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Who Will be Crowned The Ultimate JJP? | Also Scorbit Joins Us!

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 12m·analyzed·Apr 30, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Scorbit launches asynchronous pinball tournaments across 14+ venues, aiming to drive operator revenue.

Summary

Josh Roop and Scott Larson interview Ron from Scorbit, a connected pinball platform that enables score tracking, leaderboards, and asynchronous tournaments across nearly every pinball machine dating back to 1977. Scorbit predates Insider Connected (launched 2020), supports 92% of all pinball machines through hardware and software integration, and recently launched tournaments at 14+ locations with plans to expand. The platform offers operators revenue-sharing models and digital payment options (Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit cards) to drive location traffic and operator profitability.

Key Claims

  • Scorbit was one of the first connected pinball platforms, launched in 2020, predating Insider Connected

    high confidence · Ron from Scorbit stated this directly in the podcast interview

  • Scorbit can connect nearly every pinball machine dating back to 1977

    high confidence · Ron: 'Scorebit actually connects nearly every pinball machine dating back to 1977' and later states they estimate 92% of all pinball machines ever manufactured

  • Scorbit originated from a technical challenge approximately 10 years ago at California Extreme arcade show

    high confidence · Ron described the origin story: co-founders walking around California Extreme wondering if machines could be connected to the internet and extract data

  • Pulp Fiction by Play Mechanics (CGC manufacturer) will include Scorbit code in its next update

    high confidence · Ron: 'Pulp Fiction by Play Mechanics, manufactured by CGC, their next code update is going to include scorebit code in the code' and noted it's in final stages of testing

  • Scorbit tournaments launched at approximately 14 locations across the U.S. two weeks prior to podcast recording

    high confidence · Ron: 'we just started rolling out the tournaments literally like two weeks ago' and listed specific venues including Lynn's Arcade, Capital Pinball Parlor, Rulo's in Brooklyn, Quarter World, Minnesota Pinball

  • Scorbit offers no upfront cost hardware to venue operators, with revenue-sharing model to recoup costs

    high confidence · Ron explained: 'we have a program where we just provide the Scorbit hardware at no cost up front' and 'share revenue with those operators to pay off the hardware over time'

  • Insider Connected only works on approximately 20 pinball machines

    medium confidence · Ron stated: 'it only works on 20 or so machines' compared to Scorbit's broader compatibility

  • Scorbit spent 5-6 years reverse-engineering older Bally Williams games to extract memory and score data

Notable Quotes

  • “Scorebit actually connects nearly every pinball machine dating back to 1977... Insider Connected is awesome. I love what Stern has done with it. But it only works on 20 or so machines.”

    Ron (Scorbit representative) @ ~5:00-6:00 — Core value proposition: Scorbit's compatibility advantage over Stern's Insider Connected

  • “we came up with this about 10 years ago... me and my co-founders, Brian O'Neill and Jay Allison... we just kind of asked ourselves, I wonder if you could ever connect a pinball machine to the Internet and like extract data from it.”

    Ron @ ~15:00 — Origin story establishing Scorbit's founding vision and technical founders

  • “we just hacked away on a theater of magic and we hacked away on a meteor and a future spa and some other old machines... trying to figure out how to tap into them and then convert them into modern data”

    Ron @ ~18:00-19:00 — Technical development process demonstrating reverse-engineering effort on classic Bally/Williams titles

  • “we estimate we're about 92% of all pinball machines that have ever been manufactured, we can extract the data from”

    Ron @ ~20:00 — Quantified claim about platform coverage breadth

  • “when that code does get released... people will be able to do the code update and they've got scorebit in the machine the same way Insider Connected is in a Spike 2 machine”

    Ron @ ~26:00 — Announcement of Scorbit integration path for modern manufacturers like CGC without hardware

  • “we had a line out of the booth as people were trying to compete for the jackpot... because the competition was just kind of so heated over the weekend”

    Ron @ ~35:00 — Anecdotal evidence of Scorbit tournament engagement at Pinball Fest event

  • “We wanted to build a pinball kind of experience kind of thing... We didn't set out to just be a payments company... that's kind of boring, to be honest”

    Ron @ ~47:00-48:00 — Product philosophy: Scorbit positions itself as community/experience platform, not just payment processor

Entities

Josh RooppersonScott LarsonpersonRonpersonBrian O'NeillpersonJay AllisonpersonZach MinniepersonNicole MinniepersonScorbitproductInsider ConnectedproductScorbit Visionproduct

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Scorbit launched asynchronous tournaments at ~14 U.S. venues two weeks prior to podcast recording, with additional locations going live 'literally every day'

    high · Ron: 'we just started rolling out the tournaments literally like two weeks ago' and 'we're lighting up new locations literally every day'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Scorbit integrating code-based Scorbit support into modern manufacturer machines (e.g., CGC's Pulp Fiction) alongside existing hardware retrofit model

    high · Ron: 'Pulp Fiction... their next code update is going to include scorebit code' with no hardware required, similar to Insider Connected model

  • $

    market_signal: Scorbit positioned as broader platform (92% machine coverage, back to 1977) vs. Insider Connected (~20 machines, modern Stern only)

    high · Direct comparison: Scorbit covers nearly all machines; Insider Connected 'only works on 20 or so machines'

  • ?

    business_signal: Scorbit implements zero-upfront hardware cost for operators with revenue-sharing model (from Coindrop and tournament fees) to recoup hardware costs over time

    high · Ron: 'we have a program where we just provide the Scorbit hardware at no cost up front... share revenue with those operators to pay off the hardware over time'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Scorbit targeting small operators and dive bars with limited machine counts through asynchronous tournaments, eliminating need for in-person event infrastructure (TGP, etc.)

    high · Ron: 'If you're a small dive bar with two machines in the corner, you're not hosting a league... But you plug Scorbit into your machines... anybody can come in and compete'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.217

0:00
Thanks for tuning in to Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. I am Josh Roop with me, my co-captain. Scott Larson. And Scott, we are going to be talking about technology today. But before we start talking about technology and how you could put this out any game you want, where are you going to get those games from? So I'll call Zach and Nicole Minnie at Flip N Out Pinball. Definitely hook you up with all the new games if you want used games too. They usually have good deals on that. And if you want accessories for your games, so if you want to bling it out or get that topper, because we know that I like toppers, except for the elusive Iron Maiden Egypt topper that I'm still trying to figure out where I can get that. But if you want everything else, go ahead and reach out to Zach and Nicole Minnie at Flip N Out Pinball. And people, he is very picky. You guys keep sending me like aftermarket. He wants the real deal. He wants the Stern Egypt topper. I think they made like 30 of them. I'm not kidding. I think they made like 30 of them. And the problem is I know I can buy the Aces High Topper, but it doesn't work with the Egypt theme. The Egypt theme. There are no planes in Egypt. Come on.
1:14
During World War II, there were. Okay, sure. But I mean, come on. We're talking about Pharaoh. Okay, we're getting off track now. Let's get back to our guest. We got Ron on from Scorebit, and I'm excited to talk about this technology because I know that people have known that it integrated with GAGP at some point in time. And you guys are pushing on a competitive edge on, well, just competitive pinball. And so I'm glad to get you on to talk more about this because I feel like it's not as well known in the industry. So Ron, thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Big fan of the show. I was honored that you guys wanted to talk to Scorbit, talk to me. It's great to come on the podcast, so thanks for having me. Definitely. So, Ron, for the average person, I want you to come up. So we're at the Pinball Expo. You come up. I want you to tell me about Scorbit and why this should be part of our pinball playing universe. Sure, absolutely. So Scorbit basically is connected pinball. We were actually one of the first folks on the scene doing connected pinball. We came out back in 2020. So we predate Insider Connected, some of the other kind of apps and stuff like that that are out there. And we actually, as great, you know, Insider Connected is awesome. I love what Stern has done with it. But it only works on 20 or so machines. Scorebit actually connects nearly every pinball machine dating back to 1977.

high confidence · Ron described the technical development process: 'we just hacked away on it for about five or six years of trying to figure out how to extract the memory of the old Bally Williams games'

  • Scorbit tournaments feature rising jackpots in states where it is legally permissible

    high confidence · Ron explained entry fee distribution and rising jackpot mechanics that vary by state legality

  • Scorbit has partnership with Pinball Map for location services integration

    high confidence · Ron: 'thanks to our friends at Pinball Map that we have a great partnership with, we can say, okay, we know where you are. Here's where the nearest machines are'

  • “there's got to be a better solution here... that's why digital payments is such a necessity for the modern operator”

    Ron @ ~42:00 — Motivation for digital payment system tied to operator pain point (change shortage)

  • “rising tide raises all boats. We're adding another factor to bring people to the location... increase the amount of coin drop... increase the amount of business at the bar”

    Ron @ ~40:00 — Operator value proposition: tournaments as traffic driver for venue ecosystem

  • “Scorbit Vision is our leaderboard and scoreboard product... has evolved and kind of become a digital signage product for venues”

    Ron @ ~50:00 — New product feature announcement: Scorbit Vision as dynamic leaderboard/signage for venues

    • Scorbit Tournaments
    product
    Pinball Mapproduct
    Flip N Out Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Chicago Gaming Company (CGC)company
    Play Mechanicscompany
    Lynn's Arcadevenue
    Capital Pinball Parlorvenue
    Rulo'svenue
    Quarter Worldvenue
    Minnesota Pinballvenue
    Flipper Roomvenue
    Atomic Pinballvenue
    California Extremeevent
  • ?

    technology_signal: Scorbit achieved 92% compatibility across historical pinball systems through reverse-engineering (EM, System 7, System 11, WPC-89, WPC-95, Stern SAM, Spike) by analyzing schematics and memory structures

    high · Ron detailed 5-6 year reverse-engineering effort on Theater of Magic, Meteor, Future Spa to extract memory; estimates 92% total coverage

  • ?

    product_strategy: Scorbit offering digital payment (Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit/debit) as core operator value proposition to reduce friction, address change machine shortages, and increase plays

    high · Ron cited San Francisco bar example where change shortage caused lost customers; positions digital payments as 'necessity for the modern operator'

  • ?

    partnership_signal: Scorbit has formal partnership with Pinball Map for location services and venue discovery integration

    high · Ron: 'thanks to our friends at Pinball Map that we have a great partnership with... we know where you are. Here's where the nearest machines are'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Scorbit venues expanding rapidly: Flipper Room (Concord, CA) went live days before podcast; Atomic Pinball (Wood River, IL) connecting 'whole bunch of machines' with 'pretty much every day' additions

    high · Ron: 'The Flipper Room in Concord, California, just went live a couple of days ago... Atomic Pinball in Wood River, Illinois, just... connected a whole bunch of machines'

  • ?

    community_signal: Scorbit tournaments demonstrated strong player engagement at Pinball Fest event with 'line out of the booth' competing for jackpots due to 'heated' competition

    high · Ron: 'we had a line out of the booth as people were trying to compete for the jackpot... because the competition was just kind of so heated over the weekend'

  • ?

    product_launch: Scorbit Vision announced as digital leaderboard/scoreboard and dynamic venue signage product to drive casual player adoption

    medium · Ron: 'Scorbit Vision is our leaderboard and scoreboard product... kind of become a digital signage product for venues'

  • $

    market_signal: Scorbit positioning against Insider Connected as more comprehensive platform; acknowledged 'as great' Insider Connected is, emphasizes Scorbit's broader machine compatibility and location tournament capabilities

    high · Ron: 'Insider Connected is awesome. I love what Stern has done with it. But it only works on 20 or so machines'

    • 2:44
    We've been working super, super hard to figure out how can we connect every solid state all the way up to modern machine that we possibly can to our platform so that you could easily extract scores from the machines, power leaderboards, power scoreboards, Save them to your profile on the Scorbit app. And then now with our new platform, enable competitions at your favorite pinball locations. And so that's what we've been working super hard on. And it's been going great. One thing, too, is like I feel like you're associated with competitive pinball, but the app itself kind of gives you a little bit of like diversity. It's not necessarily about being competition, right? It's about just like connecting online with other people, right? Yeah, I mean really it's funny because when we originally had the idea for Scorbit, believe it or not, it's going on more than 10 years now. My original vision or hope for Scorbit was the idea that Scorbit could be a companion app for anybody who loved pinball. And that continues to be kind of our North Star and where we want to take Scorbit in the future. So if you open up the Scorbit app today, the first thing you see is where is Pinball nearby, right? We're able to use the location services on your phone, whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone. We know where you are, and we immediately, thanks to our friends at Pinball Map that we have a great partnership with, we can say, okay, we know where you are. Here's where the nearest machines are and the nearest locations are where you can go play Pinball and go play, right? And then if you go to those locations, whether they have Scorbit in the machines or not, you can still go play pinball and you can take a picture of your score and upload it to your profile and remember that great score you had and keep track of all your scores in your profile and share them with your community, share them with your friends, be able to remember that great moment that you've had with pinball. The experience just gets better if you happen to play on a machine that's got a scorebit enabled, whether it's got a piece of scorebit hardware in the back box that's connecting that machine to the scorebit platform or you're playing a more modern machine that has the scorebit software installed on the machine itself to connect it to the scorebit platform. That's when the kind of what we like to say when the magic happens where the score is automatically saved to the Scorebit platform. You get a lot more dynamic things happening and then a lot more kind of cooler things happen where you can either use Scorebit to pay for your game. You can add credits to a machine. You can participate in the tournaments that were recently launched. If you're playing in a tournament at a location that has Scorebit enabled machines, we have an integration with match play. So scores automatically get sucked into match play and all that kind of cool stuff happens when the machines are scorebit enabled. But the whole idea is that, you know, scorebit is this kind of connector between the player and the machine and the data that comes through. And that data mostly is scores. Right. And what you're able to do with it and how you want to share that with your friends. So if I'm an operator and I have four games at my bowling alley. OK, so how do I actually get on the scoreboard platform? Like what what do I do? Do I buy something? Do I install it? Do I aftermarket it? How does this work? Yeah. So it's real, real simple. The first the first thing is if you're an operator or a venue owner, the first step is get in touch with us. On our website, we have a page dedicated to venue owners and operators. There's a form there that you can fill out to give us your contact information. We'll get in touch with you or you can just email us at contact.scorbit.io. Find me on social media. The ways people got in touch with us have been many different ways. People find me on Discord, but get in touch with us. And we've got a great program for venue owners and operators where, you know, previously we do offer the Scorbit hardware to home users, right? So if you've got all you guys have got your machines at home, if you wanted to outfit them with Scorbit, you can buy the Scorbit hardware to install them in your machines.
    6:56
    And that's great. That's awesome for home users. And we'll continue to do that for sure, because a lot of people want to have the leaderboards and scoreboards in their game rooms. And that's really awesome. But for venue owners and operators, we recognize that, hey, you know, being a small business person is hard, right? Not everybody has a ton of cash to invest in a new technology. You know, we did a lot of research and a lot of the like the card systems and things like that are very expensive to, you know, to invest in. If you wanted to open up an arcade and have that card system, sometimes it's an upfront cost of more than $20,000 just to get the kiosk and all the cards and all the stuff that you need for it. And we recognize that a lot of folks who do pinball are doing it out of passion. It might not be their full-time job. It might be because how many of us have bought so many pinball machines we run out of room and then we put them on location and now all of a sudden you're an operator. And so now you've got a pinball business and you might not have the money to invest in it. So what we want to do, we want to make it really easy for operators and for venue owners to get on board with Scorbit. So we have a program where we just provide the Scorbit hardware at no cost up front. What we do is we provide the hardware to get the machines connected. And then we have a program where we're able to share revenue with those operators to pay off the hardware over time Through the revenue that's driven both either from Coindrop, if they're using Scorbit to accept Coindrop via credit card, which we offer for digital payments, or through the Scorbit tournaments product, which is a asynchronous competition product that we just rolled out recently, which allows people to compete using Scorbit on the machines on location. So imagine where you could walk into a location, put up a high score and participate in a tournament that is that is always on. So, you know, different from an in-person tournament where, you know, 60 people gather on a Saturday and hang out for 14 hours and go through all the rounds and all that sort of stuff. Imagine competing on your own time. And this is yet another way that we're providing operators to drive revenue on their machines because not every location might have enough machines to host in-person tournaments. You need a certain number of machines, TGP and all that stuff that Josh Sharpe has come up with over at IFA. If you're a small dive bar with two machines in the corner, you're not hosting a league. You're not hosting tournaments. But you plug Scorbit into your machines and you turn on Scorbit tournaments. Now anybody can come in and compete on a tournament on that machine and able to compete and win real money.
    9:43
    And so we want to make it easy for operators to get on board with that. So by getting in touch with us, we chat with them, we send them the hardware, set it all up, get them connected to it, and then basically profit. Right. That's kind of how it works. So, you know, they they provide the operators, provide the machines, the players provide the games. We provide the technology and hopefully everybody has fun in the process. So you talked about you can win cash awards and stuff like that. Like, how does how does that work? Like, who's financing the stuff for that? Yeah. So essentially what happens is, is that the the players pay a entry fee to get into the tournament. So just like if you were going to go to an in-person tournament, that is like a pump and dump tournament or something like that, Where you're buying entries to get into the tournament, same concept. So you purchase an entry fee, you pay the entry fee to get into the tournament, and then a cut of that goes obviously to us because we've got to make money because we are a business, right? A cut of that can also go to the operator because they're also a business. But then a cut of the entry fee also goes back into the pot for the states where it is legal to do so. So it's not every state it's legal to have a rising jackpot. But the states where rising jackpots are legal, the more people that participate in the tournament, the bigger the jackpot can get. And so it kind of gets really exciting when you have a tournament that's going over a two-week period and you kind of keep an eye. Let's say you put up a great score and you're in the top four and you're poised to win and you're watching more and more people enter and you're watching that jackpot get bigger every day. And let's say you're also a really good player and you know that you can come in on the last day and snipe and grab the jackpot. You can see it go from it's $100 on day two and by the end of the tournament it could be up to up over $250. And you can kind of come in and put up a great score and take the jackpot. But so, you know, it is funded by the players entering into the tournament. No different than an in-person tournament that where the more people that participate, the bigger the jackpot gets. So if people are interested in this type of, I guess, tournament, where are the hot where the hot beds for this? Like where are they happening right now? So, yeah, so right now. So we just started rolling out the tournaments literally like two weeks ago. You can tell if I sound tired, it's because we've been working nonstop on this. So we launched the tournaments at about 14 locations across the U.S., places like Lynn's Arcade in Seaside, California, Capital Pinball Parlor in Sacramento, Rulo's in Brooklyn, Quarter World in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Yeah, there's a whole list of the locations that we launched. Minnesota Pinball in Bucks Mill, Minnesota. Bucks Mill Brewing, I think, in Minnesota. It's actually in Detroit Lakes. That's the town. So, yeah, so we've got a whole bunch of locations where we launched the tournaments at. And on the Scorbit website, there's a list of all the locations that are Scorbit enabled. And pretty much any Scorbit enabled location will be running tournaments. And we're lighting up new locations literally every day. So, for example, the Flipper Room in Concord, California, just went live a couple of days ago with a whole bunch of machines at their location. And they're connecting even more pretty much every day as fast as they can get the machines connected. They're doing it. And so Atomic Pinball in Wood River, Illinois, just as connected a whole bunch of machines. So, you know, we're on a mission to try to get as many locations connected to the platform as possible because to give people more opportunity around the country to go try, you know, try a score of a connected experience and participate in these tournaments and just participate in the whole connected pinball thing, you know, that's slightly different than Insider Connected, right? So in Sutter Connected, we've all gotten used to, you know, kind of scanning your QR code and it's saving your score and, you know, the whole achievements and unlocking badges and things like that. With Scorbit, it's a slightly different experience. You can tap into the machine. So similar to the way that when you pay for your, you know, if you go to the grocery store and you pay for your groceries by tapping the payment kiosk at the grocery tab with NFC on your phone, You tap into the machine for Scorbit. That's how you tell the machine who you are. You're able to fund your account on the Scorbit app with a credit card. If you're at a location that's on Coindrop, you can pay for credits that way, which is really great. So no more having to carry quarters or anything like that. You can always just, you know, pay for a game just, you know, with your credit card. And then participating in the tournament is another great way to experience Scorbit by being able to just, you know, It adds a level of excitement to the game. When you scan into the game on the ScoreBit app, you have a little trophy next to your name, and your name is kind of like highlighted in yellow, and it just feels a little different. It feels a little more electric, and you kind of see the leaderboard, and you see where you land against everybody else. We were at TPF, and we had a tournament going on in our booth, and we had a line out of the booth as people were trying to compete for the jackpot that was available there because the competition was just kind of so heated over the weekend. And we're actually getting ready. Pinfest in Allentown is going to be this weekend, and we're talking to an operator who's going to have a machine there that's going to be running a Scorbit tournament. We just had a call earlier tonight about setting that up with the hopes that a lot of people will be participating there and competing on a game and having fun. And, you know, the whole idea of it, the whole motivation for this was that we built Scorbit to kind of give back to pinball and give something new and different. And with this new iteration within Scorbit, it kind of taps into our love of locations and our love of competition. And how can we use Scorbit to kind of promote competition at locations? And that's really what we're aiming to do.
    15:57
    Okay, so you mentioned that this actually goes back a little farther than Insider Connected. We all are used to the modern games with Insider Connected, but you're saying that you can do this with older games. Yes, we can. So how does that actually work with older games? Yeah, so actually, Scorbit's origins lie within older games because, like I said, we came up with this about 10 years ago. So this is – we predate – I think we predate Spike 2, to be honest. I think Spike 2 was out when we came up with it. And the whole – Scorbit's whole origin was me and my co-founders, Brian O'Neill and Jay Allison, We're walking around California Extreme, which is a great show in San Jose in California. If anybody ever gets a chance to attend, it's a great arcade and pinball show.
    16:46
    And we just kind of asked ourselves, we're like, oh, wow, I wonder if you could ever connect a pinball machine to the Internet and like extract data from it. And, you know, it became like a technical challenge, right? And so we started talking to like old techs and folks. We tracked down people who worked at Bally Williams and those old gray beard techs that have been working on pinball machines back to EMs and asked them the same question. And they all kind of looked at us really kind of funny and they all gave the same face. They kind of furrowed their brow. And they're like, well, I guess you could, but it'd be really hard. And we were thinking like Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness. Like, how could you get into the memory of those machines and extract the scores from the games? And they're all like, yeah, you could, but it'd be really hard. Why would you want to do that? And that just motivated us even more to tell us that it was possible, but it was really hard. It was like a challenge, right? So we just hacked away on it for about five or six years of trying to figure out how to extract the memory of the old Bally Williams games. And we hacked away on a theater of magic and we hacked away on a meteor and a future spa and some other old machines as we were just like analyzing the data coming out of those machines and trying to figure out how to tap into them and then convert them into modern data that could then be manipulated in an app in a mobile app purely with the goal of how do you you know how can you create a profile and save scores and like save it automatically And so our origins were like in the older games originally. And so then at that point it was, all right, well, how do we do this across every game? And then basically we got a list of every MPU that was out there and every type of game system. And it's become a kind of game of whack-a-mole. It's like, okay, well, how do we tackle System 7? How do we tackle System 11? How do we tackle WPC-89? How do we tackle WPC-95? And how do we tackle Stern Sam? And how do we tackle Spike 1? Right. Because every different type of pinball machine is different. And even, you know, even whether it's Gottlieb or Bally Williams or Stern, even their different iterations within their own companies, they the engineers who worked on them always modified them a little bit from version to version. Right. So there's never enough consistency that you find the exact same method within it to tap into. So for our engineers, it became like a challenge for us. How do we unlock this type of pinball machine?
    19:28
    And so we've been working hard on it. It's at the point now where we estimate we're about 92% of all pinball machines that have ever been manufactured, we can extract the data from. And so that leaves things like Hankin, those Australian pinball machines, just because they're not on location. I think I've only ever seen two Hankins on location. They've only been on Pinball Expo. And actually Atomic Pinball in Illinois, they have an Empire Strikes Back, which is a Hankin, which now makes me want to make Hankin work so that we can work at that location, but still. Like the Zacharias, which as much as I love those Zacharias games, you don't see them at arcades. So we really had to make the business decision, is it worth our time to try to get these obscure games to work when they're not going to be on a location where we can actually make money with them. So there's those. And then the more modern games, you know, like Spooky and Barrels of Fun and, you know, Turner, other manufacturers like that now, who, as opposed to building a piece of hardware that can go in those machines, we'd rather take the route of applying code that can go into those machines and do it without hardware. So, for example, Pulp Fiction by Play Mechanics, manufactured by CGC, their next code update is going to include scorebit code in the code. We've been working very closely with them. It's in the final stages of testing. So when that code does get released, which knock on wood is going to be very, very, very, very, very soon, people will be able to do the code update and they've got scorebit in the machine the same way Insider Connected is in a Spike 2 machine, right, or a Spike 3 machine. So they'll be able to connect their Pulp Fiction to the Scorbid network and be able to have Scorbid enabled on the machine without any hardware at all needed. And so that's the route we'd rather go with the more modern machines. So it's just a matter of talking to those manufacturers and building a partnership and going that route, which takes time and negotiations and all the things like that. But on the older side of things, pretty much the majority of the solid states and the alphanumerics and the DMDs, we've figured out how to make them work. And we've got them functioning in arcades across the country. And it's amazing when you see a, you know, a old solid state machine and we're able to press, you know, in the Scorbit app, there's a big button that says start game and you can press start game and the game starts. The Pinball machine starts without pressing the start button on the machine. And it's just like magical. Right. It's so cool. You can see you press add credit from the Scorbit app and the credits increment on the machine without putting a quarter into it. It's like really, really cool. And then you see you start the game, you start playing and you see the scores coming through on the app automatically or see mode information come through on the app. And it's just it's so cool to see happen on like a game that was built in the 80s. And it's done through like a ton of hard work and like, you know, reverse engineering these old machines and looking at schematics and all that fun stuff. But that was part of the fun of this project. And that's why it's the love of pinball that made us want to do it. So the one question that's popped in my mind while you've been talking about all this is when you're talking to operators and stuff that are trying like getting ready to take the plunge on this, can you actually give like some numbers to us of what you see maybe ROI? And because I mean, we're mostly like a cashless society for the most part. I mean, some people carry cash, but the incentive of something as simple as Scorbit after it's installed, be able to just take, you know, tap from the phone. How much more of an increase does operators see versus coin drop? Yeah, and that's really what we're figuring out right now. It's early in our deployment where I don't have the exact kind of numbers to share because we're still measuring and we're still seeing what the impact is. The hope and the plan is that not only by providing the coin drop functionality to those locations, we can increase plays because you're taking away the need to carry cash or the need to make change. One of the reasons why I've always wanted to do a digital payment system for pinball was like, for example, when I lived in San Francisco, there was a bar called Gestalt that I used to go play pinball at. And they were notorious for being awful about change. The person who owned the bar told the bartenders they weren't allowed to give the pinball people change from the bar. They had a change machine on the walls, one of those wall-mounted ones, and it was one of the small ones. It would always run out of change, right? And the operator refused to put dollar mechs in the pinball machine, so you needed quarters. So I would sit there with a beer and watch people walk up to the pinball machine, realize it didn't take dollars, go to the change machine, realize the change machine didn't have change, go to the bartender, be told that the bartender wouldn't give them change, and then watch them leave the bar. And I was like, there's got to be a better solution here, right? So that's why digital payments is such a, you know, I think a necessity for the modern operator. You've got to be able to take credit cards, right? And even the purist, the arcade purist who wants a world of quarters, it can still work with quarters, right? Especially Scorbit with our digital payment system, it still works alongside CoinMax. It can still work alongside DollarMax. It's not all or nothing, but give people the choice to pay their credit cards, right? So the hope is that you get people playing more. But also the hope with what we're doing at Scorbit is that the tournament's product brings people in to play the games on location more often And increases whatever coin drop that is happening at those locations so that it's giving people a reason to go to the location more often. They're competing in the tournament. They're playing more games than they would have. And while they are there, maybe they're playing the other games more or maybe they're drinking at the bar more or maybe they're ordering food from the kitchen more. And the hope is that we're a factor that is increasing overall revenue for the location. You know, rising tide raises all boats. We're adding another factor to bring people to the location. Maybe, you know, you have league nights on Tuesday nights and you do tournaments on Saturdays and Sundays. Maybe, you know, Mondays and Thursdays are dead. So maybe Scorbic can be a way to get people coming in on Mondays and Thursdays a little more often and increase the amount of coin drop that's happening, Increase the amount of business at the bar. And that's what we're measuring now with our first wave of venues and operators that we're working with to hope that we can prove that out.
    26:11
    So I just got back from Europe. I did not get any cash the entire time I was there. Wow. I actually just used my phone. So is this a way of this may be a pipe dream, but is there a way for people to go up to a Scorbit enabled machine and just pay with her phone? Yes.
    26:33
    Okay. Like with Apple Pay? Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit card, debit card, whatever you want. Essentially, the way it works is you set up your account on Scorbit, and then you're able to identify your funding source, whether you want to load a credit card or debit card or pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. And then similar to the way Venmo works where what you can do is you can add funds to your Scorebit wallet. So you can say, I want to put $10, I want to put $20, I want to put $50 on my Scorebit wallet. And you pull that from your credit card, put it into your Scorebit wallet, and now you've got a balance on Scorebit that you can go use wherever you want to go play. And so when you're standing in front of that pinball machine, you see you've got a little wallet icon on the app and that tells you how much money you have. You see, you know, I've got a Jaws behind me. I see the Jaws cost a dollar to play. I can say add one credit cost one dollar. I say add one credit. Press the button. Jaws lights up. Credit has been added. A dollar gets deducted from your scoreboard balance and you're ready to play pinball. You don't have to. It all happens magically. So. Okay. But say I don't have the scoreboard app. Can you go up and just say. So it does require having a score of an app and does require being registered in a score of an app. It's not like a subway, like the subway, like it was like, hey, I just need my Apple phone. So you're saying, OK, yes, you need to do it. But the barrier is you still need to install the app and use the app. OK, correct. And part of that is because we want to promote the community. We want to promote you keeping track of your scores and participating in the tournaments. And so that's all tied to your user profile and that sort of thing. And so we didn't set out to just be a payments company, right? We didn't set out to just be, you know, a PayRange or Nyax or other companies that are just creating vending machine payments services because that's kind of boring, to be honest, right? We wanted to build a pinball kind of experience kind of thing. And so, yeah, so you do need to install the app, but we're hoping that we're giving you, the player, more reasons than just to pay for pinball. You know, like there's more things to do with Scorbitt than just, you know, using it to pay for games.
    28:51
    So is there some kind of signage you send to because, like, I assume there's a lot of casuals that go into play pinball. And how, like, how do you get them to convince them to download the app? Well, that's, I mean, that's the trick and that's the challenge. And that's what we're, that's what we're everyday learning and everyday trying to figure out. But we do have a product called Scorbit Vision. We do love our names at Scorbit, by the way. So Scorbit Vision is our leaderboard and scoreboard product, which really has evolved and kind of become a digital signage product for venues.
    29:25
    So a lot of modern arcades and bars all have TVs, and they're all able to display stuff. And obviously, Insider Connected has the leaderboards, and we're used to seeing that. So with Scorbit Vision, we enable venues to put up dynamic leaderboards and scoreboards and also screens related to the tournaments that are happening in Scorbit to show how big the jackpot is. But they also can integrate messaging in rotation with those leaderboards. So in addition, you can show the latest leaderboard for each game and kind of cycle through like a slideshow. But you can also insert a design screen to promote an upcoming in-person tournament or promote a special at the bar or promote trivia night. But also we have pre-designed graphics to promote Scorebit and with the QR code to download the app to explain, you know, pay for your pinball game with Scorebit. Here's how and kind of instructional graphics to tell the newbies how to do it. So that's kind of where we're starting. And then we're working with the venues to better understand what is the way to educate their customers. Because the one thing that I've found out now with talking to so many venue owners and so many operators across the country is that no location and no city and no arcade is like the previous one I just spoke to. They're all unique. They're all different. Right. And so they've all got different types of customers, all different types of crowds, all different types of communities. So what might work in one isn't going to work in another. And so a lot of it is working with the venue owners and understanding what works for them and helping cater messaging and cater banners or cater signage that works for them. And then remembering that and keeping track of that playbook and keeping that in mind when you talk to another venue owner and saying, OK, I see a similarity here. This worked over here. It might work for you. But also being prepared to identify when that isn't going to work for them and come up with a different strategy. We need to help them promote. But it's all about promoting to the casual player because that's really where we see the growth.
    31:38
    So many people like us who love pinball, we're already converted. The hope is that folks like us are going to play it and play as much pinball as possible. But if we want to continue to see pinball reach the masses, and that's one thing that we're hoping to score, we can do is get introduced to new players and give them a new reason to engage with this hobby that we love. And so part of it is figuring out how to bring them onto the platform and show them how to use it. I'm actually hosting a women's tournament on Saturday. Now, obviously, I have 10 machines in my basement, but I don't really have them Scorbit enabled. Like what options are there for home users like me to use Scorbit? So, yeah, so like I mentioned, for a home user, we sell the Scorbitron, which is the device that connects machines to the Scorbit platform. In our store, so you can go to the Scorbit website and click the shop button. You're able to purchase the Scorbitron, install it in your machines at home, and if you have a TV in your game room or basement or wherever they might be, that's where you can host Scorbit Vision in your basement and have your leaderboards and scoreboards for your machines there and pull live data as well. You can have everybody who comes over tap in and be able to keep track of their own scores. If you're hosting a tournament that's using Matchplay, we have a great integration with Matchplay so that any machine that's got Scorebit enabled, it pulls in all the data from the machine into Matchplay. And so, you know, no more having to type in the scores directly into Matchplay. It pulls them in automatically. And there's also all this cool visualization stuff where you get kind of like score history throughout the round or you get a lot of player data to see how they did on previous games and all this kind of cool stuff. We haven't really announced the match play thing as of yet. So folks who are listening to this is kind of who might not be aware of it. This might be news to them. But folks who have been playing in tournaments on scoreboard enabled machines with match play, when they see it, it's kind of like their heads explode because like, whoa, how does it do that? And it's kind of like this kind of game changing element for tournament players. We're super excited about it. We're doing a lot more with Matchplay about how we can get Scorbert working with Matchplay to make tournaments even better. So those are great options for folks, home users.
    33:58
    We're excited for you, Ron. Thanks. This product's pretty awesome. I can't wait to get my hands on it some more. Probably Expos. Well, you said that Pintastic's this weekend? Well, yeah, Pinfest in Allentown is this weekend. So, Scorbit won't be there officially. I know we're sponsoring the live stream on the tournament. A couple of our folks from our team will be there hanging out, but I'm pretty sure there'll be a Legends of Valhalla in a booth that will be connected to Scorbit, and there might be a tournament running on that. So, if folks want to check that out, fingers crossed, if all things go as planned, that should be Scorbit enabled, and you can go check out the tournament on that. I know we're working hard to make that happen. And then we will definitely be at Expo later this year in October. I'm already talking to Rob about our presence at Expo. We had a great time last year. We were just at TPF this past March. I don't know if we have any other shows lined up, but we're around and follow us on social media.
    34:59
    And, yeah, and please, you know, like we're super excited about what we're doing, but so much of what we're doing is for the community. And part of that is the feedback loop that we get from the community. So much of the stuff that we're doing has been informed by comments, criticisms, suggestions, stuff from actual people playing on locations, from operators, from venue owners, from tournament directors, all kinds. So if you've had a chance to check out ScoreBit, if you have an opinion, please get in touch. We want to hear from you because we want to get as much feedback as possible to what we're doing because we're moving very quickly and we iterate pretty fast. And we just love getting as much feedback as possible because we're doing this for the pinball community, so we don't want to do it in a vacuum. So by all means, join our Discord, shoot us an email, DM us on Instagram, however you want to get in touch. But the more feedback we can get, the better, because we want to make sure that we're doing right by the pinball world.
    36:05
    Well perfect I usually ask how to get a hold of you but it sounds like you covered it Yeah there it is Well awesome Thanks Ron We appreciate you joining us and it been great to have you here Yeah thanks for having me Appreciate it You're welcome.
    36:18
    Once again, that was Ron Richards with Scorebit. It was great having him on, Scott. That was very informative. You know, it's actually – okay, I'm actually surprised. I'm surprised that you can actually integrate older games. And yeah, it does take a little bit of upfront, but that's pretty amazing because a lot of things turn out to be like, you know, the joke is the Sterniment, right? Yeah. It's like everything is like Stern because obviously Stern is the gorilla in the market.
    36:48
    They're the ones who actually produce the highest volume of games and you're going to see those mostly. But the nice thing is being able to integrate other games into your tournament and have it seamlessly seems like quite a desirable thing for people on location. And especially if you can pay with your phone. That seems like an amazing option for me. Yeah. Well, I'm excited because you and I are both going to get the tap pads, which is crazy to me. It was funny because we were going through the shop and we're like, how do you do this on Spike 2? And he's like, it's literally just a tap pad. The thing's only 50 bucks. And if you have a spike too, you slide it out. He said you just install the code, which if you've done Stern code through a USB stick, it's a piece of cake. And then the tap pad just slides under the glass. I'm excited to try this out. I think we'll do a video on this or we'll at least update y'all. We know that I don't know if you're excited about this, but I'm excited for something. Okay, I'm excited for the ability to do different things and that's always the challenge is, again, Stern is the gorilla in the room because they do 85% of the business. But being able to integrate more things into Pinball is a huge thing and just as shown as like Beetlejuice being a huge seller and the Jersey Jack games integrating Harry Potter into the mix. There's a lot of options out there, not just Stern, which makes it a very desirable option, especially for location, especially when you're doing tournaments too, because you don't want to have just a modern lineup. People love having those older games and the ability to do things. Totally agree. I'm excited for this. I can't wait to get it in the house and you and I will give it a shot. Yeah, give it a shot. One thing I'm excited about, it has been over a year, the shoes are finally back. So we found out last year, we left them on the site, and then Neil, who runs Silver Ball Swag, is like, we got a problem. I'm like, what's the problem? People were getting their shoes, and then the shipping company were freezing to give them their shoes, unless they paid like extra $65 in sports or something like that. It was nuts. This is the challenge. This is the challenge with any sort of modern trade issue. There's always going to be issues about crossing borders. And as we know, there's always going to be a lot of fluctuation in trade policy. So we do appreciate that we've been able to get those back on the website. And trust me, I'm actually going to get another set. I have three sets. I have the vans. I have the, I don't know what you would call them. The low back with the laces and then the old Chuck Webster's style. Yeah, the old Chuck Taylors. Sorry, Chuck Taylor, Chuck Webster. I love my Chuck Taylors and I have some of the ankle high laces as well. Yeah, and if you get the bread laces, which are kind of the flexi laces that you can slide them in and off fast style. Yep, it's wonderful. Okay, we are super excited about having those back on. And so please, you know, go get some more shoes. Really, we do this for fun. Yes. It's not like we are definitely not making a killing on this. We get a few bucks and it all goes back toward producing great content for you guys. So we appreciate that. But we actually, I just smile when I go around a show and I see people with our shoes or with their hats. And it just makes me feel like we are enjoying Pinball together. Well, and the other cool part, too, is Brad Albright had reached out yesterday when we started posting this. And he's the one that did the art for this. And now he's went on and done Winchester. He did Portal. I mean, it's kind of cool because I remember when we first had him on seven years ago, six years ago. It's been a while, yeah. It's been a while when he had just done the art for the Led Zeppelin homebrew for David Peck out of Australia. And it's cool to see how far he has come with all that, right? Yep. And you know what? When we were at Expo, my son picked up a few Brad Albright 3D things. So it's fun. We got a portal thing and we got a Mario thing. And I'll have to go into his room and see what the other one he selected. But it's been really fun to see, you know, Josh, we're we're long in the tooth. We're one of the old dogs out there. Yeah. It still feels like I can't. It's like so long ago. It just feels like Josh texted me. He's like, hey, do you want to do a podcast? Sure. Why not? Zach Manning told me I needed a co-host because I sucked by myself. Oh, OK. That's not true. That's not true. But it's certainly I do like the dynamic that it's OK. You and I talk regularly. Yes. If not daily, at least weekly. And we have group chats with with the Triple Drain guys. And that is a super active chat. By the way, check out Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. They are amazing. And if you haven't subscribed, make sure to subscribe. They're trying to get to 1,000 right now. Yep. But yeah, this has been great because this is really how we interact. People are wondering how we do a show. I'm like, this is kind of our conversations that we have on the phone. Yeah. Like when we call. It's been a lot of fun. And we do we are planning to do another Patreon like a call in show. And again, if you want to be part of the show, this is pretty much what we do. We we we call and we talk to like, what do you guys want to talk about? What are the themes that you guys are thinking about? And also, like, what are the issues in pinball that you want to discuss? Yeah. Yep. So one other thing I want to discuss before we get to the bracket that we've been doing for almost a month now. Now, Spooky, I guess, has in their code, people are getting their Beetlejuices and finding the Goonies. Do you think this is just a troll? Do you think, why the heck would you be finding Goonies in Beetlejuice code? Okay. As we have seen in Pinball, there are certain themes that bubble to the top, the stream themes, right? Yes. And so Goonies is definitely one of those where people of my generation, this is the show that we grew up with. This is the show, and you talked to Zach Minnie, this is like one of his dream themes. Now, I am in the minority in that I saw Goonies once, I think. But I know that there's a lot of people who it is like one of their all-time dream themes. And again, if you are going to make a pinball machine that can incorporate dream themes with the right demographic of people willing to buy a $10,000 machine and put it in their basement, this is a perfect Venn diagram of overlapping and saying there's a need, there's a want. And Spooky definitely has their little market base of saying, hey, we are Spooky fanboys. We want to support the company. How long did it take for them to sell out of Beetlejuice, Josh?
    43:57
    I think it was sold out before it even showed. Right. And Zach Mays claiming that the list is already full for the next spooky title too, so I don't know. Good. I don't know. This is the best part about having a small company with a dedicated fan base is that you are going to develop a need. Now, Josh, I'm going to ask you, the devil's advocate, is there any reason if I'm going to pitch Beetlejuice to you, why are you going to tell me Beetlejuice is a bad idea?
    44:33
    As far as like theme for a pinball machine? Yeah, I'm going to make a pinball machine. I want it to be Beetlejuice. Why is this a bad idea? Go. So depending on the size of your company, it might be a little too niche of a theme to be profitable for you. I'm spooky. I'm looking to sell $1,000 to $1,500.
    44:53
    Well, they sold out $888 in less than 24 hours. Yeah, exactly. I called Bug at noon, so it would have been 1 o'clock his time just because my cousin had called and said, hey, I really, really want one of these. I said, well, I know Bug, so I'll give him a call. And he's like, dude, I wish I could. But he's like, we sold out like two hours. OK, perfect. This is OK. This is what I'm saying. You are finding a hard time to tell me not to buy this game. Yeah. Like not to not to make this game. This is a perfect a perfect fusion of the right boutique company with the right boutique theme. Yeah. I could totally argue if I were a Stern and I'm looking to sell 5,000 to 10,000 games, is there enough demand for a Beetlejuice? Is there enough demand for a Goonies? I could argue you may not be able to find that many buyers for that, but for a small focused company like Spooky, this is going to be a home run. Well, and I would argue also that you're going for an experience. The thing with Stern is they are now going for titles that have brought a pill that can fit into different locations.
    46:10
    What did they say? It's like 30-70 right now. They're going for maximum penetration. Yes, correct. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to find themes that will work for the broadest possible audience. Now, as a boutique company, that is not your focus. Yeah. Your focus is to cater to you are your super fanboys. And I blame it all on Evil Dead, man. That game is so good. So good. So great. And again, this is something that for me, it's not my demographic, but I tell them that this is a this was a home run in finding the the passionate people who are willing to pay money for this. And you know what? I would argue Evil Dead was springboarded by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you had told me, hey, I'm a pinball company. I want to make Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I would have thought you were crazy. Yeah. Because it is one. It's super gory to it's super old school and super fanboy. Everybody knows it, though. And so they were able to make it work. Yep. All right. Let's move on to let's talk about the bracket. So about three weeks ago, started up the ultimate JJP game. The rumored Sonic the Hedgehog should be coming anytime soon. I figured what not a better time to see if we can crown a champion. The way that I did this is I took all the ratings from Pinside and then seeded the games based on their rating. So first place is obviously Harry Potter, second Selton John, third Pirates of the Caribbean, fourth Willy Wonka, fifth Guns N' Roses, sixth Avatar, seventh Wizard of Oz, eighth Hobbit, ninth Dialed In, tenth Toy Story 4, and eleventh Godfather. I do find it interesting how far Dialed In is down because personally me I think that is one of the better rule-based games that they have. It is the – man, the Achilles heel for that is the SIM card shop. Yeah. The theme. The theme is the Achilles heel. Yeah, and I totally get the people saying the art is probably too retro. It's probably in that weird spot where it's retro but not like cool retro. Well, it was John Yowse, man. John Yowse was the one that did the art on that, and he was the one that was doing all the original Bally Williams stuff. Back in the day. And I do feel bad because I remember that you and I were on with Head to Head when that game released. And I did give John, I'm like, maybe it's time to hang up the reins. And I do feel bad. Yeah, it felt like it was close. But I know what they were going for. They were going for the everyman. This is the hero's journey that happens in so many games or in so many genres, right? You have Luke Skywalker. You have Harry Potter. You have all these things where you have this nobody, this casual person who gets thrown into a situation where they have to convert to the hero and they are thrust into it. The Matrix does the same thing where Neo is an average guy who basically is thrown into this. So I kind of wish that it was a little better implemented because I think it would have connected a little more with people.
    49:39
    But, you know, okay, that being said, it's still a great game. It's still a fun theme. I wish the SIM card shot were more accessible.
    49:49
    Yep. Well, that's the hard part, too. It's not a bad shot if there isn't a cliffy on it, but it gets pretty bad if you don't have a cliffy on it. If you're a home game owner, seriously, just take the cliffy off. You are not going to beat up that shot enough to warrant having the Cliffy on there.
    50:06
    All righty. So the first round was the bottom six games because the way with 11 games. It was the play in tournament. Yeah. So first round. Scott, I'm going to read these off to you per matchup. Okay. I want you to decide who you think should win it and I'll tell you who actually won it. Ready for this? Okay, first round was Avatar at Seed 6 versus Godfather at Seed 11. I'll take Avatar. Yeah, Avatar all day, right?
    50:34
    Godfather, it's a great game. It doesn't have the eye candy that Avatar does. Avatar did win that match, by the way. Shocker. Okay, Wizard of Oz versus Toy Story 4. You know, I'm going to take Wizard of Oz just because it is way more packed and it is the game that put Jersey Jack on the map.
    50:58
    Wizard of Oz was seed seven, by the way, and Toy Story 4 was 10. And I was torn on this one because the gameplay is actually pretty good on Toy Story 4. Okay, I agree. I agree. When you look at Wizard of Oz, and I've got Wizard of Oz over my shoulder there. Okay, you have two upper playfields that are packed. You also have the sculpts that are everywhere. And you look at this and you would be hard pressed to remember that this game came out over 15 years ago. Yeah. Like this looks like a, it still looks like an advanced game now. And it's 15 years old. Yep. I know. I totally agree. So in that case, Wizard of Oz did win. I want to say it was pretty close. It was pretty close. Let me see if I can scroll down. Toy Story is a good game. I really am on record. Toy Story is a good game. It is a good game.
    51:57
    While I'm still scrolling down, I do apologize. It was 56% to 44%. Definitely closer. It was definitely not the blowout of 80% to 20% with Godfather and Avatar. All right, moving on. So Waz won that round, moved on, dialed in at seed nine versus Hobbit at seed eight. Oh, OK. I I really want to love The Hobbit. I really do. I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan. My kid is actually just signed up for a Lord of the Rings class in school next year. And so The Hobbit, it's an amazing experience. It is beautiful. I can't tell you one mode from another. And for some reason, those axe things are so loud in playing the game. So I am going to take Dialed In over Hobbit. Okay. But I will say that you could argue with Hobbit. You could. So this is the one that shocked me because I felt like I'm kind of on the same page with you. I think Dialed In is a really good game when it comes to the gameplay. The thing that it lacks the most is the theme, right? The theme immersion. Hobbit, it came down to 5347 and it was Hobbit that one. How many times have we said theme immersion is so key to marketability of a game? Yep. And The Hobbit has theme immersion in spades. The only game that probably takes it over theme immersion would be Guns N' Roses.
    53:43
    Speaking of which, moving on to the next round. And so that wrapped up round one. We got to round two. So the first matchup we had was Willy Wonka at Seed 4 versus Guns N' Roses at Seed 5. Speaking of your theme immersion, what do you think? So I will say that I think Wonka is a better shooter. I do think it's a better shooter game. Guns N Roses it is over the top It is probably the most Guns N Roses game that you could possibly think of Even if you think about the Guns N Roses music it borders on excess right And if you look at the game, the way that Eric and Slash co-designed this thing, it feels excessive in that you are baptized in a Guns N' Roses concert. I still think Wonka is a better shooter, but I am betting that Guns N' Roses is going to win because it sold way more games. And you would be wrong. Wonka won 70 to 30%. Wow. Okay. Yeah, it kicked its butt, man. Okay. But I will say if you're looking from a pure shooter, I think Wonka is a better, more streamlined. The Guns N' Roses machine, I think it suffers from excess. It's a wide body. It has so many shots. But it's a little harder to streamline the play. What are your thoughts? Maybe I should ask you what you think you think about the Guns N' Roses versus Wonka. That's my take. I think the other hard part too is the one big complaint about Guns N' Roses, it's very multiball heavy. Yes. It's very much like you get into the song and then you're playing the song forever, which then involves multiballs. I think that's where it is definitely an experience you're playing, but I think it is hindered by the actual code itself. It doesn't feel like in Guns N' Roses that you're in jeopardy. Yeah. Like in most pinball machines, you feel a penalty when you drain. It feels like Guns N' Roses is, you just drained, now here's three more balls. Where Willy Wonka was not that way. No, no. Alright, so moving on to the next matchup. Avatar at C6, which beat Godfather to move on to go on to take Pirates of the Caribbean. Avatar vs. Pirates. Okay. I will say that Pirates is going to win this. However, I don't think it's fair. I like Pirates. I do. It's a fun game. It is probably the most ambitious first design attempt by any designer in history with so many things. There are a lot of things in there that were planned, including the triple spinning disc and the opening and closing of the chest, but that they ultimately decided not to do. So I would say Avatar is probably a slightly better shooting game because it's a little more complete. I love the ambition of Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. I would probably just lean a little bit toward Avatar on this one, but it could be a coin flip. I'm betting this one was close. It was 60-40 with Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. It wasn't a terribly big wide gap, but it's still. But I think I agree with you. I think there's almost a legendary status to Pirates of the Caribbean. So it creates more clout for it, right? It does. And it's the game that they made less than a thousand of. Yeah. And so you're going to get a rarity if people want to get a Pirates of the Caribbean. It's over $20,000. But I would argue, does it feel like an over $20,000 shooter game? I don't think it does. I like the rocking upper ship. I think that's a very cool, unique idea, but I think that is part of the problem. It's like, how much of it are you paying because of its rarity versus what the actual game is? You could argue the same thing about the original Cactus Canyon. I would take the remake 20 times over the original Cactus Canyon, even though the original Cactus Canyon was super rare and at its peak was commanding $18,000. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Moving on to the next one. Wizard of Oz at seven versus Elton John at two. OK. This is this is a little bit more of that over the top excess immersion on Wizard of Oz. That is kind of like Guns N' Roses, where it has so much stuff going on. That being said, Elton John is a much more streamlined game and it is Steve Ritchie's third version of the layout. And you have Spider-Man, you have Star Trek, and by the way, both are good games. I would argue it's even further back. You could see remnants of that layout in Star Trek Next Generation. Yeah. So this is almost like Steve Ritchie saying, OK, this is the best version of the layout. You add in Elton John's music, you add in, it is probably, it's arguably the best shooting Jersey Jack game so far. Yeah, yeah.
    59:38
    It was 72-28. When it was released, I'll put it that way. Okay, 72-28, Elton John spanked Wizard of Oz. Yeah, I think so. And then the last one, I don't even know if I, do I even need to ask you this? It's Harry Potter vs. Hobbit. Yeah. Okay. Both win on theme immersion. Harry Potter wins on fun. Yep. In 90-10. Like not even close. Harry Potter slapped around Hobbit. Just owned it. All right. Which brings us to the round we're voting on right now. So this is like the semifinals. Semifinals. Yeah, and then the two that come out of this will go on to the Super Bowl, right? The ultimate JJP. So we've got Wonka versus Harry Potter. Yeah, Wonka versus Harry Potter. What do you think that one's doing? You know, I'm just going to put Harry Potter, right? Really? I can call it now. So this poll lasts for like another day, right? At the time of this recording, by the time we put this up, it might already be done, but I can guarantee that Harry Potter. It's 97 to 3%, Scott. Yeah, okay. But that's, I mean, what you're saying is Harry Potter is such a great game. Yeah. That it's, you know, it's kind of hard. In some ways, it's a little unfair because you're saying you have the Beatles' White Album versus, I don't know, Soul. It's not like an Abbey Road comparison, right? You have one of the arguably best games of Jersey Jack's history against anything. Yeah. And you have a combination of the best theme immersion and you have Eric who really found his shots in Harry Potter. It almost seems unfair. Yeah, I agree. So, I mean, obviously Harry Potter wins that one. And then the last one is Elton John versus Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. And again, that's the Elton John is such a great shooting game. It'd be pretty hard to beat that with Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates of the Caribbean probably wins on ambition. Yeah. But if you're looking at the best shooting game, if you're a tournament player, you're going to take Elton John. Yeah. Well, honestly, it's almost 70 to 30 Elton John versus Pirates. Elton John with the lead. I really do see Elton John taking this, which would then mean that it's Harry Potter versus Elton John. Me personally, I think Harry Potter wins. I think it's got the better theme. But then again, what do I know? What I find interesting about this bracket that we've done so far, based on all the seed positions, every higher seed has won its matchup. Which tells me that they're rated appropriately. Yeah.
    62:59
    Every time a game comes out, the fanboys, the fangirls all come out and they rank it as like, hey, I just bought this game. I paid $10,000 to $13,000 on this game. I'm going to justify my purchase by saying it's the best game of all time. Yeah. Okay.
    63:17
    Now, I will point out that Harry Potter took my hands down as the number one game last year. I still stand by that. Even when I play it now. So does 110,000 people. Yeah. That clip went crazy, dude. Crazy. Okay, but you have the ideal theme. This is the dream theme of all time, right, for most people. Okay, Pokemon is like some weird outlier out there, but if you're looking at the best theme of all time, and then you have Eric, who took an amazing design with the staircase, which I would say has one of the best upper playfields with the Quidditch thing. And so you have that and it's like it really is justifiably it should be the best selling game of all time in JJP's catalog. Yeah. Well, they can't even keep up. I mean, they're still building them like crazy. They said that they wanted to release a game every nine months. Harry Potter released in May of last year and Friday is May. Yeah. And are they ready to release their next one? I don't think they are. I think they could hold off even until Expo. I actually think they should. I think they should build through the summer, keep building Harry Potter because it is still a hot seller. It has not suffered the hit that most games, especially high volume games, hit after about a year and a half. We saw this with Guns N' Roses, right? Like Guns N' Roses, you can buy Guns N' Roses for a very reasonable price now, but it's suffering from they sold 5,000 of these, right? Well, and they've always capped the CE at 500. And we had someone reach out last month or the month before and tell us they just got theirs, their CE, and they're at $17.25. Right. So obviously, I mean, they've done more than triple what they usually do on the CEs for these. And it's not suffering from the standard FOMO, which is so smart with them. Because, okay, I bought a cross for me is Metallica, right? And they kept that when they probably could have sold 2,000 of those LEs. Yeah.
    65:50
    And being able to do that. And I am a big fan of this, especially for Harry Potter that has the widest appeal to for everybody to get the version they want.
    66:01
    And by the way, I would totally argue that you could get either version and be totally happy and you can even get the excuse me, the arcade version and be totally happy. Well, and seriously, though, like the arcade version, I this is what's funny. Like people have like, we just did Yukon Yeti and some of the comments were like, well, if he did an arcade edition, I'd be entirely in. But the reality of the situation is though, like look at Spooky. They stopped doing the other two tiers because they weren't selling them. Well, okay. How often have we said the most limited Guns N' Roses is the standard edition? Yep. Because they made, like, what was it? What did Jack tell us? It was like 140 of them? Something like that. Like, it was a crazy small amount of them. Supposedly, there's only 182, anywhere from 182 to 335 arcade editions out in the wild compared to the over 1700s. If you're going to buy it for a location, get it. Get the arcade. Yeah, that makes sense. 100%. It's the most straightforward, hey, we are making this to sell and get on location. And the play field is the same. You're getting bells and whistles. Guns N' Roses standard edition. Ready for this, Scott? Yeah. 130 produced. Why even offer at that point?
    67:30
    It's not worth your time as a manufacturer. Well, and your margins are so much smaller on those units too. They probably lost money on that. Yeah, it was a loss leader.
    67:42
    Okay, but Josh, if you think about it, you have a golden ticket for one game from JJP. Okay, and let's not talk about resale value because otherwise you'd get Pirates of the Caribbean because you can sell that. But which one, if you had to own and never sell, which one are you going to take? Oh, right now I'd be a CE Harry Potter. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I would get too. Yeah. It's a great game. I really am. I'm crossing my fingers just getting some more space in my house because that is the one I'm going to get. Yeah. I don't blame you. I feel like it's the way to go. It really is. If you like that artwork.
    68:30
    It's the artwork of the book versus the artwork of the movie. Which one do you want? Now, I do have a friend who did point out, he said, I don't know if I can get the Wizard Edition because the art, every single one is pointing a wand, which I'm like, huh, I never really thought about that. But people will find things that they gravitate toward on the different art packages. No, I agree. There's certain people – it's funny because we had this whole explosion over John Wick not having any guns on there. But I know people that didn't buy Cactus Canyon because it had guns on the slings. Hey, you do you. There's nothing wrong with however you feel about whatever. But it's just funny what different things people say, hey, this is what's preventing me from buying this. Just going back also to that. Josh, I'm just curious, your personal thought. Do you have more of a connection for the CE artwork or the Wizard artwork?
    69:35
    I want to say it's the CE because I originally read the books before I watched the movies kind of thing.
    69:41
    From a sales standpoint, speaking of your arcade edition and stuff like that, in the HVAC industry, which I don't know if it applies directly. I highly doubt it. But when we were doing selling classes, they talked about the good, better, best, right? That's a model a lot of people know. And when it came to percentages, 20 went to the very base, 70 went to the middle, and 10% went to the top. Yeah. And so I can see if your margins are really tight and terrible, why you would – I mean, it is 20% of sales. So is it worth it? Is it not? Yeah, that's what it's worth it to get it in arcades because that was the biggest hit or the biggest criticism with a lot of Jersey Jack games to say, I can't play this on location. And so being able to have a model that you can actually get into the arcades is a big deal, even though location is only 30% of their business. Yeah. Well, I think that wraps it up for us, Scott. It has been a minute since we've been on. Ben on. I'm glad that we were able to line this up. I'm really glad we had Scorpid on.
    70:55
    You know, that was a lot of fun, mainly because I didn't know a few things about Scorpid. Yeah. Okay. The fact that you can pay an older game with your phone, that's actually a big deal. Yeah. Because there are a lot of games I have not played because I have not had access to quarters. Yep. Same. I guess we're going to wrap this up. Yeah.
    71:20
    If you want to get a hold of us, we're LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. You can find us on all the socials, you know, YouTube, all that stuff. Follow us, like, subscribe, yada, yada, yada. Silver Ball Swag, go get them shoes. If you're part of our Patreon, you know there's a secret discount code in my Patreon. Yeah. So it's worth trying out. It's worth joining the Patreon just to get the discount code. You know it. So other than that, Scott, give us our last words. You know, I just want people to go get shoes. I have both the high top, the low top and the Vans. And I will say every time I'm wearing them, people walk up and say, those are cool shoes. I'm like, yeah, yeah, they are.
    72:14
    I'm going to leave this video game at M- 준ocal during the last minute.