Do you re-mute me? How would I do that? Uh, number four mute, right? Do you have a sneezing fit? If you have a sneezing fit, I'll just strangle you. Fresh pinball, live from Vinny's. Downtown Canton, Ohio. Welcome, everyone, to a very special episode of the Fresh Pinball Podcast, live from Finney's Arcade and Parlor in downtown Canton. You're going to hear flippers flapping, skee-balls being thrown, and people... And dinosaurs being trained. Definitely dinosaurs being trained. People of all ages having a great time. This will be a condensed episode where we're going to talk to some fun people here involved with the project. But before we get too deep into it, let's go around the table and introduce everyone across from me. Mr. Corbin Angeli. How are we doing this morning, buddy? Doing good. Morning episodes. We rarely do morning episodes, I feel like. Is this a first? No, we did the one with your dad. Oh, that's true. Most of them are a little later, but no, it feels good. It's a nice sunny day. We're down here at Vinny's playing a little Harry Potter. Zach, how are we doing, buddy? Pretty fantastic, you know. Got to play a little Harry Potter this morning. It's pretty sweet, you know. It was a little epic moment yesterday, definitely getting that game right, basically at launch and getting it set up and out for the people. Pinball to the people. Pinball to the people. That is the key. And to my right, on microphone for the man, the myth, the legend, Micah Dorward. How we doing, buddy? Oh, stop it. I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for coming down. Oh, yeah. Obviously, between Corbin and I, we've been with you and Ryan talking about this project. Almost two years. which is insane right wild like two years ago when it was actually the wig pictures so how do i know micah how how is the whole how did kind of this all kick off so a few years ago randomly on facebook i'm like hey working with mad pinball looking for some breweries to put some pinball machines does anybody out there have any suggestions of where we could put some pinball and right off the rip, Micah's like, hey, I know the people over at Unhitched. Let's get some pinball in there. Corbin came in. This was before, Corbin, you even owned Mad Pinball. We were just doing events together. Just doing events together and Micah's like, I know people over there. Let's get this done. And now here we are a couple years later where now you have your own arcade with partner Ryan Miller in downtown Canton. Wild. Yeah. Isn't that like a crazy journey of just happenstance and guys you meet on the internet? It's a beautiful synchronicity. And this isn't your first time doing an arcade down here. You were involved with Buzzman a couple years back. That's where I remembered you from originally was back when you were doing Buzzman stuff. Buzzman Arcade started in 2015. Yeah. And I had to actually convince Buzzman Mike to do an arcade, and he didn't want to do it for like a year. So this was 2014 when we first started thinking about it. And then that lasted for quite a few years. COVID shut it down, buzz been sold. So here we are. Well, let's then talk a little bit about your pinball journey. Tell us your story. Do you have childhood memories with connection to pinball? Did you not connect to pinball until adulthood? What sent you down this path of insanity? Five years old. I like this already. Starting them young. Yeah. My uncle's basement. Mike Espenshied had a Grand Prix. Oh, my gosh. Great game. And me and my cousin, that's all we would do was play it. If it was raining, we were downstairs playing it. That's it, every day. So that's what got you into it. And then obviously, I know you and I have had conversations before. As an adult, once you kind of had the means, you got into it pretty hot. Yeah, 2010 I got into it. We rented an apartment and it had a pretty big living room. We wanted to do a pool table and maybe dartboard. And my buddy's like, what about an arcade game? That turned into a pinball machine. Then I found an Atarians in Ashland for $500. Nice. It looked like it was brand new. And then I found a Rapid Fire, and it just kind of snowballed from there. That's crazy. And then I ran into Nick Fasillo. He came over and helped me fix them. Yep. And that's where it all just snowballed. Because you've had everything from Lebowskis to Deadpool LEs to, I mean, you've kind of been in and out of every little nook and cranny of this pinball hobby. Pinball owners? I think I had over 300, 350 games in the last 15 years. I believe that. I believe it. That's nothing new to you guys. So whenever I got involved with MAD and Mike and I kind of connected a little more, it was when the Godzilla madness was going on. He's like, hey, do you think I could get a Godzilla? I'm like, of course, dude. I can get it for you. He's like, no, there's no way. There's a year wait with everybody. I'm like, no, next shipment, we'll get you one. He's like, okay. I can just kind of like tell by his response. It's, yeah, okay, put up or shut up. Like, get me this Godzilla. And if it happens. Is that the first game I bought from you? I feel like it was. The first of many. I thought it was something before that. Maybe not. Yeah, I feel like that was the first one. So let's talk about Finney's Arcade and Parlor here. We're in downtown Canton. It's sandwiched right between, what, 4th and 5th Street here, right next to Centennial Plaza. How did this happen? Two years ago, Ryan and I, we had a connection with a commercial realtor, Mike Boylan, and said, hey, we've got this building that's potentially for sale. Ryan called me up. We came and looked at it and put an offer in it. They accepted pretty quickly. This is a pretty old building. What year is this building built? I'm going to say, I think it's early 1900s. Yeah, I believe it. 10s, 20s. Yeah, yeah. Definitely over 100 years. We closed on that and then spent a year building it out, trying to decide if we wanted to lease the building out or do something ourselves. Yeah, because I feel like in our conversations, me, you, and Corbin were very much at the beginning of maybe we might want to do something. Maybe we might want to just white box it and lease it out to someone. And then you guys decided to pull the trigger. And I'm like, okay, I didn't have the vision, obviously, that you and Ryan had. Because I'm looking at this empty space going, oh, my God. I mean, it was a lot of work. You guys had to add the firewall. You had to do, I mean, there was a lot of. Staircase, firewall, and then obviously a whole lot of cosmetics, the electronic. But I feel like I called you guys, like, the week we closed. Oh, absolutely. When you guys were in here. Yeah, because we came down. We got a beer over in the plaza and walked over. We were walking around. It was a dance. Yeah, so downtown Canton is going through, like a lot of downtown areas. a revitalization a renaissance right now Canton Ohio is pro football hall of fame city so the hall of fame within the last few years has put a really cool centerpiece here downtown It called the Centennial Plaza and it was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NFL And they hold concerts and events and all kinds of things there. So that's kind of the centerpiece of what's going on down here. And then Finney's Arcade is another piece, a lot of restaurants and other things going on. And then Micah's partner, Ryan Miller, has been involved with the 4th Street Collective, likes pizza, Deli Ohio. I mean, very involved with this renaissance that's kind of going through down here. So pinball. What do we have down here, Corbin? 14 games now? 14 or 15, I believe. So I'm just looking down the first row here, and whenever we talked about doing this place, it was, Corbin was like, we're going to blow this up. So I'm looking at Harry Potter CE, Bond 60th, Congo, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Whitewater, Elton John, Creature, Foo Fighters, Adam's Family, and Total Nuclear Annihilation just in row one of pinball. Don't forget about the touchdown up front, too. So up front in the window, if you just happen to be meandering by and you're like, I wonder what's going on in there, you have a Williams touchdown, since we are the Pro Football Hall of Fame city. Why is that game always turned off? No one wakes it up. Wake up, little guy. Enjoy some, what, I think the original coin mech in there was a dime coin mech whenever you started going through it. Nickel. Nickel. So what do we have in the secondary row back there, Corbin? I can see Pulp Fiction with the electric playground topper. Of course. Labyrinth, World Cup, and an LE X-Men. Ooh. So those are all the pinball machines. There's a selection of 80s and 90s retro classic arcade games. You've got, of course... Sleeples, air hockey, Jurassic Park. The big Jurassic Park environmental. We've got some puck bowlers. Perfect pour. It's not sleep on perfect pour. Perfect pour is definitely one of the centerpieces of when Corbin was setting this place up. We want to have something modern and fun, but then also has that retro throwback. So Perfect Pora is very cool from DSM Arcade. I've been thinking about doing some kind of a high score, win a beer glass or something, get a beer. Let's do it. Let's do something like that, you know, you fill it or whatever. It could be cool. Get people excited. Just get people excited about it. So Finney's was, you guys kind of, the namesake is a twist off of, this was a pharmacy back in the day, like 1920s or what have you. Yeah, Finney's Pharmacy was in the 30s through, well, really 80s. Okay. Oh, wow, that's quite the run. Yeah, it's definitely a run. And it used to say, don't say pharmacy, say Finney's. So now it says. Don't say arcade, say Finney's. Talk about the artist you guys used to do, and I'll post some pictures on social media for all of the stuff in here. because when I walked in after it was done, I'm like, oh, it's just like a decal or it's a whatever. It's literally a gentleman who does this by hand. A wonderful guy named Ron Copeland. He's a local guy. He is super old school. He does everything by hand. Yeah, when I saw him doing it, he was out here by hand. Yes. We did the original gold leaf. The Finney's logo is the original pharmacy logo. We just added Arcadian Parlor. But, yeah, he did some gold leaf on that. We did a mural in the back from an old Canton repository ad from the pharmacy. I didn't realize that that's what that was. That's even cooler. That's real cool, yeah. That's even cooler. We kind of turned it around to be an arcade ad. What else? I think that's one of my favorite things here, though, is you guys stayed local with everything. So, like, you're Neon Sign out front. Matt Franta, Canton Sign Company. Yeah, which is literally a street away. So you have all of that. You have a local artist coming in here doing all of your art on the walls. Local beers on drafts. We've got local beer from Unhitched. You've got your Unhitched ski brewski. Brewski ball. Brewski ball is what it is. And then we have pie from Gardner Pie up in Akron. Delicious pie. Amazing. We have ice cream from Pav's Creamery. Also local. In North Canton. I mean, that's part of what I love about this. It's so easy to see kind of like these Dave and Buster style places or barcades or, you know, whatever, and they just have this corporate vibe. This is not what's going on here whatsoever. Like, this is local. This is Canton. This is just a flavor of everything involved here. I love everything about it. All of my favorite things in one place, including you guys. There were definitely some moments, I think, in the lead-up early this year where it was like everybody was just excited and ready for this place to be open. When are you opening? Next week. That was just the common question, though, like across social media because even the local paper, the repository was like, oh, this is coming, this is coming, and people were like, when is it opening? When is it opening? People were excited. We started saying, ask the building department. For real. Here's the number to call. Well, and then you guys did your soft openings and your grand opening, and I mean, if the fire marshal would have been in here, it would have been like, hmm, doing a little bit of a head count because it was so busy, which is the exact problem to have, to have this sort of excitement. So now we're a couple months in, and it really hasn't slowed down to this point. New people are still discovering it. The nice thing about it is we can do birthday parties events, and those help kind of carry the weight of the slower days. So we can pitch that. If you want an event, have one here, birthday party, wedding. Yeah, yeah. Corporate event, group events. Like I was here for the Wednesday Pinball League, and there was a run club that was here. And it was, what, 40, 50 people that came through here for the run club? Oh, yeah. I mean, there was another Wednesday I was in here, and it was, like, young professionals of Zac Stark County. I mean, there are just all kinds of opportunities. Talk about the format you guys are doing. You're doing a Wednesday league here. It's a six-week league. Six weeks, yep. Yeah. You can drop one week? You can drop up to two weeks. It's very casual. Literally, imagine it as a beer league. You're just coming in here and having a good time. It's more just, hey, get off of work, come in, socialize. But, yeah, the leagues are on Wednesday. If you can get here 6.30, we usually try to kick off around 6.30, 7 o'clock. You play four games. You get a random group of three or four people. You go around. You pick four games. You score based on first, second, third, or fourth, and then you move on. But really, it's just an excuse to get out of the house, an excuse to come down here, have a slice of pie, have an adult beverage, and flip some games. Play whatever's new. And that's kind of the crazy thing that's been going on down here, Corbin, with obviously the Angelique Starke novelty side of it is Evil Dead was like the first, probably amongst the first Evil Deads in Ohio, launched at Finney's. Bond 60th is down here. Kong was down here. King Kong was down here the first week that it launched Now Harry Potter So I think this is quickly going to become the spot where people are going to say when i want to play the newest thing this i gonna go to finish we got some other things we got our fathom things coming up we got all kinds of fun stuff planned you fun house fun house eventually eventually come on man it needs a playfield swap oh okay yeah it'll be down here it'll be worth the wait yeah i'm excited for fathom yeah i'm excited to get So a little tease for the Fathom event is Micah has an amazing original restored Fathom that we're then going to pair alongside of the Haggis Mermaid Edition. So people can see the new, the old, and everything in between on those. And we'll do a fun costume party and everything else. I've already been putting together my mermaid tops and bottoms. So you guys get ready. My red hair. Scuba Steve. And I don't even have to pay to see that. That's just the feet pictures that you have to pay for. but no it's me jumping everywhere my flipper pictures but no it's been awesome to be involved with this or to be aware that this was coming from the very beginning obviously you know to get together with like minded people is always you know a pleasure and an adventure but yeah let's talk just a little bit maybe 5-10 minutes let's talk about Harry Potter because I know Micah your partner Ryan isn't a pinball guy necessarily he's more of like the business mind and everything else. So as we're doing this, setting it up yesterday, he says to me, you know, this game is really cool and I'm sure people will be excited, but I'm more excited about the change machine working. That was funny too, but the first thing he said is, why are there so many people here? And Micah looks at me and he goes, this is our Super Bowl. This is what we get excited about. The game was announced yesterday and it's here today. When do those start shipping? so they announced it on thursday we got word on wednesday that it was leaving our display was that our display one but as far as consumer ones or the next wave of them i think basically from what i understand they uh they're going to kind of see where they land over the weekend with the orders and then kind of put out a plan of action next week exactly which i like as opposed to them just like speculating saying well this is what we're going to do they're literally going to take in the orders and then say 500 orders we have whatever this is what it's looking like if the ratio is 10 CEs to four wizards to one arcade, then it's very easy for them to know how to build them timelines and everything else. But yeah, if you're looking for one for your home or your location, get at Corbin at madpinball.com and he loves to get people hooked up with their Harry Potters. But yeah, there's three different versions. Jersey Jack this time did do the lower tier, which is the arcade version. The cool part with that is, unlike G&R and some of the other ones in the past, there's nothing taken off mechanism-wise. Yeah, the playfield play is all identical. I mean, I know that the... I think you had said the wire forms are not... They're silver versus gold. It's all cosmetic, basically, that you lose. There's probably no pixie dust mixed into the playfield. The playfield is beautiful, though. The CE is a work of art. This is the first CE that we've gotten, I believe. And it is... It's a lot. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely gorgeous. Just all of the little details. The foil cabinet's real nice. Oh, my gosh. I liked the powder coating color on the Wizard Edition, the middle level, though. It was like a misty chrome where it was kind of like it shifted with whatever angle you looked at it. I kind of thought that also had a very cool look to it, and I'll be excited to see that. And it also had the topper with a Quidditch match topper. We need to get Adam to figure out how to powder coat like that. The misty chrome? Yeah. I'm sure it's probably just a matter of what application process. Application and if you're using the right powder. Yeah. He needs to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So, Micah, you got a couple games on Harry Potter yesterday. What were a couple of your takeaways on it? Man, that game's fast. That's what blew me away, first and foremost, because you just don't think Jersey Jack and think fast. I mean, there's just so much to do, and you actually can understand what's happening, which I think is kind of cool, even though there's so much going on. Yeah, I felt like there was enough on the code and the surface that within a game or two you knew, okay, I can do one, two, and three, and you're engaged in the game. but not like GNR and maybe Godfather, where it's like I plunge the ball and I'm immediately into a multiball. You've got to earn some things in this game before you really start to catch them. So Eric Meener was the designer. His last one was Godfather? Yeah, so he's done Pirates, Guns N' Roses, Godfather. And I can feel some of his design elements in this game, but I just feel like the combo opportunity and the flow, as people say on this game, is there more so than some of the other ones, which felt a little stop-and-go to me. That staircase made it really cool. It definitely has good flow, I felt like. Some good combo opportunity. I'm not upper playfield guy, Zach, but I get up to that Quidditch thing, and it's just like, it's fast. There are three different shots you can hit up there. It's a good time. It is. You just don't know where the ball is going to go sometimes. There's so many different... That staircase sends it in every direction. I need to go back to the flyer and see exactly how many ball paths they quoted, but I know it was in the hundreds that they were saying unique ballpads that you can get based on all of them. Is that normally something we put on flyers? No, because usually on a game it's not like that many. Like you have a dozen or whatever. Where's that flyer? What's that? Where's that flyer at? Let me pull it up on my phone here. You guys keep talking about Harry Potter. I said we need some for the binder now. Oh, for sure. I do enjoy that the cab art is different on both sides of it. That's always cool. Definitely. The armor has different, you know, each side is different with what's etched into it and everything. I like the topper, you know, headway's popping up and the snitch flying around and stuff. That guy on the broom. The broom max speed spinning around there. All right, so quick flyer takeaway here. Collector's Edition. You get the Mina Lima Illustrated Gold Foil Rad Cow Package, Interactive Hogworks Topper, Roving Snitch and Dark Mark Projector in there. the Galleon Gold Sparkle Armor, which is beautiful in person, the Metallic Foil Inner Art Blades, the Gold Mirrored Printed Back Glass, Enchanted Sparkle Direct Printed Playfield and Plastics, Gold Foil Apron Decal, the seven Golden Wireform Ramps that Corbin was referencing, the Golden Snitch Shooter Rod, and then this is the only model that has the head and under cabinet interactive external lighting. The action button applique. Invisiglass. 700 plus RGB LEDs. Oh my gosh, just so much going on here. Three entrances, 13 exits from the grand staircase just by itself. That high-flying Quidditch upper play field. Death Eater pinball firing interactive sculpture. So I'm going to talk just a second about this freaking Death Eater. So it is a brutal shot. There is a single drop target you have to get down. That's the easy part. The next part is getting the ball in between these two posts, which I am an average pinball player at very best, and I could not hit that shot to save my life But when you do it then will immediately a la Guardians of the Galaxy Death Eater multiball it shoots it right back at you Fires it right in your face But it has a cool moment, too, when you start that battle, you start that mode where it'll lock the ball behind the drop target and your flippers shake like they quake. I'm kind of scared. I'm about to start this battle. Very, very cool. Oh, what have we got? We've got the moving, Whomping Willow with the Flying Car. We've got the Wand 3-Ball Lock. We've got the Potion Cauldron. We've got the Great Hall Entrance Ramp. We've got the Sorting Hat Playfield Sculpture. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. So the 400 number in my mind, that was from the Playfield RGB LEDs. Unique Ball Paths are 48, which is an immense number. That seems still a decent amount there. No, Corbin said 100. No, 400. He said 100. Still, 48, that's a lot. Yeah, so, I mean, the cool thing is you get clips from all eight movies, you get audio from all eight movies, you get some of the John Williams score, as well as 90-plus handcrafted pieces of audio from David Thiel that are in here. So, I mean, you get the voice of the Sorting Hat that's doing your call-outs legit from the movies and whatnot. I mean, is there anything they didn't get with this game? I don't know. I feel like they covered, like, There's so much content to cover, it would be so hard to choose a direction to do it. And I feel like they did good with it. I agree. All right, well, I'm going to start to wrap up this mini-episode. I'll go around the table here and grab some final thoughts, and then we'll get this out here for people to check out. Corbin, final thoughts, buddy? Sure. I think of any upcoming events we have coming up Monday. We have Quarter Ups Kong launch party is happening end of the month. We're helping Madcap out. We're doing a – do you have the date on that? I do. So Madcap Brewing Company in Kent, Ohio, unfortunately, is going away. If you play pinball around the area, you've been to Madcap. They have been and are the spot. Shout out to Matt Quirk. Yeah, they're going to borrow the Kong to do their final launch party at the end of the month. So that'll be Saturday, June the 21st. I think we were all going to try to go out to at least give them one last hurrah. The big send-off. One last launch party. I know that's coming up. I'm trying to think what else we have. the leagues down here regularly on Wednesdays. Matt Finney's Arcade, usually typically starting between 6.30 and 7 o'clock. You've got your normal quarter-up Mondays that start at 7, and then we've also added into the mix. We actually visited Lakewood's first, and that's IFBA, so if you're into the IFBA stuff, Lakewood at the Arcade in Detroit is doing Monday night IFBA-sanctioned match play. I think they're playing four or five rounds, I believe. I believe it was four, and what's cool up there is if you're a first-time player, into the Cleveland Pinball League? No entry fee whatsoever. If you have played before, $20 entry fee for the six-week season. You get two drop weeks. And then the real bonus to it all is it is a sponsored league, so your league games are paid for. You don't even have to coin drop. Is that by Miller Lite or something? I believe so. Miller Lite sponsored. Yeah. And then they're doing another wild thing up there, isn't it? Wednesday's Corbin to where you come into the arcade on Lakewood and get $5 in the quarters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the Ski Ball League starting, yeah. So lots of things happening all over. Lots of good times. Final thoughts, Zach, on either Finney's or maybe Harry Potter? Just get down here and play. That's all I can really say. Experience for yourself. If you haven't come down, you need to absolutely get down here. And enjoy the rest of Finney's, too. It's an awesome place. Yeah. I can't recommend enough. Even if you're coming from a couple hours away. It's worth it. Toledo, Pittsburgh, Columbus. Worth the drive. It is worth it for Finney's alone. But then on top of that, you have the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Centennial Plaza, McKinley Monument. I mean, there are things to do for days down here. So hop on TripAdvisor and make your plans to come down. They even have little maps down here for visit Canton places. They do. I mean, there's all kinds of trouble to get into. No doubt. Final thoughts, Mr. Dorward? Finney's Arcade is on Instagram and Facebook. Yes. Give them a follow. Our hours are Wednesday 4 to 9, Thursday 4 to 9, Friday 4 to 10, Saturday 2 to 10, Sunday 12 to 6. How and who do they get a hold of if they do want to book a corporate event, party? Yeah, you can do events any day of the week. Yeah, you can get a hold of Ryan or myself. Jonathan is our bar lead. He's great. You can go to finneysarcade at gmail.com. you can call me at 330-488-7994. We can book an event that way. You can book events or send in feet pics. Either one. We'll take either one. So whatever you want. Are you going to get some car shows going down here soon too? Yeah, I might schedule just a couple pop-ups this summer on Sundays. Yeah, just stay tuned for that. We've got some cool stuff coming up. I think we're going to – this is on the DL. We just started talking about this. We might do a pie-eating contest. Yes, please. Yes, please. So, yeah, stay tuned for details on that. We got some tricks up our sleeve. Ryan and I are constantly bouncing ideas off of each other. Sometimes my ideas are cooler than his. Well, that's what I love is you both are so involved in different things. He's ingrained into everything that's this revitalization of downtown. You have pinball, car community, you know, all those things. Our networks are similar but very different. Yeah. So it works out really well. Very, very cool. Again, my final thought is exactly everyone else's. Get down here. Check it out. If you do get down here, snap a picture. Tag Finney's Arcade on social media. Tag Mad Pinball. And we'll definitely repost and be interested to see what everyone has. I really, really appreciate you guys for everything you do. All the games. All part of the team, baby. Man, it's been a really good relationship. It's been a ride. It's been a ride. Why are you looking at me like that? It's love. It's love in my eyes. Is that a tear? Is that lust or love? I'm not sure. Deep breaths. Seriously, I can't thank you guys enough. It's been amazing. Yeah, everything's been great. I'm going to play us out here with some Mad Pinball jingle. If you do need a pinball machine or you need your location set, email corbin at madpinball.com. Yes, I need more projects. He needs more projects. He needs more emails. Till next time everybody Play better We miss you Carl FES PIMBA Are you looking for a new machine, topper, or accessory? Email jeff at madpinball.com. Tell him Don sent you. Whether it's a topper, whether it's a machine, he's the man of your pinball dreams. Don't get angry. Get mad. But what?