. I'm like an hour and 15 from home. What are you talking about? Because I have to drive through Woodridge. You're just a lightweight. Yeah, I am. Sounds like we got you to nine. We just freed up about 25 minutes of time. Dan needs his beauty sleep. He also gets in a lot earlier than I do. And he had a rough Bears game yesterday. And I get that old man wake up at five in the morning thing. You like waking up to see the sunrise? No, I just wake up. Do you wake up during the middle of the night? No. Just the other old man thing. Not yet. Not yet. You got enough slack there on your phones? Yeah, I'm good. You good? I'm good. Good times. Well, I appreciate that you came out. So, for not have met you until recently, I've seen more of you than anybody else in pinball over the last two weeks. That's because I'm just good on that. Yeah, you are. You know? You're the world's most strong sales and marketing manager. The world's strongest sales and marketing manager at American Pinball. And now you've got, like, you're the most frequently. visiting sales marketing manager for many people. Visible. Visible, visiting, yes. Go blue. Persistent and annoying. Dr. John, thanks for the bit, Mark. Excellent segments today from our special Wimbledon Pinball Podcast correspondents. So I would assume that episode will be up tomorrow or Wednesday. I highly recommend tuning in to hear the return of Bill Webb live in the studio. Thank goodness. How you going there, Steve? Oh, good. Good times. That's twice in a row that I've opened Ken's basement door. I'm trying to go down to Studio A. Yeah, Studio A is closed. Studio A is closed. Closed for business. Closed for business. What else is going on in pinball? Did you get a chance to play any machines at Expo that maybe you didn't think that you would have played? I got some time on Crawl. Crawl. Yeah, how was that? That was good times. It was a good time. It wasn't a great game, but it was, you know. You're playing a legendary game. Yeah. You don't have a bad time. Check it off the bucket list. Did you get it to the lower play field? No. No. No. You see how I play. You're doing something up there today, Dan. I think we've got to add Dan to our streaming because we don't play very well either. Yeah. Yeah. Dan, you are welcome for pinball nights and streaming nights. Anytime you like. I will take you up on those offers. Hey, Josh, A-Cube 631 says you've got to make a shot. We're being told you've got to make a shot here. A-Cube 631. Let's see if he just riled him up a little. I like that he can't hear me unless I shout, because this means when Bill Webb's playing pinball, we can say his name. Oh, that's a good point. Let's test this. Bill. Hey, Josh, can you hear me? Hey, Josh, can you hear me at all? This game's cranked in the studio, though, too. Josh, behind you. Anything you want to say to Josh about him actually hearing it? It's definitely different out here, for sure. Hello, hello. Anything you ever wanted to say to Josh to the back of his face? I usually say it to his face. Man, that was a long ball there, Coob. Hey, nice job there. J.Crew, lighten it up. Not really, but we'll get there. You are too good for us. I have to do some lock stealing. What do we have in the keg right now? I think just one. Okay. Just one. Because I think that's how I was able to kind of get a little bit of score going, is I was able to get that third lock at that keg in that first game. Well, then obviously the key is to try and get it stacked with something good. Right. Food, frenzy, bumper cars. Easier said than done. So let me ask you this, Josh. I mean, for somebody that just gets in the game that's into scoring, I mean, what's the first three things that you would do in order to get a score that's respectable? So hang on. I tried to ask Josh this before we started the stream. He's like, well, I'm not going to tell you now. I was giving all sorts of great tips to a new up there playing. Keep the ball alive and shoot for the flashing touch. I did hear him say that. Josh did want to. He's like, keep the ball alive. Little does he know, we don't have a chance to get a job score here. But I thought that was pretty good. It makes sense. Well, again, the most important thing is just to learn to play modes you have signs for. It's obviously helpful getting your scores up. There's certainly a mode like food frenzy is a fun mode. It'll score a lot of points together in scores. What's a little bit different about food frenzy from your typical all switches score is that each unique switch you hit is what increases the value. Okay. So rather than just hitting the spinner to get points, you're far better off trying to sweep the Oktoberfest standoff. I did not know that. And hit post a few times, and then you'll go for the spinner. Yeah, because that's like 12 or 13 targets right there. So you get a few shots at those, a few other things, it'll make the scoring much higher. Good job, Dan. Pretzels. Every now and then they don't stop. Yeah, we should have the pretzels and cheese dip going, the Oktoberfest beer going today. What are you guys doing tomorrow? Go blue. It's a food frenzy. That's my favorite mode because you can just hit anything. That's where I'm going next. A lot of games have that mode of people, you know. It's a great one to set up for when you have multiball ready to go. Oh, yeah, I can do that for sure, for sure. If you can get a couple of signs on that, a couple of signs with a multiball, it can really, you know, you can really cash out. Getting my steps in. So we're at 8 o'clock. We have about an hour to go, so I think we play another game or two of Oktoberfest. Did you guys want to take? Well, I know you've got to leave. Yeah, I know. All right. Did you want to take a call or two tonight, Josh? Sure. Absolutely. All right. Cool. And A. Coog, was that make a shot or take a shot? I can't quite make that out. You're capable of doing both here at Studio C. I'm just trying to find out what I'm being encouraged to do here. Nothing wrong with that. So Inga's not, like, ridiculously out of line with her call-outs, but the occasional call-out she sneaks in does kind of catch you a little by surprise. That's what I like about that. Yeah. Did you catch the... She's not even... Inga could fit all that in her mouth. No, I didn't catch that. That's one of those lines. You're so anxious. That's a line. It's only dirty if you understand what it is. So a kid's not going to get that joke. True, true. So this week in pinball has subbed tier one for five months. So, Jeff, at TWiP, thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Akoog631 is saying he wants you to make a shot and take a shot. Okay, here we go. So, you ready? Well, I got a refill. Hold on here, hold on. Hey, you're a guest. I'm happy to refill your drink. I got it. You got it? All right. That's the J. Koog stash over there. What are you drinking tonight there, Chuck? I don't even know what this is. This is obviously tequila. Josh is the tequila drinker. This is Espolar. Espolar. It's a shooting tequila, even though I'm not really shooting it. It's supposed to be. Shooting, sipping, whatever it takes. I'm drinking it out of a red solo cup to be in the October fest. Absolutely. Now, is that your shot that you'll be taking? That's probably more than a shot. The TNT. Make him thirsty. Thank you for the 300-bit. Josh Cougar with the shots for bits, everybody. You heard it here on the Flippin' On Streaming Network. New October post. Yes, I cover for you. Hey, Neff Arcade, what's up? I'll be sleeping on your couch every day. Under the bar. We can make this pretty nice here. Neff Arcade. I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed your appearance on Eclectic Gamers Podcast with Dennis Creasle and Tony. That was a great podcast. At some point, I'd like to meet Mr. Knapp. So cheers to you. Yeah, you're right. When you're at the game, you can't hear anything going on back here. That's perfect. That's awesome. Because I have no problem ball-busting from the upper deck here. Yeah. It kind of lets you focus a little more, too, you know? Yeah. so you'll notice on the player cam the pin quest player cam brought to you by pin quest and pin quest.com you're seeing the back of the monitor that we're looking at for chat so what'll end up happening is we'll have a backdrop that'll be added at some point most likely some type of a green screen to take away that pitiful view of the back of a television monitor a uh a camera that's pointing our way an unfinished floor because we're in the construction phase of studio to see. It's a part in our dust, but I enjoy sharing the evolution of the studio with everybody. And literally, the bits and the subs have really helped to make it all possible, so I'll go back into upgrading for you guys. So, literally every single bit. Thank you. Hey, were you able to get a little tilt action going there, or no? Did you check? Is the plumb bob in there? Tilt bob? Because if it's not, you're about to see me put up some pretty good scores. I'm going to walk this game back to the bar. Hey, you know. It's in there? It's in there. All right. Good. It's a little generous. A little generous. That's okay. In the Oktoberfest spirit, Lloyd says, Oktoberfest is a lot of fun. Will the next American Pinball game be like it or a little tougher adventure like Houdini? Asked Lloyd Olsen. I'm happy to answer Lloyd's question. I don't know if you guys noticed that when Doug caught, because we did have family-friendly turnoff at one point, and Doug exploded and splattered blood and feathers onto the binoculars. I met that on the screen. Nicely done. If you picked up on that. I think our next game, I think, falls as far as difficulty level, probably in between the two. It's not as crazy a layout as Oktoberfest is as far as being completely unconventional as it is. It's a little more fan-like than Oktoberfest is, a little more similar to Houdini in that. But it's definitely a game with a lot of flow to it, just at least based on the first Whitewood that I've been able to shoot. So our goal is for each game to be different. So it will not be like Houdini and it will not be like Oktoberfest. It will be its own unique thing, both in the way it shoots and the rules will be radically different than either of the first two games were. So we spent a lot of time working on that and just conceptually getting it to where each game is unique and different, that it's not like you're going to have them in your lineup and say, oh, wow, these are all the same game. And anyone who's really looked at Joe Ballster's games over the years knows that his layouts are always different. They're all over the place, whether it's Apollo 13 versus South Park. You can't get more polar opposite than those two games. And so I think people are going to really like the next one when it comes out. Good to hear that. I'm glad you handled that. David O'Binnick is here. Yes. Well, what is that next one that's coming up? You know, don't you have it? Right. Hey, John. I'm going to give you an exclusive right now. Our next game is game three. Oh. We heard it here on the football channel. TMI. It was pretty funny. Joe Schober was in town for Expo. It was really the first time we put some real thought, a real effort into a game three. because we had just finished up this Oktoberfest release. And so we got very much in the habit of just calling it game three because we didn't want to lose track of that. We were very careful with Expo. We were out and about town. We were at Pac-Man Entertainment for dinner. There was a bunch of people there. Old Level 257. Old Level 257. And Martin A. from Pinball News was there, so it was good that we were being careful not to say anything I'm sure Martin would have loved this coupon the next game. Yeah, how about another game, and then we'll go to a little after-hours. I got to. We're going to Antonio Cruz? That close drive? Yeah. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I'll walk out. Hey, Taco Pizza. I've been wanting for three months. I love Taco Pizza. It's my favorite Twitch name. Now I'm hungry. Let's say goodbye to Dan from American Pinball, the world's strongest sales and marketing manager currently residing at American Pinball. Always good to have him. I'm going to walk him out of the studio. Because he's afraid I'll steal things. Well, no, I'm not afraid of that. I've got an October Pest that's collateral, if anything. That's true. We're loading that up with Josh tonight. Yeah, no worries. I just wanted to show you out. I mean, I could open the garage and let you go off into your abyss that way. Yeah, no, I'll take the walkout. I'll be very gentlemanly of you. As for me hosting you tonight, I'm going to walk you to the door. Bad neighborhood. Yeah, that's true. That's good. That being said, if you guys want to start a game or if you guys just want to keep chat rolling for like two minutes. Yeah, let's roll for a couple minutes. Yeah, let's go. Let's roll. Let's go, Dan. Right. Josh, we'll see you bright and early in the morning. Well, maybe not bright and early. Maybe not bright and early. I'm never bright and early. That's not it. I'm typically the last one in and the last one out. All right, so any questions while we're waiting for these guys to come back? Deal can salt shake us, okay? There's got to be a story behind that. So I guess just while we're waiting for those guys to come back, other things that went into this update was we redid all the Corkscrew animations with the roller coaster, just the locking sequence. The original one was something we literally threw together minutes before the first reveal at Expo, and it had been in there ever since until we finally replaced them with some actually good animations by Ishra Nisi, our animator. So that's the same thing with the, you'll notice the mystery award, the duck. That was, again, also almost glorified storyboards that were in the game until we finally actually did those. As far as our next show, Lloyd, I'm not sure where we're next. I'm not sure if we're at Louisville or Cincinnati. I'm not sure which of those shows we might be doing. I know I'm not scheduled to be at anything probably until TPF. I need to stay in the office and focus. Crunch time at the office. So, yeah, next month, two, three, four months, it's time to head down and get cranking. The show circuit, it's really big in the spring through the summer. I did, I think, six shows this year. Yeah, it's kind of coming to a close here. And I love to get out to the shows. I love to meet people and talk with players and get feedback on the game. I like to see what else is going on. But at some point it's like, okay, now I need to get to be able to focus and get some stuff done. Awesome, man. Replay it? Yeah. Replay it? Sure. Do it up. Do you want to go in reverse order? Sure. Go ahead. You're working out. Yeah, might as well. As long as I'm still number two, I won't lose track of who I am. Hey, you got a maid there, Josh. I haven't had much sleep for two weeks. I'm going to get punchier by the time tonight. Uh-oh. I hope to see you there, Lloyd. I always appreciate Lloyd. He's always good about coming by and wiping down the glass on our games. We're usually pretty good at that at shows, but not surprisingly, often I arrive at the show early to go do that, and Lloyd's already down there clearing glass off pretty much everybody's games as he tries to help out as best he can. Knocking it out, Lloyd. Oh, we got ball save on? All right. All right. Lloyd and I had a rough beginning to our relationship. When I first started collecting machines, I posted on Wreck Games Pinball. I was looking for photos of a Twilight Zone teardown because I was putting mine back together. And Lloyd posted, you should take your own photos. And that pretty much killed the thread because when Lloyd spoke on Wreck Games Pinball, That was pretty much it. I emailed Lloyd. I said, Lloyd, I said, I didn't think this game was put together properly by the last person. That's why I was looking for photos. And he's like, oh, you know, I never really thought about that. All right. And I was able to get it. I reminded Lloyd of that a few years ago. And I said, but, you know, I forgave him. He forgave me. We've been friends ever since. That's funny, man. But, yes, taking your own photos is certainly the way to do it. But if you don't have the photos. Right. There was stuff on this game. Or a hacked up game. I was taking it apart. I'm thinking, there's no way this is right. Yeah, sure. Sure, sure, sure. And you crowds have TV up in the glass. Great to meet you. It's hot. See, right there you can see. So here's the two of the new animations just went by right there. First we had the mystery and then the ball rock. Oh, ball save. Ball save. Ball save. Can he make it back? Can he make it back? Can he make it back? Oh, he's good enough. No more beer, no more race. I will give Ken credit for... I'm going to restart this. That was probably not the best way to do that. I would have just gone into service mode. The main thing I'm not happy with still is our boot time is incredibly slow. I was doing that intentionally because I have to pay some bills here. Hey, we're back. Good morning, man. As we go into the Monday night pinball studio. So, Josh, on a scale from 1 to 10, where would you say this pin is at where you want it to be? Is it at a 10 right now? No, because I don't know it'll ever be at a 10. I'm not sure I'll ever be where I feel it's perfect and great and complete. Okay. There's still things that I'm not 100% happy with, and I know Joe Shover was here. He would say the same. There's still some things we'd like to tweak, and that'll happen at some point. Sure. Again, the more we play it, the more other people play it. You know, we listen to feedback. We listen to ideas. There's some things we'll tweak. Just like in this one, we tweaked some scoring to get the balance right. we talk all the time about, are we creating something in a game in which people don't want to play it? In fact, we have the calorie coma mode. When I first coded that up and Joe played, I wasn't happy with it. I could tell it just wasn't right. I didn't say that to Joe. I said, here, give it a try and let me know what you think. And I came in the next morning and had a message waiting for me that said something along the lines of, I would do everything possible to avoid playing this mode. And I'm like, okay. I knew it wasn't Now we know. I knew it wasn't good, but I didn't think it was that bad. Right, right, sure. I'd already kind of rewritten the rules for it and changed it to get it where we wanted it to be, and it was just not right. I mean, sometimes you come up with an idea, you write it up, you code it, and then you play it, and you're like, you know, this just sucks. This is not there. And then the reverse could happen. This just sucks. Yep. The last call is the opposite of that. And Schober was not crazy about it when I described the mode to him and told him how it would work. He thought, it's a dumb, that's not going to work. And the first time he, when he got his game, he was playing it. He had a couple of friends over, and somebody got that mode. And the next day I had a message waiting from him that was basically, I was completely wrong. It's great. Oh, hey, cool. There you go. Once he played it and saw how people reacted to it, you know, I'm very comfortable messing with the flipper on the player. In last call, you have to spell sober hitting the various stand-up targets. It's after you've drained. It's after you've drained the ball. So my attitude is you've drained the ball. I'm giving you a chance to get your ball back, so therefore I can screw around with you. Because if you don't like it, just don't play it. You're already trained. So in that mode, you have to spell sober, which turned out that we had enough stand-up targets with letters that there's actually sober there. Sober, shover, rhymes. And, in fact, most of the letters have more than one that you can shoot, which makes it easier. But the flippers start off a little delayed because your reflexes are slowed. And then as you start to spell sober and prove you're sober, then the delay is there. And the characters on screen are a set of five very attractive people. They're a little bit out of focus, but very attractive. Of course, as you start to spell sober and you sober up, you realize that maybe they're not quite as attractive as you thought. Oh, no. One of my favorite voice calls in the game is Otto at some point. There's some line he says something about, maybe we should go back to my – Oh, my God. It's like the Willie Nelson song where he's like, I went to bed with a 10 at 2 and woke up with a 2 at 10. 2 at 10. Like, hey-o, hey-o. I used to joke. We got to bed a little bit. Great. That's good times. All right. So my mistake. I messed everything up. Let's just go back in regular order. We'll start with Steve. We'll do a three-player game. We'll close this game out, and then we'll take some calls, and then we're going to load this Oktoberfest into the J. Coog Mobile, which I'm sure is financed by American Pinball, your company car. Yeah, right. Right? Hopefully it's going to fit. I have this huge cooler in there from tailgating. There's still some beer in there, actually, that's cold, which means. Really? What do you have in there? to Molson and some IPA. Oh, he's got an IPA. I'm an IPA guy. Of some sort from Michigan, a buddy of mine brought. You're welcome to when we go take a few out of my store. We need to make some room for the game and swap some IPAs. Yeah, right. So hopefully the game is going to fit with this giant-ass cooler that's in there. But we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. And if we need to, I can hang out to the Octoberfest for a couple more weeks. Yep, same here. Or I'll drink the IPAs. It's a win-win for me tonight, guys. It makes no problem. Remind me where you guys are again. It looks different and not Studio B. So we're in Studio C tonight, which is still in St. Charles, but it's the game room conversion that I, studio conversion that I've been working on for the past couple months. It's definitely a nicer setup. Yeah, thanks. It's easier just to play. There's actually this really big screen in front of us so you can actually see the chat. I felt like I was confined into a basement dungeon in our other stream. So I appreciate your patience there. This is a little more roomy. I guess I have to get good at looking at you with the screen rather than turning. I know, I know. Well if we were seasoned professionals though Josh we would be able to play to the camera and casually convert Exactly And then play to the camera I doing the same thing Comfy for the guests. Absolutely. Studio C for Cooler. Studio C is for Cromwell. My last name is Cromwell, English last name. And it is Cooler, though. I like it up here, man. Josh, I believe we'll be at Intron Fest on Wednesday. Hey, Josh, will you be at the Intron Fest Wednesday? Yes. Ooh, a little bit of a short ball. Hey, ask more questions. Then you have a chance. Yeah, right? Hey, Josh! Oh, did you drink? That's my distraction. That's my tactic. Yeah, I'll be at Intron Fest. I think we'll have a couple of games set up there for it. It's more for the intron customers and vendors to show off the new facility. As Dan said, we'll do more of a pinball-oriented, pinball fan open house. If we have everything set up over there. I think when people come, most people really enjoy getting a chance to see the assembly line. Whether it's on Saturday and not in action. And just to kind of see that, I think is what part of the fun is when we do an open house, as well as to give people a chance to play our games. We've done some of the open houses typically during testing periods, where we want to play on the games and get some testing to see what's working. We're a smaller company, so we don't get as much play on our games each day in the office as I would like. We have a few players, but the more the better all the time. Well, Josh, if you ever need testing, I work right down the road. I'm going to play for an hour on lunch. All right, no problem. Variably, there's meat for that. I need to get out there, though. I've yet to see American pinball. Well, you've got to come before they close it to the new location. Right. Yeah, Pelton's a little bit further. We're not exactly killing it here, guys. No, this is starting off rough here. We'll see. Can't wait to see the new place, says Lloyd. Well, I think we should play one more game after this, and we should play one-handed. I could not agree with you more. I will save this for that game. We'll play a one-handed game. One of the nice features, you know, early on, we had the one-handed in there, but you had to turn it on through settings. We realized it's going to really prevent people from playing it on location. So the default now is just called Player Selected, where if you hold both of the right side buttons in before you start the game, it'll put it in one-handed play for everybody. So you can play the whole game that way. I love that mode because if I haven't convinced myself that I'm so piss-poor two-handed, I can absolutely convince myself of it with one hand. But sometimes I play better one-handed. Well, the Stein Race mode, people shy away from it, but it's actually, especially in this release, we've boosted up the scoring on it. Okay, good to know. It's a high-risk, high-reward mode, but the reward is there for it. You get a long ball save at the beginning. You get a ball save at the end. Perfect, perfect. And interesting, I was playing in a tournament or a league event, and somebody kept going for that Stein that boosts them more so because of the tilt warnings. The Stein also gives them tilt warnings. And this was a violent player, so he wanted those extra tilt warnings. But I give him credit. He then went for it, and with three signs, it was an incredibly lucrative mode. Oh, wow. And he played through it, and he crushed it, and he ended up winning because three signs on that mode. Dang. You know, if you're careful and you don't drain, even if he, at that point, by the time he would have drained, he would have already crushed everybody else. Awesome. Awesome. Need more pins. Studio Speed for Cooler. Yeah, we went over that, but he's like, cooler and Cromwell. Yeah, cooler Cromwell. C squared. C squared? I don't like that. Oh, C squared. C squared. I'm going to point that mic a little bit to the JQ. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a drift. He's got a drift. Coming in hot. All right. Let's see COVID blow this game out. Hey, PinQuest. What's up, my peach? What's up, Neil? What's up, Neil? Hey, man. Good to see you the other day. You ever saw Neil at Expo? Always, always good. The more Pin says he also had heard that it's comfy, so maybe it's C-cubed. There's going to be a bunch of... I don't know what the next one is. Is it C-quad? I don't know. Oh, hey, welcome back. Yeah, it wasn't that long. Ball saved. All right. Oh, my gosh. Dude, like there's a walking snake. It's the walk of shame. This game is schooling me. It knows steps in. Schooling me a little bit. So when you're playing one-handed mode, Josh, the flipper buttons, like your typical flipper position, that button one is your right flipper and then the bottom one is the left? Correct. Some people feel it should be sort of the other way. Yes, I always think it's reversed. But to me, your normal flipper is still your normal flipper finger. Okay. And the other becomes the other side. I find it helps a little bit early on to kind of keep that flipper up a little bit. Okay. Sort of helps to remind me of it. I also think it's important to put your hand like on top of the game or something so you're not. Okay. I'm always thinking like the top button should be the far left because it's close. I don't know. Right, no. But it messes me up. It's like I'm playing one-handed and I'm playing reverse flippers. So it's like I am so out of touch with what's going on. The other reason for that, too, is if you do it the other way, it makes it a little too easy for somebody to just play with both hands on one side of the game. That's true. It's a little bit harder to do that with the other. I still see people do it, but to me that's wimping out. You've got to do it. It's a wimping out. Play one-handed. Good times. Ideas, you're supposed to be holding a beer in your other hand. And we will be holding beers. Might have to hold a couple IPAs from a cooler that came out of Michigan recently. Ooh. Hey. Hey. Hey. Are they Michigan IPAs, or are they just... It's a Michigan bird. It's from Michigan. What's a Michigan? What's the Bell? No, Bell's is in Michigan. Where's Odell? Is that Colorado? Standard or Y? Licensed or unlicensed? What makes it different? Of course, I shouldn't ask, but I got to for a chat. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Josh, or Zach, I think that's an excellent question for Josh. Do you have time to call in? Need more pans? IPA? Is Odell's in Denver? I think it's Colorado. It is. Yeah. Okay. It's Colorado. I'm trying to remember. Oh, man. I do like Odell Brewing. And there was one last. There's one that comes out around wintertime. I forget what it was. Isolation, I think it's called? It's really good. Odell. From Odell. It's only seasonal. Yeah. It's like in the fall, winter. Nice. Tonight I'm drinking a Revolution Brewing Antihero. It's an IPA. Chicago-based, right? That's a good beer. That's a good beer. Colorado has a lot of good beers. We have a bunch of Colorado peeps in chat. Yeah, so we're just streaming this to Colorado right now, Neal. Yeah. We're doing all 50 states tonight. So this is the Colorado. Hey! Josh giving it a little ride. Give it a ride over there, Josh. That tilt is set pretty generously, huh? I was still warm before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still couldn't shave it. So my goal on every stream is to just not come in last place. Just don't come in last place. That's always a good philosophy. Don't embarrass yourself. I don't need it necessarily. Take the game, but... Yeah, Colorado has a bunch of breweries. Clue on game three. Yeah, clue on game three. Anything you'd share, Josh? Let's see. Game three. I have glasses. I'm on the play field. Let's see. Game three. What can I tell you about Game 3 that I won't get installed before? Probably nothing. That's why nothing I could say. Other than what I said before, which is the layout's kind of in between Houdini and Oktoberfest. It's a little bit more of a fan layout than Oktoberfest is, but certainly does not have overly tight shots as Houdini does. So it's got some nice flow to it. And I think it's going to be really well received by people when folks see it. I think Joe's really putting together a phenomenal layout, and I'm really happy with where the rules are. It's been probably more change to these rules in the process. Just through this point in time, I expect they'll continue to change. But we've had some really great dialogue around it, and I think we found a really nice balance to what we're doing with it. That's good stuff. Thanks for sharing, man. You know, I think that's a lot of information. I mean, not overly, but, I mean, we're in between a Houdini and an Oktoberfest. We'll get on a more fan layout. So I think, you know, well, it's certainly going to not be a controversial theme, as since that Oktoberfest was, as far as some people feel, and get less family-friendly. It is absolutely a family-friendly theme. So now we're on a family-friendly, fan layout theme. It'll be a theme of mass appeal. Mass appeal? More so than, let's say, either Houdini or Oktoberfest. Okay. I'm sure there'll be some people who it won't register with, but I think for most people, they'll be like, ooh, I want to see that. Cool. Cool. Very cool. Can you talk about game three in 2020? I would hope so, yes. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I would hope so. I would hope that it's not out next year. No doubt about it. Right now we're trying to get some of our engineer staff right now. This was a question that was asked earlier. It's actually wrapping up our first redemption game that we're getting ready to put out on test. So it's a non-pinball game. So that's something we're working for. That's kind of where the focus is right now. That's getting ready to go on test, and then more effort will be put towards game three. Just a little earlier with my flipper action on that one. Very cool. Our goal is for what I like to call... Excuse me. Excuse me too, John. By the way, so we just got to see our match sequence. so you guys get to see the monkey in our match sequence. I did see that. I like it. So that means the pin's done. Exactly. When you see the match sequence, you know we're getting close. And, of course, I'll probably screw that up in the next game. We'll have it in the first release. There you go. Because we'd like to get that in there sooner. But, you know, it's also sort of the last thing you see, and it was a great way to get the monkey. I knew I wanted to try and get the monkey in there again. Yeah. So that came together very nicely for us. Are we going to go one-handed mode and then a quick after hours? Yes, let's do one-handed. We'll break this puppy down. So to do that, you have to hold down the extra button, right? If you hold in both of the right buttons, before you start the game, a message will come up on screen, and it will tell us one-handed play. All right, let's see how this works. Got it, Ken? So our goal is to do timeless themes. Houdini's timeless. Oktoberfest is timeless. So anything you see us do, I think we'll fit into that category. I don't think there's any doubt we will do licensed themes at some point. The challenge with a licensed theme, I've talked about this before, is you lose control over your timeline because now you have a licensor who's going to want to approve everything you do. They're going to want to look at everything you do. So all of a sudden, things can take much longer than you think, and anyone who's followed the industry has seen this with games that you think are supposed to be the next game coming from a company, and then it's six months or a year or two years before it comes out because of those types of issues. And until we start having multiple games in progress, It's a little trickier for us to do licensed themes, but there's no doubt you will see licensed themes from us in the future. Oh. Yeah, that's fun. I really like that. Playing like you play two-handed, Ken. I got cocky and I took a sip. All right, Josh. Bring your drink up. Okay. Let's see. You better fill your drink up. You can't just bring it up. Bring your drink. Bring your drink. Bring your drink. Still, like, the flipper buttons seem like they should be reversed to me. So is the top? Yes, that is true. Top is right and bottom is left. Yes, it seems like top should be left to me and bottom should be right. Yeah. I wish there was a way in the settings you could change that. But it makes it extra. You know what I did is I contorted my fingers. Did you go like this? Like this, and I was playing this way, but then I got carpal tunnel instantly. Like, I'm not going to do that. That hurts. It is. All right, just told the wife about LTG's, and she's in charge of our weekend, so it's happening. Don't panic, flip. Sweet. No idea what LTG is. Did I miss a conversation, probably? I don't know what's going on. You were here the whole time. No, barely. Hey! Eat. Okay, this is where I messed up. Thank you for the 100 bits. It was Tennessee 467, but I was corrected on this. It's like Eaton Friday 67. It's something different. It's not Eaton Penicillin 467. Right. What's his name? I don't know what his call tag is. I'm like Attention Forward 67. Something Forward 1967. No, no, but it's not. What's an ETN? Eaton Fried 67. I need the phonetic spelling. But thank you for the 100 bits. I do this every single week. Top is always the right flipper, so you can't change it. Right now, I know that, but if I'm playing with two flippers, we know that. I feel like Columbia. Top should be left in the bottom three, right? Right. Live in the dream brewery. So you know what it was? It was Odell Isolation Ale. Eaton Ford. Eaton Ford. Okay, that's it. Eaton Ford. Not Eastern Tennessee Ford 66. Right, right, right. Was that wiener Dan there at the one point Was that wiener Was that wiener dog there at one point tonight I think that might be a good new nickname for Dan, Wiener Dan The world's strongest wiener That's what he gets for leaving early It is funny when you come up with lines saying that the line about the wiener dog looks scared to go down, how that resonates with people. I missed the call-out, though. It's different now. No, it's still there. Is it? Okay. Yeah, it's just multiple call-outs. We added hundreds of call-outs in this release, so there's just a lot more variety. You will hear them all as frequently. You get a little more variety. Well, Neil, you said wiener Dan, and I was just talking about wiener dogs, so that's why I was thinking about it. But Dan did pull a Bill Webb, and he got out like trout. He did pretty early on. I didn't know Dan was leaving that area. I was kind of taken aback. Well, he did say the longest drive, but Woodridge is like 30 minutes. Woodridge? Come on! There's no traffic at this hour. It's like the one time of day there's no traffic in Chicago. No traffic? Like eight minutes. Of course, I'm missing Monday Night Football, because usually I'd be watching multiple things at a time. I can't watch multiple things. You can throw it on. Anybody know the score of the game? I know there's a two-year-old out there watching ball. Oh, the Hood Ridge. Oh, Zach used to live out in Naperville, so I don't know. Maybe they had a little Hood Ridge going on over there. Oh, man. All right. I like the one-handed mode. Oh. A little center post save for Ken there. He's doing pretty good here with the one hand. Okay, so your ball caps are on the top. Your magnet. Does that still work with your... It's now the left flipper will do the magnet. Oh, that's why. Because I was like, oh, the magnet. No! Yeah, that's the opposite. But you have a beer in your hand. Right. So you're going to smash your beer against the cabinet. Right. Sand that ball with a magnet. Right. At this point, you're probably not worrying too much about the mag. I was worried about that. I'm on the magazine. Zach, I'm curious if you could actually admit he was in Woodbridge, right? He was at Naperville. Ooh, that Naperville area. Just let her know. I couldn't tell you where Woodbridge was either. So he said, oh, near Naperville. Okay, now I know where it is. I think I'm mixed up with my Woodridge in another town here. I hit the wrong flipper. I don't know why I had to send a little... You hit the wrong flipper? So I'm trying to hit that magnet. My ball was lined up to hit that right flipper. I was trying to hit that magnet. And I just hit the left one up. I zicked the one I should have zacked. Oh, you zicked the zack now? So I'm trying to magnet save, and I'm like hitting the one. I think the lower flipper would be the magnet. I forgot to set my fantasy lineup tonight for football. I hope I don't have anybody that's going when they shouldn't be going. You know what? What would Inga do? F the Bears. F the fantasy. This pinball night. That was pretty bad. Because we second bowled. I did. Zach, you went to grad school in Oak Brook? Where did you go? Where in the business? My wife went to Midwestern for pharmacy school. That was just ineptness. Good times. Ineptitude. Uh-oh. That's right. We did discuss this. I thought I was having a flashback there, Zach, so I'm not positive. Zach and my wife went to the same graduate school, Josh. That's pretty interesting. Does that concern you at all? A little bit. I'm going to go upstairs and ask if she's flipping out. Anyhow, so we're going to finish this game. We're going to go to a quick after hours, maybe two or three calls, and then we'll get you on your way, Josh. I know you have Buffalo Groves about an hour, hour and ten from here. Maybe with traffic, eight minutes. It is what it is. When you live in Chicago, you get used to it. As I mentioned, I've spent probably 35 hours driving over the last 10 days. What's another hour? Yeah. I know. I know. Those seem short to me compared to all the other driving I've been doing. What time are you? Oh, see, and he stole the ball. I got them all loaded up, and there we go. So it just goes to show the change with that coil stop. Yeah. We've seen the ball go into the barrel at least a dozen times tonight across the various players. So it really makes a difference. Not that you want it to be a super easy shot. You have to earn it and feel like you've achieved something. But it was just a little too hard for most players. So it's nice that it's improved. It's nice that you caught it and then you've got something that's correctable and people can contact their distributors to get the fix. Would you consider it a fix or just like an upgrade? It's a change. A modification. You know, some people may not even bother with it depending on their play. Oh, he's crushing it. Not bad. Good job, Steve. Way to steal our balls, buddy. Stealing the balls. I'll be right back. There you go. Oh, I thought that was the ball three. That was one three and a half. Oh, we don't wait then. We wait until after hours. All right, let's see how it goes. Oh, I'm totally zigging instead of zagging. Oh, he forgot his beer. Very important. It felt weird without it. That's fun. Multiball really messes you up, though. Yeah. That's when it's like, oh, no. A little more challenge. I kind of just want to double flip. Especially if somebody likes to hold the balls on the flipper. It makes sense. Exactly. Yeah. Either really beneficial or really challenging. It's going to get really confusing. We were doing a stream one time, or head-to-head. Marty from head-to-head was doing the stream of Octoberfest. I got him to play it one-handed. It was back when he had to go into settings. He played for like 25, 30 minutes one-handed. I have to keep reminding people. By the way, he's playing one-handed. He wouldn't have realized that he had gotten such a comfortable way. It's hard to nudge with one hand, too. It is. And it's hard to use that magnet. I'm going to throw out my shoulder. Ow. Oh, well. How's the pin set up in the new place? So we're in the same place, just a different location. And so right now, we have the Munsters Pro, compliments of Flip N Out Pinball. Oktoberfest, Pinball on Tap, compliments of American Pinball. Jurassic Park Limited Edition, compliments of Flip N Out Pinball. Lord of the Rings, compliments of TV. Louder. Star Wars the pin compliments of flipping out pinball. Look at that. Broken roach ass meteor. Broken roach ass meteor. Compliments of what has two thumbs. King Cromwell. So when I finish this garage, soon to be Atomic Cherry. Cherry Atomic. Cherry Atomic. Nicely done. I can tell you're following the project. I am? Yeah. Hey, you got the words. Once I get the game room or the studio set up, I'll start adding back to the collection. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. You? Oh, love it. Love it. Three? All right. Good times. Good times. You guys like it? No more balls I can steal? Yes. The barrel is empty. How many pins do you have at home again, Josh? You've got like eight or nine or something. 13, 14, something like that. I lose track. It's funny. I was visiting a friend in Michigan this weekend. Gotcha. It was a large collection. And we asked him, and he's sort of like, yeah, I don't know, 48, 49. It's hard to always remember the exact number, but I think it's 14. Did you hear about the breaking news? No. Eaton Ford just described share one for three months. So I just wanted to let you know. I know you were asking about that earlier. I'm sorry. Thank you so much. Eaton Ford just described it for three months. Yeah, it's good. But I did not mean to interrupt you. Whenever somebody stops or throws bits, we like to give them a special call out. Goes back in to the little pinball action here, so it's always fun. What's your oldest pin and what's your newest pin? My oldest pin is a 1976 Grand Prix, but it's actually been re-themed to Camp Wigwam. I did two of them. I re-themed two machines for their 100th anniversary. That's awesome. With partially the goal being to introduce a bunch of kids to pinball. That's awesome. Besides that, I think the next oldest I was a 78 Valley Playboy, which is actually home use only. A bit of a nominal machine. And shockingly, my newest machine is Houdini. Will there be an Oktoberfest at the Jake Hoop family? Yes, I hope to have an Oktoberfest in my house at some point. So, Dobble, if you're listening to this, when am I getting my Oktoberfest? Yes, Dobble. Where's everything you promised? Well, you know, usually I don't get my game until, you know, production has extra games floating around. That makes sense. That makes sense. Once there's some spares around, eventually I'll get my head. You don't want that, maybe that first one off the line anyway, because now you're going to have the coil fixed for the upper left ring. Right, but it's an easy enough change to make. That's true. Obviously we want customers to get their games first. At some point I'll want it at home because that's when I'll be able to start looking for other things to improve on it. You won't be re-theming it. No. That's good Keep it Oktoberfest People say you should re-theme Oktoberfest to something else And I'm like really? What else has beer and arcade Septemberfest And it's funny This time of year I can't drive to work Without hearing at least two or three Oktoberfest commercials Whether it's for beer or some sale Or something But with Oktoberfest pinball and tap You can have Oktoberfest all year round That is true. And who wouldn't want that? I mean, seriously. I was skeptical in the beginning, but a drinking holiday throughout the year actually appeals to me more than I ever imagined. So I can totally see it. And more importantly, it's a feel-good pen. And I think that's what makes it stand out for a lot of people when they play it. It's just very different. The layout is very different. And I think that's what makes it appealing to people. Absolutely. I like it. And our poor monkeys didn't get to match. That's okay. I think we're going to transition here into a little after hours. You're up for a phone call or two? Sure. I cannot answer questions live just as I cannot answer them via chat. Right. And so this is what I'm going to ask before we go into after hours. We're going to call, ask a question. If it requires a follow-up, hang on the line. Let's try to get as many people in as possible here over the next, I don't know, 15 minutes or so. And then we're going to let Josh. We're going to release them back into the wild so we can get back to Buffalo Grove, and then we're going to break down Oktoberfest. So nothing says pinball night like breaking down an Oktoberfest after drinking a bunch of beers. Right. Flip the head down, slide it into the car, bring it back. It's going to be good. As long as we remember to put it in the right direction, we'll be fine. Do you have a pin card over there to take it out, or are we going to plastic this bad boy up? You know, it's going to go in my car. I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. I'm going to pull it into the factory and they're going to yank it out, or I'm going to drive over to the new location and they'll yank it out there. All right. All right. So we'll just put a quick bit of wrap around it and we'll be good to go. Now, we'll take care of you. We've moved plenty of these things, especially lately. Great match sequences, says Lloyd. So good times. And he hopes that Dovel gets Josh's game soon. So as time goes by, he can add to a great game. I would agree. So that's Dovel at American-Pinball.com. Right. D-H-A. All right, we're going to get into After Hours, ladies and gentlemen. And for those of you new to After Hours, you can call in. You can ask Josh anything, but he can't answer everything. But you can ask him anything you want, right? Is that how it's going to work here with After Hours? Hey, Steve, what's going on? The phone number is Erico630-283-2888. Feel free to call in, and we'll take it from there. Anything that's taboo tonight that you don't want to discuss, Josh? I do want to call out to our Brazilian friends. Absolutely. I actually had a great opportunity to do a stream with our friends down in Brazil. It's the only time I've done one where every time I gave an answer, I had to wait for it to be translated into Portuguese. How cool. And recently we had a whole bunch of visitors in our office from Brazil. So it's great that Pinball is alive and well down in South America and doing great. And to all of our friends down in Brazil, hey, thanks for all your support. Streaming's getting hot in Brazil. And surprisingly, I think it's Marlon out there, right? M-A-R-L-O-N? Yeah. I mean, he had Gary Stern stop in and pay a little visit. So, yeah, Brazil's the happening spot there. What I love is UFOs and Pinball. Like, there's two things coming out of Brazil right now. They were doing an Oktoberfest-themed dinner the night they were streaming it, which was great. And obviously we're doing that tonight, sort of. We have part of it. We don't have any. I'm not sure where the brats are. Actually, I think I still have some in my cooler. Maybe. I'm not sure. I'm going to pass on eating the coolers out of the brats from the weekend. But I will absolutely try the IPA if you have one of those. Absolutely. Any beer that's in that cooler, if you want it, when we get out there, it's yours. I'll try one. My wife told me I'm not allowed to eat brats that came out of a cooler from Michigan that was like five days old. I'm like, I'm not allowed to do that. That was like two days ago. They were good brats, too, I'll tell you. Two days. Where do those come from? So you're like a tailgater a little bit, though. I mean, you like to have fun. Yes, I'm a big tailgater, and the last two weekends were huge tailgates. And this past Saturday, and they're pouring rain all day. But we went at it hard, and my brother was in it. And nobody brings it to a game like he does. He gets to one game a year, and he's over the top. And everybody in the tailgate parking lot is talking about him and his craziness. Nice. That's amazing. It was nice. A couple of pinball people stop by who know I'm there, who come by my tailgate when they're in town. So always a good time. And Michigan beat Notre Dame, so I was a very happy camper with that outcome. Yeah, that's big for you guys. That's a big rivalry. So we're going to go to the line 6-3. Let's do this. Let's try to, let's nap. Glazed over beauty. Not quite. Not quite. Let me make a little effort here. Oh, there's the effort. Oh, look at this. I'm calling out today. You like that? Wow. Calling out. Seems extra loud. Yeah, I can adjust that on the fly here. Watch this. Flip N Out Pinball. This is Zach. Hello, I'd like to order an Oktoberfest because I just saw one of the best streams in my entire life with one of the most cool programmers I've ever seen and the world's strongest sales and marketing manager from that set company. Yeah, make it two. Wow. Wow, absolutely. While we're at it, why not make it a twofer? We'll go Oktoberfest and Houdini. Hey! I'm betting we can get you a discount on that. You take both games right now. Yeah. I'll autograph it for you. Game number three in there? Or not autograph it, if that's what you would do. Hey, he will put a beer and a brat from last week's tailgate in the coin box. Absolutely. Absolutely. What's up, Zach? I'll say that all Oktoberfests that are ordered tonight come with a wet and slippery duck. Oh, hey. So one of my favorite call-outs on it was, oh, Inga's, what did she say? Inga's used to anxious wieners or something like that. Used to anxious wieners. It was awesome. I was like, oh, hey, my mom doesn't fully get it. And again, if you don't get the joke, it's probably okay. Yeah. I think most people in your homes will have no issue with family-friendly turned off unless you live in Utah, maybe. Then you probably want to keep it family-friendly. Yeah, Utah, whatever it takes. No offense to Utah listeners. No, no, not at all. We're not streaming in Utah right now, just Colorado. Just Colorado. What's going on with you, Zach? I know you're moving and shaking. You moved into your new house. You sold your old house. You're monitoring the stream. This is your flipping out streaming network. You just uploaded MTV Cribs bonus content today, which was pretty fun. What's a good word over there? Nothing much. We're still in the moving process. Tomorrow's blinds day. So I went and picked up a damn near 40 sets of blinds. I should install those tomorrow. So you already have painting day. Blinds day. I don't think you have painting day. Favorite day of the week. I think you're going to have, like, taping off the blinds day after. Did you paint that thing yet or no? Say it again. Did you paint your place before you hung the blinds or no? We're in the process of all that. The blinds are mostly going on the doors and the windows, inside the windows, so no need to worry about the whole thing. Nice, nice. You've got to measure twice and cut once, right? Yeah, yeah, buddy. Measure twice and cut once. So anyways, it was fun having Josh and Dan here. Josh, it's his second time here on the Flippin' On Streaming Network. We initially started streaming Oktoberfest. It was the first game that you allowed us to stream, Zach. I remember it like it was five months ago. You called us up and you said, hey, if you want to go grab a new in-box Oktoberfest right now, you can pick it up and stream it this weekend, and we did. Josh was nice enough to come out three or four weeks into that and stream that game. Absolutely. I will say that I get a lot of friends in pinball, but Josh Kugler, You guys can tell he's so passionate about the industry, about his job. He doesn't just check out at 5 o'clock and go home. He lives this stuff just like each and every one of us that are here on the stream. So thanks, Josh. Thanks, Dan, for coming out and supporting the stream and supporting the product that you guys are selling and working intensely on. And as a reminder to everybody, up at the upcoming Cincinnati show in Cincinnati and the Nashville show, there will be show specials. If you guys are interested, you still have time to call and order your Oktoberfest show special or your Houdini show special, and there's some really big discounts. So give me a call, email me, we'll talk about that and how we can get one of these things into your home or into your favorite location. Yeah, basically with the show discounts, we like to get as many games as we can to a show, and if Zach's able to kind of pre-sell, so we get some more games there. And you're basically getting a game that's maybe had 200 plays on it at the course of a show, and you're typically getting it. And most likely perfectly set up. Right, nicely set up. All problems are less, but they're a little aware. And it's basically as if you put your game on location for a day and get a nice cash in on that coin box. Yeah, absolutely. It's a win-win for everybody when we can happen. And we try and do that as much as we can. Again, it gets more games to the show, so more people get to experience, and somebody gets to take a game home for, you know, save a few bucks, and it's still basically new in box. That's cool. It is. Pull this out of the show. Got a little discount, and it's ready to rock and roll. I'm sure Zach will put it right back in the regular box for you. And stop cutting the boxes, Zach. That's not how you open one of our boxes. Stop re-taping the boxes. How do you open regular boxes? I was kidding. You don't cut the box. With our box, you don't cut the box. What you do is you open it up, you tilt it over, and it'll just slide right out. There's these cardboard rails it sits on. and it just makes it easily slide out of the box. I never knew that. I think Josh needs to make a video. I agree. And you're good to go. We'll do like an unboxing. Okay, Josh. Josh. Yeah. Listen, I've got four kids. You don't have to tell me how to slide out of the box. All right. Well, last time I watched. Oh, dude. Oh, he bounced. Oh, we lost connection with Zach over there. It's a little bit of family-friendly mode. Yeah, what the heck was that all about? Ingo, don't lie to me. If you missed it. All right, let's go. There are lines there. I'll be adding to the list for the next time. We're getting you back into the recording studio again. We'll get a few more lines out of it. He just dropped the phone and took off. Literally. Or did he get cut off? I don't know. I think Twitch took him off. Wow. Anyways, we've got Josh for a couple more minutes. If anybody has any questions, Sicky Sour's here. What's up? Hey, yo, he says. Now, Lloyd is saying that you could potentially re-theme Oktoberfest to Tailgater. No, don't think so. It doesn't have the, you know, you have to have different toys on it to be tailgating. The beer part works, but the amusement rides and the roller coaster does, and it would have to be something different. Sure. You could take that out and put like a rotisserie in there. Right. A griller, smoker. Right. And typically you tailgate for football, so you get a football. You already got the keg. That's good. Keg tapper. One of my custom games I did, the Kugler family can feature football. So that tailgating could have gone well with that mode. It does have a football mode in it. Oh, there you go. So you're not going to re-theme Oktoberfest and tailgate it. No. You know, early on we were working on Oktoberfest. You know, you were throwing out different potential theme ideas. And the one that registered with me that somebody had brought up was vacation, National Lamp. Yes. That would be a lifelong re-theme of it. The licensing around that would probably not ever let us do what we had to do with it. And, again, that's the problem. I ran into Keith Elwin a few weeks ago and he made the comment he love to do an unlicensed theme Okay because he would like that ability not to have to deal with somebody telling him what he can and cannot do right so I think that a nice thing that we had that opportunity there's certainly things we've done in Oktoberfest that in a licensed theme they would never allow us to do you wouldn't be able to get away with some of the jokes we're doing or just some of the things we're doing right in that situation. And so I dread working on a license theme from that standpoint of having things we want to do and be told no. Because right now nobody tells me no. I can pretty much do whatever I want. And with a license theme, that won't be the case. They're not going to let me do things. So I recognize that sometimes when people criticize games that come out that it doesn't do A or B or people want, but they've always realized that sometimes you just can't. You're not allowed to do that. When the Dutch pinball guys did their first artwork for the Big Lebowski and it went sent to John Goodman for approval, he said, oh, you can't have me anywhere near a gun. You can't have me near a gun. It's like, well, have you seen the movie? It's like the most iconic scene, right? But he doesn't want to be associated with that. It wasn't there. Does he really care? It mattered to him to the point where they're probably thinking, oh, this is perfect. It's the theme, and then it's not there. People are going to be like, why isn't he holding the gun? Well, because he wouldn't approve. He should have been holding a bratwurst. And I think that's changed a lot. And I've heard stories from years ago, things that went on, and it's that much more challenging now. Obviously, Jurassic Park, the fact that they recreated animations, which is a phenomenal job with the animations in that game, that they didn't use movie clips just talks about the challenges of a licensed theme, and that obviously there were enough constraints that they said, damn it. You know, my concern with that is I think that they had done a really good job, and I'm not asking you to comment on this necessarily, but I'll offer my commentary, is that was Pandora's box opened with taking a license theme and creating your own story within the license? Because does it now give manufacturers kind of like the easy out to not try to get the assets because they're going to create their own world within the license? Or was it just the cards that were dealt for this particular title? Because I'm torn on that. Well, I think your goal in getting a license is to hopefully have assets because the development of assets is a huge expense and it takes a ton of time. And that's part of what you're paying for with a license is to hopefully get the assets. The flip side of that is, and people throw out all these themes all the time they think would be great, And while some of these themes might have worked well in the 90s, a lot of them won't work now because people want a game with more depth. They want more rules. They want more going on. And when you look at certain themes, I looked at Princess Bride. I actually spoke to the company that owns the rights to that. Oh, wow. Would be a great thing. About potentially doing it. I love that. Would be a great thing. Would be a great thing. And then I stacked out. Keep on saying that word. I don't know if it means what you think it means. Right. And, you know, I talked to them. They were open to it. potentially doing a pin, and then when I really sat down and looked at the content and watched it a bunch of times, this is not enough there to make a full feature pin. As you win, it's a nice environment. Yeah, there's a dozen just great, great lines, and there's a half dozen really good scenes, but you would do that, and then people would be like, you know, this game's too shallow. You could just make Robin Hood. in the 90s you could get by with that because they were coming out quicker and now that's such a big part of it is the collector market, people want a game with legs, they want a game that's going to have depth and that makes it a challenge so I've only played Jurassic Park a few times, I really can't comment much how great the game is or not or how complete it is, I know bits and pieces of it but I'm sure that was part of the factor for Keith and the team behind it was if you don't expand in some way in telling the story, are you going to have enough content to create a game that's going to really pull you in and challenge you and keep you coming back for more? And I think we've seen with some games that people feel there's not enough there. And does every game need to be super deep? No. But I think, at least for us right now, to me, that's a priority. I would agree. With great depth. As a homeowner especially, I don't want to see all the code in the first couple days or weeks that I own the pen. Right. Absolutely. And to me, part of it is, I should say, it's really breath over depth, both at Houdini and Oktoberfest. We want to make sure there's a wide range of stuff. If you have a Houdini, sometimes you're playing for stage modes, and sometimes you're going to play for the movie modes. You're going to say, you know what, damn it, I'm going to get through all five secret missions, and I'm going to die trying. and have different things to go after so you can approach the game differently at different times and play it differently. One of the things in October 5th is with the signs is you can approach the game very differently and look at it differently and have those different paths. And that kind of breadth is a really important aspect that we spend a lot of time looking at. And that, again, is the challenge with some themes is is there really enough content there to work with? Well, it's fun seeing the evolution of the game Octoberfest. Again, the last time we streamed it was about five months ago. And to see it come back in now and be able to, I mean, noticeable changes, not something that, well, I have to look for this. Oh, now that you mentioned this, I see this. No, it's just the game has evolved. So, I mean, kudos to you guys at American Pinball, to yourself, Joe Shover, the team at American Pinball. Again, and I've always said that this is like one of my favorite party pins, right? Uh-oh. Thanks for calling the Flip N Out Pinball Streaming Network. You're on with Ken, Steve, and Josh Kugler of American Pinball. Well, thanks for answering the phone, guys. What's up, you maniacs? What's up, man? How are you? How are you, Dave? How are you doing? Hey, Josh, can't compliment you enough for all the hard work you've put into the games. I don't know if I told the story last time you were on, but it was right around Christmas at 257, now Pac-Man Entertainment, and I came in after work one day and it was like 7 o'clock and there's Josh working on that game. So Josh puts a lot into it, and it's appreciated. And I got to watch a little bit of the stream today with the adjustments you guys made, and it's good to see you're still tweaking it. You know, you guys haven't given up on just that here it is. You know, you guys are making it better every day, so that's really appreciated. My question is, have you guys thought about any Western themes at all? Western. Oh, hey. Hey, thanks for the call, man. Thanks for joining us on the Flippin' On Streaming Network. Yeah, I don't think we've ever talked about any Western themes. Obviously, if you go back to the 60s and 70s, there were obviously many Western themes. In fact, I played a couple this past weekend on some old EM that were Western themes. What about Cactus Canyon? I mean, that's kind of a Western thing. Yeah, just Cactus Canyon. Of course, the hot room. The biggest one. That's coming out. Right, right. We'll see if that actually occurs. Certainly, country and western is a pretty strong follow-up. I can't see that attracting. So does NASCAR, and how did that work out? It's like you've got to be really kind of careful. Does your demographic buy or get into pinball too, right? That's a great point. We talk about that all the time. What's that Venn diagram of the pinball collector and a particular theme? There are certain themes you look at. Is there a large enough cross-section? Pinball is pretty diverse. You go to a pinball show and you see there's a pretty diverse aspect, but you're still looking for something that's appealing. I usually describe it as a bell-shaped curve. With any theme, at one end there's the segment which is, I'm going to buy this game unless it absolutely sucks because this is my dream theme. This is my dream theme. Hey, I just said that. Literally on the podcast tonight. Unless this game completely sucks, I'm going to buy this game. And there's the other end of the bell spectrum is the, this game's going to have to be the greatest game on Earth, or I'm not buying it because I hate that theme. Sure, yeah. The size of those is going to vary based on what the theme is. Star Wars obviously had a pretty big chunk of, unless the game sucks, I'm going to buy it. Sure. And, well, no further comment required there. And then you have Iron Maiden, I think it's sort of the opposite, where you get a big group of, there's no way I'm buying an Iron Maiden unless it's a great game. I was in that camp. And that clearly, that game was able to take people who were like, ooh, Iron Maiden, no way. It said, you know what? It's a great game. But there were still those that ultimately took a pass because of its theme. And that's going to happen with any theme. Think about you taking that layout and giving it a more popular theme. I mean, it was already, it's a great game, and it was really well done, and it sold extremely well. But it's sort of that interesting challenge with the game. And then there's that chunk in the middle, which is where most of us reside, and it's based on, you know, do I like the theme? Do I not hate the theme, but do I like the gameplay and what it has to offer? I think Houdini's a theme where there were some people it was a must-have because they're magic people. Yeah. But you didn't have a lot of people which was like, no way do I want Houdini. And then it was, you know, really about whether or not you like a challenging machine or not. Some people don't like the challenge of Houdini, and some people love that and want that in their home because they know it's going to keep challenging them for a long time to come. New Oktoberfest, it's beer. I must have this game. I was just going to say, beer pin. Cheers. I've met many people who were like, I was buying this game no matter what, and they were like, thank God it's a good game and I like it. Yeah, right. But you certainly had a statement, which is it's a beer theme, so there's no way I'm buying it. I get it. Yeah. So it's a Western theme for American Pinball? I don't think it's not one we've talked about, but you never know. Thanks for joining us on the Flippin' On Streaming Network with Ken, Steve, and Josh Kugler of American Pinball. Good evening, Americans. Hello, Austin. What's up, mate, Dr. John? How are you, bud? Thanks for the stream. Hey, can I give a quick shout-out? Because you're calling from Australia, and our buddy, Rorden, literally pulled into McDonald's to suck up their Wi-Fi in the morning to try to watch the stream. So I wanted to say hi to Rorden. Sorry, Dr. John. Go ahead. I love when he does that. I saw that. Right. Our ambassador is home. Yes, he is. I had the pleasure of spending Saturday evening with Darvel over here in Melbourne. He came out for the, not flip it out, but the flip out pinball show that we had. It was a pleasure spending time with him. He was a very nice chap, very receptive. Basically said, right, sit down with me and tell me everything you hate about Oktoberfest. Yeah, and I got that list today. Unfortunately, it was a relatively short meeting. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Those three lines couldn't hit the upper left ramp with the old flipper coil. That was certainly the rampless feedback we got from down under. And I was a little annoyed because there was just not a good plan with Dabble leaving because he didn't take the latest code with him for the show, and he didn't take a new coil stop with him to play in the game. Other than that, pretty efficient trip by Dabble over there. I'm giving Dobble a thumbs down for his planning on that. Thumbs down. Unfortunately, it was like right after Expo, and it was like – I love Dobble, though. He was gone, and it was like before he was gone, he was like, where's Dobble? And he showed up with Houdini, and it wasn't even October 5th. He already left. I didn't give him stuff to take. Good times. Good times. He was a very, very nice chap. One thing we did discuss with him, I'm interested in you from a coding perspective, is, is it possible to put too much in a game? I love all of Joe Bolch's designs. I think they're all different. They're all a lot of fun. But one thing we noticed about Octoberfest is there's so much in it that it can get confusing. For instance, the little semicircular targets down the bottom, the green ones. Do you need that much in a game for either the casual or the tournament player to use? Can you save money if you cut back a little? What do you think? I think every game you have to find the right balance, and there's no doubt you can put too much into a game. I think that's certainly possible, and I think that's both true in the layout and in the rules. I think even in Houdini, we probably put maybe a little too much in there. We probably could have reduced things, a couple of things I would do differently on that game. Oktoberfest, there's probably less that I look back on and would like to have done differently. I happen to love what Joe did with those targets, and we really try to leverage that into the game because it is something very different. I think the challenge, especially when we get feedback as we try and separate and what we're trying to get better with each game we do, is to make sure the game is both fun for the novice, the collector, and that tournament player, and find that right balance to make sure it's clear and straightforward enough for that novice stepping up to play, but not sacrificing the depth. So that's where you'll continue to see us focus is making the game as approachable as possible the first time you step up on it. And that's something we're spending, I think, more time on this next game than on the first two is looking at that to make sure it's very receptive, but to make sure that once you know the game, you're able to uncover all that depth that's there that, again, for a collector, you want that stuff there to be exploring. So that is a tricky balance. Nicely said. But absolutely it's possible to put too much in a game. You articulated that very well. Yeah. Dr. John, you have one more for Josh? No, that's good. You good? That's good. Love your work. Good luck with the next guy. Thank you. And catch you all later. Hey, Dr. John. Dr. John. Dr. John. Love your work, buddy. Yeah. Good job. It's the call, Dr. John. Dr. John. We got one more for Jay Coog if somebody's got one to chat. We got to get him on his way. He's got a very long trip to Buffalo Grove, and he's not flying the Concord this evening. So he's roughing it out on the ground. He's not in the Concord. Flying the Concord. The times I would have flown out of the country is with the Concord. In any event, I know the elephant in the room is that Game 3, pinball-wise, is currently in the works. I know that I can't ask you anything specific, and I know that you're not wanting to offer anything specific, but is there any type of a nugget that you might be able to offer regarding Game 3 that would entice those that are here in chat or viewing this stream to be on the lookout for the next release from American Pinball? Oh. Oh. It's made by the bell there. Literally. It's doubled. Hey, thanks for calling in at an inopportune time on the Flip N Out Pinball Streaming Network with Ken Steve and Josh Kugler from American Pinball. Hey. Hey, Ken, congratulations on the new studio. Thanks. And that's your friend from Brazil also calling to make another international call. Oh, hey. Who am I speaking to right now? It's Marlon. Marlon. We were just talking about you earlier. Marlon. Bill Josh was giving you some props with the stream, and I think it's awesome. And I saw your Gary Stern came in and jumped on your stream. You guys are rocking it out. We do. Hey, keep it quick. We're international, man. He's like dollar a minute. Oh, sorry. We just love BIMO. We love doing that. And again, talking to Josh. So a couple of questions. Actually, two questions. With the new factory, are you going to be able to do two or three games at the same time, or will you have to stop one of them to do another one? Our new factory will let us have our plans for two lines and potentially up to three. Really, the third line we plan for is a redemption line, which is kind of different. and it's not your traditional assembly line like it is for a pinball. So our ultimate goal is two lines for pins and one for redemption. It has been our goal to hopefully be able to help other people bring games to market. There's a lot of visionaries out there with ideas for games who want to bring it, who don't have the ability to manufacture. As I mentioned when I was talking to the Princess Bride folks, The key thing I knew would be required before I could really go anywhere with them is the ability to be able to get the game manufactured. And at that point, there really weren't a ton of choices. There were some out there to do it. But that's one of our goals is for people who want to get games built, who have a vision, who have it designed, to be able to help them do that, as well as continue to do our own games. So the new factory is big enough for us to have up to three lines running. Nice. What else you got for them, Marlon? Perfect. Second question. You mentioned that things that you changed from Rodini to Oktoberfest. Anything that you can actually share that will change on the next game in terms of cold, breath and death, or even on the mechanical parts? Piggybacking a little bit on my little teaser question. So I think with our next game, as I said, it's a classic theme. It's timeless. It's a theme that's been around for a long time and will be around forever, I would expect. So I think from that standpoint, it's a theme that's known around the world. So it's not going to be something where people go, oh, that's a U.S. thing. It's not going to be Kashmir Paul Askey Day. All right, it's not going to be that. Just make it sure. It's not the Kugler family thing. It's not. All right. So it's a theme known around the world. Okay. That's a nugget. I guess that's somewhat true of Oktoberfest, but some people would argue Oktoberfest isn't, but I would say this is a widely known theme, but fits into, like I said, being timeless. Yeah. And we're hoping to make a game that will hopefully do well on location as well as in home. So that's one of our goals is to help grow location play. And so that's one of the things we're looking at in our design is to make it appealing to operators. That's where the complexity in the code is to make it appealing for somebody that's stepping up to a machine on location but still make it deep enough for the homeowner to want to come back and play it. Exactly. Do you ever see, and Marlon, hang the line for one second if you don't mind. Do you ever see a setting that you could put in a pinball machine that's location play for maybe easy progressive code and home edition where it's maybe a little more deep that would allow the homeowner to see something without having to try to do it on location? I mean, is that a possibility? I know it's probably two separate rule sets, which doubles up your work. Well, I think what we're trying to do with every game is always to make it so there's something appealing to the novice. Where I don't think we did as good a job as we could have, for example, on Houdini, is it's not always obvious to people what to do. Part of that is the stage modes are tracked on the screen. There are inserts that kind of indicate that. Right. We have the chain links that track your progress, but we didn't do a great job of labeling those. When you first walk up to the game, it's not necessarily obvious to you what to do because the stage was at the very top. People didn't necessarily notice it right away. The scoop on Oktoberfest is a little more clear. So there's some things like that we're looking to try to do to make it when you first step up to be more appealing. and you still also want we want games too where you can get to a sense of accomplishment and get far enough into the game in a reasonable way as well. Lord of the Rings is a great example of that standpoint of destroy the ring. You don't have to be a true wizard to get to destroy the ring. If you're a player and you play a handful of games on it and you find your rhythm you're going to get there. You're not going to necessarily have defeated all the multi-balls and gotten through them all. And that's there for that player who owns the game, who wants to get to the ball and who wants to defeat every multiball and wants to get to there and back again. But you can have somebody come to your house, and they potentially can get to destroy the race. Right. And that's a tremendous accomplishment. So I think we want to find that balance where you can get to that, a major accomplishment, Without it having to require, you know, 10% of your life to focus on that. But I don't mind donating 10% of my life. But, Marlon, I wanted to say this. Thank you for what you are doing for Pinball with streaming out of Brazil. I think it's very important. Can you let everybody know how they can find you and your channel on Twitch? Because we'd love to be able to, you know, send anybody your way that hasn't discovered you yet. Sure. Just type Life Catch Pinball at Twitch. And one more thing, there's no more Monday night streamings in Brazil just because we have to stop and watch Flippin' Mouse. Oh, yeah. Nicely played, Marlon. Lots of Marlon. So that's going to change it to Wednesday just because I love you guys are an inspiration to us. And, Josh, maybe someday we can get you to a launch party in Brazil. Absolutely. We can party. We can party. Hey, Marlon, if you're ever in Chicago for whatever reason, please look us up. We'll have you in, and we'll take care of you, buddy. I appreciate you calling in, and thanks for everything that you're doing. Live catch pinball on Twitch. Marlon, thanks, buddy. Live catch pinball. Marlon. Always good hearing from Marlon. So listen, that was a blast doing the stream with those folks. Yeah. Good guys. It was great. Like I said, it was kind of funny having to translate through, and, of course, there's a little bit of a delay because we were doing it through a Skype-Twitch combination. Sure, sure, sure. But it was a lot of fun, and it was great to see the excitement down there for Oktoberfest, which does go to show, well, some people go, oh, it's a German theme or whatever. It's not. Oktoberfest is celebrated everywhere, and everybody appreciates beer. Nothing says Brazil like a German-themed Oktoberfest pinball machine. They love it. It's done really well down there. It's good times. We're older than that. We've shipped a lot of Oktoberfests to Brazil. I think we've probably shipped as many there as we have to Germany at this point. That's perfect. It's done really well. The game's been very popular. Let's say that those Brazilians know how to party. They do know how to party. Yes, they do. So I think all three of us would fit very well. And anybody down in Australia who's looking for an Oktoberfest, I know that Mr. Pinball down there is preparing to get another container. Okay, good. Of Oktoberfest games. So there's a limited number per container. Yep. And pretty much we always do a container at a time down there. So anybody who's listening from down under, get with Wayne before he, you know, because I'm not sure how many he has left in the container that he's getting ready to have shipped out to him. And for anybody that's looking for an Oktoberfest up top, Zach at Flip N Out Pinball. Zach is at FlippinOutPinball.com. Contact him or Zach and Nicole, many owners of the company, 847-778-4876 for Flip N Out Pinball. Josh, I want to thank you so much for your time tonight, man, as I extend my hand for the handshake. It's always good having you in studio for the second time. This was fun. Always a good time. Thank you, Mr. Beatty, for coming in and picking up the stream again. Thank you to Flippin' on Pinball for allowing us to display these machines and play them. And thanks for bringing Oktoberfest and putting it on loan tonight for the stream. No, it was great. It was fun to do it. I always enjoy coming out and looking forward to when we get to do it the next time. I can't wait for the next code update, and I can't wait to be streaming game number three at some point, which is a Western theme, I think we can term it that way. That would be a good takeaway from this. It's a well-known Western thing. That's all anybody's going to get from this stream. Maybe like a little High Plains Drifter with a little Dirty Harry style. So clearly when I did my Teletubbies joke, when I did the Zacks and Greg's 100th anniversary, and I made a joke about getting back to Teletubbies code, I guess nobody believed that one at all. That clearly did not even create a rumor. That was obviously way too obscure. but Lassie, I'm betting I can get that. Lassie. You know what I said? Oh, Lassie. Western theme Lassie. To see her on a collie on the back last. Oh, yeah. That could be in the well, even though that never happened, I guess, in the show. You know what just hit me is, and again, it's not a Western theme, but something that's got some sexual innuendos in there. How about a little Three's Company? If somebody can make a homebrew Three's Company, I'd be down for playing that with Mr. Roper and Mr. Furley. You've got season one and season two. The homebrew movement is phenomenal. There's so many new people jumping into creating games and some great stuff going on out there. So if you have that theme, if you're out there, two things I encourage. Find other people who want to do the theme because if you can find the right group of guys, two or three guys or somebody who's maybe mechanical and somebody who's software, to be able to create your own dream theme because there's a lot of great themes out there that no company is going to do. There's just not enough demand or the licensing or those things are in the way. But don't let that stand in your way of having your dream theme. There's ways to get it done. There's a lot of support out there. Even in the five, six, seven years since I did my homebrews, The technology out there to help make these games better and better is growing all the time. And if you're interested in that, we've got it on Pinside. There's a Slack channel of homebrew guys that also has people from almost every company involved as well, giving advice and guidance. And, you know, give it some thought. If you've ever thought about creating your own machine, give it a try. And if you need to be talked off the ledge, how can they contact you? Right. If you get involved at Homebrew, you'll have access to me through. There's a Pindev Slack channel. Again, there's people from every major company on there who help the Homebrew folks out there. All you have to do, I mean, if you look at what the three amigos are doing over in New York. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. Their projects, both the Spickle Me and what was the one? Crazy Mansion. Crazy Mansion, yes. And not just the creativity of what they're doing in their game, but what I love about those guys is the three guys, they get together every Friday night. Yeah. And they're just having a great time together. They're just hanging out. They're drinking beers. They're working on a game. I'm not sure who gets that game because it's pretty incredible what they've done with it. And they're just having a lot of fun. And it goes to show that, you know, trial and error, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, I wish they would have a warning about not to do some of the things they do, because they really do some dangerous stuff with tools. But setting that aside, I think it's a great inspiration, and I'd love to see more. You know what I think is pretty cool, though, Josh? I mean, so you're cemented. You're in the pinball industry, and you're appreciating the efforts of others that are doing things. And I think that's just all you. I mean, you're not looking at it and dismissing it as amateur hour. I mean, you're appreciating the efforts, and I think that's outstanding that you are recognizing that. So good for you. It was great at Expo. We were next to the homebrew section this year. Yeah, you guys were right next to them. I was only there for a couple hours. I was able to spend time with at least three of the guys with their homebrew games there just to talk to about their games. Did you get a chance to play Justin Kalinowski's Castlevania? No, I did not. Okay. That came in, I think, on Saturday. Right. And I did see his thread on that, and I'm not familiar with that theme per se. Okay. But, yeah, I mean, phenomenal. I mean, the games at every year, there's just some really phenomenal games that get brought. I really enjoyed playing Spaceballs when I was down at Southern Fry. Detroit Taxi, I think it's called. Yeah, I heard about that. It's all about Detroit. I lived in Detroit for 10 years. I appreciated the landmarks and that. What a cool idea, too. Nightmare Before Christmas. Yes. That game, people who've gotten to play it. And I think Mark's game, Mark and City, he's been working on that for five or six years now. I've watched its evolution as he's gone through a couple of iterations of it and just kept plugging away at it. And it's a phenomenal game, and it was a theme he felt very attached to. Nobody else was probably ever going to make that game. And it's great. And, again, so people were interested. Who knows? Maybe you see it on one of those lines at American Pinball down the road. You never know, right? You never know. You know, you work through the licensing issues. There's some tumbleweeds in there. But, you know, you don't need to work through the licensing issues necessarily because we saw Keith Elwin and his brother's Archer pin that still was picked up by a pinball manufacturer and was just offered to a theme that was a license that they had carried. So if that layout makes sense, and even though it's not Nightmare Before Christmas, it can be something else. Right. It can. It can be. Right. Absolutely. Ooh, Mad Max. And you have to see that value in that. And I think that's the challenge. Sometimes people create a game, and then they'll come to us or somebody else. They go, well, I've got this game that's worth a ton. Well, maybe it's not because you can't use that theme. Or one of the big eye-openers for me going from homebrew to commercial was the level of detail required in a machine. When you're doing a homebrew game, you drill a hole here, you do this. It's very much like what the three amigos are doing. Even if you're doing it more where you're actually using a CNC and doing it, there's that next level detail required. Every flat rail has to be shaped perfectly. When I create the flat rails for my game, you're taking metal and you're bending it over your wagon. You're adjusting the shape. You're not doing that in mass. So there's a lot of details that have to be worked out to take a game all the way through the process. And that's what most people don't recognize is that level. People like to talk about the bomb, the bill of materials. Most people don't realize the sheer quantity of items on that. Every screw, every nut, every washer, all the details behind that to actually be making a game. But, you know, when you do a homebrew, you don't have to worry about all that stuff. You can just have fun creating your dream team. You never know. And maybe, you know, if you look at it, you've got, you know, Keith Elwin started out in homebrew. Scott Danesi, he started out in homebrew. Homebrew, yeah. Obviously, I got my start in homebrew. So, you know, there's a bunch of people who have started that way and found their ways to the big leagues. So, it's not a bad pattern for them. So, the homebrew scene is kind of like the single, double, and triple A of the major leagues of pinball. That's the way to put it. Yeah, you never know where companies are looking for people. And more importantly, if you love pinball and you have a vision for a game, give it a try. Maybe after a few months you give up. It happens. Or you just re-theme an Oktoberfest at Tailgate and just call it a day. There you go. By the way, I'm trying to sell that for a little tailgate. And a re-theme is a great way to go. Couldn't agree more with you. Best games out there is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, done by Dave Nelson and Michael Ocean. He's local, too, right? Like Naperville area? Dave's local. Okay. And this was a great project because Dave did the physical stuff and Michael did all the software and the content. Michael's in Boston. Dave lives here. They had actually never met each other in person. Amazing. Until they were at Expo and were at the machine together for, like, the first time. Oh, that's pretty awesome. With their machine. Yeah. And, you know, so they worked on it. Like, we created this baby from a distance and now we will hold it together. They developed the rules together, but they had different skill sets, and it was a re-theme of Swords of Fury. They actually modified the play field a little bit. Sure. But it was based on that, so they had all the parts for it. So they didn't have to figure out a design and see and see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you could do what Eric Kripke did with Cactus Canyon Continued. He took an existing game, and he rewrote the rules. where actually he first recreated the rules and then expanded and completed. Right. He had to reverse engineer the original rule set and then expand on that rule set. And I argued with Eric one time about, you know, who is crazier, him for doing that or me for doing a game from scratch. And he thought I was crazier and I thought he was crazier because I felt that for him, anything he doesn't get exactly right in recreating the rules he was going to hear about. Oh, yeah. Good point. And he obviously did a great job with that because you never hear anybody commenting that the rules aren't right. And what he did on that to make that, to complete that game and finish that game and bring it to life for the people who do own that game will tell you that the game is so much better after what he did. For sure. And Eric, I guess it's another example. He's a homebrew guy. Homebrew guy. And he's now doing work for Spooky. Spooky Pinball. He's now working on Scott's next game, Haunted House Party. Haunted House Party. Continued. Haunted House Party. It's the quickest way to the majors, seems like, to go through the homebrew. Yeah. Homebrew is the way to go, guys. Prove yourself in the minors. There's scouting. Get drafted into the majors. You might get into the scouting. Certainly a architectural path, absolutely. Makes sense. Well, listen. Cool, guys. No, I won't give them out. Skip Natty, thanks for joining us. We've had Josh for a little bit longer than we anticipated tonight. Are you ready to wrap this up, Josh? Yeah. You got anything else that you want to? No, I think we're good. Are you good? It's 9.30, so yeah, let's. 9.30 here. We're going to hoof an Oktoberfest. We're going to break down Oktoberfest. Again, thanks for letting us, you know, stream it tonight. Thanks for bringing it out. And letting us do this. And for those of you looking for an Oktoberfest, everybody, hey, cheers. Grab an Oktoberfest near you. Contact your favorite distributor or contact Zach and Nicole many at Flippin' Up Pinball, 847-778-4876 or Zach at FlippinUpPinball.com. Forget Zach. Just contact Nicole. She's much nicer than you. Nicole is pretty nice. Very approachable. She's very nice to deal with. I want to thank everybody in chat tonight. Thank you so much for all the support with the bits and with the subs. First and foremost, though, I mean, thanks for just showing up in chat and being here. Part of the community. It's always fun. Monday Night Pinball has been a staple for us. And I cannot wait to stream another update or stream game number three from American Pinball. Hey, man. Thank you so much. Good times. All right. For Bill Webb, who is no longer with us, TBD, and Josh Coogler, I am Ken Cromwell. Don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody. you you you you you you you you you you