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PNP 611- Top 5 Rad & 1 Bad: Merlins Arcade By Turner Pinball

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·57m 50s·held·Mar 19, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Orby reviews Merlin's Arcade, praising layout, foosball spinner, and design while discussing industry dynamics.

Summary

Orville Albert (Orby) from Poor Man's A A Pinball Podcast discusses Turner Pinball new arcade-themed machine 'Merlin's Arcade', offering five positive and one negative aspect. The episode heavily features Orby's characteristic tangential storytelling about his homestead, personal life, and broader pinball industry commentary, interspersed with detailed analysis of the game's layout, toys, and mechanics designed by Jon Norris.

Key Claims

  • P3 Multimorphic's Portal has more innovative toys and gameplay magic than recent Jersey Jack Pinball releases, including Jaws

    medium confidence · Orville Albert, comparing Portal favorably to JAWS (Pro), noting the cube robot toy is more interesting than Jaws' shark fin and boat toys

  • Orby has made finals in every pinball tournament except Pin Masters in the past year and a half through measured drinking practices

    medium confidence · Orville Albert, explaining tournament success strategy and drinking pacing

  • Jersey Jack Pinball paid significantly for a content creator (Kaneda) to attend an exclusive event in a downtown penthouse suite with first-class airfare

    medium confidence · Orville Albert discussing JJP's investment in content creator relations and comparing it to his own willingness to attend under different circumstances

  • Turner Pinball declined to play the new machine on camera during Cary Hardy exclusive YouTube interview because his best player had gone home

    high confidence · Orville Albert, critiquing the decision and arguing Turner should have ensured gameplay demonstration

  • Jon Norris has designed approximately 25-30 different pinball machines

    medium confidence · Orville Albert describing Norris's design portfolio and calling him 'world renowned'

Notable Quotes

  • “Portal, that's on a new level. So I'm really excited. And I can tell how much I like a new pinball machine by how many times I watch the video. I've gone back and watched that P3 Multimorphic video probably 20 times now”

    Orville Albert @ Early episode — Demonstrates Orby's enthusiasm for P3 Multimorphic's Portal as exceptional compared to other recent releases

  • “multiple toys in there are more fun and more interesting than anything i've seen in at jjp since the wizard of oz honestly”

    Orville Albert @ Early episode — Direct comparison of Portal's innovation favorably against Jersey Jack's recent catalog

  • “If you're JJP and you want to pay for Kaneda to stay at the ninth story of a penthouse and the most expensive downtown hotel, pay for his first class ticket there, and give him the royal treatment when he's there, that's like the cost of getting ten Orbeez”

    Orville Albert @ Mid-episode — Critiques JJP's investment in content creators and suggests misaligned priorities

  • “the biggest thing, though, that pissed me off that I talked about yesterday was Kaneda said that, you know, a portal's not going to bring, that's not going to get anyone new into pinball”

    Orville Albert @ Mid-episode — References previous criticism of Kaneda's assessment of Portal's market appeal

  • “I would have slept under Jack Winarian's pinball machines. Hell, I would have slept in his bathtub. I would have cuddled up and been the big spoon with him”

    Orville Albert @ Mid-episode — Expresses past admiration for Jack Winarian before critical comments changed his perspective

  • “the foosball, I love the foosball spinner. So in place of where there would be a spinner, I've always thought, why can't we make spinners more interesting?”

    Orville Albert @ Mid-episode — Identifies foosball spinner as top creative design element of Merlin's Arcade

  • “the only guy in our company who's even okay at playing pinball has gone home”

    Chris Turner — Turner's explanation for not playing the machine during Cary Hardy's exclusive interview

Entities

Orville AlbertpersonTurner PinballcompanyChris TurnerpersonJon NorrispersonJason ForbespersonCary HardypersonMerlin's Arcadegame

Signals

  • ?

    product_strategy: Turner Pinball introduced a foosball-themed spinner toy instead of traditional spinners, representing a novel approach to typically standardized playfield elements

    high · Orby describes the foosball spinner as unique and notes it's something he'd rarely see others put in their top five design elements

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Merlin's Arcade features a wide-open layout with good flow designed to appeal to newer players and casual audiences, with classic design elements like pool-ball-styled stand-up targets

    high · Jon Norris layout praised for being accessible, flowing, and easy for newbies; stand-up targets styled as pool balls to make traditional targets appealing

  • ?

    design_innovation: Merlin's Arcade includes an automated tap pass feature based on classic pinball mechanics, appealing to both modern and retro pinball enthusiasts

    medium · Orby describes the auto tap pass as Jon Norris's addition of classic elements, explaining what tap passes are and why they're mechanically significant

  • ?

    content_signal: Turner Pinball used Cary Hardy's YouTube channel for exclusive reveal content, paying in exclusive rights rather than cash, leveraging Hardy's audience and goodwill

    high · Orby discusses Chris Turner's decision to give exclusive interview rights to Cary Hardy, comparing it to more expensive marketing approaches used by Stern and JJP

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Orby expresses frustration with other pinball podcasters being reluctant to mention or promote competing shows, contrasting with earlier era of cross-promotion and collaboration

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.173

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, We're going to get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 611 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, and I really thought I wouldn't have to do a show today. A, I thought there's no way there'll be any more news after already having a pinball machine released two days ago. That's right. P3 Multimorphics, I dare say their masterpiece, okay? Like, I really am excited to play the Princess Bride as well as Weird Al. But Portal, that's on a new level. So I'm really excited. And I can tell how much I like a new pinball machine by how many times I watch the video. I've gone back and watched that P3 Multimorphic video probably 20 times now, and I'm going to watch it again later on today. Like, I am just so excited. That is by far the most magic we've seen under the glass. Look, nothing in Portal is more magical or more fun or more like of a jaw-dropping moment, I would say, than the building in Godzilla. but multiple toys in there are more fun and more interesting than anything i've seen in at jjp since the wizard of oz honestly like even if you if you had to be open and honest with yourself if you think about jaws ranked number one in the world right now right on benside if you think about jaws and and how great of a pinball machine that is yeah the shark fin's kind of cool pops up The boat's neat because you don't normally see a captive ball up there.
2:19
You know, like there's some neat stuff happening. But none of those toys is as cool as that little cube robot who spins around and yells at you with Mark Silk's voice and his cheeky little monkey. But we're not here now today to talk about that. I first have to thank you. Thank you slash what the heck, dude. I wanted one day off. No, I'm just kidding. Jason Forbes, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. And I did want to say a special apology to Jason Forbes.
@ Mid-episode

  • “more than anyone else, actually tell you what's going on with all the other content creators. Feels like all the other pinball podcasters are like afraid”

    Orville Albert @ Mid-episode — Describes perceived reluctance of other content creators to mention competitors or provide critical commentary

    • Portal
    game
    P3 Multimorphiccompany
    Jawsgame
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Kanedaperson
    Jack Winarianperson
    Pinball Nerds Podcastorganization
    Poor Man's Pinball Podcastorganization
    Ninja Eclipsegame
    Tour de Francegame
    Alice in Wonderlandgame
    Angry Alpaca Coffee and Teacompany
    Joe Chervinoperson
    Franchiperson
    Dracoperson

    medium · Orby criticizes current podcasters for fearing listener loss if they mention other shows, comparing to historical era with Ken Cromwell, Bill Spellman, and Nate Shivers

  • ?

    industry_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball invested heavily in content creator relations (first-class flights, expensive hotel accommodations) but content creator (Kaneda) provided critical assessment rather than positive coverage

    medium · Orby discusses JJP paying for Kaneda's penthouse hotel stay and first-class travel, yet Kaneda questioned Portal's ability to attract new players to pinball

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Portal (P3 Multimorphic) being favorably compared to currently top-ranked Jaws (JJP) in terms of toy innovation and gameplay magic, suggesting potential competitive positioning shift

    medium · Orby compares Portal's cube robot toy and mechanics favorably to Jaws' shark fin and boat toys, suggesting Portal has more innovative magnetic moments

  • ?

    product_concern: Turner Pinball's decision not to have Chris Turner play the machine on camera during exclusive interview due to lack of skilled players available at the moment

    high · Chris Turner told Cary Hardy that 'the only guy in our company who's even okay at playing pinball has gone home,' and Orby criticized this decision

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Merlin's Arcade uses fantasy/arcade theme with artwork resembling Disney's Sword in the Stone; theme is enhanced by arcade elements making it substantially more appealing than standalone fantasy theme

    medium · Orby notes that while knights/magic themes are good for pinball, the arcade setting makes Merlin's Arcade substantially better

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jon Norris continues to be recognized as legendary/world-renowned layout designer with 25-30 designs to his credit, designing for Turner Pinball's new release

    high · Orby describes Norris as having done '25 or 30 different pinball designs' and praises his layout for Merlin's Arcade as exceptional

  • ?

    community_signal: Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Network's Pinball Nerds show has reached approximately 27,000 total listens across 50+ episodes over the past year, indicating growing audience reach

    medium · Orby calculates that with 500 average listeners per episode over 55 shows (27,000+ total plays), the podcast has established significant community reach

  • ?

    operational_signal: Recording pinball podcast content while managing homestead operations (maple syrup production) and high-energy dogs creates significant logistical challenges, affecting interview frequency and scheduling

    high · Orby extensively describes difficulty recording with spazzy sheepadoodle, maple syrup production commitments, explains why he does fewer interviews now due to need for 2-3 hours pre-recording dog exercise

    • 2:46
    Quite a few people messaged me that I didn't know that well or I hadn't, like, talked to before or hadn't supported the show before. When I had my little stern upper-decker meltdown last year, my mini-meltdown, which helped me win the Pinball Degenerate Award for the most degenerate pinball podcaster. I saw someone in the Pinball Degenerates group, Joe Chervino, posted all the winners. And they said, nah, these winners aren't that degenerate. yo bro have you met me more importantly have you partied with me because if you can't party with me you I mean if you can't keep up with me you're just a human that's why because I party like a rock freaking star okay I'm no Cliff Albert like Cliff Albert can probably dance circles around me uh you know he can probably go from 9 a.m till 9 a.m I don't have 24 hours in me but I can still kick it pretty good. I can start, I mean, even at the last, at Flippin's Arcade in Fredericton there, at the last pinball tournament, I started drinking around noon and I didn't stop till about midnight. So I can still pound her back for about 12 hours. Now, mind you, the new, more measured, more calm Orby or Albert or whatever, I like to do, this is just a little tip for y'all, especially if doing these long pinball tournaments, beer, water, or pop, probably don't go anything high sugar though. Beer, beer, well, I'll say beer, non-beer, food, beer, non-beer, food. And it doesn't even matter if it's just like a very small bag of chips or like those tiny little 99 cent things of peanuts. Okay. Um, it doesn't matter what it is, but if you go beer, non-alcoholic drink, ideally not super sugary because you know if you do that and you try to stay at like one beer depending on your size every and depending on if you're drinking an eight and a half percent triple IPA or if you're drinking like me a two and a half to three and a half percent sour it really depends now of course I'm a big IPA guy too and at the end of the night for a nightcap I'll have a double or a triple but you don't start at noon with that because you ain't gonna make it all night brah and you're definitely not gonna go to finals I've made finals in every pinball tournament I've gone to other than pin masters and okay other than in the united states against the top players from every state and province i have gone to finals in every pinball tournament except for one i believe in just over a year and a half now so like you can't be going to finals at every single tournament unless you're like drinking at a measured pace right uh what was that what was that adam sandler I'm trying to keep these family friendly. Oh, at a medium pace. Oh, dear God. There's at least half of this audience is hearing Adam Sandler's at a medium pace right now. And if you don't know what that is, it is not safe for work. Do not look. I know you're thinking it's Adam Sandler, Orby. Come on, it's safe for work. The edgiest thing this man has done in the past 20 years was a movie about Jell-O. No, the movie where he's a comedian where he was dying of AIDS, that was kind of, that was, that one actually, that was the last good Adam Sandler movie. The Jell-O one was decent too. I mean, but like 50 First Dates, that's probably like the craziest movie the guy's done in decades, right? But he used to be the guy who sang about at a medium pace. So I've gone off topic here. I've got to talk about Turner Pinball. But before I do that, the only reason I'm talking about Turner Pinball today is because my boy, Jason Forbes over there. Do you live in Chicago or Illinois? in my head just I thought that's where you live Jason I apologize I haven't shipped you coffee in a while Jason angry alpaca coffee and tea will still ship to you you may have to pay a tariff I hope you don't but you may have to I'm not sure um that being said we do have more coffee in stock for the first time in a long time and Joe Chervino because he just ordered some tea we actually are working very hard to get the two bases for the teas that he ordered. The one is Orbeez, which means it comes with our own mint. It comes with our own, like tons of the stuff in there. So anyways, Orbeez Pinball Potion is our angry alpaca tea that has a whole bunch of stuff from our homestead. I have a brand new homestead tea about to drop. And the coffee reorder is completely done. Danielle and I finished our coffee a couple weeks ago. So if you're like Jason Forbes, what I was saying is Jason used to order coffee all the time. He was our biggest orderer, Jason. I can't thank you enough for that. And after my little meltdown, Jason sent me an email, very heartfelt. And it was almost like I was trying to forget about it, and I was kind of embarrassed about it. And yeah, I did really want to get invited, but I was also kind of, you know, two things can be true, and I want everyone to remember that. Was it a bit of a Canadian fairy tale? Sure. But should I even be invited to something like that? I mean, maybe, but maybe not. And it's up to them who they want to choose. If you're JJP and you want to pay for Kaneda to stay at the ninth story of a penthouse and the most expensive downtown hotel, pay for his first class ticket there, and give him the royal treatment when he's there, that's like the cost of getting ten Orbeez. I will literally, I mean, until Jack Winarian made fun of Kale and was basically being egotistical and rude to him, I would have slept under Jack Winarian's pinball machines. Hell, I would have slept in his bathtub. I would have cuddled up and been the big spoon with him. Could have kept him warm at night, okay? I would have done that. I would have slept wherever. You guys could have flown me coach. Y'all could have put me on a bus. You could have put me on a Greyhound bus, JJP. But when you're spending 10 times that money on Kaneda just to give him first class, for him to come there and basically make fun of your product, it's like, well, obviously you don't want the real pinball content creators that are going to give you honesty, but they're going to do it in a kind but constructive way. because for the most part, when Chris decides he doesn't like a pinball machine, he's all or nothing. Like when you listen to him talk about Alice in Wonderland, he's like, oh, the art is incredible. And that upper play field is just the magic under glass is more than David Copperfield making love to David Blaine. You know, he's just like, he's just, he just, oh God. But then when he talks about like portable, he's like, yeah, it's okay. like, I, you know, I'm a grown man, I don't like video games, you don't, you're a grown man who doesn't like video games, you have, like, $45,000 in Neo Geos in the background that you would literally have to be, like, nine years old to be able to fit there and even play the freaking thing, so the biggest thing, though, that pissed me off that I talked about yesterday was Kaneda said that, you know, a portal's not going to bring, that's not going to get anyone new into pinball, and no one new will go through P3 multi, he doesn't really sound like that, he actually has a very good voice for radio uh but you know he was saying that no one knew would come to pinball because of p3 multimorphics that's totally wrong it is innovative it's fun it's got balls disappearing where you don't know if they're going through subways or it's a different ball like physically without you actually going in there i thought this would be funny if you took like a little well you wouldn't want to take anything that would like mark up your play field but if you took like a non-staining, like, I don't know, like a white, whatever, a white marker, and you put, like, you put dots on a couple, like, the captive ball to see if it's really going up through the back glass. Obviously, I don't think it is, but, like, it would just be neat to see which balls are going where if you use different colors to put them on the balls and track how magic the ball is, but the fact that I'm even saying that means it's a good game, but because of Jason Forbes' kindness, and Jason, if you do happen to order after your big dono yesterday, thank you, Jason, fired me off 25 bucks 50 cents a show for my last 50 shows and to be honest I've done five shows since I started saying that so we're actually up to 55 shows okay so it's less than 55 it's less than 50 cents per show but thank you so much for that my grand my pledge total my PBS pledge total for the year is up to 420 my favorite number 25 dollars so thank you very much Jason for that when I hit 500 I will shut up about the pledge drive I will from maybe on my birthday or if I come up with pinball nerds podcast trading cards or if I decide to do page around the future you might hear me advertise for that but for uh honestly for over a year now I have not advertised for my coffee or tea um also on average most people order like one one or two small bags of coffee or tea and I make about a dollar 75 for each of those and after shipping I sometimes actually lose money if they up us from the nine dollar shipping method to the twelve dollar one because the website charges you significantly less than that. However, this is not your problem. You came here to listen to me talk about Turner Pinball's top five rad and one bad. So let's just go ahead and get to that. To put a nice little bow on it, Jason Forbes, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for donating. I really didn't expect to get any more donos with how much I've got over the last week. At the same time, you know, when you have between 400 to 600 or if you go on a bad rant, 1,000 people listening. If you think about it, let's say even 500 people listen on average to my last 55 shows. You're looking at what? 25, 26, 20, about, I've had about 27,000 times, right? Am I doing the math right? Yeah, 27,000 times. Think about that. 27,000 times in the last year alone, someone has pressed play to listen to me rant and rave like a freaking goof nerd on the Pinball Nerds podcast about mostly pinball. Now, sometimes I'm being entertaining and just being funny and trolling y'all. Other times, you know, depending on my mood, depending on how much beer I've had or gummies, you know, sometimes I'm just telling you about my life. Other times I'm just talking about the pinball industry. And I, more than anyone else, actually tell you what's going on with all the other content creators. Feels like all the other pinball podcasters are like afraid. I'll tell you back in my day, now I'm sounding like a really old dude, Back in my day when it was Ken Cromwell and Bill with Special Winlet, when it was, you know, we still had Nate Shivers with Coast to Coast going on, when we still had, well, even Kaneda back in the day would do a good job of at least most of the time, some of the time, being kind and courteous and giving constructive criticism to the other content creators. and now it's like all the other content creators don't want to mention any other podcast because they're like oh we could lose our listenership and they'll go over there and listen to them it's like take it easy guys it's just pinball podcasting uh don don's pretty good about it like if you know like when he was on my show and he said that uh my the christmas episode that i will i will be honest that's probably what tipped the scales uh certainly colin from the kineticist said that was something that uh really made him think i deserve the most degenerate Pinball Podcaster Award.
    13:47
    That particular show was from the Christmas show that Don was on that he said it was sour. It wasn't sour, Don. It was incredible.
    13:55
    Now, I thought I would get a message from Don because, did you guys see that Don made an appearance at the D-Genny's? That's right. He was on my chest. I was wearing my Don's Pinball Podcast t-shirt while doing that. Now, was it a mistake? No. Did I do it on purpose? No, but is it a comfy, cozy shirt? Yes. So if you have the opportunity to ever get one of Don's awesome shirts. Now the one thing he has never admitted and I asked him about it I said Don did you change your eye color on that shirt I think he went in there and I think he glizzed them up He gave himself a little a little rizz He rizzed it a bit, glizzed it up. Okay, he made it look pretty. He made his eyes pop. I don't think they're naturally quite that like toxic green. You know, no one has, come on, Don, just be honest. It's okay if you airbrushed out a little bit of gray in your beard or that's all fine. But don't be glizzing up your eyes like that, man. like it's already you're already a good looking fella it's when I get those glizzed up eyes staring at me when I'm brushing my teeth or shaving my beard or or having a shower wait why would I why would I have Don's t-shirt on while in the shower maybe it's just so he can be close to me no I'm just kidding but like you know when I'm getting dressed and I'm those eyes are just piercing eyes staring at me let's say Jay Shetty go look at Jay Shetty's eyes those have got to be fake I think he's wearing I think he's got those little contacts in uh now that being said, Don is the manager of a local Burger King there in Wisconsin, so the chances of him actually being able to afford like very expensive eye-changing color contacts is extremely low, but y'all came here to hear about Turner Pinball. Let's just get into it. I'm going to bring up my handy dandy notes. Yes, I wrote some. When I have at least some notes, I tend to stay on topic slightly more. Slightly. All right, so here's the top five rad, and I'm going to try to go through it pretty quickly. Originally, I had animations in here, but then I ended up... Animations are really good. Some of the animations are leftover, I would assume, from Deep Root. Perhaps the best thing that Deep Root Pinball ever did was their animations. The artwork was a little bit questionable, but overall, very, very, very good. Now, I bumped out the animations just because I think this is so cool, and I'm probably the only person who would put this in their top five rad. I don't know. I could be wrong. If you're another pinball content creator, let me know if I'm just being silly. But the foosball, I love the foosball spinner. So in place of where there would be a spinner, I've always thought, why can't we make spinners more interesting? They all look identical. Yes, there's opto spinners. Yes, we changed the sound to make it either incredible or horrible. But why on earth could we not change up what is there? Like I want to be able to hit it and it's like a little piece of pizza in a diamond shape, right? And like the pizza starts flinging and spinning. That would have been awesome on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you know what I mean? Or Food Truck or whatever. I wonder if we'll see Food Truck. Now that we've seen Merlin's beard, it's actually called Merlin's Arcade from Turner Pinball. But that, if you go watch Cary Hardy, Cary Hardy did an interview with Chris Turner of Turner Pinball last night.
    17:06
    I will say this, something that was sus that happened and that Cary Hardy normally would call someone out on this. I feel like he went a little bit easy on them, but maybe, you know, they probably have a working relationship, so that's okay. And to be honest, even if Cary Hardy isn't paid a single solitary penny, he's being paid in information and exclusive rights to show it. And by the over a thousand people that had already watched Cary Hardy's video this morning, that was probably the least expensive thing he could do. Rather than spending a million dollars on a fancy video like J.J.P. would, or probably even, I'm guessing, 20, 30, 40, 50k like Stern would, he decided to either pay a small fee or just give exclusive rights to Kerry Hardy to be able to see the new pin in exchange Kerry Hardy gets lots of views Kerry Hardy gets goodwill in the community and Kerry Hardy is going to be pretty nice so I'll be honest if I had Chris Turner from Turner Pinball on my show I would have to feel it out but as soon as Chris said oh I'm so sorry I cannot play the pinball machine at all the only guy in our company who's even okay at playing pinball has gone home my gut reaction as and again I'm more of a pinball podcaster less I'm more of a pinball blogger less of a pinball reporter even though I'm trying to go that direction a little bit of course he didn't say to him like yeah but Chris everybody wants to see it played we don't care how good or bad you are and if it is the day that your bring your company's bringing out a new pinball machine you tell you you're like yo dude you're the only guy who can freaking play pinball here, we're showcasing it on the largest YouTube channel for pinball with Kerry Hardy, you've got to be here to at least play for five minutes so you can go home, bro. You've got to be here. And I would say like, no, you don't have to make your employees work overtime. They're already working so hard to get ninja clips out. But be like, dude, I'm not a good enough player that I don't feel comfortable playing on camera. And Chris, even if you weren't that good, you could have just taken the ball and thrown it around like Dwight does, you know what I mean? But Chris was good enough to turn on the machine, let us hear some of those funny, hilarious call-outs.
    19:08
    Which I will say, the voices were actually pretty decent. They did sound very close to, like... The artwork really reminds me of The Sword in the Stone. If any of you guys saw The Sword in the Stone, the story of Arthur when he pulls the... Everybody's trying to pull the sword out of the stone, all these strong dudes, and this young kid who's, you know... He's an apprentice for King Arthur or something like that, and they didn't know he came from royalty and he's able to pull the sword out so he's officially the king, yada, yada, yada. Sorry, sorry, spoiler alert if you didn't see this 40-year-old Disney movie. The artwork looks like along that vein a little and I will say this about the theme. Do I think like knights and magic and all that kind of stuff is good for pinball, a good pinball theme? Yes, but what made it substantially better was the fact that it was in the arcade, right? So, but that foosball, Chris Turner did actually take his finger and spin the foosball thing so we could hear the sound. And it sounds identical to like a foosball thing. It brought me back to college and getting drunk. Like long before I was a pinball nerd and a pinball... I'm not going to say the W word, but you know what I mean? Before I got good at pinball, okay? We do not use the W slang on this. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The only time I would use the W word is if it were in reference to the disgusting analogy my buddy Borat used with the sleeve of wizard. but I wouldn't be that type of person. This is a family-friendly show, or at least I try. Is it kind of funny me trying to keep this family-friendly? Trying to get me to talk for half an hour without swearing is like nearly impossible. If you think about it, whether I'm doing a collectible show, whether I'm doing a coffee show, if there's like nine little kids right there, I'm not like, yo, come get your freaking coffee, nerds. You know what I mean? Like I'm not like swearing left, right, and center like a drunken sailor, but I can basically speak how I want 90% of the time with any customers I have at any show. and on this particular show, I actually do go out of my way to not swear very often because I want to grow the numbers of the people listening. So if you're listening in the car with your kids, you don't have to worry. Nine out of ten shows. I used to let one swear word slip. I think yesterday I had none. The closest to a swear word you usually hear on here is I'll say like, I don't give a shats about something. And obviously people know what that is the short form for, but it is actually a pinball maneuver that you can do, even though you might not ever have to do it on Turner Pinballs.
    21:36
    Medieval Madness? No, I'm just kidding. I don't relate to this theme, even though I like that movie. What I do relate to is the foosball spinning. Let's get on to number four. Number four is John Norris and this really good open layout. Looks like it's going to be great for kids, which are going to be pulled in by this. Really good for newbies. A lot of people playing this will be newer players because the code's not that deep. And over and above all of that, no, you just came in from outside before I started this podcast. You just came in like six minutes ago. Franchi is annoying me on a daily basis. That's what dogs do. I gave him a long walk before I started this show, and he's now looking at me like, Dad, time to go back outside. He knows it's maple syrup day. uh we had freezing rain last night that added up to like 15 centimeters so that's like three inches four and five inches it's a lot so I've got to go empty out all the pails my 25 pails that the maple sap goes into make get rid of any ice that could be in there from yesterday as well because today we're going to have a record-setting maple sap day um let's get on to number four though so world renowned world renowned might be a little bit too far but he's done like 25 or 30 different pinball designs. John Norris, he did this one for the Tour de France that I thought was really cool that came out about a year ago that no one used. But this is a tremendous layout. It looks like it would shoot like a dream. It's got quite a bit of flow. I'd say it's got way more flow than Ninja Eclipse did. It also looks like it's got wide open shots like that ramp to the left is nice and wide open. So it's going to have flow. It's going to be an easy shooter. It's going to be, it looks like fun. And what I love about the layout that I knew John Norris would do, because this man loves adding some classic elements, is just like an 8-ball deluxe, on the left there, all the stand-up targets, he's got all those stand-up targets going in a row for you to play pool. And, wow, those are just like, those are, that's, it's such a, I don't normally like stand-ups, I like drop-downs. In this particular case, when you can make the stand-up targets look identical to, like, pool balls, then I'm completely, completely okay with it. Draco, come here bud, you're not going outside right now come here, come on the couch come for a little nap for a minute I'm going to be done in 10 minutes, come sit down thank you, you're not going outside right now bud I love you stop, ow, stop I love you, come here, sit down you're not going outside you can't go outside every 10 minutes I know it's spring, it is spring and my guy Franchi needs to get outside and sow his wild oats, okay, he doesn't have any wild oats to sow because we got him the operation last year, but he likes to be outside and frolicking, and who wouldn't? After three to four months of being in minus 20 temperatures here in Canada, with three to five feet of snow at any given moment, it's beautiful outside. The sun's coming out. It's five degrees. Oh, man. Pop-ups, I love you. Well, between Franchi and the pop-ups on my computer, this, I can just tell, is going to be a fun show. Okay, I have to let Franchi outside for a second, because he's absolutely driving me nuts. So I'm going to put him on his lead and let him go outside. So y'all talk amongst yourselves. Go get a drink if you need it. I will be back, I promise. I'm coming. I'm coming back. Come on, Franchi. Oh, he's so excited to get to go outside. Oh, yeah. You're not going outside.
    25:09
    Over here. You're going out on your... Get over here. You're going out on your leave. Come on. Okay, guys. I will be back in a minute.
    25:21
    Stop. Oh, God. Oh, hey, I'm back. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, guys. I am so sorry. This is nearly impossible. If you're trying to record a podcast while running a homestead, when you have a super spazzy dog like Franchie, it's difficult. All right, I have made it back. He's outside on his lead. It's a beautiful day. He's going to enjoy himself. Wow. If ever were you going to donate, it would be when I have spent 45 minutes exercising this dog before I hit the record button. I've been up with him since 5.30, so I'm four hours into playing with him, and he wouldn't let me do a 20-minute podcast. Imagine that. Okay. catching up on my breath managed to get him out on his lead his lead which is 50 feet is 50 feet from the door and it was 50 feet past that so I did have to run about 200 feet and back I have survived I apologize for that hopefully y'all just fast forward okay let's get back into number four which is uh John Norris's layout I think it's a great layout it's wide open it's got tons of flow it's going to be the best shooter perhaps ever ever ever uh from them at least that you know they've only done two pins but all right sorry guys that i cannot believe that i have played with him for four hours straight of cuddling petting playing longest walk around our property ever and 10 minutes in he's crying at the door and not letting me this is this is very challenging and for all of you who love it when I do interviews this is why I don't do interviews anymore because when I go to do an interview I have to literally spend two to three hours playing with Draco so that I can actually record the interview even many of you remember during my interview with Colin last year one of my last interviews I ever did the only time I can do an interview is when I have other friends or family home and nine out of ten days when I'm going to be recording a podcast there's no one else home so it makes it nearly impossible if you have a one-year-old spazzy sheepadoodle that just loves to be super hyper. So if you ever wondered why I do less interviews, this is why. Now, everything I've read is that sheepadoodles are supposed to start to calm down around a year. He's a year old in December. But honestly, maybe next time I go to record, especially if it's a nice day and it's five degrees out and everything else, maybe I'll just put him outside on his lead. Because as long as the delivery driver doesn't come in the next like 10 minutes, we should be able to get through this podcast. All right. So number three, number three, I apologize, Chris Turner and to all the listeners and adjacent forums. He played for me, paid for me to be here today. And then he has to listen to silence for like 30 seconds. So number one way to get your audience to stop listening. But if that ever happens, guys, just fast forward 30 seconds. All right. So number three on the list. Oh God, Glenn, don send me anything when I recording Of course how would you know I recording All right so number three on the list is the auto tap pass And again this is from John Norris who likes old school So for those of you who only play modern pins, or maybe aren't tournament players, and you've never, ever, ever heard of a tap pass, a tap pass is when you kind of cup your hands. This is starting to sound bad. You cup the ball. No, you cup your hands so that when you press the flipper button with your more like not with the tips of your fingers, not just the tip. This is really starting to get bad. No, you want to kind of cup your hands and just barely press in the flipper button just a little so the contact is barely touched. So it starts to flip up a little for a millisecond and comes right back. Now, why on earth would you want to do that? Because especially with a lot of older pins, you cannot do a post pass because the posts are too far up. So what you would have to do in a lot of older pins is you would have to shats the ball if you needed it over on the other flipper shatsing can be very dangerous and it's very hard and on most pins especially modern ones it's not reliable in fact if you shoot it clean enough with the heavy powered flippers of nowadays you can eat and i just saw this in a big tournament the other day i believe on uh getaway getaway high speed to the getaway you will see like they'll they'll they'll hit the ball and it will go up through the in lane but then it will go up and over and it basically becomes like a suicide flip a longer suicide flip but you basically killed your own self by doing this so uh the only toy that really does like interact with the ball and i gotta call them out on this a little bit now they're a newer company but the only one that interacts with the ball whatsoever okay the only thing that interacts with the ball whatsoever of all the toys i mean maybe maybe the mech guy that Merlin guy, maybe he is kind of taunting the ball or something. It looks like mostly he's talking to the other two characters. But again, we haven't seen any gameplay, so we don't know. And something feels off about that, that they couldn't do gameplay. So as soon as possible, please, Chris Turner, give us a gameplay stream, whether or not the player is great. It would be good. It would be better if they're a good player, right? But as soon as possible, because I would say to everybody else, I personally would not. This for sure. Now, Portal, if I already owned a P3 Multimorphic, I would have bought Portal Day One.
    31:14
    Dear Lord Almighty, what are the chances? The chances of my phone ringing at 9.30 in the morning is like no shot. And here we are recording and I swear to God, if this person gives personal information on my answer machine, I have to end this podcast and start all over. I'm going to be really disappointed because I've had to record a podcast every single day for like five days straight because people won't stop donating, which I love you donating, so...
    31:40
    Oh, dear Lord, the dentist is calling about a cancellation for tomorrow. Oh, my God. Guys, I'm going to get a root canal. Oh, my God. I hope I don't have to go tomorrow. Anyways, don't give out any private information on there. Like, don't be giving out my credit card number or something on there, lady. No, she's not going to do that. All right. So the tap pass feature is a separate button, which I actually like because how could you have it on the same one? It wouldn't make sense. So apparently what the tap pass button does is it automatically just, blump, passes it over. And this is such a cool feature because, yes, a lot of the time you will see competitive or really good players who just dead bounce and then they cradle up. Or they can do a live catch and cradle up. But for 99% of newer players, and definitely me in my first two or three years playing, it's very, very hard to cradle up and get the ball to a standstill. Shooting the ball from a standstill while the ball is not moving is like a 9 out of 10 easy. Shooting the ball while it's, you know, shooting the ball while it's going full speed down your flipper, oh my God, like on a modern pin, it's very hard. It's very, very, very hard. And even the most accurate people out there, if you're off by 1% on the bottom, by the top of the play field, anyone who's done, you know, like baseboards or any type of general construction knows, if you're off on the bottom of a cut, the top of it's off by 5, 10 times that. So the best way to give your best chance to actually, you know, hit the shot you want to hit is to cradle up and get it on the proper flipper. And the easiest way to do that, of course, for a newer player would be to just press a button and make it all happen for you. So Chris Turner has gone even further to make this more, I would say, even more beginner friendly than any of the other ones. So, yeah, that is so cool. I know a lot of other people might not think that's that cool, but mark my words, when people get out there to TPF and all these other places and start playing it, they will notice how cool it is. All right, number two on the list is six sculpts, including Merlin's moving arms. Okay, so that's by far the best one is Merlin's arms moving. Is it nearly as cool as the portal mech we just saw? Of course not. Is it nearly as cool as the dragon in D&D? Of course not. But it's still pretty cool and for Turner Pinball I think it's a big step up he can turn left and turn right to give the impression that he's talking to the evil girl on the right and the good guy on the left right um now I do want to interrupt my own self here to talk about the artwork for a second I think and and and uh Brad Duke I believe very good artist went looked at his Instagram he did do the um he did do Looney Tunes which I did like I'll give Looney Tunes maybe like an eight out of ten. Mind you, he's working with other people's artwork, of course. This particular case, this is all, like, he had to figure this all out. So, to me personally, Avatar artwork's like a ten out of ten. Ninety percent of the stuff that's done by Zombie Yeti is either a nine or a ten. Ninety percent of the stuff that's done by Christopher Franchi is, well, it's probably, it's usually a ten. I can't even think of a nine by Franchi. But what I'm getting at is that Brad Duke is a good dude, and I want to be careful with my words here. I think because Brad had the hard job of incorporating a lot of old stuff from Deep Root and Chris Turner did say that he wanted to add some of the older artists to the new like to the website because they kind of you can kind of tell some of the art is done by like slightly different methods and it's just done by different artists at different times now the back glass which was all done by Brad looks incredible and I don't know if it looks incredible it looks very good I'll give it an 8 out of 10. But the play field, I can only give like a 6. I'm sorry. It kind of looks fragmented. The side with like all the good characters, the right-hand side of the cabinet, I'll give a 7. The evil people, they kind of go with a color pattern over here, and it looks a bit better. I'd say it's like an 8. So overall, it's not a make or a break. I think my wife, who knows, has gone literally to university for art, the University of Western Ontario, or she didn't, that's not one of her majors, but she took art while she was there, multiple classes, and did very well at it and still to this day knows way more about art than her she went there's almost too many colors happening what I was saying is like if you look at it there's got to be like 15 different colors in here but not only that but every blue is a different hue of blue every green is a different hue of green it doesn't it doesn't look nice to your eyes it's too much going on too much happening um it's not oversaturated it's just it's you know a lot of the shading is okay, but not great. The topper, I don't love. The topper, I'm going to say, I just, that's the one reason you definitely don't need that higher end version. Like, I'm sorry, Chris Turner, the topper's just three flat plastics, and the artwork on the flat plastics is meh. Like, the artwork, say, on Godzilla, you could argue Godzilla's just a flat top, a flat plastic, even though he is smoking that big bong, right, and blowing it out. I was trying to keep this family friendly. But he's, he's, don't worry. He's, it's grandpa's, it's grandpa's tobacco pipe, kids. Nothing to worry about here. Getting cancer is fine, but doing anything else that doesn't cause cancer is not. Confusing, right? So I absolutely love all the sculpts. The sculpts really make it what it is. And Chris Turner did say on the lower arcade version, there won't be all the sculpts. Now let's talk about pricing just for one second. I think if I was an arcade, and I was an arcade that got almost every new in-box pin, I would 100% go get the lower-end version. Okay? I haven't even seen it yet, but I would probably go get it just so you have one of every new pin. You don't have to worry about the arms breaking down, or the thing turning, or all the other stuff you have to worry about. Chris Turner even said with the physical lock, there's a slightly better chance with the virtual lock of not having balls get stuck and not having issues. It's a little bit more reliable. So obviously, if you're a location, you're going to get that. But why I would say at home, I would be okay with it as well, even though I do love all those six sculpts, I think I would be okay with it because I don't necessarily love that yellow armor. It's kind of disarming because there's not really any yellows that bright in the artwork. Also, I do think the sculpts look good, but not incredible, so I wouldn't feel like I needed them. him turning and raising his arms looks all right but you'll get over that in about a week i the topper i don't even want the topper i would even even the topper and then the topper is just too freaking tall the topper is half the size look at the back last look at the topper the topper is half as tall as so the difference is with ninja eclipse chris turner could bring this to places and people could say whoa the topper is way too big hey we don't i don't necessarily love the artwork it's okay remember he's not you know when he when when brad was doing uh looney tunes he was working from artwork that was already out there he just had to kind of make it his own and make it better here he's making it all up from scratch or at least taking some from deep root and trying to make it his own so again i wouldn't not buy it the artwork doesn't isn't like horrible but when the artwork is the cheapest easiest simplest thing to get correct on the entire pinball machine you better damn well at least get the artwork correct do you know what i mean so that was my whole that was my whole thing side note this weekend february 22nd um David Dennis will be, I did get a confirmation from him last night, he will be going to the tournament, so if you want to get to hang out with two pinball podcasters, and arguably four, because both my sons are coming, and they've both been on the show multiple times, in fact, at least a hundred times, if you include the, many of you remember from show like 150 to 250, Hayden and Owen did a rap with me, I'm a pinball nerd, and we actually got it from Mike Dimas, who wrote it and kind of made it our own. But can you see the word? I'm a pinball nerd. I forget how it goes. Some of you, Glenn the Skateboarder probably does remember who just sent me a message. But it does, I don't know what's going on with TPM, but like Triple Drain left the, I hope they're not closing down. Like I haven't officially on the record heard anything, but like it seems to me like I don't know if they're disbanding. That would mean the Poor Man's Pinball Network here with Foghorn, Leghorn, Craft Brew Sally, and once or twice a year, Ian and Drew, we would be the only pinball network left if that happened I hope it doesn't happen I mean as soon as Craig Bobby left the pinball show I knew something was going on man it was nice seeing Craig Bobby at the D Jennings and he did tell this he did go on this whole rant about taking gummies or something Craig Bobby I didn't think you're that type of dude anyways he's talking about the pinball machines got really small it's so funny as if you need another reason to watch the D Jennings when they come out all right let's go back to number two. So number two is all those beautiful sculpts. Great job on that. I think they look very good. I don't think they look incredible. I don't think I would absolutely need them or would hate the flat plastics, but I haven't seen them yet because we haven't been shown them yet. I will say this, before you put your pinball machine for sale, Chris, in the future, have even a one minute teaser video that we can watch over and over and over because it's really annoying having to decide whether or not someone wants to buy a pinball machine without seeing it flipped it all. It can be a pre-recorded video. It doesn't have to be a live stream, but you should have even, even just like a five, even if you went onto Fiverr and spent 20 bucks, like if you don't want to spend a lot of money, go into Fiverr, spend 20 bucks and literally just have like, I don't know, say like, um, you know, like a 45 minute teaser showing the five main mechs working and that sort of thing. Like, you know, that, that really would have for the cost that you would spend for the amount of sales you would get back, Chris, that would be huge. Now, some of us will think to go watch Cary Hardee's. Others of us will see it's like an hour and a half and go, eh, I'm not going to watch a whole hour and a half. I will tell you guys a little cheater code here. If you go to about half an hour into that YouTube video, you can just watch the camera work where you can get to see close up all the mechs, all the toys, all the shots. The RGB lights look good. I don't know if Ninja Eclipse had that. Certainly didn't in the first time, I think, but the RGB lights looked beautiful. Everything looked very, very, very good on it, but nothing looked great. Nothing wowed me. Nothing knocked my socks off except for the one thing on the list that does blow me away, that does shiver me timbers, if you will, okay? And that is number one on my list. Number one on my list is the goodwill that Chris Turner and Turner Pinball has built up. if you order from Chris Turner, I would say maybe not higher than like Stern, but probably higher than any pinball company on planet earth other than Stern and maybe JJP, you have a very good chance of actually getting your pinball machine and probably spooky. You know, there's about CGC, there's like five pinball companies on planet earth that regardless of tariffs, regardless of the market, regardless of resale values, they'll stay in business. And I think that Turner pinball has made its way into those likes. And the reason for that is, I mean, I'm not going to shock anyone by saying American Pinball might not be around next year. Okay? I hope they are. Why are you using the stand-up paddleboard? Don't be using SUP for your stand-up paddleboarding. Don't make it worse by making your company name that. But the goodwill, the reason Chris Turner has goodwill is multiple reasons. First of all, he didn't come in with a big head and being egotistical and being rude and pretend he better than everybody like Jack Winarian or like the Robert Mueller from Deep Root and just oh we gonna crush the competition we better on just a whole bunch of BS rhetoric the opposite Chris Turner was humble he was kind he was generous he said I love Spooky I love what Spooky's doing in fact Bug or Corwin Emery came into the chat last night with Kerry Hardy and he was congratulating him on how good the game looked now was he being a little bit tongue-in-cheek probably that's how they roll over there it looks really good right in comparison to evil dead like this is maybe a seven all day long which is great it's better than like a two or a three which is galactic dank force or a one or a two which is barbecue but like i'm sorry i'm sorry dnd is like a nine out of ten you know what i mean like even avatar with no toys is like a solid eight probably even with that scram that scram moves it up from a seven to an eight all day you'd be hitting that scram I'm getting a shirt I'm getting a pinball nerds podcast shirt that says I hit the scram today and like people are just going to be walking around at everything else other than a pinball show being like I'm really sorry to bother you but what's a scram and then I'll explain it to them and they'll be like wow that was the least interesting thing you've ever said LRB and that's saying something because I've said a lot of uninteresting things But the number one thing and the number one reason why I would consider ordering, and the most rad thing about Turner Pinball, and the most rad thing about this particular pinball machine is, when you order it, you know that he's literally, Chris Turner's home cell phone number is on the website, is on his business card, he gives it to everybody. You know you're going to get your pin, you know you're going to get updates. It's not like CGC where you're waiting two, three years and you have no clue if your Pulp Fiction is coming. You're going to get updates. If you get something wrong, he had one person with a bad flipper. He sent it out right away. If something's wrong with it, it's not like Stern where you're going to have to wait three, five, ten. I've heard people waiting weeks and never hearing back from Stern customer service, which makes sense. They sell a hell of a lot more pinball machines. I mean, it would be good if they got better at their customer service, because then I could say this about Stern. There's lots of great things to say about Stern, but their customer service is not top of that list. I think we all can admit that. Whereas Turner, did my voice just crack? Turner. Whereas Turner Pinball, I think we can all admit that probably the best thing about them right now is not the artwork, is not the mechs or the sculpts, which are still cool. It's not the foosball spinner. It's not the fact that they got John Norris as a designer. The one thing that's the best about them is that you know you're going to get your pin. You only have to put down a thousand deposit.
    45:56
    They pay you back your money if they don't get you your pin in time. CGC is never going to do that. Pinball Brothers are never going to do that because they'd have to buy everybody's Big Lebowski, right?
    46:07
    And then if Turner is running behind on your order, he's going to be open and honest about it. The other good thing is they're only making $500. I would have liked that number to be much, much lower. I think the perfect number, if he had said we're only doing $250 combined,
    46:22
    and he said, I don't know how many of those are going to be the higher end version. $500 is just too much. To go from $100 to $500 is too much. I will guarantee I'll put my show on the line I won't even ask for money for an entire year straight if Turner sells out of 500 I'm serious I will not one time once ask y'all for a dono if this man sells out I don't think it's going to happen I just don't think it's going to happen now could I be wrong sure but I I highly doubt it if I had to guess do my best guess from a decade of being in this hobby and watching multiple small little boutique companies come and go if I had to guess I will put I will actually say here Turner will sell probably within a year to two years 200 of the high-end version and no more than 100 of the small one maybe only 50 so I'll guess right around that 250 and here's the thing if Chris Turner and Turner pinball now of course why would they hire me they're a small company but if I was say like I signed an NDA and I was working with them as a marketing manager or even like a marketing assistant or something like that right intern marketing intern advertising communications intern I would say guys you've got to top it out at 250 even even if they had said the higher end one I'm sorry we're only making 250 that would be better than saying oh we're making up to 500 500 is what Stern makes for their le's usually that just doesn't feel special especially not for a little boutique like to say like for everyone who owns ninja clips to say i own one of a hundred like one of a hundred like that's the first number past double digits but now to say oh i own one of 500 it's like yeah now they're not going to make all 500 i highly doubt so i get where chris was coming from that what i i would say from a marketing perspective the biggest mistake was not having a video the second biggest mistake wasn't announcing a live stream and the third biggest mistake was how many you're making. Now, other than that, if those are only three big mistakes and you've got all this goodwill going for you, that's great. Now, I know what you're thinking. Orby, you've mentioned lots of bad things, but what is that one bad thing for today's show we've got to talk about? Well, the one bad thing that we have to talk about, and I don't want to talk about, but we have to talk about, is the code. And that's the biggest question. With them not having any coders, with them not having any pinball players who are like known to be like really good high-end pinball players what are the actual chances that this particular machine will be coded well now I know the good news is it's mostly for newbies it's mostly for like stay-at-home players it's not meant to be really a tournament player's dream I get all that but honestly if you're only going to have five to ten pins at your house you want each of them to have staying power because we know in today's market if you sell a pin in less than three to six months you're going to absolutely lose a little bit of cash on 95 of the pins you buy maybe even 98 at this point you know what i mean so but if you keep it for two to three years you put a couple tasteful mods on it you don't put it's not in like an all you can play arcade where it gets 20 000 plays you keep it in decent condition you can either break even or you can lose way way way less than a buck per game you You can probably put 3,000 to 5,000 plays on that sucker, enjoy the hell out of the code on it, and either break even on selling it five years later or maybe lose like 25 cents a play. Oh, wow, I played 5,000 plays and I lost 1,000. Who cares, right? So anyways, Turner, congratulations, Chris. Congratulations to the whole team over there. I like the cut of their jib. I like that they're kind of following Spooky and being humble and being kind. They're not as funny as Spooky. Spooky's still ahead of them on that. So keep that up, Corwin. The videos from Corwin in the last year were hilarious. I don't know if you like to be called Bugger Corwin. People get weird with nicknames, right? Like, you can call me whatever. But anyways, let's just talk about yesterday's podcast. I did forget at the very end to mention the one bad thing about P3 Multimorphic, even though I kind of touched upon it in the middle. And I just want to be clear that I'm not giving out favorites just because two of the three designers of the game happen to be Tribes members, okay? I'm trying to look at it through like just non-tribes member glasses. And what I can tell you is that the worst part is the barrier to entry. The 20K, more than 20K Canadian, but it's like 15K, well, 12 and a half, I guess, US, something like that. Plus, it depends if you get the extended version. Then you're talking probably closer to 25,000 Canadian, right? So it's that barrier to entry. Now, you do save quite a bit of money when you buy the system and you get the Portal game at the same time. So that is the advantage of that, is you're going to save an extra grand by doing it that way. And then you can save an extra grand if you go through, again, I don't know, maybe Drew at the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, reach out to him first and see if they still offer that, where you get $1,000 back. I thought they were working with P3, so that might be possible. if not maybe reach out to the loser kids or reach out because if you can save a thousand dollars by buying both together then a thousand dollars by supporting your favorite pinball podcasters wow now you've saved upwards of an extra two grand us which is like three and a half grand canadian so you're doing something really well if you know what i mean so you're getting closer to that value proposition and if you didn't listen to yesterday's show go listen to it i think it was fire. Honestly, I've only had one coffee and a couple sips of my second one. I had a really long three or four days straight. Draco today has been a big handful. I think it's springtime and he just wants outside all the time. I am going to go take him on a very, very, very long walk right now and try to tucker him out a little bit. I can see him out there running in circles on the freaking lead. He's just excitable. He's just excitable. My Franchi is just like the real Franchi. From time to time he gets highly excitable and yeah it can be a little bit of a pain in the butt he's a bit of a troll my dog is a troll i will say that no i'm just kidding he's not he's not he's a he's the dote he's the most degenerate of the troll dogs and then luna tuna elo and agar is literally laying here keeping my feetsies warm because she's so soft and cuddly and curly and and fun and chill and relaxed and until we're outside like playing with a ball or something she's like mellow yellow and he's like Mr. Spaz almost all the time when he's not sleeping. I wanted to get this podcast, I had to get this podcast out to you before he goes for his morning nap because I'm going to be running back and forth. Sometimes when it gets this hot with this much sun this time of the year and it was minus five last night with freezing rain, that means the taps are going to be filling up the buckets almost as fast as I can get them all done and get back here and get them emptied and get them all done and get back here. so I have a very long very I probably am doing 20 to 25,000 steps today it'll be a fun day it'll be an interesting day I get to bring a vape with me for a walk and listen to other pinball podcasts so it's not like it won't be a fun day but it's still a shots a lot of work and there's no way I could take an hour off to do a show for you guys so shout out to Chris Turner huge shout out to Jason Forbes for donating you can hear my voice is giving up on me I've done shows I think for four out of five days in a row or something like that. I, against my best judgment, against my best judgment, I've been working on this show. Dave Fix, Dave Fix, who knows where he is? Shout out to Dave Fix, I guess. I like you better not working at AP, buddy. I do. And not doing interviews where you're blaming everything on everyone else but yourself. That's how I, I like Dave Fix better as being like an assistant dude who like helps run Pinball Expo. In that capacity, he's fun, he's great. I know even Nick Lane from Buffalo Pinball on their last show said like, Dave Fix, you're fun to hang out with. You're very passionate about pinball. I like you like that. I just don't think you were a great fit for being the president of the company. So as nicely as I can say this, Dave Fix, if you apply for any jobs in the future, maybe make it like related to like event planning and making like pinball expo better or something like that. Maybe even being like, imagine being an auctioneer. You know, he'd be great at that. I got $450 on this sharpshooter over here, blah, blah, blah, blah. he'd be great at that. I just don't think that you are the George Gomez of any pinball company and will be any good at it. Now, if y'all want to hear me come back tomorrow, I want to do the Dave Fix five-year quiz. It's 88 questions. 22 questions will be about playing pinball. 22 questions will be about buying and selling pinball. 22 questions will be about, like, just, let's say they're just general strategies for how to play better, as Steve Ritchie would say. And then the last 22 is going to be a mix-match of just like regular trivia. But it's kind of like everything I learned in my first five years. And Dave Fix famously said in his first five years of pinball,
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    he doesn't want to hear, I don't want to, in Minecraft, so I don't get sued. He's a very litigious man, that David Fix. He only loves two things. it's mustache wax and suing people and he's all out of mustache wax so in minecraft dave fix uh said something along the lines of until you've been in pinball podcasting for five years your opinion doesn't matter well guess what guys you can speed run everything or be learned in five years on my next show now do i want to spend three or four hours today writing it in two or three hours tomorrow recording uploading everything no so please for the love of god don't donate i'm not even going to drop a link into the thing. Now, could you go back to a previous day and figure out my PayPal? Possibly. But for the love of God, if you're listening to this, unless you're like a frenemy of me and you just hate me and you really want me to have to work my butt off tomorrow, donate $25, which is 50 cents per show over the last year, $50 American, which is $1 per show, which come on, I deserve a buck a show, don't I? Especially if you can afford it, come on. Or you can knock my freaking socks off. We'll hit our fundraising goal. You'll never have to listen to Orby talk about fundraising all the way till next April. If someone donates $2 a show, that would be a hundred bucks over the last year, a little bit less than that, but still a hundred bucks. That would get me to my fundraising goal. And I'd be at 520 and you wouldn't have to listen to this nerd beg and plead with you to donate a couple bucks to me for all the hard work. The 20, think about it, 23,000 times in the last year, someone hit the play button and they were at least either entertained or hater-tained, one or the other, and yet only six people could donate of the 23,000 times. Come on, guys, get out there. I challenge you to get out there and donate a small amount of money to me. Not any of the people who have already donated. You've already done your job. Not Joe Chervino. He just spent $100, unbelievably, on coffee and tea for me. Thank you so much for that, Joe. But to everybody else, if you were even 5, 10, 15, 20, especially if or someone who's listened to half my shows in the last year, come on, donate a buck to me per show that you listen to. That's it, 25 bucks. Please, I would appreciate it. I've worked my butt off for you. I want to keep doing these shows. I want to come back to doing closer to a daily dose of pinball. I don't want to do five a week. God, that's too much. Now, I will either have no donations tomorrow and have the day off and love it, or you could just shiver me timbies and make a small donation to me, and I will be back tomorrow with Dave Fix's quiz, the 88 things I learned in my first five years of doing pinball. Until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Merlin's Beard.