The Pinball Network is online. Launching Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. Joel, where's your state championship plaque? I don't have it. I don't have one. I don't have a state championship plaque, but you do. Look, Josh even spelled it right this year. Good for him. Geez. Tom, you look great. You look great. As always. I don't have a state championship plaque, Joel. Yeah, why is he not giving you a hard time? I don't get it. Because Tom's a freaking beauty. Look at that goatee. Fantastic. It's good. It's evil, Tom. I like it. Why does everybody keep calling me evil? Because I have a goatee. Hey, I called you an effing beauty, Tom. You're not evil at all. If Joel shaves his beard, is he evil Joel? Maybe if I shave it just for the goatee. I don't know. My arms are Oh, so he's going to hold this until we hit the button Got it, okay Before his camera goes out This is episode 48 We're creeping up there to 50 Yeah, here we go Triple Drake, Triple Drake, Triple Drake, Triple Drake, Triple Drake. Triple Drake. Travis, you're an idiot. The video during the song is the theme song video. You know what? If I want to get hyped up for my own podcast in the way that I want to get hyped up on a Friday morning before 10 a.m., you've got to let me do that, Joel. He held up his plaque the whole time and danced with it, and no one's going to see it. It's because I've been working out, Joel. I don't call it. That's all that matters. He's getting swole. So swole. Yeah. 12-ounce curls. It's awesome. All right. Well, here we are. We are recording on Friday the 2nd, the February 2nd. Ooh, Joel. I know. I'm fired up right now. I don't mean to interrupt, but, well, yeah, actually I do. So there's a, have you guys ever heard about the groundhog conspiracy? No, the groundhog conspiracy. No. That happened with, I guess, I can't remember if he was the governor at the time, de Blasio, de Blasio of New York. So this is a legit thing. He dropped a groundhog on Groundhog Day. It was like a whole thing. Like he was holding the groundhog, and then all of a sudden the thing like just went nuts. fell over, the groundhog fell, and then there was like this big cover-up to where nobody wanted to know what happened to the groundhog. Oh. Yeah, and then it turned out unfortunately the groundhog was permanently injured afterwards. Yeah, it's like a whole thing. So drop the groundhog. Seriously, this is like an internet meme. You've never heard of this? No. So is that a like a suggestion, like, hey, don't drop the groundhog, you know, or is this I mean, I guess you could apply it to pinball a little bit, but 99% of the people won't care. But just every time Groundhog Day that you said that, it just clicked in my head. This is like a full conspiracy. You're going to go down a rabbit hole if you look this up. Just look up dropping a groundhog, and it'll pop up. Don't ever squeeze a groundhog. Really? That's pretty specific. Why would you not squeeze a groundhog? I mean, don't squeeze most small animals. What I would say, listeners, if you happen to be playing in a tournament with Travis and he really sucks on one ball, feel free to go up to him and just be like, hey, man, he really dropped the groundhog on that ball. Just throw that in there. Just throw that in there. It'll be perfect. Joel, I just looked it up. This is on the New York Post. This is the headline. Bill de Blasio speaks out about dropping Staten Island groundhog on the 10th anniversary of the scandal. This is a real thing. And it's freaking hilarious. I mean, I feel bad for the groundhog, obviously. But all things considered, it's just freaking ludicrous. It is. I mean, it's like watching you play Jaws over and over again. Yeah, man. It's insane. So what I've found that brings me true joy in life, true joy, is I understand I'm in a very awesome situation where I work with Zach and Nicole flipping out. They lend me games. and I get to stream them. You're a lucky bastard. I know. I love it. I love it. And it's a ton of fun. But due to just proximity of Chicago, Zach usually gets games faster than Travis necessarily gets a game. And because of that, I typically get a game roughly 24 hours before Travis has an opportunity to open it. And the timing all aligned that this Jaws behind me, which dropped off Wednesday afternoon, and I was able to stream it a few hours later. And you know what? Travis had to do, he had to watch it. He had to watch it because he needed content to consume to understand the game, and he had to watch my stream. For the listeners. There we go. You just heard that, and this is why I'm so salty all the time, because I have to go through this. It's like an endless loop, a feedback loop that I have to do every single Stern release. Yep. Every single time. What was the last? There was another game that you had to watch. Venom. Venom. You just said it's a feedback loop. Venom. And then guess what the one before that was. Foo Fighters. Yeah, I love it. I love it so much. You want to guess what the one was before that? I don't know. Rush. See, I remember all this. It's here in my brain. Joel. Joel gets these games so much, Tom, that he's like, yeah, I don't remember that one. Because I have this one. This is what I will show right here. It's like a spoiled brat. This is what I will show right here. So, Zach. He's like one of those Instagram models that actually has the dad that's a multi-millionaire, but they're taking selfies everywhere. Like, look how well I'm trapped. So, this is what I've started to do. And I don't know if Zach knows that I do it, but I take one of the keychains. Of course you do. I take one of the little keychains out of every game that I've streamed, and I've started a little collection just to, it's awesome. Do you have those all together? Yeah, I have them all together. See? There's Labyrinth. Now I'm salty. Yeah. He probably holds it up in front of the mirror. It puts the lotion on and it does what it's told. I know there's a lot of people in this hobby that just rotate games, in and out, in and out, in and out. Like you? Well, no. I would suggest to start this because it's a cool, like just grab one of the key chains. It's a cool visual collection of like, I remember that game. I remember that game. That was a fun game. And then show your kids, show whoever, like, hey, Of these games, which one did you enjoy the most? What Tom and I are getting out of this, and what hopefully the listeners are getting out of this, have a Zach Mini in your life, and you, too, can have a hellacious keychain collection from all pinball machines. Tom's keychain would be bigger than this, for sure, of games he currently owns. Yeah. Uh-oh. Oh, great. He's whipping out his precious. Here it comes. What does he got here? What is it? Oh, tilt. That's your... Oh, he's plugging another distro. Wow. Solid. Oh, gosh. Oh, man. Okay. Apparently all three of us. I didn't even put that on there. Oh, you didn't? No, that's good branding there. Like all three of us just sponsored you. Yeah. I actually bought that from Zach. But actually, I took it to MGC, and I think Rachel put that on there. Oh, Rachel of Fox Cities that helps you out. Yes. Right? Okay, that Rachel from Wisconsin. Gotcha. So we are going to talk about – Fox Cities, Rachel. Well, let's actually – we'll finish with states. You held up your plaque. State tournaments happened. I forgot. It sounds like I need to talk to my family and be like, I need to block out time on the weekend of States. Because there's so much good pinball to watch. And to be able to jump between the different streams and see who's all doing what. I will say, and I don't mean this to be rude, but I was watching Travis. I was watching Travis's stream because he won. He won States. And I was like, dang, he's made it to the final four. And when I turned it on, there was a moment where you and I don't remember the other guy's name. It was just two of you, and you were playing Toy Story. And at the time, the player camera was out. The score camera was glitching. It would pop in for about a half a second every 10 seconds. So I was watching high-level tournament streaming, and all I could see is a play field. and you try to get a glimpse of a score. And it's like, I don't even know who's, I don't know, like, I don't know. I didn't know who player one versus player two was. And the guy announcing, I bet he's a great guy, but he's super nice. Shout out to that guy. But he's like, I'm not going to lie, guys. I don't know Toy Story at all. I don't know what we're doing. I think he's all a good shot. That was basically the announcement that I heard. So the whole time I'm like, I am so clueless. And yet all I want to know is if Travis is winning, you know, I'm like, he's like, oh, what's he trying to do? He's trying to lock a ball. Dude, it's multiball. Like, he didn't know, but that's fine. Or he's like, I wonder what he's trying to do in this mode. Look at the iPad. Look at the screen. It tells you what to do in the mode. So what I will say is my takeaway, and I see Tom is raising his hand. Tournament streaming is hard. Is that what you were going to say, Tom? I mean, shout out to the people that do it well, like really well. Yes, having a mobile rig is not easy. Yeah, yeah. It was a – it's one of those you don't know how good you have it until you don't have it because I was like, all I want to do, I just want to watch Travis win this game right now, and I literally can't watch it. The takeaway is do not have me on your stream. I am a human EMT. Do not do it. That's the quickest way for shit to go sideways. So it would be a great time for Travis's camera to go out. That would. I did every precaution. But, yeah, State was rough this year. I ended up getting, and I was texting you guys during it. And in the middle of the event, it, like, food poisoning hit me hard. Yeah. Hard. Yeah. It was during, like, the beginning of the third round. I was in the middle of a creature from the Black Lagoon game. And it just, like, hit me out of nowhere. And I'm like, what is going on? My energy levels just went. And I was to the bathroom and outside to the side of the building for, like, the next six to eight hours. It was rough. So I, yeah, so just thank your tournament streamer. If you're at a tournament, thank the person streaming it. And if you're watching the stream, donate, sub, bits, all that thing. Anything to keep the level, the high level. Yeah, anything that we can do to keep tournament streaming at a high level, it benefits everybody. But, Travis. Do you notice how Joel, I told Joel, I felt sick. I felt bad. I was coming back to you. I just wanted to finish the plug. He just like big leagued it. No, I was coming back. I was coming right back to you. Sub to your streamers. I should. I mean, it's more important. We care more about the high-level tournament streamers than we do about you. We do. Well, yeah. I mean, to be fair, we do need Toms in the world because we would not have entertainment and we would not be able to watch this. So, yes. I fully agree with that. So, back to Travis pooping his pants. What? Why are we going to go there? I just said I have poop poisoning. So, I was watching the stream and I didn't know this yet. And I see he's playing. You have a bathroom camera? No, no, no. He was playing Beatles. He was playing Beatles. This was when all the cameras were working. He was playing Beatles. And then all of a sudden, he just, like, bent down. Like, he was playing. He held the ball up. Yeah, and he bent down, and I was like, what strategy is this? It's called cramps. Yeah. I didn't know. I didn't know what's going on. So he finished his ball. He finished the game. I texted him. I was like, why'd you bend down in Beatles? And you just responded back, like, food poisoning. I was like, oh, no. So my joke was, you know, shoot jackpot or poop pants. Those are two options. But, I mean, that's even more props to you, the fact that you were able to pull out a state tournament win with food poisoning, literally fighting through all that. I mean, I saw Monica in the background. It was from the support, you know, from your family. Oh, yeah, clearly. Well, what's funny is, and I don't know how many people out there watch the stream, but if you watch the very end, we're on Fathom. And I was playing Austin Trent. who was the one that was in finals with me. And you could even see me in the background just kind of hunched over a table, just kind of standing or sitting there just trying to figure out life and contemplate it. You know, because it's like, I don't know if you two have had food poisoning before, but it is not fun. And so it's like I spent the whole time just saying, don't be that guy that does this on stream on the pinball machines. Don't be me on the machines. Oh, my God. I already got memed enough in 2023. I cannot start out 2024 doing that. That's fair. That would be a new thing for you, you know? Right. You would really drop the groundhog if you duked on the game. I'll tell you what. Yeah. Yeah, man. Well, congrats. Congrats to your win. Thank you. So now I get to go visit Tom and go to Nationals up at D82. Yeah. Travis is going to stay with me, Joel. Oh, boy. Maybe we'll send you pictures. Maybe. I don't want that picture. Just make sure you have a spare toothbrush, Tom, because he always forgets to pack it. I have plenty. Oh, you're good. If anybody has extra dental cleaning apparatus in your house, it would be Tom Graff. Toothbrush for you, toothbrush for you. No, that's awesome. Well, cool. Congrats on that. other things we want to talk about. Tom, how did your state go? I know he didn't win. He just didn't want to, you know, you were the one looking like, where's my plaque? Where's your plaque? I just got to feed my ego. I just didn't know if I was bringing up a bad feeling or if it's a good feeling. Okay. I made it all the way to semis. For the field we had, I was very happy with that. Okay. I love you to death. I cannot get over Joel saying, I don't know if I'm going to bring up a good feeling or a bad feeling. I don't know. Can you imagine him having a discussion with his wife, like trying to figure shit out? This is where they touched me, Joel. No, I get it. I get it. I mean, you've joked around about there are certain tournaments that you just feel you're Neil's chaperone, essentially. You've said that before. And then there's other tournaments you dominate. And I just don't, you know, I'm just trying to be considerate. So Neil and I, our plan was to meet in the finals. Okay. Okay. And I had to get through my first match, another Tom, Tom Schmelzer. And so I got through my first match. And then I had to face Cassidy, who we call the assassin. Yes. So I was up 3-2 on Cassidy, and it was one of my picks, which was Pinbot. Okay. Okay. I put up 5 million points on Pinbot after two balls, and Cassidy had a bad first ball, and I was like, I got you, assassin. You're going down. this girl put up eight million on one ball of pinball eight million and i was just like my jaw just fell like you know the cartoons where you know you see the jaw on the floor and i was just like shit i'm in danger that was that yeah luckily i made it past the seventh game okay all right Then I played Sheldon, who knocked out the number one seed, which was Luke Nahorniak. So, I mean, it was a tough, tough tournament. And then I had to play Jason Werdrick in the semifinals. By that time, I was, like, exhausted because I didn't have a bye. And, I mean, Jason's a phenomenal player. I just couldn't beat him. Yeah. So, but, uh, so Neil, Neil won his first two, two matches. And then in the semis, he faced Steven Bowden who, who won the tournament. So congratulations to Steven Bowden. Um, but, uh, yeah, Neil, Neil was actually up two games to nothing and, uh, and Steven came back. so okay but uh it was uh there were a lot of good matches going on and i'm sorry i didn't stream it but logistically me driving my stuff down to madison it's just it would have been a headache for me so where was uh was this at district 82 or where was this no no so i mean if it was at District 82. Yeah, you would have streamed it. I definitely would have streamed it. It was at Nerd Haven in Madison, and it was a good location. Games were set up a lot easier than, you know, would be at District 82, but that was fine. I mean, there's no issues with that. But, yeah, I mean, it was a good location. If you're in Madison, you should definitely check out the location. Yeah, and I know what's always interesting with state is the people competing in the state tournaments may not actually live in that state. It just doesn't matter, right? The rules, it's all about how many wins or how many tournaments you've played in in that state. So, like, I know Madison or the Wisconsin tournament is close enough that you'll have people from Chicago or Illinois or even, I think, like, didn't Lowe's from Ohio participate in it one year? Or is, like, a thing where you get people or Escher came from Colorado. I mean, people can come from wherever. Carlos didn't, but, yeah, Escher did last year and won. Okay. But it's one of those things. It's hard to explain to somebody not in competitive pinball why, like, well, you don't live in that state. You know, why are you playing in that state? And it has to do with basically the points you accumulate by playing in tournaments in that state. I mean, you know, Jason and Steven, they came to a lot of tournaments at District 82. They had the right to play. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. See, all I hope is that Neil McRae wins state in some state in the U.S. at some point. That would be so great. Travis is officially done, though. He's officially done. No more. He will not. This is his last year being the Oklahoma state champion. Travis said he will no longer play in Oklahoma. Okay. Yep. I am doing the Tim Sexton. I am retiring from Oklahoma State. How did that work out for Tim? Yeah. Yeah. All right. He made finals at Indus. That's awesome. So, yeah, I'm either going to do Missouri or Illinois from now on because it's basically like a seven and a half hour drive. And I'm not even going to be able to get down to Oklahoma very often enough to even qualify anymore, I don't think. So, yeah. It just kind of works itself out. Well, Tom, you may not have won, but you didn't poop your pants or puke on a machine. That is true. I didn't do that either, Joel. I went to the bathroom and I went on the outside of the building. You went, you pooped on the outside of the building? No! Oh my god. Wow. All right. Next segment. Next segment. Time to chill. Time to chill. Check out these speakers. Check out those bad boys right there. This is Penwoofer. Penwoofer, we've talked about Penwoofer before. Penwoofer, Dan at Penwoofer, they've always done speakers. That's been their thing. They've always done audio. But I know Dan has had enough issues, or he was having issues where his speakers weren't working with other speaker-like kits. that were out there. There's a bunch of different people that make them. Everything is Speaker Light Kits, too. I think, like, Comet made some. I know Ninja Mods or something. Yeah, Ninja Mods are the ones I have in my games, and they're really good. And they're all great products. Like, Speaker Light Kit, what I have here in Godzilla is that. I've tried a bunch of them, and they're all awesome. But Dan decided he wanted to make his own kit that he knew would work with his speakers. And they're really cool. So this kit comes with a it's actually like an injected molded kind of a foggy white ring. And then he has there actually it's a PCB. It's like a it's a perfectly made PCB. So it's not 3D printed or anything. The install was painless. His own power supply. He got a like he didn't just buy an off the shelf power supply. He he actually got a power supply made specifically for this. So the branding, everything's everything's really impressive. And so that's what these are. But what's really neat is he teamed up with Measel Mods. Measel Mods have been doing undercab and backbox lighting for a long time. And his kit works with their stuff. So here's actually, I haven't put the bottom in, but it's aluminum track, these LED bars. And then basically he has these like daughter boards or these breakout boards where whatever the graphic, whatever the signal is that you're sending to the animation you're sending to the speaker light kits, you can pull off of that information and then share it with the rest of it. So it may be somewhat hard to tell in the background, but there's actually kind of a wave animation that's going on on the speakers themselves, and then that same wave is going on on my back wall as well, which is really cool. So I did blue for JAWS just because it kind of makes like a kind of a watery back. And I haven't done the undercab yet, but, I mean, what an incredibly easy install. And, I don't know, it's really cool. I'm really, really pumped with those. And now I want to see if I can find a way to tap off the information from the speaker light kit his flames to see if I can get that on my back wall Do they help eat the ball They do not. My jaw still does not eat the ball. You know, I did the hole. I upgraded the speakers in there. I've added the light kit. But the ball still does not go in the mouth of the shark. So, you know, maybe later. But just a real quick shout-out to that. I know you can see Measlemods.com will have all the additional lighting rails, and then if you go to PenWolfer.com, you can look at their light stuff. But they're affordable, and this is just a dynamic thing. So it's like you set the animation pattern with your remote while the – I know you're making faces. You're not – but he also has stuff that works with – his stuff will work with expression light kits as well. So if you have a Foo Fighters Led Zeppelin or a Rush, then it would display all those animations. So kind of a new product. Definitely check it out. But, yeah, it's been cool working with Dan, and I was really impressed with that install. So there is your shill. I was just enjoying, like, while you were talking, we got to see the back of your head. Yeah, see, I'm pointing. I'm pointing. Look at that. Yeah, I'm not even pointing. I'm just looking behind me. All right, this podcast is just the best. It's fantastic. I have such a great time with you, Tom. Especially our audio listeners. This is awesome. And Joel. Joel, you're fine. Okay, so this is what I've added to make my draws look cool. But let's actually talk about Jaws. Now, this is your Jaws? Well, no, it's not my Jaws. It's my – thank you, Zach and Nicole for letting me borrow it. I'm borrowing it, yes. Jaws, let's talk about – let's actually talk about Jaws. I don't remember. Did we – Checkmate, Joel. Checkmate. I know. Good job, Tom. Yeah, but did you see my keychain? Did you see that? Isn't that cool? So did we record – Jaws wasn't officially announced last time we recorded, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was. So we've already done first impressions. Because it was post-sendest. Well, yeah, we just kind of generally talked about it. And then we talked about Looney Tunes. And then, because remember, the whole thing was about the, it was all beating the ball. Yeah. Okay. You were like, you were going ham on it. Oh, we did. Like Tom and I had to be like, Joel. No, that's right. Settle down, Joel. Okay. Yeah. We got feedback. We got feedback. So we had some, we had some people reach out and they, in both good and bad, people were like, thank you for taking a hard stance on this. It's ridiculous that people are reacting this way. Cool. Then we had some other feedback where people were like, we really enjoy your podcast. And one thing we like about your podcast is the positivity and the fact that you guys were so hard and negative on this topic. Like, you don't want another about like what ball eating or what we think we're negative negative of. I was fired up. I was positive. What was pretty fired up? What we were fired up about was just the overall negativity to a response like that. The fact that there were people that were like, the heck with what Keith thinks or Harrison thinks. Figure the mech out. You know, like, I don't know. It was just this almost like, why would they not try harder? Or what I love. Sounds like my old boss. What I love was there were people online that were like, this wouldn't have happened if Gary Stern was there. Because Gary Stern would have come in and been like, no, that thing has to eat a ball. That's what they did in Jurassic Park. That's, you know, but Gary's not there anymore. Seth probably walked in and was like, hey, take it out, you know, save the money. It's like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't know. Well, it's like anything else. People have all kinds of different opinions. They're all valid, even if we don't agree with it. I think it's good that people can express their opinions. But, yes, definitely it's, yeah. I mean, you see it across any industry, though. Like, look what's happened to Suicide Squad right now. That's the newest video game that's out. It's just getting hammered by people just, like, dissing on it and everything. And it's like you truly – we have an idea of what a game is going to be like just because, like, Tom and I, we've played enough. You see layouts. You see something that's similar to what you've done before. You have a general idea of how it's going to be. but at the end of the day, you can't truly form your like hands-on impression until you're hands-on. And that's just, that's just the reality of it. And I think all three of us have played it by now, right? Yes. But what I, what I wanted to go on. Okay, go ahead, Joel. No, what I wanted to say was, I will say there were some people that were offended because what I want to make it very clear that our opinions, we don't feel that our opinion is any better than yours. We all have very different experience, even the three of us, very different experience. Tom has been in this game a long time. He's played a lot of pinball. He's owned and collected a lot of games. Travis now works in the industry. He sees the business side of this. He's seeing all of that. I'm trying to give him credit for a lot of it. I see every different style of player, ranging from people that have been in the industry for 30 years, ranging from somebody that just discovered pinball last week. So, yeah, see it all. And that's why we're doing the podcast. We're sharing our thoughts on things. And if we can't express our thoughts, why are we doing this? True. But the one thing I wanted to point out was there was conversation of, you know, you two are tournament players and you guys look at a game in a different light than I think others do. Just because it's in a different light doesn't mean it's a better light than your look. I just want to make that clear. I don't want there to feel like we view ourselves better, worse, better. I want to be clear. Tom's opinion, of course, is better than everybody else's. I mean, that's just a fact of life. But, you know, like, Joel, we talk about it all the time. And that's one of the things I like about you, Joel, is that you realize your shit stinks. And we just talked about that just the other day. You know what I mean? It's like you hear us on this podcast and we're just giving each other crap and all that. But, yeah, of course, there's so many egos in the industry. There's so many egos everywhere at any point in life. You know what I mean? But it's important to be grounded. But you still got to have your opinions, you know, and you still got to have your beliefs. And that's personally fine. I don't think I'm better than anybody else. And, you know, I don't want anybody to think I do. but personally yeah you can't always just throw off the handle because of somebody's opinion but you can't please everybody either you give an opinion guess what somebody agrees somebody disagrees and then somebody else is Monica that's just how life is so I think the main thing was one thing that we were kind of harping on is just what we were seeing in the initial reveal were the shots we weren't you know there was a lot of people that why is the shark not eating the ball? Or why, like, lack of mechs or lack of this, lack of that. When we're like, can you just, what you were trying to point out was like, look at the shots, look at the shots, and maybe it's harder for certain people to notice that right off the bat of what the shots do or looking at the layout. It's 100%. It is harder for people to notice it. And that's not a bad thing. Not everybody out there is an elite player. Not everybody out there cares about combos or cares about how a shot is. most people out there that are casuals, they don't care about that. They care about what a mech does. So, yeah, everything we said is perfectly valid, and it's true. I mean, if everybody, if the only thing everybody cared about was mechs. Can you explain the casual thing? Because I think some people are getting offended by that. Yeah, maybe that's. I'm trying to say it in a negative. No, this is easy. No, this is easy. This is easy. If you're a casual, you basically are not listening to this podcast. Yeah. Like if you're taking in pinball content, you are not a casual. Because I'm sorry, a casual will just go, put in coins, play a couple of games, probably not even realize they have an extra ball, probably not even realize there's three balls, then they're done. If you consume content, you are as far from a casual as possible. Now, you might be on the level of Joel with your playability, And that's perfectly okay. That's not a big deal. There's going to be people of all kinds of different, I guess, different mindsets, different skill sets. And that's what pinball should be. And that's where these games aim to please. They have to appeal to as many different skill sets as possible. And just because you look at a pin and you don't understand the shots, that's not a big deal at all. It's something that you have to learn. It's like saying us, for instance, I enjoy playing chess, right? I play it every single day. I do puzzles. I do all that. Am I going to be the next Magnus Carlsen? No, not at all. Like I play literally on a thousand ELO level and that's it. And I've been playing for years. So that's just how it is. And so other people are going to see different situations or different aspects of a rule set or a layout. They're going to see it in a different way. and sometimes it could it doesn't mean it's a better way it could be a higher level way and i want the designers to be able to do that i want the people that do the software on this game to be able to do that because if they didn't imagine how boring pinball would be across the board with every single so that's the reality of it and i've i have there's some local collectors i've been to their house this was before i really started streaming or anything just trying to meet people in the area. And one guy in particular, I was at his house and he's got this beautiful collection. Like he had 10 games, beautiful, high-end, all really nice games. And I remember I stepped up to, it was one of the JJP games at the time. And I was like, okay, so what do you do in the game? And he's like, I don't know. I mean, he was honest. He's like, I don't know. I just, I think it's a cool game. I was like, oh, do you know how to start multiple? He's like, I've done it before. I don't know what I did though. And this is a guy that's heavily invested in the hobby, all about it. I know he still is. He's active on Facebook still heavily, But he has no interest. Like, he doesn't care to know about the rules of the game, how to play the game. He just doesn't care. I think to him, what he enjoys about pinball is the mechanical side of it, the visual side of it, just getting whatever experience he is getting out of the game. And that's fine. That's what I'm saying. I just don't want any of our listeners to think that the three of us are at a higher level of pinball consumption than others. I mean, we just do it in a very different way. You and I, Joel, are fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you're talking about consumption, my God, I got to do this like 50, 60 hours a week. So, yeah, it's – Well, here's what it boils down to, though, Joel and Tom. Okay, the reality is, and it's like this for any industry, for any hobby, you're going to have people that are more involved than others. You're going to have people that have a much larger database to go off of. and this was said a lot to me back during the days of like baseball and all that, that there's a lot of people out there that have probably forgotten more than what we'll know. And I believe that for pinball, there's people in this pinball industry. I'm not one of them, but there's people in this pinball industry that have probably forgotten more pinball than what I will ever know. And that's a good thing because those people are going to be the ones that are the leaders. Those are the people that kept producing games, kept designing games, can think on a higher level, can push that barrier to get past it, to think of, for instance, like an XP system, or how can this particular mech work this way and the shot combo work this particular way. And that's what excites me about pinball in general is you have people from different backgrounds that have different skill sets that design these games, that code these games. They're bringing people from all kinds of different ages. Now you got Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske, who's a late 20s woman that's literally like super sharp, high end IQ when it comes to pinball. And it's clear that she's going to be the lead on a game at some point. So to me, something like that's exciting. The fact that Bug took over Spooky and they're getting out a good cadence of games. Who cares if one of us doesn't like the game or whatever? They're literally doing something consistent that a lot of people are responding positively to. Stuff like that is exciting because that shows that pinball is going to be here for a long time. And pinball needs everybody. It needs the casuals. It needs the home collector. It needs a person that just cares about the mech and not a rule set. It needs a person that just collects an LE because the artwork looks fantastic and it just sits there and collects stuff. Because at least they're buying it. At least it's in their game room. At least it's moving a company forward in a positive direction with cash flow revenue. I mean, you could go on and on. There's so many different aspects to this industry than just simply just the world under glass. There's so many different other aspects to it. So what I would say, there's a question here that I want to ask you guys. But just what I would say is if you listened to our last episode and you were offended by it in any way, that was not our intention. We're not trying to talk down or feel like we're trying to talk down. That's not our goal. I feel like you're wanting to apologize, Joel. I feel like you're one step away from apologizing. I am saying we share an opinion, and our goal, though, with that opinion is not to offend others. I will say I will personally stand by everything I said. And if somebody's offended by it, like, I'm sorry that happened. No, no, no. I'm not. What we shared, I'm not offended. I'm definitely taking the Josh Sharpe stance. Well, yeah, this is one of the things. We all have our different opinions, right? And it's an opinion. It's not a fact. I'm not saying that. I'm saying he brought up the word casual. And that's the thing. Like, when we say the word casual, we're not trying to say it in a derogatory way. And if you're listening to the episode and thinking, well, I'm a casual, are they talking down to me? We're not. That's not what I'm saying. I just want to make sure terminology is not offensive. This industry cannot survive without casuals. And I'm telling you, if you listen to a podcast consistently, you're not a pinball casual. You are fully invested in this industry, and you've gone down the rabbit hole to just pinball degeneracy. Like, you're here, and I totally caught that word. But, yeah, you're here with us. Yeah, it's not. It's definitely not that. So here's the question. This was a post. It's every soul. It's all casual. This was a post that was put on our TPN page on LinkedIn. And I just thought it was really well written and asked. And actually, Tony and Dennis at Eclectic Gamers Podcast actually mentioned this particular post and talked about it. So, to the Triple Drain crew, the love of early 90s physical maximum moments may stem from the fact that the storytelling of the game came from sculpts and play field components interacting with the ball. Instead, we now have the LCD screen, licensed content, and RGB lights and animations to do the work. designers then didn't have the technology to incorporate leveling systems into the rules or to immerse players with audio and video content as more intellectual property and world building gets put onto the screen the less reliant designers need to be the oh as more gets put on the screen the less reliant designers need to be on toys and 3d sculpts to create the feel of the environment they can focus more on ball pass and geometry of the playfields than creating a world under glass maybe this is why some people say shots are the new mechs. The flow and combos lead to more things happening on the display. Destructum Jackbot, Foo Combatron, etc. However, then you get people saying the game feels empty because it's missing the unique set dressings they remember from the early 90s games. Busy artwork and flat plastics won't cut it for them. This is why there's such a crazy demand for mod makers, Stumbler, Wolf Cuffs, Swings, Measel Lore. People want their playfield to feel more lifelike and inspired. They They want equal parts tactile and digital. Labyrinth hit the mark for a lot of people based on the theme and inclusive licensing, but it also captured attention for its use of additional LCD screen, pop-up characters, and use of physical sculpts to build the world. Given the choice, I think most would prefer their machines this way. Again, that's why the mod market is so hot. Still, technology is changing, and with its capacity, with it, the capability of the pen, think spike three. So more effort or bomb will be put into the intangibles such as rules, carryover, displays, et cetera. It will certainly push the hobby forward and that's a good thing, but it's clear that most still want to retain what was differentiated pinball from video games this whole time. Mechanical components, visuals, feedback of cause and effect. I did this thing when that happened. There's kinetic satisfaction. Oh, I did this thing and then that happened. There's kinetic satisfaction, and then there's causation satisfaction. Pinball machines need equal parts of both. Godzilla had the building, tail whip magnet, and the bridge. Jurassic Park had moving and eating T-Rex, Jeep, Raptor pin. They were hits for a reason. Flow and fun as one. So I thought that was really well spoken. It was something I hadn't thought of was they are correct. The pins that people keep referencing back in the 90s, they couldn't communicate this crazy depth complex story with a DMD. So they tried to make sure everything was communicated with inserts or they were trying to show that with mechs. And I think that's what some people are accusing us of, that now we're at a point where because you can do essentially anything we want with an LCD, it's almost like we're focusing all of our time or our money or our effort there when some people are craving, I don't know, I mean, like I know Brian Eddy, he loves his inserts. He loves communicating with inserts. That's what he still falls back on the 90s way of communicating or showing your progress through inserts. And Stranger Things does that, shows everything, all the different modes. Venom does that. Mando does that. You know, if you want to know where you're at, how far, how close are you to wizard mode, just with Mando, look down. You know, well, I've done five, and I'm about to like that. I don't know. I mean, what are your thoughts with all that, with this idea of trying to find that balance of relying on a play field to communicate depth of a game versus an LCD screen? Tom, do you want to answer that? Well, I mean, I've gone on record to say I think the LCD is overrated, personally. I really do. I think you can get across what you need to get across with the DMD. Sure, the LCD provides some stuff. But if you're actually playing the game, until you trap up, you're not seeing much there. And it goes beyond if you're trying to look at something real quick, it's because you're hitting a shot and you're looking up real quick before the ball gets back to you or something like that if you need to see progress. But, I mean, overall. See, and I think the LCD is awesome. See, Tom loves the LCD. I like it way better than the DMD. Tell him why he's wrong, Tom. Tell him. Travis, you're wrong. And that's all I'm going to say. Tom, you're wrong. Well, no, I just think it enhances the depth of the game because you can give more information on that screen than you can with just a regular, ordinary DMD. I agree to that. But what I would say back to that is, is how useful is that for somebody that's not getting the ball to stop consistently on their flippers? That's their problem. So, Tom, then explain. So, like, Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction has no screen, but yet there is a lot of depth there. And what I find comical is I've talked to a few people that feel like they almost beat Pulp Fiction, but that's because they don't. They're just looking, I think, at, like, characters. They don't realize how much more there is to the game because there's no screen to communicate it. But yet Travis is saying you don't need a screen. So how do you find that balance? Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, and you bring up a good point. I mean, Pulp Fiction's just a different game. I mean, it's got the alphanumerics, and those alphanumerics are helping you to understand what's going on in the game. but you know there is depth to the pulp fiction but it's not quite as it doesn't have the depth of say godzilla sure you know um and plus you can time out all the modes right i mean that whole game needs to be reworked yep scrap it start it over yep Yep. I'm going with Jeff on that one. I just don't know what value outside of the ball stopping, right, and then you're able to look up and take a breather. I don't know what value just having video clips does. Like, for me personally, I get more excited seeing, like, a jackpot animation if it's combined with what's going on in the play field. like somehow somebody can integrate the light show and the sound along with the video, then I do seeing a movie asset or a show asset or something like that. There's definitely got to be a combination of stuff. But, you know, I'll take Iron Maiden, for example. I mean, the LCD with the whole power features, trying to get to Cyborg. I mean, you need to know where you're at as far as your progress towards that to get the Cyborg. So you have to eventually look up and say, I need this many shots to get to this. Well, maybe. How do you do that on Metallica? The inserts? Well, that and if you're tracked up. Yeah, you can just go to info anyways. You're controlling. So basically we're just looking at, it comes down to a flow too, because you can get the same information. Well, it comes down to presentation too. Right, right. It's the presentation. Right. And the presentation's there in order to get the information at a more efficient manner is really what it becomes. And then in order to give the information in an efficient manner, you also have to window address it, which comes with the animations, with the UI, with everything. And so my whole thing is, I don't know, like from a design standpoint, that would almost seem like a nightmare trying to work around your code, work around your design, knowing that you have to have certain stops in the game for that, you know? Well, we've talked about this before. And I mean, of the three games behind me, Jaws, Godzilla, and Cactus Canyon, the display I like the most is Cactus Canyon. And part of that is just the art. I love the art style, the DMD. but I look at Cactus Canyon, there isn't anything in the game that the play field doesn't communicate to me. I mean, maybe it's like how many more beer shots do I need to get to that, or where am I at with combos, and I assume there's an instant info. I don't know. I don't know if there's an easy way to achieve that, but what's interesting is talking to Josh about the lineman code that they're working on for this. He said one of the biggest challenges they have is there's inserts on the play field like he wishes they could add inserts or there were some inserts he wished he could have used for something else Like I don want it to say that I wish it would have So there limiting He was basically saying the power of an insert, of what it could add. That's because they're updating a rule set to a game that's holding it. Yeah, that's a little bit different than what Tom and I were talking about, Joel. But I'm saying if an insert would have been blank and they could have put an RGB light behind it, then he can communicate more with that insert than just that. And I understand. Have a kit and add lights. Yeah. Put a board in the back. And I think, too, the LCD screens overall in pinball are done very well. It's not that they're done bad. They convey what you needed to convey. I mean, there's some things that get confusing for people, but just my whole thing is that unless you're very well aware of where you're at in the game, you have to know where to look on the LCD screen if you're doing it like while the ball's in motion and then you have to know exactly what that means pertaining to what's going on actively. So I know people that aren't deep in rule sets, that may not click as quickly. So I mean, that's the only thing that I have with it. Like I wonder how useful it is in situations like that, that you're not just standing off to the side and looking. Like if I watch Tom play, then yeah, it's cool seeing the LCD screen because I get to actually look at it all and view it all and experience it all. And I'm going to see things that he's not going to see because he's focused on the ball in motion. So that's what I wondered. I just wonder what would pinball be like if somebody out there took a chance and ignored the LCD, stuck to a DMD, or did something similar to what you have behind you, Joel, with the Cactus Canyon look, and they were really able to focus more on what's going on underneath the glass in that form. Like maybe that might help. What if there was a mini LCD right in the middle of the apron? What if? What if? There was a full like monitor type thing, like multimorphic, that goes across the whole play field. I think when I had Bond 60th here, what I did enjoy, that monitor in the middle of the play field, there wasn't much on it. There was no video clips. There was nothing like that. It was literally like a blue screen with impact font. It was very basic, but it was also super helpful because you're in the middle of a mode, and it's like three more shots for this. It communicated so clearly, and you don't have to look up. So I see value there, and there are times even, you know, streaming Jaws the other night where it's like I do finally have a chance to trap up, and I'm trying to look up, be like, where, you know, do I have a mode progression? Anything showing that? No. Do I have the bounties? You know, bounties normally show what I have left in the upper left, but no, it's displaying an animation. So I know there's complexity there, but my question, and I know, Travis, you want to say something. My question is, I think people assume that we are taking money in the bomb. We are taking money and putting it towards display aspects when people would rather them take that money and put it towards another mech. So Foo Fighters behind you, would you prefer, Tom, would you prefer to have five less songs, but there be another mech in the game? I don't know if that's even a realistic thing. I don't know if that's how the money works. Or if people think, well, this many hours of coding is this price in the bomb. Well, maybe if we do a little less, then we could put another mech in the game. I have no idea how that works, but I think there are people in this hobby that genuinely think that's how it works, that Stern is paying more money for Jaws 3 and 4 when they could have taken that money and put another sculpt or mech in the game. I'm trying to think of, like, a game with, like, just a crap load of toys in it. Well, Labyrinth was the example. Labyrinth has a lot of sculpts. I mean, there's the fiery heads. There's sculpts. That's a sculpt. Do they interact with the ball? They don't, but that's the experience, though, right? Like, that's the idea. Yeah, I mean, that stuff's cool. And, I mean, it is cool for Labyrinth, but I'm talking more of, like, interacting, like, on the play field. Well, I will say, I think Godzilla Premium has set the bar so high because you have the moving building, you have the rotating Mechagodzilla mech, you have a Mechagodzilla with a magnet in his belly, you have a moving bridge, and you have the Magna Grab. Like, those are four very utilized and innovative mechs that are all in the game. But I'll even argue, like, okay, I own an LE, but I could own a Pro, right? Godzilla? Yeah, well, yeah. There's no man in a belly. There's no belly, you know? You just get a little horseshoe. But is that really needed? Like, do you really need that feature in the game? Do you really need a bridge that, like, opens and closes? Is that, like, the number one thing on that game? I think here is where it's an interesting crossroads to where you get different preferences, to where you're either going to get people that prefer the shots and the nonstop, like, all gas, no brakes, or the people that want to see mechs do something. I think that's just the difference that we're seeing. And I like both. I like both. I do like both. I've had the Pro and the Premium here in my house. And I will tell you the premium has gotten way more plays by people outside of myself, and it's because of the mechs. It's because of the interactive toys. To them, you know, when my wife or daughter plays, all they care about is they just want to bang that building until they see it go down. That's all they want to do. And you don't get that experience in the pro. You don't get it. But I had a blast on the pro. But that's because we are trying to play the games and attack it from a code standpoint and a depth and a moment standpoint. And I agree that it's a lot easier for a casual player, not derogatory, not in a derogatory way, it's way easier for a casual player to try to experience a physical mech on a game than to try to experience a code-based moment in a game. So we're going to talk about Jaws. Maybe this is a transition. Well, that was it. Before you go, that was the interesting thing about Jaws when you were pointing it out. What's one of the complaints? about the LCD screen that people had about Jaws? Like, what's the one, I guess the one scene that everybody's like, oh, this just keeps showing up over and over and over again. It was like the chum thing or whatever. Oh, the chum bucket. Yeah. Right, to where they just show it. But we've all played it, right? Like, how often do you even remember seeing that scene? Like, hardly at all? You know what I mean? We do. You see it, but, I mean, are you playing it? Am I focused on it? Right. You're like, holy shit, this is happening right now. We're seeing it again. Like, yeah. And going into JAWS, I really like how they use the LCD, though. I mean, there's a lot of information there. Like, even the skill shot, there's levels to the skill shot. I love how they have the text up there. Yeah. Communicating what to do. Yeah. Yeah, because typically on games, I don't know what the super skill shots are until they're discovered. Or, you know, certain things you have to hit for a skill shot. Unless it's just like a top lane or something like that. But, you know, the normal stuff. But I like how they have the text there to show you, hey, this is what you want to hit. You want to hit the pop bumper. Now you want to hit the targets. Yeah. Now you want to go through this lane, whatever it is. I like that. I like that feature, and that's why I think the LCD is good. It's good for casuals. It is. Counterpoint, but you are correct. I will give you that. You are right. The thing that I like about Jaws, I've really paid attention to this, and I noticed it while playing and just trying to figure out my way around the game. that the play field actually does a really good job at letting you know what each shot is and what it means. If you really pay attention to the inserts and you pay attention to the text, it all really flows together very well. I mean, you can look at the billboards, you can look at the inserts, and you can look at the roll card with it. It all meshes. Right. But it all meshes well together. What does the machete do, Travis? Play field X, baby. But the only thing that I could see people getting hung up with and not understand what's happening is maybe the fish finder because it accesses or activates on the right-hand side. But it does have an insert there that if I look at it, I think it – well, shit, it literally says activate fish finder. Activate fish finder. Yeah. And so then you – Under the pop bumper. Yep. And then you shoot it straight across against the target. So that's the only thing that I could see people maybe kind of get confused about. I know I was watching Monica play it, and that was something that didn't stand out to her. But she knew immediately, okay, I've got to hit the captive ball to light the encounters. Then she saw everything light up. She's like, oh, I've got to hit whatever insert because it has the name of the mode on there or the encounter. So it's like stuff like that. You see people that may not think of rules too much, but they're able to kind of process what to do on this. I think that will happen, but make sure the game does play fast, though. And it is a little bit on the hard side. So make sure you do know what to do, like, in terms of looking at this play field before you even start playing. That would be my recommendation. Let's talk about that. So this game showed up, brought it down, unpacked it. My initial impressions. Initial impressions of seeing the game in person. First off, the art is fantastic. The blue. I'm really enjoying the blue. There's not a ton of blue in pinball. and at least on the pro, the art on the side, my kids thought it was awesome. It's a beautiful, it is a beautiful art package. It is a cool-looking pin. I really enjoy that. The back glass, and maybe I'm just like, you look at my back. This is the Cactus Canyon. This is the Brian Allen. I love it. It's very complex. I love that art style. Even Zombietti is known for complex art style. It is very simple, and I know it's iconic. I don't know. I think the back glass, people are going to love it or hate it. That's really what it comes down to. The back glass is awesome. There's nothing about Jaws that is busy. It's true. It's true. Yeah, I mean, it's a cerebral, like, movie, right? You've got something that's lurking. And that poster, that is an iconic poster. I just think it stands out in a way. Like, I think that back glass would, in a collection of 20 pins, I think it would stand out because of how simple it is. It's literally just the shark, the word Jaws, and the swimmer. That's it. That's all it is. Yeah. Well, it tells you everything you need to know about the theme. And that's what's important. If you can do something in the most simplistic way and get across what the theme is, that's why that movie poster exists in the way that it does. I mean, and anybody that looks at that, you could, here's the thing, you could take the Jaws name away, right? Pretend that text isn't even there. And you see that photo. Yeah, you know. Yeah. A lot of people know exactly what it is. So here you go. Here's our – apparently we only shill, right? We only shill on this program, right? Hell, yeah. That's all we do, especially Sterns because, Travis, you sell them and we shill. Oh, yeah, and all the money, all the money we make from the manufacturer. So I'm going to say something negative. When I unboxed the game, my initial thought when I looked at the game is I thought it looked flat. And what I mean by that is it's just some of these games you get ramps all over top of each other, They're maxed all over, interacting, weaving in and out. It's almost like there's a depth, like a height thing where it feels, you feel like that, the world under glass. You feel like it's just so much crap is between the play field and the glass. I opened this up, and it's a pro. So I was like, man, this pro just seems almost stripped, or it was just flat. Like it just didn't seem like there was a ton in the game until I played it. And that's when I realized what is so unique about this layout is there's three ramps, but you really don't see the ramps. You don't have that visual stainless steel ramp that's right there in your face. The right shot, the ramp is behind the back panel. It's just like the left ramp on Godzilla. You don't see it at all. You barely see it. Right in the middle is a 180 ramp that's super short and tight. You don't see it. And then on the wave ramp, it's another 180 ramp. But where it's kind of hidden, you don't see it. So you're just, you just, you see so much play field. And that's where you realize this is the ocean. Water's flat. You're not playing a mountain. You're playing in the ocean. You're playing in the water. But yet, because you can see the ball, you can track it so well. And you just see this, I don't know, like it almost accentuates how impressive the actual ball path layout is. and so my initial impression the the last two games i had before this were elton john which is just jam-packed light visual overload it's awesome it's an incredible game then i had elvira red kiss like house of horse it was another thing it had the radcals it had the art plays it had everything in there like another visual thing you open this no art blades you know it's a it's a you're back to a pro it was kind of like a huh i kind of got spoiled with those last two games of all the stuff that was in this game. But then you start playing it and you're like, holy cow, this game is something else. And that I was so, maybe it was a unboxing it and being like, huh, kind of a, kind of initial view. But then once my brother, same thing, once we started playing, we were hooked. If you want to say that's a pun, go for it. But it's, we were, this game is brutal and it's fast and it fights back. But, man, it has this draw, this one more game draw that I haven't felt in a while. I just wanted to keep playing it. So that's my initial take on it. Tom, you've played it. You've put a few games on it. You're playing it on location, so you don't get to hear it. Three games. So you don't get to hear it like we do. Right. But your initial, same thing. You've seen the unveil. You're in on an LE. You plunge the ball. What was your main takeaways? pretty much exactly what you said Joel it's really fast the shots are all there it shoots great but it's going to kick your teeth in a little bit it's a tougher game but fun as hell I love that shark target that pops up and then yeah the fin and and uh sorry the fin and i saw i saw somebody miss it and then it it like literally just like back to the other side and came back up i i thought that was really cool um yeah i'm i'm excited to get the le and and try that out but i i definitely want to go back and play some more. Okay. Travis, you were flaunting it on Facebook that you've played one game, and sure, your score was higher than mine. But your one game, same thing. I mean, what's your initial step up to it? Yeah. So, I mean, of course, there is a lot of blue, and it's hilarious that you mentioned that, Joel, because somebody was texting me the other day, and they said, you know what, I really don't like this game. I'm like, why do you not like it? And they're like, it's too much blue. And I'm just like, but it's an ocean theme. I'm like, so, yeah, so that was funny there. And I know he's listening. So, yeah, you gave me a good chuckle there. But, no, so what I can say about this game, and I played it more than once. That was just the only game I put up on IC, my very first game. So I had to show off for you. I did have extra balls on, though. So that was not a three-ball game. But I will say that this game, it, like, the best compliment I can give it is it seriously, it makes me feel like I'm playing pinball. You know what I mean? No, I don't. Meaning, like, I'm going to put in my quarters or I'm going to hit start. And I'm lucky if I'm in control. Oh. And I'm playing by the seat of my pants. things are happening, but yet it's not so many things at one time that it's confusing. It's like you know what's going on. You know generally what you need to execute, but you're always at risk. So you have risk-reward going on the entire time. To me, that feels like pinball. You know, while I may find games that I have a repeatable shot, right, that's safe that you do that, this game does not have that at all. I could not find the repeatable shot that was just completely safe. And it's, I mean, one of the coolest sequences in it is when you hit that quick shot, right, and it comes up, and you know it's coming back down the left side. You know the fin's coming up, and you know you've got to basically hit it on a one-time or hope for a ski jump. But, my God, like my accuracy was just dog shit on it, but I was having a grand old time trying to do that. Let's talk about that left side. Honestly, when I saw the pictures on the pro, it's just a straight path down the left side of the thing. And part of me was like, I wonder why Keith couldn't think of anything else to do with that. Like, it's just a straight path. It just seemed like kind of a throwaway kind of shot, and it may be one of my favorite shots. I'm telling you, Joel, it's probably, it's currently one of my top five shots in any pinball game I've ever played. I was blown away at how fun just that shot is. It's hilarious. That's why it shows me that it's like I know nothing. Because looking at the pictures, looking at the reveal stream, looking at all that, I was like, that shot looks lame. I just thought it looked lame. It was such a tight U-turn, so it's a left orbit. You want your orbit to be a fun shot. Not your orbit. It's where the left orbit is. That's the curious thing about this game. It doesn't have true orbits. You want your spinner shot, though, to be the satisfying shot because you just want to hear that. And first you can hit it from the little mini side flipper. No idea, like physically I don't understand how that shot works because it seems like it's a straight right to left, and then all of a sudden the ball is going whoop right up the play field, does a hard U-turn, and right back down. But the speed, the speed of that shot, because it's a straight path on the play field, the speed at which that ball is coming down to your left flipper is faster than any wire form or ramp you're going to hit. And it's because the wire form or ramp will always drop the ball at the end. So that's going to take away from the speed, pause it for a tiny little bit, and then speed the flipper. This is just straight barreling down at your flipper. And Keith uses that in the code. Like you were saying, the quick shot. There's a whole thing where the fin will pop up. That ball is coming so fast, you're not going to stop it on the left. You can't do like a, I don't know, post, not post-trap, but like a, where you hit it. A post-trap? Yeah. You're not going to do that. You might be able to do what he was saying, ski jump, hold with the left flipper, go to the right flipper. But what he's insinuating, what he wants you to do is hit stuff on the right. So if it's on the right flipper, you're not going to hit what you need to hit. So he's really forcing you to use that left flipper to hit the pop-up fin in a quick shot. It's such a cool moment. Yeah, it forces you to use the entire play field. But, yeah, that particular shot right there, because it's almost like it's so awesome because you get ready, right? You hold up your flipper, that mini flipper, as soon as it comes down, that unique area. So you might start a sequence to where you're on the left flipper, you go around the reel, and then you catch it with your mini flipper. And so you activate the quick shot, you hit it across. If you make that shot, it is super satisfying on its own. But it's almost like Billy Mays. Wait, there's more. And that's where the true fun all of a sudden comes because just like you said, you're gaining all that momentum, all that speed coming down to your left side or your left flipper again to where you got a one-time it off a shark fin target that's not in the same spot every single time. That was the only time that I can remember to where I'm missing a shot and I'm missing it consistently and I'm laughing having a good time doing it. I'm not cussing at it. I'm not like, oh, my God, this shot isn't doing what it's supposed to do. It's like that right there, that's what I'm saying. it made me feel like I was playing pinball. Like I was a little kid again, finding a spot somewhere. Yeah. Joel probably thought it was like Star Wars Episode I all over again. He was so excited. Yeah. Shout out to Keith because I messaged him in our group, and I said, Keith, this game is incredible. And his response was like, does it compete with Star Wars Episode I? I'm going to find this game stuck forever sharing my opinion on that. That one shot, though, I don't know how often you got to experience it, Tom, but I will tell anybody out there, if you're playing this game or you haven't played it yet, like that shot is just fantastic. It's so satisfying when you actually do complete it. Yeah. And the fact that you can, yeah. I only hit it once or twice, but when I did, it was like, ooh. It feels good. Yeah. And the mini flipper is such a unique thing. Like that being able to, what I realized is the mini flipper being able to stop the ball, essentially lock the ball. That's the only controllable break that you get in the game. The only controllable way for you to breathe. Because the speed, you hit the center ramp and the speed that that ball comes back, you're not going to be able to post-trap the ball. You can't stop the ball. You can't, even the waveform feeds the mini flipper. You can stop the ball there. But every other shot, it's just the return back to your flipper is at such a speed that it's just so hard to slow the game down and feel like you're in control. So that little mini flipper is the only chance you have to be in control. But then what are your options there? You either flip that and the ball is going straight to the left. You're back out of control. Or you let the ball dribble down to your right flipper and you kind of have another shot. You have another chance. And I'm loving that. I'm loving that so much. Those shots to the left between the drop targets or the stand-ups on a pro, try to squeeze it through that kind of harpoon shot, the quick shot or whatever, or somehow how it magically goes up through that left orbit shot. It really did not take long. It didn't take me to play this game long to realize how brilliant the actual layout of the game is. And I had a lot of people on stream. They're like, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on pro versus premium? I can tell you right now, I'm having a blast on the pro. I having a blast on the pro Now if I do the friends and family test if my wife came down here and she like okay what do I need to do in Jaws Is there something physically like a mech something that I can point out of like, you want to experience this? Not really. Like the Chum Buck is kind of cool. The fin, the fin is probably the closest thing. There's a little bit that you have to do before that pops up for the first time. You have to create that shot. Yeah, it's not. You have to create that. You have to get that all set up to have to experience that. So probably not something she's going to experience. That's where I see the value in the premium, because if she was standing in front of the premium, I'd be like, hit the ship. And then all of a sudden that shark pops up, she can bash the shark or try to get it on the upper play field. See if you can spin the wheel up there. You know, there's, then I, there's more stuff that I could point to for, for somebody like herself to, to experience, you know, a physical satisfaction of the game. But, um, but man, if you are ready to just dive in and, you know, hit the chum bucket, try to get your multiball set up. Like Jared and I, we went into our stream with very little knowledge of the game and we had so much fun discovering that game and seeing how, how much you can do in that game right at the beginning and kind of what path you want to go and the satisfaction we were getting from the shots. Like I am so excited to continue to stream this game and play the heck out of this game. It's going to be a unique game. because I know obviously one of the cons is going to be that it plays difficult. It plays hard. It's not, like I'm telling you right now, it's not an easy player. For me, that's the exciting part. Like I feel like I looked at Monica last night. I'm like, this is the first time I feel like a game is truly fighting back in a long time, and it feels like a challenge. But yet it still feels like things are accessible. That's the difference. You know what I mean? It's kind of like some other games, yeah, they play hard, and it doesn't necessarily feel like everything is accessible in this. For some reason, this game convinces you that you need to play on the fly and that you're going to hit the shots. Because it's like if you don't hit the shot, you are getting punished. Do you think the shots are more accessible in this or Jurassic Park? I think the shots are more accessible in this one, personally. I agree. I think it is, personally. And I think they did something unique with the sound package, too, because you hear the Jaws theme and everything. It's almost like it speeds you up in your play. I found myself doing them. Yeah, I'm like, why am I playing so fast? And then I realized, wait, I'm hearing music. I'm going. It's almost kind of reminded me of like how Gorgar is, you know, to where like the music just keeps going up. You're like, oh, I got to play fast too. So, yeah, it's, you know, and like I said, of course, you know, obviously I work for a company that sells the games, But I will say, legitimately, I am so excited about the premium coming out. Like, the Pro is a lot of fun, but then I'm thinking to myself, wait, Bash Toy, upper play field with all new shots included that has three pathways. Like, I don't know. I'm going to have a hard time not getting a premium for myself. I'm going to have a very, very hard time because I told myself no more pinball games this year. and I'm like, ugh, I'm already going to break it second month in. You've got Jurassic Park 30, you've got Godzilla, and you have Iron Maiden. It's clear you and Keith line up with what you enjoy. I will say, my question about which shot is, or what game is more accessible, the reason I do feel, I mean, you said this game feels like it's fighting back, so I do think it's a hard game. I think people will like that it's shorter game times. Nothing in the game feels like a slog at all. It doesn't. It feels like you're constantly doing something and it's fun doing it. And what I will say is, what I mean by hard is, it's not hard because you can't hit the shots or you're bricking a lot or like, man, I'm trying to do this but I just can't hit that shot. No, that's not it at all. You're hitting the shot but the way the shot is feeding back to your flipper is not safe or it's going to force you to go on the fly and try to hit another shot and hit another shot. But when we were streaming, my brother like he had not touched the game and he's he's worse of a player than me and yet he was like getting like competing like his scores he beat me in a few games his scores were up there he was experiencing the game and it's like okay he's finding the shots but it's still such an intense experience while like when we played Jurassic Park I remember the first few times we streamed that we were just getting our butts hit like kicked in because our teeth kicked in our butts kicked all that stuff yeah we it's like we couldn't hit this shot we couldn't hit the old shot we couldn't hit this like we know what we need to do we're just we just haven't found the shots yet while this it's like i feel like we started to find the shots quickly kind of like most people experiencing godzilla but yet i absolutely feel this game is not going to have anywhere near the ball times that a godzilla has because they're accessible shots but they're not safe shots i joel i'll tell you my ball times i actually somebody asked me this this morning as a matter of fact so So my very first game I played, I had the extra balls on. It was like around 16, 18 minutes, right? As soon as I took the extra balls off, we're talking eight to ten minutes for a three-ball game. And I had one game, which was like six minutes. And that's still around 100 million, 150 million. Sure. But, yeah, it plays tough, but at the same time, it is accessible, like I said. And the big reason for that is the encounters. They're on every major shot. So you can, as soon as you light them, you can start it. It's just like walking dead in that way. So unlike Godzilla, where you have to hit the scoop, right? Some people couldn't find that. Like the modes is what you're doing. Right, right, right, right. And some people couldn't find the scoop on Godzilla. Then it's like, what do you do then? You know, or like Jurassic Park, some people couldn't find the control room shot. Like, what do you do then? So from a code standpoint, just for if anybody's going to, if anybody this weekend has a chance to go and play a Jaws, what do you want to do? The two main things are you hit the chum bucket. You hit it one or two times, all the lights show up red, and you hit enough red shots, you'll fill up the chum line, and then that'll allow you to then hit a yellow shot, which it'll be the middle ramp or the left orbit. You'll hit a yellow shot, and that's what's going to set you up for that chance to hit the fin, the pop-up fin. And once you do that, once you've attached a barrel, then you hit one more yellow shot and you're in multiball. That's your multiball opportunity. If you want to just get into a mode, all you have to do in this game to get into a mode, you hit the boat one time, it'll flash shark. And then you'll notice every other shot on the play field has a white insert and it says the mode name. So you can be in a mode in, I think it's two shots. It's just hit the boat once and then hit another major shot and you're in that mode. So it's very accessible. Is it that or completing the arrows? What arrows? I forget. The complete arrow, like it says complete arrows for sharp encounters. What he means by what that is, in the boat itself, there are three arrows behind it. They're like opto. But realistically, if you hit that boat straight on, there's a good chance the ball is going to roll over and it's going to light. It'll light your mode. And then don't forget, too, I think the bounty hunts can be lit. via the right ramp. So you hit the right ramp twice. And that lights the bounty hunts. And if you've played something like Led Zeppelin before, that would kind of give you an idea. It's just basically four features that are out there, like ramps, pop bumpers, targets, spinners. And then you qualify a shark, got to reel him in. Sometimes you can be like, Joel, lose the shark. It happens. So that's the whole thing. The bounty hunts, that's what I'm really enjoying, where I get into a bounty where you it's exactly what he's saying. So it's like, okay, for me to catch this shark, I need to hit three ramps, I need to hit the chum bucket twice, I need to hit the pop bumper once, and I need to hit the whatever, the boat, whatever. It's like it'll tell you in the upper left, and you can just kind of chip away at it during the game. Once you've done that, then the reel, which is a horizontal spinner, it's a very fun shot, it's a cool 180 shot, you have to hit that and get a certain number of spins to reel in the shark, and then you hit the boat or the shark target, and you caught the shark. And it's just, it is so enjoyable. That horizontal spinner and that 180, not the 180, the figure eight, I am blown away at how well that works because it consistently feeds below, around a pop bumper and feeds your mini flipper. And what's odd, though, is if you hit the shot in a way that it feeds the opposite direction, then it's a dangerous shot because that ball is coming either right at your flipper or close to straight down the middle. So you've got to be ready. It's such a creative layout. And you've got to make sure to nudge the machine the correct way so you don't force the ball. to go down the middle. Carl D'Python Anghelo shared a clip with me from my last stream where the ball was going to hit the left flipper, and I nudged it the wrong way and just it went straight down the middle. Tom, well, we've got to ask Tom, Joel. So, Tom, you played this, what, three times? Yeah, that's it. On location. Did you get a feel for the shots or, like, what you were doing in the game? I found the outlanes quite a bit. Did you use the right outlane, like, to bump it back in? That was funny. I wanted to talk about that. So I was literally surprised because the ball was going down the right outline. And I was like, oh, man, I lost the ball. And then all of a sudden it bounced off the post back in. It's like, okay, let's go. But, no, I thought the shots were very findable. Strangely enough, the boat or the shark shot, that captive ball, I had the most trouble trying to hit that. And I don't know if it was just my aim or what, but I kept hitting the left post rubber. So from the right flipper? Yeah, left flipper. Or from the left flipper? Left flipper. From the left flipper? Well, that's back to the unsafe thing. If you don't hit the captive ball, there's a lot of rubber post on both sides. And if you hit it, it's coming straight back at you. Even if you hit the captive ball, it's still dangerous. I found that the chum bucket felt like the only safe shot. Yeah. I don't know, really, you know. And what I love. Ramps and stuff. Yeah. The rescue multiball. So every time you hit a stand-up next to one of the main shots, it will add a beach-goer on a shot. And you have to do that. You have to add the beach-goer and collect the beach-goer. So what I've found really fun is my skill level, I mean, I'm hitting posts all the time. So the fact now that I have a little target there that it's like you don't want to hit it because it's not safe, but the fact that you do have to hit them, though, to add your beachgoers. So I'll look down and it's like, man, I got so many beachgoers out there. Once I actually start hitting my shots, then, like, I have, playing the game, I did it once on stream, I got to rescue multiball, and I did it once the other night, which is a cool, it's a cumulative thing. It's something that you are going to progress over time, and then, hey, I'm only a few shots away from rescue multiball. When you start that multiball, you can close the beach, and then it kills your flippers. It kills your flippers, and it starts you in this multiball mode, and it's a unique thing. The code's only at .83, and that's what I've told some people on stream and some other people that have reached out. The things that aren't going to change, the art, I'm really enjoying the art. I think the art on the play field is not busy. It really lets you see the ball, and it looks great. The art's not changing, and the shots aren't changing. The shots are awesome. I'm loving the way this game shoots. The code that's already there, the .83, I'm having a blast with it already. And the fact that this is where I think Keith has proven himself that he's going to flesh out a game in such a unique way and make it a fun experience, look at Jurassic Park, look at Iron Maiden, look at Godzilla. This game's only going to get better. So if you have one on order, I think you made a good choice. If you have an LE locked in like Tom, good on you. My view is buy with confidence. This game is a blast. This game is a blast, and I'm really excited to see how it continues to grow. So, I don't know. It's awesome. Go find one. Hopefully your local arcade has one at this point. Otherwise, we'll share Tom's address once he gets his LE. No. No. We won't do that at all. I don't know. Any other thoughts on Jaws? I mean, it's – I'll admit, like, I've seen the movies and all that. I was not sure how this would translate for pinball. You know what I mean? I was worried about how it would translate. But, I mean, it works. It shockingly works. And I don't know how they did it. Whoever did the artwork, was it Michael Barnard that did it? I mean, I personally think it's fantastic. because if you really look at it and you see what the art is along with the inserts, along with labeling the shots, along with working its way all the way to the backside with the buildings on the back and everything, it just, it all comes together nicely. And I like that it's not super busy. And that's not to say that other people like Brian Allen or Zombie Yeti that I don't like their artwork. It's just something like this. I think it's the perfect art package for what this theme is. Things don't need to be busy. It's a shark. It's an ocean. And I'm sure something like this wasn't necessarily the easiest thing for people in pinball to do because pinball is typically chaos. But what's beautiful about this theme is it's a simple premise that is chaotic and is terrifying. Being in the water with something that could just eat you alive is probably absolutely terrifying. So having a game like this, it's just curious to see how this would translate out. And I don't know, having a horror theme like this translate in this way, that it still has even the good campiness in it that comes in. Like when the guy is talking about the tiger shot and he's like, a what? Like that's one of my favorite quotes in it. Yeah, there's just, I mean, the game's just excellent. I'm very shocked at how excellent everything seems like it's coming together. And I don't say that lightly. Like, I'm just very surprised by it because I was not sure, based on the theme alone, how it would be. So, a few quick thoughts. One, this is considered a horror movie. I was worried bringing this in. I was like, I got little kids. Is this a game? Like, unfortunately, Elvira, that was a game that I wasn't allowed to play around my kids, and it's not because of her. It was like what I found my three-year-old. He didn't like the floating heads. He thought the floating heads were scary. And there were other a few clips that were scary. So it's like, okay. It wasn't the satanic. Yeah. It's like I need to. So that made sense. But I was worried. I was like, I don't want my kids. It wasn't the other assets? Yeah. No back glass? No. Okay. Three-year-old boy, he didn't care about that. He wasn't. Gotcha. But the thing about Jaws, I was really worried. I was like, I don't want my kids to all of a sudden be scared of water, you know, or and they've included, it's very tactfully done. That's what I'm saying. Like, clearly, this is a game that's going to be at a bar, and it's not, let's say it's a family-friendly restaurant. You know, little Timmy's not going to look up and see, you know, a half-eaten body on the screen. Like, it's just, it's very, it's tactfully done, and it's camping, and it's enjoyable. Yeah, you got to get to that point. The other thing, audio, I really, I was like, cool, they got the score. But all I'm like, I don't want to hear, duh-dum, duh-dum, for the two hours that I streamed the game. No, the audio package in this is incredibly well done. All the modes have different songs, and they're all intense. They really, like I was super impressed with the audio. I really had a lot of fun, and whoever, I don't know who's on, I'm assuming Jerry Thompson, is that his name? I'm not sure. I'm assuming he's on. I'm not sure who did sound. I don't know. Well, I know, we know one person that did sound, but very little bit of the sound. But yeah, it's I don't know if they've announced that I think it's Jerry Jerry Thompson It's really good The sound is good, the art is good All that is good I don't know man It's really a lot of fun I'm hoping more people play it Oh, video wise That was the thing, the clarification Some people were upset about the art The fact there's only two people in the middle This was clarified on Loser Kid Pinball Podcast that the third guy, the police officer, to use an art asset, you have to work with the estate on that. Right. That's a totally different thing, and apparently the estate never even responded to him. So they couldn't use his likeness in the art, but they can use whatever they want from the movie. That's a separate licensing thing. The other clarification I think is really important, once again it was on the Losing Kid Pinball podcast, Elwin basically said for all those people out there that are saying, why isn't this already pinball? He basically said, imagine the speed of the Godzilla building. The licensor required that the shark comes out of the playfield. That was a licensor requirement. They wanted the shark to surprise the player. They wanted the shark to come out of the playfield. So the shark had to start below the playfield. But the only way that they could make that mech reliable and make it be a scoop was basically imagine the speed of the Godzilla building. So there's the shark mouth. You hit it. So please thank you for not doing that. So they're just like imagine the shark on top of the Godzilla building. That's what the mech would have been. So those are my clarifications. Well, while playing it, I don't know if you two got the same feeling. I thought about that while playing it, and I was just like, I don't know how this would have worked. No, the speed. Yeah, I'm just like, that would just be, because there was nothing about Jaws in the movie that was slow once he attacked. No, he'd pop up, and there would be times he'd pop up, and people, by the time they'd turn around, it was back underwater. Right. It makes sense to be a fast, quick, fast toy. After you play the game, for all the haters out there that still think we're crazy, once you've played the game, you will understand the last thing that you want in that game is a mech that slows it down. Because everything else about this game and the layout is speed and flow. It would be out of place, I think. Yeah. What do you think, Tom Graff? You think it's still out of place? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Tom's all in on an LE. I'm so freaking jealous of him right now. Like, because that premium, I'm telling you guys, I think the way that this plays, it would not surprise me if it earns really well on location. But I just, I don't know. I got the feeling the premium is just going to be just a whole other animal. Like, it's, I don't know. You got to go premium or LE. I don't know if there's any LEs out there. But I will say the art package, after seeing this art package, it has sold me that the LE art package is definitely better than the premium art package. Oh, yeah. I would want the pro back glass for sure, like the iconic. That could be a mirror back glass if it was the LE. I know. I know. If only there were LEs. If only we knew somebody. Getting an LE. Well, that's all I got. That was our pre-show notes. We're like, we can talk about state. I think we, yeah, we crushed it. We could talk about Jaws. We did well, right? I remember to actually, that's the only problem. We record like once a month, and so we love the feedback, please. feel free to continue to message us on Facebook or email us at tripledrain.gmail.com. But sometimes we get all that feedback a few days after the episode is released, and then it's been three weeks since I read it all. So I should probably do better and, like, catch up on that. We did get a good email, though, that I'd like to do next time to where we'll talk about our – Oh, the question. Sorry. Well, yeah, we could do that. Lynn messaged us. It's a good question. We'll get to it. It's an excellent question. I think we should do that next podcast for sure. We had three items. There were three items, and what I found is we only did two. We only did two, and then we had another random side item. We had to talk about stuff, yeah. But, no, the main thing we've got to talk about before we leave is the Winter 3X. Tom Graff, what is going on with that? There's a tournament at District 82 called the Winter 3X. It's a Stern Pro Circuit event. Basically, it's like a mini Pemburg. So you play three games, basically five rounds in one day, play three games, and you get put into divisions, go into the next one the next day and play in your division. Same thing. You play five rounds, three games, and then I believe it's top 20. No, it might be top 32 make the playoffs. I have to look into that. And then, yeah, playoffs on Sunday. There's a couple other tournaments going on in the evening, some knockouts. But it should be a good time. We're going to stream it. I'm looking forward to it. On what channel? Are you going to stream it on? It'll be on the Fox Cities Pinball channel. But I was going to plug that in later. If you want to stand up a little bit, just stand up a little bit and Superman that sweatshirt. He's got a beautiful Fox City shirt on That's what I'm saying Merch, where's your merch at? Is it Silver Ball Swag? He's wearing it on set Yeah, you can get that Triple Drain hat You've got some cool merch on there too, Travis I do, Joel, where's your Triple Drain stuff? I had some good comeback I'm restraining my That's what I thought Alright, well let's do our plugs Let's wrap this up All right. Well, as I just said, I do Five Cities Pinball. It's on Twitch. Twitch when we're live. YouTube when it's not live. Yeah. Awesome. Keep doing what you're doing, Tom. I'll try. Yeah. All right, Travis, you ready? Yeah, yeah. Okay, yep. New is coming. There we go. Yeah, you guys can find me here on the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast with my excellent co-host, Tom Graff. And Joel, he's here too. He's fine. He's a good guy. He has a beautiful beard. Joel, I got to say that your beard is pretty excellent. Thank you. I'm going to grow one eventually. One day. When I'm 60. One day. Your son will grow a good one. Yeah, my son's pretty awesome at growing it. He's only 14. What can you do? So, yep, you guys can find me here or find me on YouTube at the Pinball Company. I do stuff on there. All right, your turn, Joel. Okay, and yes, I'm Joel. I do this podcast. I also do the Flip N Out Pinball stream every Wednesday night. That's on YouTube. Check us out on YouTube. Like, subscribe, all that stuff. And then, yeah, shout out to Pinwoofer for hooking me up with these. I'm enjoying those lights a lot. And then if you happen to buy the Galactic Tank Force lunchbox from American Pinball and you want to complete your lunchbox collection, check us out on Zazzle. Search Triple Drain on Zazzle, and you can get your Triple Drain lunchbox. It'll look real good right next to it. Otherwise, our stuff on Super Bowl Swag, which is always a good time. But, yeah, that's all I got. Like always, Tom, you get the last words. Have a good day.