Thank you. But I actually don't mind it. It's a little more challenging. It's coming, guys. Everything's coming. We're figuring this all out. Yes, I know there was some talking over the sizzle, but, hey, we're learning. We're learning. Welcome, welcome. And what makes me so happy is there are already 24 people here. The fact that this is week three, week three of streaming on YouTube, and I was worried about this. I was really worried that Twitch, I understand a lot of viewers show up in Twitch because they just go to Pinball, and they're like, oh, who's here? And they just happen to click on it. And the fact that there are people that are specifically setting aside time to be here and to be here at the start is incredible. So thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you for so much that's here. Chat should be good. Everything should be good. Let us know if audio is odd or not. But I think we're all good. So, Vinny Shag, Conti, Derek, everybody, yes. Finn Shiro, Michael, appreciate you guys. And then Penn Mike, by the way. He was here like 15 minutes ago. So, I really appreciate you guys. My name is Joel. This is the Flip N Out Pinball stream. I stream now on YouTube every Wednesday from 10 to midnight. So, come join in on the chat. And the goal is to do these Flip N Out Pinball with Friends, these kind of chatting shows, every other week, and then the weeks we're not doing the chatting shows, we're going to be playing pinball. So I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. So speaking of love, I love these guys. I have three amazing guys that are with me tonight to chat it up. So we're going to do our normal introductions. Wow. The names are not right. Let me fix the names. But we can definitely make this. Mike fell where he needed to. But, no, we are looking good. So let's just go around here. JR, I'm new, so bring your egg in. Hey, buckle up, man. Set expectations low and you'll love it. So we're going to go around. So George Fisher, not George, but actually Craig Bobby, the one and the only. Who are you? What do you do? And what was the last pinball you played? Who's your daddy? What is happening, everybody? Yes, my name is Craig Bobby. Thank you, Joel, for adjusting that. And I do the Top Stories news segment, of course, on the Pinball Show with Zach Minney, who is here with us today, and the one and only Dennis Creasel as well, who has been on from time to time. And, yes, that is part of the Pinball Network. We discuss the news. We discuss market trends, game reviews. Zach brings his Stern production information. and just so many good things that you're not going to hear anywhere else, you know. As you can see, I'm wearing the triple-drained skirt, buddy. I'm wearing what we like to call the second-best podcast on TPN. But we like to support the up-and-comers, so that's why we do that. Triple-A team, right? Hey, let's go. I appreciate that. Craig, thank you so much, man. What is your hat? That brand of hat, I know they all have one word. What is the gorilla? What is the word? This one says fog. Nice. Nice. Nice. So the last game of pinball I played was actually today, and I was over at the Player One distributors, just sort of seeing what they have in stock. Spoiler alert, nothing. So. No Led Zeppelins? Yeah. They certainly don't have any rushes, that's for sure. Still no rushes. No, still no rushes. Yeah. But I did play their Pro that they have on display there, and I was always saying to Mike as we were coming in, you know, it's such a fun game, and every time I play it, I'm like, damn it, I need this. Every time I play it, I want not to like it. I want to be disappointed in it. I do not want to buy this game, but it is fantastic. And I left today again thinking, I asked him after I played. Before I played it, I said, you sure you don't have any premiums? He goes, yeah, I don't have any. I played the pro. I'm like, you don't have any pros? Because I might buy the pro right now if you have one. But no. I didn't have one. Geez. Now, Zach Many, Zach Many here, he's got pros. He's got a pro. Pros for days, people. He's got everything you could want. But you're in Canada. So just drive on down, man. Just drive on down. exactly that's our life story we we don't get much up here yeah we uh we gotta we gotta suffer through the uh high paid uh high asking prices of used pinball machines up here and yeah yeah well and the business too that as he reminded me what is really in the big redemption games that they bring in so they've got like tons of redemption games in their warehouse for the Dave and Busters of the world and the rec rooms of the world. And, you know, there's 30K, 40K, there they sit. Yeah. But. Nothing. Yeah, no rush pinball. Well, I'm sorry, Craig. You'll get it. Hopefully when they get it in stock, you'll be in the right mood. You'll be ready to go. But your head is covering Godzilla, right? You didn't get rid of it. Okay. I did not. No, no. There they sit, the two side by side. They're a little nervous these days because someone feels like they might have to leave. But I'm trying to calm everyone down. Yeah. Man, chat. Love it, guys. Love it. Love chat. I love how many people are here. I love it. I just – you guys don't realize this was a discussion between Zach and I. Like, what about YouTube? Do we think – I mean, we're at 53 viewers. Ten minutes in. I love it. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys, for being here. I can't believe we have 53 friends that are actually on here right now. I know, right? Unbelievable. Yeah, they're all here for Mike. But we'll get to him. There you go, Mike. Right? Come on. So, Craig, thank you, man. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, Joel. It's always great to be here. Absolutely. And next up, a newcomer to the scene. No, Zach Minney, the one, the only. And I do think there is an amazing question here in chat. FightCave did ask, how's the back? How is the back feeling, Zach? You know what, Joel and friends? The back is well, actually. The back feels good. As long as I don't do anything at all. Nothing. It's really fantastic. Ball of Rex. Just breathe. Just breathe. Ball of Rex. Hello from Australia. I love it. I love the overseas people that are here. Thank you for being here. But yeah, Zach, who are you? What do you do? And what was the last game of pinball you played? Oh, geez. My name is Zach. I own and operate Flip N Out Pinball. I do a video series called Straight Down the Middle here on YouTube. Yeah. I do a podcast with my buddies Dennis Creasel and Craig Bobby called The Pinball Show, and that's exclusively on the Pinball Network. Bing. What else do I do? The thing is about it, and soon I'm going to load a big-ass truck full of premium sterns, and I'm going to drive it right over the border into Canada. We're going to get out of the parking lot, and we're going to sell, sell, sell. Yeah. That's what we're going to do. I love that idea. Just you don't load it. You personally don't load it and screw up your back again. Jeff Teolis is in chat. Pinball profile. Why the switch to YouTube? Just trying something new. Twitch is awesome. I'm a big fan of Twitch. But believe it or not, I just feel like there's a new audience that we're going to try to tap into here on YouTube. So we're just, to be honest, completely an experiment. It's an experiment. And I will tell you so far, so great. So thank you. Thank you for everybody that's here. We try to set new standards, don't we, Joe? That's it. And I see Josh Roop, too, with Loser Kid. So there's awesome people being here. Zach, what was the last game of pinball you played? Okay, last game of pinball I played was Congo. Congo. Mike has a Congo. Diamonds. Mike has a Congo. When did you get that? And what are your, yeah. Congo. I received that on a trade from a guy up in India, actually, Joe. Okay. And I don't know if it'll stay. I want it to stay, but still looking for that minty one. Oh, it's got to be. Still looking for that minty one. It's nice. You are selling some of your minty games. You've been searching, and you've grown quite a collection, and I've been seeing you. You've been selling some stuff. Iron Maiden LE just pending sale. Sold tonight. That was from my personal collection. Are we downsizing? What's causing the purge? I'm just buying too much shit. I mean, I got a little game by Ethan Owen, you know, to go. Maybe the greatest of all time pinball machine ever made. That's James Bond's 60th anniversary. Maybe. Who knows? We don't. We have no idea. We have no idea. I don't know. If Dennis Creasel loves it, I mean, what's not to love? I've got that coming in. I still have to unbox Fathom Revisited. So I got that from Haggis. I've got, I slipped out what I have coming and it hadn't been announced yet. I got another thing planned coming within the next couple months. And two things. So, yeah, there's just games coming in. It's something. I'm running out of space. Something's got to leave. So Maiden Ellie is on its way out. And then I'm buying shit like Dolly Parton. I don't want to part with my girl, Dolly. So, yeah, just stuff's coming in, and I've got to get rid of stuff. Yeah. Corvette. The old Corvette's leaving. I know. You were on the hunt for, like, a real nice Corvette. You get it. And then fast forward a few months, and here you go. It took four years to find that Corvette. Four years. And you kept it four months. Yep. Oh, I've had that for over a year. I've had it for over a year. I've had it over a year. Well, I'm excited. Preview, there's next Saturday. Next Saturday is the Pinball Awards, and it's going to be hosted at the mini barn, the pinball barn or whatever. and I can't wait. I can't wait. I can. I can't wait. A little more time. We'll play all your stuff. I can't wait. Yes. But we're really excited. It's going to be, for the few of us that will be there to film it and be there for the live presentation, I think it's going to be a real fun time. DJ, you're right. I've got a Scooby coming in, too, probably toward the end of the month, beginning of next month. So I've got to find room for that, too. Shout out Spooky Pinball. Yeah, should be great. Should be awesome. Well, thank you, Zach. Thanks for being here tonight. I'll be curious. We're, yeah, having a distributor here sharing your opinion on some of these things will be great. But, yeah. And Mike, who are you, man? What's up tonight? Hi, Mike. Oh. How you doing? Yeah. Yeah, I stream on Pinballers on Twitch and Facebook. Hopefully YouTube soon. We're going to work that out. But the last game, I've been playing a lot of pinball, actually. I've been playing more pinball this week than I probably have over the last few months. And that's because I am preparing for the provincial championships this weekend for the IFPA. So, yeah, this weekend, Carter and I are both in the Open, and Lisa and my daughter Paige are in the women's. So we're traveling up to Toronto, and we are going to compete for the provincial championship. So, wait, your daughter plays? I don't think I've seen her ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why doesn't she stream? She doesn't like to be on camera and whatnot, but she does. She goes to tournaments with us. Yeah, yeah. She's been to Pin Fest and played there. Oh, yeah, definitely. She just does not like to be on stream. I've asked her several times, and she's just not into it. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we've been playing a lot of pinball, getting prepared for that. The last game I played, Black Knight Sword of Rage. Oh, I love that game. Yeah, I love being insulted by Steve. it's really it's an ass kicker and that's one of the reasons why I like it, I've always said that it's such a difficult game to play that it really gets my adrenaline going and it physically affects me when I have a session on that game, especially the pro, I like the pro better than the premium I know that some people will say it has to have the upper playfield just like the other two versions but I find This version plays so fast, so much flow. It's quick. It's nasty. And if you're good enough, Steve Ritchie will be nice to you. So he will compliment you after a while. It's just a challenge. You just got to get to that point. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mike, for being here. Looking forward to it. So, yes, we have two Canadians, Craig and Mike, representing America's Hat. And we have Zach from Indiana. So, you know, I don't – yeah, yeah, it should be great. I've got to give a shout-out to Nick. Nick, congratulations, Nick. He just purchased a Guardians of the Galaxy from Flip N Out Pinball, and he was wanting to know if I could throw in an Insider Connect. I tell you what, Nick, yes, you can. It's not because we're so generous and, you know, we're coin givers here, but it's because it's installed in the factory. It's in the game, yeah. It's already in there. It's already in there now. Oh, yeah. You know what, Damon? And if it wasn't, I wouldn't have. I promise you that. You should have told them, no, it doesn't come with it. Sorry. Thanks for the support, Nick. I appreciate it. So all new games. All new games since Godzilla hit the line. Every single game they made new has Insider Connected built in. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that's a good segue because I want to talk about the game I've played. But, yes, my name is Joel. This is the Flip N Out Pinball channel or the Flip N Out Pinball stream every Wednesday. And then I do the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, which Travis and I did a mini episode. We actually recorded one just a few hours ago. So hopefully I can get that edited up, and hopefully that will come out, yeah, within the next few days. But, no, life is good. The last game of pinball I played, believe it or not, was in this house, and it was Jurassic Park Premium. So the question is, how did I get into Jurassic Park? Well, TNA is gone. TNA is gone. It's not sold. No, TNA is not sold. TNA is not sold. I did a temporary trade with a buddy of mine here in town, Ryan, And this is why. So let's – I'm looking ahead, right? I'm looking ahead. I know Zach has been incredibly nice. He's been incredibly nice letting me stream games. I currently have Bond. And I've just been looking at this list, and I'm like, Bond, have it right now, playing it. Rush played it. It was great. Like, it's a great game. I know it well. Godzilla, I own it. That was one game that he let me borrow. Godzilla Pro, loved it. Was like, all right, I'm going in. I'm going in on the premium. No regrets. It's awesome. Mando, he's let me borrow. Had a great time. Avengers, he let me borrow. First Keith Elwin game that I've had in the house. Shoots amazing. The code is incredible, but you've got to be ready. You've got to be mentally prepared. I mean, Craig knows. Craig knows probably more than anybody else here. But you've got to be ready to play that game. Elvira, I have not borrowed, but I know it's a fun game. Deadpool, I own. Iron Maiden, I have not. Jurassic Park, I haven't. And Star Wars, I haven't. So here I am thinking, I'm like, these are games that are available. These are games that if I really, if I, I know I've been, thank you, Zach, but I've been very grateful and fortunate. But it's like, what, what is available now? What, what could I buy if I wanted to buy one? And there's a lot of people that argue that Jurassic Park is better than Godzilla. There are some people that truly feel that way. A lot of people, huh? I, I think it's, I think it's a decent amount of people are, you know, when you say, what's your favorite Elwin, they go back and forth between Jurassic Park and Godzilla. So I know how much I've enjoyed Godzilla. So I was like, all right, I got it. I got to give this a shot. I've got, I need to spend more time with Jurassic Park. I've only had it three days. I've only had it three days. So my review is a very short lived review, but I will tell you, Keith Elwin knows what he's doing because without knowing the game at all, you only have to shoot it once or twice to realize how great a Keith Elwin game shoots. Like I had that feeling immediately with Godzilla. I had that feeling with Avengers and I had that feeling immediately with Jurassic Park. I get it. Those shots are awesome. Like they just feel good. They feel good. So layout is awesome. Code though, I'm not connecting to the code as much as I was expecting. And that's what surprises me. Because, Zach, I know you love Jurassic Park. I do love Jurassic Park. George Fisher loves Jurassic Park. He likes Jurassic Park. I know more than Godzilla. So am I missing something? Mike, do you still own Jurassic Park? No, but I've had two of them. And if I could own all four Keith Elwin games, I would. Absolutely. I mean, I'm limited on space. I also like to have a variety of games from different designers I don't want to be kind of pigeonholed into one specific designer but I think that Jurassic Park is probably one of the best rule sets that Keith Elwin has done for me the only drawback on the game is nothing to do with the gameplay or the code itself it's actually just the art package and video assets and all that stuff I wasn't really a fan of that which is really one of the main reasons why I don't still have it. I mean, I find the code is really intuitive. I mean, you've only had it for a few days. You'll get there for sure. Yeah, I watched a tutorial on it. I watched Carl stream it a little bit. I get what you're saying about the art. I get what you're saying about the art. But this is – it sounds weird, but I feel like it's very linear And it's kind of a – and maybe this is where I need some help. But it's just like, okay, what is there to do? Well, it's like, what is there to do? It's like you do a paddock. Yes, but what are you – you're picking a paddock. That's your only option. Yeah, but in picking the paddock, you're also deciding on what perk you're going to get with that paddock, right? Okay, so perks I haven't done. I don't know those at all. So if you look on the screen, when you're picking a dinosaur, when you're at a specific dinosaur, I forget where it is on the screen, but on the screen it will tell you what perk you're getting if you finish that paddock. So you're wanting to decide what perks you want to work with. Maybe you like to do rescues. There's ones that give you bonus points for rescues, that sort of stuff. There's one that gives you extra time on your playfield multipliers and whatnot. So you're choosing your own adventures you're going through there, but at the same time, as you're doing the paddocks, you're also opening up other areas of the game. You need to finish paddocks to open your control room, that sort of thing. You won't access a control room until you either finish a paddock or do other things as well. Then you also have the truck. Hit that a few times. There's modes and multi-balls in there as well. So there's different paths you can take in the game, but again, you'll start feeling that. once you play it more. I think my issue is that the paddocks are, I mean, the paddocks are the same, essentially. They just get harder, but it's very much like you hit, when you start a paddock, you are going to hit X number of rescue shots, then you have to hit the yellow targets, and then you either have to hit the helicopter, or you have to hit the yellow shot that's going to be to pick up the dinosaur, or you have to hit the helicopter pad, and then the yellow shot to pick up the dinosaur. But that is essentially every paddock. Now, I understand. Sort of, yeah, sort of. But, I mean, each dinosaur behaves differently depending on the color of the dinosaur in the paddock, right? Like, they move different directions. Some of them skip and go right to your rescues to take them away. Some of them will go to the left. Some of them will go to the right. And then the further you get in, the more difficult it becomes to hit the trap targets, stuff like that. But that's what I think is funny is because I traded this game for TNA. It's Tim Trade? Tim? Tim Trade. And I love TNA. But TNA is super linear, and what are you doing? You're hitting much shots, and you're overheating reactors, and what's different between each reactor? Nothing. You're doing the same thing. It just gets harder. So that's what I'm thinking with Jurassic Park. I was like, I feel like you're doing the same thing. It's just getting harder every single step of the way. While I'm trying to compare that to, like, Godzilla, in Godzilla the modes are so different that it's like, what am I feeling? Do I want to rip spinners, or do I want to shoot a bunch of rams? Do I want to snipe some shots? You know, it's like gives me options that way. That way, while the paddock is much more, you're saying, you're just looking at perks, it's not a drastically different, I should say drastically different. That was bad. That was real bad. I know. Thank you, Zach. Ladies and gentlemen, Joel Engelbert. I hope I can fall asleep here for a second. Joel Engelbert comes out with that. Just there. That's what I'm done. I understand you have multi-balls that you can sprinkle in, and I think Nick Stone looks like he agrees with me. But, Zach, what am I missing? Because you love it. You love Jurassic Park. How am I not viewing this the right way? For me, the paddocks are just background noise. You start them, you want to progress through them, but also you're prepping those T-Rex modes. You get that GMC going there. And then you get the little virus computer modes. You're stacking that at the same time there. All the while, you're trying to spell chaos, too. I'm always trying to do that. So if I miss my skill shot right off, I'm like, okay, F it. I'm going to the C. I'm going to try to get the C because the second shot, it qualified my mode or my paddock as an H. So I get my C, got my H. Oh, I got to get an A. O is a bitch, but I'm going to try to get that. But I want to start a paddock first, and then I'll load up that little T-Rex a little bit. That feels good. Let's get a little computer mode going here. Bam, bam, bam. Start stacking them all. Uh-oh, chaos is ready. Hit that damn chaos. And then there goes paddocks. Boom. And then you got the T-Rex. Yeah, linear. Linear? Well, that's – That's a linear about that. That's super helpful, though. So that's what you're basically saying. If I treat the paddocks as background noise. I'm all fired up now. But that's what I was saying. I mean, there are so many people. Go on drains, like, halfway through that, though. True, yes. Hit the C-shot drain. Okay, well, maybe next fall. Craig, you're right, but that's what I'm saying is there's so much love for this game. Like, I've had friends that were basically like, don't trade away TNA or you're not going to get it back. Like, you will love Jurassic Park. Like, you will not want TNA. But that's what you're saying. Focus more on the other things that come along in the journey of the paddocks instead of just that. I'm trying to sprinkle in every little ingredient until it gets done and starts popping and boiling over. That's it. The paddocks are really just there. You're kind of always working on those, and then you're getting those side things. You're talking about modes with spinners and different objectives and stuff like that. Well, you're going to get those in your control room. You're going to get those in your T-Rex modes. and those are all stackable with the paddocks along with multiballs. You can have a control room mode. You can have chaos multiball and a paddock all going at the exact same time. Yeah, there's nothing better than that. Joel, yeah. Joel, this is what you need to do, right? So your paddocks are going to keep going. Sure. But get that, what do you call it, Mike? The control room. Control room. Control room. Get a control room going and then at that point try to get chaos going and double stack that control room and the paddock. Oh, you're going to see blue lights going. You're going to see the other lights going for the regular paddocks. You're going to love it. You're going to love life. I don't doubt it. And that's what I'm saying. It's only been a few days, so I needed this, all right? I needed the passion. A little pep talk. A little pep talk. You can do it, Joel. You can do it. But there's people in chat here that are saying, you know, that they feel that Godzilla is like a baby game compared to Jurassic Park. And I understand. I will say if I play Jurassic Park for 30 minutes straight, and it's kicking my butt. Like, when I'm hitting the shots, it feels good. But when you miss the shots in Jurassic Park, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. While Godzilla, like, it just feels good. And I understand maybe it's just an easier shooter, and it kind of carries you along a little, and maybe that's what I need. I'm just not as good of a player as other people. And maybe that's a thing where it's like this level of player probably is drawn more towards Godzilla. Why, once you go above that, you can get into the complexity of Jurassic Park or this or that. I mean, I do think Jurassic Park is a harder shooter than Godzilla for sure, but I'm just good. I was focusing too much on paddocks, waiting for the excitement to happen, and just kind of trying to sprinkle in multiballs when I felt it was needed. But you're saying no, don't do it that way. No, and Scott Dye in chat, he's on it. Visitor Center is one of the best wizard modes in pinball. It is super satisfying, a lot of fun. I've only gotten there a couple times. Didn't know what the hell I was doing, but yeah. Well, come stream it with me, Zach, and you get it too in the first night. You know, that's... It does, like, take time. Go, Greg. Well, I was just going to say, like, it does take time to get into some of these games because they are so different in feel and, you know, shot combinations. So I don't think it's that uncommon that you're into one thing and you're really loving something and then you go to another one and you're like, eh, I'm not really digging it because I'm loving the other one so much at the moment, right? But I, so, you know, probably 200 or 300 games in Jewel, it'll start to cost you more, I would suspect. I mean, I'm going to have it for a few months, and that's, I'm excited. I'm excited. And, yeah, Fight Cave, it takes at least 50 games. I know for a fact, like, Zach has dropped games off at my house, and the first two, three nights I played it, Stranger Things is a perfect example. I was like, I hate this game. Like, I did not enjoy it at all. And then once I started to learn the code, and there was a few code improvements over the time that I had it here, by the time it was time to go, Zach's like, hey, I need to pick that game up. And I was, like, playing it every night, just, like, getting my fill as much as I could because I knew it was going to be – I was sad it was going to go. So I get it, but that's – I just – there's so much love for Jurassic Park, and now that it's here, I will continue to unravel it, which should be a good time. Joel, do you have the movie code on there too? I don't. I was starting, so that's a whole other thing. Now, chat, I mean, close your ears if you don't want to, Zach, but this does not have the Insider Connect kit on it. And I will tell you props to Stern because I missed it. Like I only played a few games, and I am so used to having Insider Connect on my other games, having home team, logging in, all that fun stuff. I'm like, I want my achievements. I want to be able to log in. Like I wanted it. I really wanted it. And I will tell you, that's what I'm saying. Close your ears, Zach. If you don't have Insider Connect on your game, there's a loophole. You can kind of – Buy one. You have to have one. That's the thing. You have to have at least one for this to work. But basically, look it up. There's a way that you plug a Wi-Fi dongle, an SD card in there, and connect to the other adapter. You can connect your game in a way that you can get home team on it. Yeah, share your QR code reader. Basically, yeah. You can look it up, but I was able to get it on my machine, and I'm with it. Like, Insider Connect is legit. It's, I don't know, it's one of those, I didn't realize how much I liked it until I had a game here that I knew had achievements that I wasn't accessing. So, home team. Home team is like a gift. It's so great, and I love having it. Yeah, it's great. You know, every time one of the games I own is up on the Stern leaderboards for the month, I'm on that game. I'm trying to hit the leaderboards, get the top scores. It's great. I just, I was expecting more features to be out by now. I mean, I'm not complaining. I know, you know, shit happens. But I'm waiting for more stuff to come out for it. I'm a paying member. Like, I pay the premium. And I just got renewed again for the second time now. I don't know if I get the package anymore. You know, I don't know if I get a little package from Stern anymore, whether it was just the first time. So I'm paying. Now I want to get what I'm paying for. I want the extra features that are supposed to be coming out, that sort of thing. So something else comes out soon. I just want home leaderboards. I want to have my TV and have the leaderboards when I have friends over, stuff like that. Like that's simple. Everybody can see Coach Carter at the very end. No, I mean, Zach will have an amazing, you know, barn for a leader. Like, his is a perfect spot for a home leader board. I don't know. Home board. Yeah, it's going to be great. But Joel's addicted. Hey, and precision flippers. Yep, there we go. There's the shout-out to precision flippers. But, yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about Jurassic Park, and it seems like there are some people that agreed. There are some people that agreed with me in chat, and there's others that don't. So that's fine. I think my opinion on that will change over time. Other opinions that have changed over time. not Jurassic Park Bond 60th Bond 60th two weeks ago we talked about this two weeks ago is when it came out that's when they showed all the pictures and everything we sat here on camera or on stream and looked through the game looked at the layout Mike I know you were here George was here and Dennis was here so Craig I am curious your opinions of Bond 60th what you've seen Let's not talk about the reveal yet, but just the game itself. What are your thoughts? Yep. Art package-wise, I think it is probably one of Stern's weakest titles. And I would call Bond in general one of their weakest art packages that I think they had in a long time I think the cabinet art in this game is abysmal Oh, you're blind. No, it's horrific. It is horrific. Especially that open area. And, you know, I was looking at the Stern Pro or the 007 Pro today at the distributors, and I don't really like it either. I really wish the license holder would have let Stern modernize it, because I think to take the original images and to try and clean them up and put them on. Okay, so this is the 60th. Oh, yeah. It's so uninspired and terrible. You know, I think Zach and Dennis did a great, listen to the last podcast where they talk about it. It is – and I don't necessarily blame this on Stern. You know, I do think a lot of this rests with the license holder. But if I'm Stern, I'm like, this is the best we can do? Like, to put every single poster on there and we think that's a fun idea? First of all, I think it's a giant ripoff of GNR, frankly, where they did the – they started this trend or started with the first to put the, you know, posters from concerts on there or album art on there. Yeah, but it's totally different. It kind of works in that game. It's better. It's so much better on GNR. If you look at this. Yeah, it's way better. And so I feel like they tried to do the same thing with this, but with the movie posters, and it doesn't work for me at all, at all. This looks cool. Yeah. That looks like some of these, like they did the right thing. They actually. They got the original art. Yeah. They modernized it. You know, they made it in high def. They were allowed to manipulate it, I'm sure, to make it work. and it all comes together, you know, to make it look like a cool rock and roll themed machine. This just like, it doesn't know what the hell it wants to do here. You know, like. Like little gaps. We saw gaps. I know. Like little gaps in the art. So it's just not good. And the back glass isn't good. And it's just not good. I don't mind the back glass. Go ahead. Go ahead. I will say the play field, when you look at that play field, same with all of the versions of it. Yeah. It does have a very 90s feel about it, which I think is very unique right now in the world of Stern. It feels vintage 90s. It doesn't feel like vintage 60s or vintage, you know. And that's what all of them kind of feel like to me is kind of like a vintage 90s theme. I hate the top hat. I know the theme they're going with. I hate the spinner because I think it's completely uninspired. But, again, they've done that a thousand times, and I'm tired of seeing those things, too. I don't doubt, though, that, you know, this is going to be a great shooter because Keith Owen doesn't make bad shooters. So I don't even have to see this game played once, and I know it's going to be, despite all of the, you know, horrible-looking stuff, I still think it's going to be a blast to play. And, you know, the reels, you know, again, I just wish, it's such a unique thing. and they went to all this trouble to make these mechanical reels, and it still looks digital. Like, I just think they went to all this trouble, they placed it right where the LCD is, and I think to the untrained eye, you're going to think, now, Zach will tell us when you see that live, maybe it actually does look like a reel spinning around, but I want it to be more vintage or more feeling mechanical than I think it looked on the trailer. Well, that's because it looks like it's like the speaker panel is the exact same as you would see on the modern Stearns. That's the problem. It's like they just took the speaker panel and then just put a piece of plastic and cut out four little holes for the score reels. And then they should have made that a little different. and then that would make it look obviously different than the other games. I do think the promo images don't show the reels well. Like there's a video, I don't have it, but it was like Bond at CES, and it's showing it from any angle from the side is where you actually start to see that there's depth there. Like it shows it way better. But you're right. I know when this rendering was leaked months ago, I saw the reels. I was like, well, that doesn't look like physical reels. And then the announcement, the game came out with the actual images. I was like, did they not change that? And then I agree. I just think the promo stuff doesn't show it well. So, you know, I actually think that the Batman 66 does a better job of doing vintage reels than actual mechanical reels. Like, I just, you know what I mean? I do. I do. The hell is that? All right. And to counter. The fake ones look better than the real ones. It counters that. Because they put four up there, and I just think that looks weird with one reel there. I hear you there. What do you have, Zach? I mean, how is Craig wrong? Please. Tell me, please. I was listening until he said, I like virtual pinball more than I do fucking physical pinball. Oh, God. The only thing I said about the reels is, like, have you ever tried to mess with, like, the step remote or all that on an EM? I don't want it to be too real. Yeah. I was just messing with one. They suck, man. They really suck. Yeah. And, yeah, these are cool. I like that there's a physical reel. I like that there's a physical reel more than I do a little LCD number on a screen. So I like that. But, I mean, Greg's right. The art is not a looker. It doesn't look pretty well at all. I said that on the podcast on the pinball show. I like the play-through. I happen to think that that looks – I think it actually looks good. It's not like it's passable or anything. I think it looks good. It does remind me of those 90s WPC games, Demoman or Monster Bash, where you see those colored paths. I think that's a sharp look. Do I like the bonds down on the bottom third? I don't know. Do I like half of the damn picture stuff that's on the bottom third whenever they do that? no unless it's zombietti and it's hand-drawn yeah but the screen placement i think it's pretty cool um and then everything else i just think looks looks so much damn fun uh that i can't wait to open one up for myself and to shoot it i i held on to my uh gomez le and didn't unbox it because i was waiting for them to release this and after they did it's it's it looks great to me I'm going to keep my LE in the box, and then I'm going to open a 60th. Nice. That teal is sexy, though. Yeah, I know. If you're going to talk about the outside of the game. Show its good side, Joe. Show the scuba side. The scuba side. Oh, that's the bad side? Scuba side. There we go. See, I like this LE way better than the 60th as far as the art goes. I agree. If you only had one game, right, if you only had one game sitting in the corner of your basement, this is the prettier-looking game. There's no denying that. And the fact that the topper, if you want to – the topper's not even an exciting factor because you can buy the topper for this. But I think this is the prettier game from the outside. But at least me – so, hey, thank you for everybody that's subbing to this channel. I really appreciate that, guys. To me, though, once you have multiple games and you have them in a lineup, I don't really care about the cabinet art as much. I don't care as much. I really care about what does the front of the cabinet look like and what does the back of the cabinet look like. You really care what the front of the cabinet looks like. Well, the front of the cabinet on this bad boy is, where is it? There's the front. Oh, that looks. Nice. It looks like Zach's background right now. That's right. I'm honing my 60th right now. And the back glass is fine. I don't mind it. But I don't get it. I mean, I don't know. If I was in the position where I was a – like I feel for David Dennis, believe it or not. I know he has no soul, but I do care about him. And I know that he loves Bond. He loves Bond. And so this is probably tough for him where he's like, what do I buy? And I know he was struggling between the Pro, the Premium LE, and then waiting for this. I don't know. As a diehard Bond fan, I don't know if this – I don't know if his – He probably has every poster already taped up in his bedroom. So maybe he loves this. I don't know. He likes those Connery short shorts. I know. I don't know. I don't know. So Michael Holliday, best back glass out of all of them. Do we agree? Do we like this back glass better than that? I think I'm right. I talked to the owner of Tapper's Pinball. It's a pinball bar downtown. Awesome dude. They have Bond. And he says the issue is it doesn't say Bond. It says Dr. No. And he's like, none of the younger generations have any idea that that's a James Bond game. They just, because it says Dr. No. What is the front of that cap? Does the front not say 007 on it, like this one? It says 007 down there. Does it say that on the pro, on the Dr. No? Yes, it does say that. The LCD screen will say it too. True. But he said it's a genuine problem. But that, I mean, this doesn't say Bond. It says 007. But it's a little more, I don't know. We're not going to see these on location. Oh, look at that. Yeah, we're not going to see them on location. And is that because they couldn't get the license to use the name James Bond? Is that what they were having a hard time with? I don't know. Is there any reference to it in the game or on the screen? Does it show the name Bond? Well, you can spell Bond on the game. so they must right like if you the drop targets all they spell bond and stuff so i mean if they can do that they can obviously include the name if they wanted to uh i mean there's no doubt 007 is i i think recognizable but to not use james bond at all is a bit odd to me now this is a good pinball machine this is one of the first ones i owned actually i think this was like we've had about 80 pinball machines go through the basement and this was probably number four in our collection that we own. So that was a question in chat. Is this a better looking game? Is this a better looking game? I don't know. The play field on that game, GoldenEye, resembles the play field on Gomez's. Look at the top down. It does. It's similar. It also has the best jump ramp shot in pinball. I know you're supposed to Oh, yes. Are you? Oh, yes. Get it down that in lane. Flip that switch up. Fire it up there. Jump. Land in the satellite. Start your multiball. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Jump. The only thing good about the Toy Story one is it's repeatable. That's it. Duke of Boom. This one is a better shot. Duke of Boom is where it's at. You're jumping the actual shark, baby. Yeah. I do genuinely miss the Duke of Boom shot. after having that here in the basement. But I don't know. I'm not saying this to bash on the 60th, but we talked a lot about the layout. We talked a lot about the art. I know I was curious to hear Craig's takes. They're strong. I know, Zach, we've heard your takes on the pinball show. I think you and Dennis did a really good job talking about those. I think we, the four of us, and all of chat has to agree. The layout looks incredible. I think there's no way this game isn't going to shoot well. It does look great. You're right. I like the art on the play field. I like the blue. I'm not used to that much blue, but I really, really enjoy it. It's a game that I definitely, definitely want to play. But one thing that's changed since the last time that we talked about this was it was the day it was announced. And when it was announced, everything was sold out, right? I mean, that's what we hear. Everything's sold out. Things have changed. He said, maybe, Zach, you can fill us in on this. But it just seems like there's been this roller coaster of good luck trying to find them at 20,000. There are some people that were – I think there was somebody at a spot that was selling them on Pinside for like 22, 24. And then all of a sudden now you have distributors that are afraid they're going to be stuck with them, so they're selling them for 18. I mean, it's just been this – I have never seen this. Who are they? Who are they? Yes. Give me their names. I don't know. I've never seen this so quickly, right? I mean, you look at like Halloween. Halloween, it was sold out instantly. And then over the course of the first few months, now all of a sudden people are selling their spots and taking a loss and blah, blah, blah. But I don't know. I mean, Zach, you've been a distributor a few years now. Have you had anything like this? I mean, you had an opportunity with Beatles to set a price. did you have this? Beatles was right before it became an official dealer. Oh, so you didn't experience it. I'm curious. I did that with Elvira 40th. The dealer set their own price, so we went through that. The big difference being that Elvira 40th came out and Stern didn't sell them direct. When Stern sold them direct, they set the price. Whatever they want to say, they set the price at $19,999. but when it comes to sales we did like i said on the pinball show for those that didn't listen we we did very well the first day we sold out essentially of all of ours and then the next day came and once everybody was talking about it and you know discussing it people got cold feet didn't pay their deposit didn't pay their invoice and we had five people back out Now, some dealers get one, some dealers get none, some dealers get maybe 120. So every dealer is different. But is my volume down? Yeah, Zach, Chad, apparently it's that sexy low voice that – Oh, yeah. There we go. That's a little better. You got any better angle birth? I don't have that depth that you have. I'm sorry. But is that better? I hopefully – It's deeper. It's deeper. Everybody's there. So, yeah, so that was the first day. And then, or that was the second day. Second day, five people dropped out. But then we had more people get in. So, and then the next, it's like been back and forth, back and forth. We still have a couple left. Like right before we started streaming, we sold another one. So, I'm not too worried about the sales. The sales are going well. I think when everybody's feedback is, this pinball machine looks like a blast to play and it's super loaded. I'm not too worried about it. I think that if we've sold this many out of the 500 that is all dealers in CERN pinball, and nobody's played it, and everyone's feedback is it looks like a blast to play, number one, and it looks loaded, number two, I think we'll be fine. I think everything will be fine. I don't think these things are going to tank, nor do I really think, given the – I'm just being real – Given the price and comps, I don't think it's going to skyrocket either. I think it's going to probably sit anywhere from 18 to 21 on the secondary market. So I think it'll sit. I think it'll do well. At the end of the day, we can't forget that you cannot play a pro counterpart. You can't play a premium or an LE counterpart. You can't play, if you want to play five Keith Elwin games, you're going to play the four you're used to and this one. Yeah, that's it. There's only one model to play. That's why if you take the price out of this equation, that's what Dennis and I were talking about. What's the argument then? I think so much of this, the perception, the first impressions from people come based on a price. And there's nothing wrong with that, because at the end of the day, you've got to pay a lot of money for this game. But if you separate those two and then really try to objectively give first impressions on the game itself, I think you're going to have a lot more positives than you do negatives. Yeah, expensive-ass game for sure. I don't know. You probably know more about it than I do, obviously, because you're on that side of it. But to me, it's just what scares me is that we're not going to experience these out in the wild. Why not? Like, where, like, what? Who's going to put a $20,000 pinball machine in a barcade for, listen, I go to barcades and I see people kick games. And, like, if I was an operator and I had one of those out there and I saw somebody kicking it, I mean, no way. I mean, there'll be a hand full. I think AC Goji will have it. Yeah, but I'm not flying to California to go play it. Now, you say you want to. Well, I can't guarantee that every local bar in the entire United States and world is going to have it. Yeah, but it's very common. A Stern, like most pinball locations at this point, Wizard World. So if Wizard World gets one in Fort Wayne, that's two hours for me. But still, it's just not all locations. There's a lot of locations that they get every Stern Pro. That's just common. But they can't. I mean, this isn't going to happen. And there's a lot of games like Rush. Rush, when Rush came out, people were either diehard, they were Canadian, and they were going to buy it, or they're not. But yet, it's been out long enough, and people have played it. played them on location or in tournaments, people are really starting to fall in love with that game. I know, Zach, there was a time where you had them in stock and then gone. I mean, you haven't had a premium in stock in quite a while. Do you have any Rush in stock right now? Yeah, we've got Rush Pro in stock. We're ready to go. Okay. Now, tell me this. I want to ask my fellows here. Greg, Mike, Joel. All right. Hypothetically. whenever your local local arcades get the new Stern game, they get a pro in you go and play it? if you haven't let me borrow it, I do yeah I haven't modded myself, yes yeah, okay, alright and Craig, do you get out there and play? see, I'm lazy you know, I try and like I'd piggyback it on to another visit. So, like, today I was at the airport, you know, dropping my wife off. I'm like, oh, I'm just around the corner from the distributor. I'm going to go over and see what they got, you know. And so, yeah, I don't – Well, that's two out of three. There's nothing wrong with that. Next question. Joel, do you guys go out of your way, if your local place has a pro, Do you go out of your way to drive to play the LE version of that game? You see where I'm going here? No, is the question. No, you don't. Yeah. If I experience the Pro, then I have no – I'm not going to go out of my way to experience the LE. I mean, that depends. Like, you know, I have a Godzilla Pro, and I go to an arcade that has the premium, and I go there because I like playing the premium. But that's like a special circumstance. Typically, you wouldn't definitely do that. You wouldn't. What if there was no pro or premium or LE version of that game? It becomes a hell of a lot more special. Joel, you even already in your mind calculated, okay, two hours away, that's kind of a, I could kind of do that. Would you do that for LE? You said no. Would you do that for a pro? No. But you would do that for this game because it is special. It is Keith Elwin, and it's the only way you can play. So what I know, Zach, we've talked, and there's a chance. there's a chance that I may be able to borrow one of these to stream. It may happen. But what I realized was, like, if I got one to stream, I'm pretty confident there would be people that would, like, travel to want to visit my house because they're like, oh, I know somebody. Like, I have pinball friends all over the state of Indiana or even up in Chicago or whatnot. And it's just like it wouldn't surprise me if Chuck Wirt in Cincinnati was like, hey, Joel, is there any way I could go over to your house and stream it with you? Like, yes. If I own a barcade and I have three competitors within a hundred mile radius, I'm thinking about buying that. Because, look, just like I said on the pinball show, this isn't a, boy, is this going to make $20,000? We've got to get that out of our minds. That's not important if you're a business person. If you're a business person, you put it in there, you attract people for a product. At the end of the day, you get as much as you can because you're different than everybody else. And then what can you do? It's not some asset you're going to set on fire. You sell the damn thing whenever you want to. You're not losing $20,000. You're losing whatever the market sells on the secondary market. And I think it would be probably a pretty smart business decision. If I had an arcade and I had competitors locally, my asset would be opening up the 60th, and I would be advertising the hell out of it. I'd even probably try to fly Keith Owen down to Zoon of Fury. Well, that makes sense, though, because, I mean, you know, if I'm going to that arcade, I'm not just going to go and play the new Bond. I'm going to throw, you know, $5 into Deadpool. I'm going to throw $5 into Godzilla 2, where I would do that at the other arcade as well. But if I'm going to, yeah. You're going to throw $5 into your Bond. Yeah, so it's not only, you know, I mean, yes, the game may not make its $20,000 back, but as a whole in the business, it is going to bring more people in, and it's going to drive business on the other games and on drinks, beers, food, whatever, you know, they sell. So I see that. I don't necessarily think that it's a big gamble for an operator to buy the game. I just don't know. It's not that I don't think that they would do well with it. I just don't know that they – I feel like they'd be a little scared to spend that much money on one game. You know, they could get almost three pros for the price of that, right, and then throw those in their arcade as well. So this is a good question here in chat. Best argument I've heard for it. Curious if it'll be $2. Yeah. I think we actually saw on the – there was a picture somewhere that said, like, a dollar. I don't know. There was something. But I am curious. Like, this would be – I don't know if that's your thing. Like, if Wizard World – Wizard World, I bring that up, is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They have, like, 100 machines. That's all they do. They don't sell food. They're not there for beer or food or anything. It's just for pinball. I think they do the Indiana State Championships and everything, too. But, yes, if they get one of these, and I don't blame them for charging $2 a game. Three games for $5, yeah. Yeah, it deserves it for what it is because that's one of those things where it's like, oh, you go to Wizard World, you've got to make sure you play the Abond SLE before you leave. Like kind of like family entertainment centers. I mean, some of these games I'm dropping, I'm sliding that card. It's like a dollar, $52 for an arcade game. So I don't, I don't think that's crazy. Yeah. Ours here already, like the, the arcade we go to the nearest me, uh, all the modern turns are already $2 a game, $3 for two plays, $2 a game. Well, it's Canadian, you know? So it's like 50 cents here, right? So, uh, no, uh, speaking of, uh, When I talked to the guy at Tappers, he said one game that's just crushing it right now is Toy Story. Like, Toy Story, for their location, it's downtown Indianapolis. They get a lot of foot traffic, a lot of 20-ish year, 20-, 30-year-old people that come in, school place hanging out. They have a whole – all the arcades are free, and then the pinball machines cost money. But he's saying, like, Toy Story is – he said Toy Story, Mando. those two are like consistently great earning pins and then and then there's normally whatever's newest fluctuates but he said last month like one of his highest earning machines was monsters and it's because one guy apparently like one guy was all in on monsters and played it like daily so that's funny i don't know toy story though i mean zach how are any update on how you feeling on toy story sales wise do you have any like ces or did those come and go i know that was a thing sold out and then i could sit here and i could bullshit you as a salesman um i've been accused of doing so by countless people i've been accused of doing that by more people than there are uh bond 60s and i'm here to tell you that no sales are not great right now in toy story um whether it's the le or the c they're they're kind of sitting right now um i was hoping that more people would get to play them and realize how great that damn game is uh but right now we're we're pretty much sitting on those those are sitting we still have some gnrs um people are you know once toy story came out we had more gnr sales because people like okay i don't want toy story let me try gnr but right now that inventory is kind of sitting we're still right now sterns They're moving. Turns are a movie. And then CGC. Right now, Texas Caneys are hard to get our hands on because they're getting the LEs out. They're getting the SE pluses hopefully out soon. So they've not really produced any SEs, and all the dealers are pretty much dried up on those. So those have been really good sellers as well. um were you worried at all about the price increase that went to all stern games come january 1st was that yeah do you feel like that's i mean i know he likes price increases yeah but that's something where you do you feel like we're getting to a point i don't know where too much is too much? Have you had people that have been on a list for, let's say, a Deadpool that when you reached out and said there's a price increase, they're like, I can't do it anymore? It just depends on the title. So there are games that you're seeing that are going to sit more now because of that price increase that were not as popular of a certain catalog game that others were. But games like Jurassic Park, Premium, Deadpool, Elvira, Godzilla, of course. Avengers is crawling out there. Iron Maiden is another one. Those, the majority of people are still staying in. They're like, yeah, it sucks. I'm mad at Stern, but I still need one. Yeah, so it depends. If there was these A-list titles, I think people would even pay more, but nobody likes a price increase, even dealers, because the more prices go up, the less quantity we're going to sell of things. Yeah. The pros only went up by $100, though, right? So, I mean, that's not terrible. It's doable, but if you look, so here's – hey, thank you for the sub. Appreciate that. Are you good? Yeah, right here. So it's like the pro is now officially – this is Rush I just rolled down to. It's official. I mean, we're at $7,000. Boom. And, I mean, it's happening. I don't know. It's tough. I get it. I think it's getting tougher, obviously, to get into the hobby. But to me, maybe it's a selfish thing, but every single time the games go up, the value of my games just went up too, you know. But, like, I'm curious, Turtles. Like, one day when Turtles finally gets the love it deserves. I know Zach loves Turtles. When it finally gets the love it deserves, all of a sudden that game's going to go because they're not making it anymore. I'm waiting for the same to happen on Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin's a good game. Derek is in chat. Derek is a local collector here. He just got it. He actually just bought a Led Zeppelin from Flip N Out Pinball. And he messaged me right before this, and he goes, I don't get it, man. Like, this game got so much hate, and I am loving every bit of it. Yeah. When you start comboing those shots and enjoy the music. He has a premium, so it has the expression lighting kit. That game is fun. That game is genuinely fun. Get some expression lighting in there. Oh, yeah. That really kicks it up. God, I would – I had – Zach, let me borrow a Led Zeppelin Pro. And putting the Expression Lighting Kit into the game is such a big game changer, like legit such a huge game changer that I almost feel bad for all the Rush owners that don't – like, just wait. You think you love the game now. Just wait when CERN finally makes those kits. I know. You can put it in there. Oh, it's so good. I'm dying. I can't wait to put them in mine. I mean, I have a Led Zeppelin Premium, so I know how awesome the expression lighting is in the game. And just with everything that's already in Rush, the expression lighting, I can't wait to put it in there. You know, I'm seeing sales for Led Zeppelin Premium. Those have been pretty good because of the expression lighting system. Because remember, those come standard on the premiums on Zeppelins, where they don't on Rush. So people are doing that. Yeah. And it makes me happy. I'm seeing texts here. I'll be buried in my Turtles game. No one can take it from me. You know, I appreciate you. Turtles is great. Yeah. I do have to call out Sterling if he's in chat. Balls of steel pinball. He is selling his Turtles, and I hope he regrets it. I love Sterling. It is a fun game. It's brutal. It's brutal. But it's a fun game. Joe, you know who would love to play Bond's 60th anniversary? Uh, me. I can almost guarantee you that hundreds of competitive pinball players at InDisc next year, picture that in the final game in the final round of the Open. Now that is how you competitively pinball. Raph, I appreciate the sub. I agree. What I will say, what I will say is I told you, Me and Travis, we recorded a Triple Drain episode, a little mini one, earlier today. And I made a comment about that because what did we see What did we see at the end of both the finals The finals of the Open I don know I fell asleep Oh God You so wrong Zach The finals were so great They were so great. The end of – I just have a ladybug that just flew by. Anyways, that's odd. The final games in the Open were Bad Girls, Flash Gordon, and – help me, Mike. Yeah. Bad Girls was the second. Bad Girls was the second. Flash Gordon was the third. Yes. Oh, my God. I don't remember. And by the fourth, their viewership was asleep. No, there was three, and they were great. But anyways, they all – it was an older game. It was an older game, and I made a comment. I don't remember seeing any modern games throughout the entire finals on that day. Not even the finals. I'm not even sure I saw a D&D game in those finals. Alien Star was in the banks. Oh, no, it wasn't Surf and Safari. But it was an older game. But here's the problem, and this was the deal, was I made a comment about that, and I was like, oh. Congo. It was Congo. It was a D&D game. No, it was Congo. Yeah. Yeah. It was. Are you sure? I think it was Congo. Well, we had. Travis was definitely on Congo. I remember watching it. There was a Congo with that, but then they played Tommy. I remember they played Tommy. And then Travis and Kaylee did Flash Gordon. And then there was the first, I don't remember who it was, but it was an older game. But the reason I bring this up is I was like, oh, Keith was driving the bus. So Keith Elwin, I was like, he must be picking older games so that, you know, keep the younger guys like Escher off of these modern sterns. That was the thought. And Travis goes, no, that's not how it works. You can only pick every game one time. So he's like, Keith was out of picks. Like, Keith had been driving the bus the whole time, so he'd already picked everything. And that's the same thing with Travis. Travis, when he had the chance to pick his playoff, he was out of picks. He's like, I wanted to pick Rush. If I could have picked Rush, I would have picked Rush. But the problem is they pick them early. So that's the issue. Firepower. Thank you, Gizmonic. Thank you, Firepowder. Firepower, another old game But that's the problem But it's by the time you get to the finals If you're one of these top players And you've been picking You're out Who cares, just change the damn rules I'm not the tournament guy to tell them to do that I mean, Mike Do you think there should be a Okay, you get to the final Or the final game All picks are gone And you can pick It's different in every tournament Every tournament rules are different. Actually, most tournaments I play in, there's no restrictions on what you can pick. The only restriction is you can't pick the same game twice in the same round. Okay. But if you move on to another round, you can go back to that game, typically. In-disc is a bit of different rules. It's a hardcore tournament. The format in that tournament at in-disc is really, really hard to qualify in. and there's some strategy in picking games and whatnot. You can defer your pick. Let's say you're after two games, you're ahead, you know you don't need your third game because you've already won the first two. Then you're going to defer your pick because you're going to save your picks for other rounds in the future. But do I agree with it? I mean, it's just a tournament decision. I like seeing all pinball. I like watching competitive pinball to watch the skill of the players. It's not necessarily to see the bells and the whistles in the game. I loved watching that final game on Flash Gordon. It was actually incredible to watch. The skill that they exhibited during the game was unbelievable. Would it have been better on Rush? That's debatable. I don't know. They did have a Rush there. I don't know that I saw it on stream at all the entire weekend, and I watched pretty much everything through the entire weekend. I did not see that game. Last one is a great comp game. It's a great comp game to watch. And I did not see Mystery Castle either, though. Mystery Castle was also not on stream. It was there. Well, it is on stream. It was there, but I don't know that it was there. So I've got to give a huge shout-out to Carl with IU Pinball. I mean, first off, the stream was able to get on the front page of Twitch, And that brought in, at one point in time, it was like 15,000 people were watching competitive pinball, which is insane. And the chat was incredible because there were so many people like, I can't believe I've never seen it. I didn't know pinball is streamed. People are asking good questions. Everybody was super helpful. What sucked, though, is this was during Classics 2, the tournament, so only Classics game. And I think they were playing Cheetah at the time. And Cheetah, the only thing to do in Cheetah was hit the left orbit over and over and over again. So 15,000 people are watching pinball, competitive pinball, and they're like, so some of their thoughts were, oh, apparently we're only playing, there's still only old pinball games, right? And why are they, like, there was somebody like, why are they only shooting one shot, you know? And I got props to the commentators. They were responding. They were reacting to chat. And they were trying to communicate what's going on. So, I don't know, quick little thing I just saw. We currently have 101 viewers. 101, that's the highest view count that I've seen. That's nowhere near the competition. That's not 15,000 viewers. But 101 concurrent viewers, previously with TP and After Hours, we were streaming on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch at the same time. And I don't know if we ever broke 100 without a big raid. So the fact that there are 100 people here, I really appreciate it. Thank you. You do better than that. Still, this is awesome. Thank you for being here. You know what I realized, Joel? Yes. I'm expecting, because everybody gives me shit over competition, pinball and broadcasting and all this. It's deserved. say shit because you've never played in a tournament. What was that, Jeff? Jeff, was that yours? Jeff T. Ellis? Yeah. The most ignorant conclusion I've ever heard of in my life. Oh, you can't have an opinion because you've never played in a shit tournament. Ignorance. But I will say this. What I've realized is, oh, you guys might not like this. Maybe it's just, maybe N-Disc is the greatest tournament that we have in pinball. I'm fine with that. Maybe Carl D'Python Anghelo is objectively the greatest pinball streamer in history. Maybe. Pop a pinball. Maybe. Carl is a genius. He's greatness. That's fine. Maybe people don't want to change the rules, antiquated rules, of tournaments to make them enjoyable. I'm fine with that. but then on the other side, maybe in-disc doesn't deserve broadcast pinball to the masses. I think that's where I'm at. I'm putting too much weight in thinking in-disc has what it takes to entertain masses. I don't think it does. I really don't. I think, if anything, I've got to get my mindset off of thinking we can shape and mold something that is three days and puts you to sleep with most of the game choices, getting the same shot over and over, that will turn people off. It's like Grandpa's game. We might as well play tic-tac-toe live on stream too. No, we just need to create something else. So I am finally conceding and saying, and this needs to be what it is because it is wonderful, and as a deep, deep pinball player, I love watching it. But whenever it gets 50,000, 300,000 people, So what is it doing? I don't think it's doing anything. If I'm paying money and I'm sponsoring that show, if I'm Stern Pinball, and I said it last year and people got shitty, but I think people deep down agree with me. If I'm Stern Pinball, if I'm Jersey Jack Pinball, I'm paying money for sponsorship to get my product in the Final Four game. If there's not a modern game that can be purchased in that Final Four, for Stern, for Jersey Jack, for all these major manufacturers, it is a fail. And for anybody that really wants to grow pinball, it's kind of a fail. I don't know why I'm the only person that agrees with that. It's asinine to even think that everybody's like, oh, Flash Gordon, damn it, that's a waste. Flash Gordon, I almost give that a pass because that's good. That's bastardly, it's good. But what was I watching, Keith Elwin? And I legit fell asleep watching Keith Elman play the high stakes because it was this bullshit of the same shot over and over. Keith almost fell asleep. No, and I'm a diehard pinball player. Oh, is it? Yeah, it was the EM, which he was dominating. I did this for a living. Yeah. And I was bored out of my mind. That's a problem if we're trying to get it to the masses and trying to make it entertaining. That's my only point. so I will say that there's two segments of people and I do believe that there is many people that understand what you're saying I understand what you're saying but as a competitive pinball player I'm watching it for a completely different reason and all these other competitive players are watching it for a completely different reason they're not watching it because oh my god look it's pin they still make pinball holy cow can I buy one of these wow that's fantastic I believe the majority of people who are watching this already know about pinball already know what's going on with pinball and just want to explore what competitive pinball is all about. When there was like 18,000 people, it was during the finals when they were playing Bad Girls. And I said, you know what? I want to check out the chat because 15,000 people watching a pinball stream is absolutely ridiculous. The most I've ever seen is like maybe 3,000 people for like a James Bond reveal or whatever on Jack Danger's stream. 15,000 people and I'm watching and there's tons of new people there following you know following and subbing and whatnot but most of the stuff that I saw was people asking hey what are they trying to do here how does this work how does the point system is it just you know there was so many new people that seemed to be intrigued by what was going on and and then you had obviously the regulars you know explaining how it works and whatnot and there was tons of tons of comments where people say this is fantastic I didn't know there was competitive pinball. It's amazing. So I think that most of the people that were watching it were watching it because they want to know more about competitive pinball, not just pinball in general. I think they knew about pinball. I think they just wanted to see more competitive pinball, see what it was more about. There's a comment here, and it stands out. So Scott Dye, and basically what he's mentioning is, what do we think is a better display of pinball? What we just saw, in-disc, probably the best well-produced tournament stream that you're going to get this year. Or you have the Stern, I don't remember what it's called, but it's like the Stern. A pro circuit final there. No, it's where they do. Oh, you mean the one they did on ESPN. Yeah. Eight people, they're doing the fast, you know, it's eight people that are trying to do stuff as quickly as possible. It's super produced, highly produced, introductions of players. Like, for a novice person, which are they going to find more entertaining? I know at least within this, my brother was coming over. My brother came over to help me get Jurassic Park down in the basement. And here I am, like, standing in front of – because I had Travis, my buddy, my Triple Drain partner here, is in the quarterfinals. I was nervous. I was anxious. And he got sucked right in because me pointing stuff out and then the commentators pointing stuff out didn't – I thought it was riveting. I didn't care what game it was. I was locked in. I was way more locked in on that than I was the stern eight people. I forget what it's called. I don't think they did a good job on that stern thing. I mean, one, they advertised it as though anybody could apply, but they really had half of the people were there in the first one. They were there in the second one, and they didn't play the games actually against each other. They were recorded. I believe they were recorded individually, right, playing their games. Yeah, so, I mean, I can see a highly produced pinball tournament like that doing really well if done properly. And I just don't think that that one was done properly. I really do think that a really well produced pinball tournament with, you know, behind the scenes stuff, stories about the players, stuff like that could do really well, but it needs to be done properly. Well, I would say I feel that Carl with IU Pinball is doing the best pinball stream that you can do for a live presentation. Right. The only thing I can think of is if you did, I don't know, like if there were player introductions that were filmed and edited before and between rounds, and instead of having the commentators talk, maybe you throw those in for the new viewers. Who is Keith Owen? and do, do, do. Like, you could maybe sprinkle in some pre-produced stuff or make the finals bigger, have some pre-produced. I don't know. Do you interview the wives and girlfriends of the players and, you know? And there's music stuff you can do. Yeah. I mean, is that going to help? Craig, you have it. Yeah, what are you? Well, I'm just trying to think of ways to grow the hobby, and I'm not – I think there's a lot that can be done kind of grassroots stuff, And it was interesting that Rachel Risto, who's part of TPN as well, had a very interesting short podcast today where she was talking about what I thought was really interesting. She was talking about the differences between the women's only side of pinball and how, you know, she's really focused on growing, you know, the women's side of the hobby and some of the differences that she finds with the women's side versus the men's side. And I was thinking, she's got some really good points here about making this hobby not only more inclusive but more welcoming to people, you know, who don't know anything about the hobby. So I think what my impression was when I've been to a few tournaments is that the competitive part of it, which is fine because you're at a tournament, overshadows everything. And so people forget that there are people there that maybe are there for the first time. and people get so competitive and that they shut out the welcoming aspect, I think, of inviting new people into the hobby because, God forbid, someone comes back again or brings their friends back and the thing starts to grow, right? And so, well, I'm not saying it's not a friendly environment. I'm saying I think more could be done in these, you know, local tournaments to welcome new people, to invite them in, to actually, God forbid, show them how to win a game, show them what they have to do. This isn't some, like, it shouldn't be a secret, you know, like, you can still have to make the shot. So telling me what I have to do when I have no clue, why would that be a bad thing? Two parts to that. And why should I be scared if I'm a state champion to tell somebody that's never played before how to make a shot or, you know, don't do this but do that? I'm sure it happens. But I just don't – I just think there's not – from what I've seen, too, when I've been at – both when I've participated and when I've been at bigger tournaments like at Expo, So I think more could be done to actually highlight those tournaments, to encourage people that have never played in a tournament to come, and that when they do come, that they're taken under, people take them under their wing, they show them what's all about, there's more high-fiving, there should be more back-slapping, there should be more less... More high-fives. You know, I don't know, like something. It is missing something, and I can't put my finger on it, but I think Rachel was getting close. I think Rachel was getting close to it. For local stuff, yeah. And I started to understand why, I think, a little better, you know, why I think it's a good idea that women have kind of gone off on a separate path here a little bit. But I think a lot of that could come back into the men's side as well, you know. and it wouldn't be a bad thing to continue to promote the hobby in general. You know, like, anyway. My two comments, it sounds like most tournament players that I've run into are extremely friendly. So if you are a good person and you're genuine, like, I know even Escher, number one player in the world, is you can be playing him going into the next game and be like, hey, you know, what are your thoughts? Like, he's going – people want to see good pinball. They want to compete based off of, you know, feeling like they earned it, not just like, ha, I know the rules and you don't, that kind of thing. Because Escher, even in the finals, he said, like, Bad Girls was the first time he's played it. So somebody there is telling him, like, hey, I suggest you do this or that. The second thing, and this is a shout-out to Chuck Wirt with the Pinsonati crew. When he streamed his tournament, he actually filmed a ton of these, these mini – so this is Chuck Wirt, his YouTube channel. These are minute-and-a-half, two-minute tutorials. So as they were switching games, as they went to the next game, he showed the tutorial. So it's like before each game, it was a one- or two-minute thing to show. So here you go, Chuck Wirt. This is him, mini tutorial. And this is huge. I mean, like visually, like, hey, look down here, do this, do that. and if Carl spliced in some of these before each one like hey this is probably what they're going to do or this is your best way to I don't know isn't it wild that people what a novel concept that people have been suggesting and talking about for a handful of years now they do do that on in disc when the game is actually being played they had a telestrator and the commentators were describing how to play the game and what the things do. I mean, it's not to this level. It's not to this level for sure. These are fantastic, definitely. But they are starting to do it a little bit, but that doesn't do anything for the competitors that are playing in that specific tournament. Correct. They're not watching the stream live or anything. The drawing on the screen, and that's what surprised me. And maybe it was just because it was the finals and the commentators are so locked in that I didn't see anybody draw on the screen. The telestrator was broken. Oh, that's what it was. Okay. Towards the end of the finals, the telestrator wasn't working. Because it worked so, like, it's such a useful tool. But, you know, having Steven Bowden, like, look, the orbit on the right, you know, and he's describing it. And I'm thinking, like, can you just draw it? Or, like, can you just circle the target you're talking about? Yeah, that's really helpful. And that is a super helpful tool. So, okay, so I can't blame him for the technology branding. I also want to add, like, Orby makes a great point here in chat talking about the commentary. I think the commentary was top notch. The streaming was top notch. Everything was top notch, which is why I think that it needs to kind of just be its own thing. It's loved for a reason. It's the best for a reason. I just don't think that – I just don't think it will ever get to the point where it brings people in on a big scale. It's not the right format. It's not the right type. It's not the right – commentators were great. but it just, I don't know. I've come to a realization and it came to end disc to, uh, to do that. I will be curious. I mean, Carl was getting, if you're looking at the chat, Carl was getting a lot of follows like during that, during that time. We've got over a thousand that weekend. There's a freaking lady bug in here. It's all right. There you go. Hey, say hi. Is that a good luck term? I don't know. Um, anyways, he got a ton of follows. So it would be interesting. I mean, he got enough interest from that stream for people to be like, I want to see more of this. So did that stream grow the hobby by a thousand plus? I mean, I don't know. You may get a sale. It's so hard to judge. So if I kill it, is that a bad thing? It's so hard to – don't kill that thing. It's so hard to judge because what have I told – I've told manufacturers before. It's like saying, when it comes to revealing a new product, have you seen what this channel can do? I've told manufacturers before, I could put a fucking squirrel in front of the screen and give you a pinball new product reveal. It's going to get big numbers. I'm not crapping on what IU Pinball does because, as I've said over and over, he is the greatest. And if anybody's going to bring in those numbers, nobody's going to do it better than Carl. But when you're on the front page, you're going to get big views. I don't think that that's – now, is that great? Yeah. Yes. Better than anything has probably ever done in pinball. So we need to congratulate it. It is wonderful. But to equate it to say, you know, he got that many views, well, what does that mean? I think it's great because, yeah, if they subbed, if they followed, then if they're on again, they'll get notified. It's better than anybody else could ever probably do. but it's not getting the big eyes. Yeah, well, I mean, if you look at the pinball category now on Twitch, it's not really any different than it was on the, you know, I mean, with the exception of the weekend, it's not any different than it was before in-disc. You're still at, you know, 150 viewers at best every evening. Look, we need things like this. These things are important, but if this is all we have, people, ain't a damn thing going to happen because they're formats. They're too long. They're boring for the normal person that doesn't care too much about pinball. Either make it entertaining, a half an hour, an hour, just the final four, or don't. That's the only way to really make it entertaining, in my opinion. In my opinion, if I look at the last few years, I think the biggest influence that has, media-wise, that has made on an outreach thing, I'm not praising this well but the biggest thing that I can think of is the Slow Mo Guy video that was made for pinball. That video because it was a brand new machine so it highlighted that these games are still being made. It was a huge video. I mean millions of, I think the Slow Mo Guys have a few million subs and it got millions of views. So that to me I think is is probably, I mean, I'm not downplaying anything that Carl did or any of the streams out there, but it's just that I think that video was, I don't know, probably the best thing for pinball from a media outlet standpoint in the last. I bet that video alone got a lot of new pinball machines into new players homes. So this is not going to do that. That's for sure. I mean, this is not going to get pinball machines in homes, but it could get people interested in competitive pinball, which I think that was the point anyway. Yeah. That was great. So this video currently, as of right now, this thing's, I don't know. I mean, slow mo guys has 14 million views, subscribers. So that was roughly 14 million people that decided whether or not they wanted to click on the video. And then since then, the videos had almost 2 million views in two years. So I don't know. I mean, that, that's insane. Now with that said though, I mean, that stream had 600,000 views. It had 600,000 people, 15 at a time that viewed. So, I mean, sure, let's get more of that. Let's absolutely get more of that. Let's get – I would love – I hope next time Carl – but it would be interesting if Carl would have just been doing his normal stream. If he was just crushing Rush on stream and he happened to make front page. I don't know. I don't know if he would have had the same 15,000 people that would have been interested in watching him play or if it was the tournament aspect that brought him in. I don't know. I'm not going to let that idea go, Joe, because I think if scripted and produced in the right fashion, it may have done better than a competitive pinball series. Do you think just Carl streaming in general? If scripted correctly and telling a story correctly, absolutely. You know what I think people want most of all in a game? They want excitement. They want entertainment. They want the journey to get to the wizard mode. They don't want Player 2 coming up and waiting for the tilt bomb to fucking settle down. They want to hear, I am playing Godzilla. I am Godzilla. I'm going to battle these two battles, and then I'm going to get into this. And, guys, if you hold tight, if we can just get here, and we're about to see a wizard mode that nobody's ever seen before come along the journey, I'm going to, you know, that kind of stuff, that is a show. That's what people want to see. They want to see the excitement. They want to see the ring being destroyed. That's what they want to see. They don't want to see ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's not what they want to see. Why do you watch movies? It's not to watch because of the runtime. Why do you play Super Mario? It's not how many fucking coins you collect. It's because you want to see the boss at the end of the level. That's why you do it. Yeah. I don't know. It's good. It's good. But so, I mean, we can all agree what happened over the weekend, an amazing stream with a ton of views, it's good for pinball. It is good for pinball. But do we know whether or not that's what's going to pull in people? It's probably going to be a mixture of everything. I mean, Jack Danger, he is a great personality, and that's what people fall in love with, his personality. He's pulling people in just because of his personality. And then the pinball and the play just happens to be the icing on the cake, right? There was nothing close to Carl. There was this last IE pinball thing on the front page, and then there was nothing else. I mean, there's very few things that reach that level. You just talked about it. Slow-mo guys reach that level. A freaking Kardashian put her ass on a pinball machine. It reaches that level. Everything else, whether I'm entertaining or Jack Danger's, it's all bullshit because it's like 1,000 views. Who cares? Jack Danger was on the front page. No one. Jack Danger has been on the front page, and he didn't get nearly as many views as Carl did. And this was for reveals. But, I mean, you know, a lot of people have, you know, they've been questionable reviews. You know, a lot of people have complained about the way some of those went. But he has been on the front page, and he's maybe three, like those 3,000 views that he was getting on reveals, Those were more on the newer games that were just being revealed, and people wanted to see those, right? So it's completely, completely different. I mean, we've shown, and this is not a slight, but I know, like, Fliptronic, they had the opportunity to do the reveal for Deep Root. And Jordan and Becca, they're fantastic streamers. They're very entertaining. But they had a ton of views because it was the Deep Root reveal. I mean, that's, like, of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. Adventureland. So that to me, sure, if Spooky or American or somebody called me up and said, hey, Joel, we like what you do. Can you come reveal our game? I mean, yes, is the answer. I'm going to go do it. But do I think I personally am going to bring in a lot more reviews than anybody else that you insert in that position? No. I mean, it's the game. People want to see the game. That's the goal. Send me a punny factory. You've got a Canadian manufacturer here in Canada, send me a Puny Factory, I'll reveal it on my screen. I can guarantee at least 30 viewers or whatever. Well, I will say, so we're at 1130. This conversation went way longer than I expected, but it's been a great conversation. It's been really good. There is a few more things I want to cover and we're going to rely on our good friend Jason Knapp to provide us those things. There's some juicy stuff. I'm skimming over spooky. But this is juicy. And I'm curious, Zach, your thoughts here. But this is a rumor, and he clarified it as a rumor. But apparently sometime last year they're saying, I've been hearing for a while, Chicago Gaming Company is working on remaking Twilight Zone. We've heard that. I mean, there's questions about that. It's one of the most produced games ever made. Is it even that rare? Is this something you want to do? I don't know. But where's the rumor here? Well, the rumor was that a large 1,500-unit order of Twilight Zone ramps was placed last year. He didn't say it was CGC, did he? I don't think so. But it's just saying there was a company that ordered 1,500 ramps. So somebody. They're looking to flip them. They're going to make some big money on flipping these ramps. Max getting into Twilight Zone ramps. I don't know. Don't tempt me. So that to me is, if it's not CGC, who is it? Maybe there's a company we don't know about. Maybe it's something else. I don't know. But, I mean, does that kind of confirm? I mean, it's still a rumor. I get it. But does that mean Twilight Zone is coming? And what are our thoughts on that? I know Twilight Zone is a huge nostalgia poll for a lot of people. It's not for me. It's not for me, but I know Mike's shaking his head. He's getting excited. I used to have one and that probably my biggest regret was getting rid of my Twilight Zone I think it probably I know people will disagree but I think it probably the best wide Bolly Williams and might be one of the best Bolly Williams DMD games period in my opinion In my opinion. I just had to hold his beer. Who would – I knew he'd say that. I knew he'd say that. First go says, give me, give me, give me. Of course he does. Hottie is ready. There's no – It's such a good game. But, Hottie, there's no topper, right? I mean, what are you going to – Not yet. What are you going to do? Zach, I mean, as a distributor, Are you, like, licking your lips over here? You ready? I mean, do you have a – It's hard for them to remake Twilight Zone. I love money, and that thing would print money for me, yes. Oh, yeah, definitely. So is that something – do you get phone calls from people that are, like, hey, like, do you have people call you up requesting old games just because they're like, oh, I remember growing up with Adam's family. You don't happen to have one of those, do you? I mean, is that a – Multiple times a week. So this is – you would be all in on this? absolutely you know what's crazy even more so than this text me on the list now there you go Zach write them down if I had a hundred Medieval Madness remakes in the box I would have them sold by tomorrow afternoon and I'm not being dramatic for the old games Medieval Madness is the Godzilla it's crazy I think Twilight Zone honestly I think I could sell more Medieval Madnesses still than I could Twilight Zone remake whenever we were saying it before whenever something's on top everybody wants a piece of it Twilight Zone's up there but Medieval Madnesses I don't know how many it made a couple thousand still not enough people want it this would be the first licensed remake that they would do too. So, I mean, there's got to be some licensing fees. And I heard that, I thought that there was, I mean, people were talking about there being an issue with the license for Twilight Zone, that it was either too expensive or unobtainable. Well, it's a little harder than original themes, you think about it. You've got Rod Serling, you've got the license that is Twilight Zone, then you have Gold Earring with the song and everything. You have multiple components to that intellectual property. What Knapp's arcade article I don't understand is there's really not enough information there. Like, okay, somebody bought 1,500 ramps. I don't even know what the hell that means. And come to think about it, I mean, what are the TZ ramps made of, Joel? Oh, they're wire forms. There's one metal, one plastic, and the plastic one on the left feeds to a wire form. I'm looking at the habit trails. Yeah. it's plastic it's plastic I thought they were both metal one of them is metal one of them is plastic it doesn't mention which one that they ordered 1500 of those I would say ordering would be plastic because I mean if you're just if you're welding metal ramps together I don't know if CGC does that or not but I think they could I don't know The back-to-form stuff is the stuff you usually send off for. Well, did they buy the Medieval Madness ramps from somebody? Like, do we know if they molded them in-house or if they just had a – Yeah, that's why there's just not enough information here. I don't know. I mean, that's been the rumor. We heard that rumor from Cale Hernandez off of Pinball Party, featured exclusively. Yeah, let me click this Let's Chat button and see if Jason responds. He tells us, yeah, we need more – I just know there's a lot of love for this game, a lot of love for this game. And Medieval Madness, sure, it's very high on the list, but it's just – I know if you're going with nostalgia, there's a lot more people that have played Twilight Zone and Adam's Family than they have Medieval Madness. But it's – I don't know. The answer is Elwynn, Back to the Future. Elwynn, Back to the Future would sell more? Yeah, he's asking which would sell faster, Elwynn, Back to the Future or New Medieval Madness, right? I don't know. I think this is really interesting. If this is, we've heard rumors of this or thoughts of it, but if this actually goes into effect. Now, I do know at least CGC, there's kind of a weird feeling right now because from a distributor standpoint, you guys have a lot of games you're still waiting on. A lot of games you're still waiting on from CGC. And so if CGC is talking about building something new or, you know, it's just like, can we get done? Can we get done what we currently have first? I mean, I don't know. I think we'd be lucky to see a new remake in 2024. Because there's rumors of a licensed theme from CGC. And so hopefully that's what's coming this year. But they still have plenty of Cactus Canyons that they have to get out. Yeah, I think we've received not even 15% of our allotted LEs. And 0% of our SE Plus orders. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it was all topper related, and that could have been – that could be anything. That could be one screw that they're waiting on that's a custom screw. That could be any – not a node board, but some sort of PCV inside. And I don't know. I don't know what we're waiting on, but we're waiting. I thought that was big news. I thought that was definitely big news that was dropped today. I don't know. Any other thoughts on that that I'm missing out on? I know, Chad, there are people that are asking to be put on your list right now, Zach. There are other people that are going. Zach at FlippinOutPinball.com, and we'll get you on any list you want, even Golden Girls. Well, and talking about toppers, I mean, there wasn't a topper originally on Medieval Madness or Attack from Mars, and they made a topper for that. So if they're making it, there's going to be a topper for sure. And not only did they make them, they made them, and they are some of the greatest coppers ever made in pinball. They are pretty insane. Ed said, I want to see Galactic Tank for die. I'm in. I'm all in. Thanks, Adam. Shout out to Adam Streeter. He said he got a CCR nine days ago from flipping out pinball. There we go. There we go. So pretty. We have some spooky pics here. Look at that. One of the things that I'm seeing with these Scooby-Doos, I mean, it looks like they're doing a lot more custom. PCBs underneath for all the lights and whatnot. All the top five cords. Yeah, so basically all individual, not node boards, but everything is going to be linked together. So it looks like probably building those is going to be a whole lot easier for them. Look at that. But obviously if anything goes wrong, they are all custom parts now. Like I know that's one thing I've seen on the CGC games. You lift one of those play field up, and it's almost like one huge custom PCB that is all the lighting on the game, and it's pretty incredible. but yeah I can see the quality control from here I don't know I'm excited I think there was somewhere on this they talked about the stream is still planning on late January so you know I had a pipe dream that I was hoping Zach you would get one for the pinball awards I was hoping you'd get one at ease in time or something but that's probably not going to happen that's a week away if anybody spooky is watching all you got to do is get us one we will stream one for the 27th, the day before, as George Fisher and Joel Engelberth are testing out the rig. We're going to have a live stream the day before the pinball awards, on the 27th, live from the pin barn at Flip N Out Pinball. So I'm hoping either that or, honestly, the 60th anniversary. I reached out this turn. I'll be honest. I told them we'd love to stream the 60th anniversary for the 27th or even leading into the pinball awards on the 28th itself. So I'm pushing and pushing to do everything. Oh, my gosh. Before we leave, I've got to tell some of these people some of the teases of the giveaways we're going to do for the Pinball Awards. Hey, if you want to do it now, I mean, go for it. Gosh, we've got so much. We've got so many people backing us for the Pinball Awards. Mark your calendars. January 28th. It may be a big mess, but it's going to be a big mess with a big pinball family together. Karl DeAngelo's IE Pinball gets $600,000. Might be lucky to get $60,000. And we're okay with that. Yeah. Because we're friends and we're all going to hang out and we're going to celebrate pinball. Those who create pinball, who design it, who code it, who do the music, who do the art, we want to celebrate those individuals as well as the knuckleheads that do media for pinball. But you're going to be live. We're going to be live here on YouTube, I believe. And we're going to be doing some giveaways. So each and every year we want to make an award show be a great representation for us in the community, and we want to give, give, give as much as we can over at the Pinball Network and Flip N Out Pinball. So we're going to be doing giveaways. Stern Pinball, they got our back. They're going to be giving away some stuff, including the Rush Treasure Chest. Yep. Oh, my God. Mike is peaked. Stern Pinball, you wonderful, magnificent people. I heard you're only allowed to give that out to Canadians. That's the candy out there. As long as I don't have to ship it. But Stern Pinball, thank you so much. And that's not even the end of what they're giving. Stern Pinball is so kind to be supporting the Pinball Awards this year. They're going to be giving away more stuff. Not only that, Jersey Jack Pinball said, hell, yes, sign us up. We love everything TPN, and we love the Pinball Awards. We're going to be giving away not one but two playfields. playfields. What? We ain't dealing with no little trinkets, no little playfields. A Toy Story playfield, a Guns N' Roses playfield. That's going to be unbelievable. Also, for the pinball, and you guys, all you got to do is watch. Watch the pinball awards live on the 28th, and it's not like you have to do your homework. You can win. It's going to be like a random thing. If you're there and you sign up, you can win. Look at that treasure chest, the Russ treasure chest. Mike, whoever wins it, Mike is ready to buy the hat off of you. I'll buy the hat He wants the hat so bad And the shirt And courtesy of Flip N Out Pinball I believe There's going to be so much cool stuff I'm not even going to announce here that we're going to be giving away I can guarantee you we'll be giving away Shooter Rods I guarantee you we'll be giving away Side Art, hell we'll give away a topper I'll give away a topper Whether it's a Turtles topper, maybe I give a Deadpool topper away I don't know, maybe a Stranger Things topper I could even give away some playfields myself or back glasses. I don't know if I can give that away. Maybe some custom back glasses. It's going to be a lot of fun. Other manufacturers, we're waiting on them. We're in discussions with some giveaways there as well. And maybe some surprises, some industry surprises at the pinball awards, formerly the pinball industry awards. So we're wanting to make it fun. Maybe next year we'll do it live in Chicago. We don't know what we're going to do. Maybe next year we burn it all to the ground and we don't do a damn thing. But it's nice to hear that the manufacturers have our back, and they really, really appreciate it. They voice that. They appreciate what the community, what all of us are doing to celebrate together. I will say I'm part of that committee, so I've been able to kind of see this or experience this from the background. And to see the number of votes we got was awesome. Yeah. Seeing the results, like counting it and being a part of it, I'm very happy. with like I'm excited for this show. I think it's going to be fun. No knock on last year, but like last year just Godzilla was Godzilla, right? I mean it's like who won this? Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla. I mean that's no fault to the award show, but like I'm telling you this will be a very entertaining and interesting award show because of what's going on. And we're going to try to make it as fun as we can. As a committee we talked about that. We're like, what are we doing? And I know Zach's incredibly good at making highly produced shows. Don't talk it up too much. But that's what I'm saying is we threw this out and we're like, what if we did it live? You know, you have this amazing pin barn. Like, let's get some people there. Let's have a great time and let's just enjoy ourselves. And that's the goal. So I know, unfortunately, Mike and Craig over in Canada getting you guys in was going to be a challenge. And Craig's dad, I think it's his 80th birthday, so you can't come. But it's going to be a fun time. Yeah. Happy Bobby. And you, Papa. But it's going to be a really fun time. So we're not trying to hype it up too much. It will be fun. I know I'm going to have a blast. I'm going to be there looking forward to it. It's a wreck. People are about to win stuff. So who cares, right? Yeah. Just show up and be ready to play. And the awards are spectacular. The awards themselves. Those crystal glass. I mean, there's nothing like them. Look, I got one right here. Look at this. It's a little dirty. I think any industry would be jealous to have it. Look at that thing. Look at it. The thing is freaking loose. The weight of it. He's hurting his back holding the thing. Well, I think this one says best show. I think Zach in the pinball show said, if you want to come, send an email to, what was it? What did you want? Send an email. It doesn't, or the pinballnetworkatgmail.com. Say why you want to come. I don't know. He's like, sell it. Let's get you there. Yeah. Why not? I don't know. I can't wait. Except unless you're a weirdo. If you're a weirdo, be self-aware enough to know you're a weirdo and don't come. All right. Enough weirdos I have to deal with. The best part is Fathom was a game that you could vote on from day one. Fathom was included in our ballot. Yes, it was. Yeah. All right. So what else do we have? I thought you guys were very generous in talking about that, by the way. I think if I'm going to be just because. Give me the 50th anniversary treatment there, C. Bobby. I was not associated with that, or I haven't been ever. I thought it was, I'm trying to pick my words. I'm not trying to be too brutal about it. But I thought it was a sign as to how far down that award show has dropped. and I think it starts exactly where Zach took the right turn with the award itself. When you look at that thing, and I know, you know, you don't have to put everything into the award, but is that twippy? I know what it represents, but the thing stands this high. I've seen bowling trophies and my kid's frigging soccer trophy that looks, you know, in House League Soccer that looks better than that thing. so I think the whole thing just sort of speaks to a lack of commitment to that award frankly and I know people have been working hard on it but when you leave out a manufacturer who's been frankly manufacturing stuff for a couple of years now I think that speaks to itself as to what the fuck is going on over there that's my hot take on all that I would have burned the whole thing down I'd be like, it's done. We're done. We're done. We're easy with it just because I just feel the pain of anybody that tries to put something together and makes a mistake. God, I know I'm going to have a freaking nip slip this year or something. So I don't want to jinx anything. So I'm like, you know what? We're rolling live. There's no way it'll be perfect, but it'll be fun. But I get it. I mean, even what I've been involved in with the Pinball Awards, I feel for Will. I feel for Will. Obviously, I think it was an honest mistake, but, yeah, you'd hope with a committee, you would hope there would be a review process. We had multiple meetings. We had a lot of discussions. And, hey, something may still slip through even what we're all doing. So I don't know. I feel for them. I feel for Haggis that the mistake was made, but we're just going to have to see. Miles, Cameron, and Chad knew this year's Ben Ball Awards is the public does get to vote as well. Look at this thing. I remember Albert said, look at this, Reach Around Award. Yeah, the Reach Around Award is pretty incredible. Does anybody want this? Does everybody want one of these things? The public vote was really cool. I can't even get in front of the camera. I will say I was involved in looking at the tallies, and the public vote was – it was cool. And I don't want to go into too much detail, but, like, it's not throwing. That is to be treasured and handed down through the generations. That is, like, yes. That is what – The Reach Around Award. I mean that is what I call an award right there alright well let's do the only other thing that I wanted to discuss that is on Nap Arcade was once again unexpected company to remake one of the world's worst games I feel like Big Bang Bar has been talked about for a while about remade but they're saying there's rumblings that some other company other than CGC might be remaking Big Bang Bar I don't know. I just don't see the appeal. I thought the appeal of this game was the rarity of it, but to me, like, this is like, eh, whatever. I just, this didn't, like, Twilight Zone, boom, eyes wide open. Like, okay, great. Like, this is a big deal. But I just don't, I don't know. I don't know why so many people are... Yeah, why do people love this game? Can someone tell me that? Why this game, besides the rarity of it, yeah, besides the rarity of it, Is there anything else that's good about it? I mean, if you look at the backstory to the game, it's an interesting backstory. But, I mean, it really is only because of the rarity of the game and just sort of the lore. It's really more about the lore of the game than the game itself. I don't know that the game is regarded as a great playing game by any means. But I also think that, you know, this has been rumored for years now. so I mean it's people are just like oh yeah Big Bang Fire again okay whatever is going to happen I think wasn't it the same is it Circus Maximus or something the company that was supposed to be doing Kingpin they were supposed to be doing this as well weren't they so I wonder if it is them and they're coming back out again but we're also hearing Rothreels and Rothreels does have a little bit of a connection to pinball in that the well the name guy the IFPA Josh Sharpe is, you know, he's an employee there. So credibility? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it'd be interesting. Zach, are you ready to place an order for a bunch of these to sell? I mean. I'm with Mike. He gives me the same feeling as hearing about, you know, Kingpin being made. I'm like, all right, that's fine. All right, cool. So Albert there in chat, tons of cool mechs, awesome art, unique gameplay. Maybe I just, I don't think I've seen one. I don't think I've seen one in person. Maybe it would blow me away. I don't know. Penrex is right, though. It is a little raunchy. Yeah. It's a little risque. I just, to me, of all the games to remake. The alien strippers in it. Those page dancers in there. Yeah. Well, maybe that's the thought. It's got to be easier to remake an unlicensed game, right? It's got to be way easier. It's a wit. And some people said the same thing about Cactus Canyon, though. They're like, why do people like Cactus Canyon? It's because it's rare. But that game, I mean, that game's selling well. It's a fun game. So maybe that's the idea of, well, what unlicensed games are out there that if you're going to remake an unlicensed game, what's going to demand more or sell more? I don't know. Do you go this route or do you go for, like, high speed, you know, something? High speed. I'm just thinking. Twilight Zone. Talking about Twilight Zone. Well, I mean, not a license, but I'm talking in sheer numbers. There's 15,000 of them already made, right? So it's not a rare game by any means. So that's not the appeal for it, right? High Speed. Yes, that is unlicensed. A remake. Would a remake for High Speed do as good as the other remakes? I don't know. And that might be only because, I mean, it's not an expensive, rare game, right? I mean, you can get one even here in Canada for like 6,000 Canadian. That's not, you know, to buy a new one. I mean, you're not going to make, I don't know, that they would make a remake on a game that's not at a premium price. Now, in the secondary market, why would you remake it and try and get, you know, $3,000 more than what it's going for on the market used? Well, let's look. So, unlicensed games, right? So, Medieval Madness already being remade. Attack from Mars already happened. Monster Bash. Monster Bash is kind of a licensed game though I would say oh okay, Cactus Canyon already happened where are we at? what's the next Unlicensed Tales? is that the next unlicensed theme? does that make sense? that makes more sense than a high speed or something I could sell some Totens would you rather have Toten or Theater of Magic? Theater of Magic probably sales probably Toten from a sales point just because they go for more money Theater Magic go for a couple thousand less than a Toten so that to me is number 34 right there that would be the best one to do Circus Voltaire I think Circus would do worse than Toten and Theater Whitewater I mean I own Circus it's one of my favorites what about Whitewater Scared Stiff I don't think would do that great Scared Stiff is licensed Whitewater I think would do pretty good I mean if that just to me if I'm like if they're saying a different pinball manufacturer is going to step in here and do a remake you know I don't want to here's a strong take for you guys I think Whitewater would do better than Circus Voltaire I don't know why I think it's just because there's more and more exposure to the game for people and they know the game. A lot of people haven't had any time on Circus Voltaire, right? They only know it as a rare, expensive game. I like Big Bang Bar, though. I just think there's... I would have picked all of those games, all three of those Papaduke games, before I'd take Big Bang Bar, if I was going to bet my company on what remake should we do But maybe they, I don't know, maybe it's trying to get a hold of that. That's because those are proven games. Those are proven, you know, games. Bing, bang, big bang bar. I think there's only 23 of them or something like that in the wild. It's not a proven game, right? I mean, we don't know. They don't play like that at East, too. Yeah. Man. They don't have that feel that, you know, Allie Williams feel. I don't know. I don't know. Well. We really shook some people up tonight. We had some strong takes. Yes, we had some strong takes tonight. I think, I mean, where are we at? We're in a wait-and-see situation. Hopefully we get some gameplay from Scooby-Doo within the next few weeks. Hopefully we get some gameplay with Bond 60th within the next few weeks. Ooh, I can't wait for that. You know, it is January. We're in the middle of January. I'm hearing Bond 60th is getting close to being on the line. I hope we get, you know, we're due. We're due for some reveals here. If CGC has a licensed game, where's that at? American, hello, where's that at? So hopefully we see some stuff. Hopefully we see some stuff coming out here soon. You got a month and a half maybe, a month and a half until maybe the next Cornerstone from Stern too in March. Yeah. Hopefully, right? We're getting there. We're getting there. Yeah, and I know it's going to be either Jack Danger and Tanya, or it's going to be Dwight and Brian. So it's going to be one of those two. I don't know. We're just going to have to see. So, but yeah. We're going to have to what, Craig Bobby? Yeah, it's perfect plug. Yeah. Wait and see. Yes. Well, let's go ahead and plug it up. Craig, you're welcome to go first. Oh, I'm going to start it off since I'm talking already. All right. Well, my name is Craig Bobby. And, of course, I help out over on the Pinball Show with the Top Stories news segment that you can hear every Monday with Zach Menny and Dennis Creasel. And we are, of course, proudly part of the Pinball Network. I want to give a quick little promo. I don't think she's going to mind me doing this. Hopefully I'm not going to get into trouble. But I'm going to give a quick little teaser here for another TPNer. And that is to Amanda Hamilton and Bill Webb's podcast, which is called the Free Play Pinball Podcast. and I had the pleasure of being a guest host on that podcast this week. So that episode will be dropping soon. And guess who our special guest was this particular episode? I know the answer. The pinball designer. Yeah. Probably one of the most prolific and popular pinball designers in the hobby these days, and that is the one and only Mr. John Borg. Whoa! Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a special guest. Yes. Yes. I'm excited for that. I'm excited for that podcast. I think that will be very well done. Did you ask him where your Rush premium is? I did. That was one of the questions. That was one of the questions. What's going on with the Rushes? So, yeah, we picked his brain about everything Rush and some of his other titles, some of his design philosophies. Such a nice guy and was very open, had a lot of great stories, as many of the designers do from their various histories. And anyway, I thought it was a really entertaining hour and change, and I encourage everyone to check that out when it gets released over the next, probably in the next week I would suspect that's going to come out. Perfect. And we do have a request from chat here. Sterling's wondering if you can do your Bond song there real quick. Get editing, Amanda. Oh, this is the Bond theme, yes. I'll do that. Warm up the team. He's going to warm up. That's great. All right, we'll keep going here. Zach, go for it, man. I can't do it. No, I'm kidding. Nicole! Nicole! Oh, no. Yeah, I'm Zach Minney. You've got to listen to the Pinball Show, people. What's that on Pinball Podcasting? You've got to watch these VODs. You've got to watch these live things at Flip N Out Pinball. And when you want to see a sexy beast, it's either Joel Engelberth or it's Greg Bone over at Straight Down the Middle. So go check that out. You all can back off of Greg Bone's mom. She's all mine. I want to thank everybody in chat that's here to support us. Extra brownie points for those in chat that are Flip N Out Pinball customers. Thank you so much. without you, there wouldn't be anything that I'm doing because the support is unbelievably helpful. And also, hopefully, as we're doing these big discussions and these debates and stuff live on stream here, I want people to remember that what I'm trying to do, I'm not trying to upset people, and I hope it comes across that I love pinball more than anybody could ever know, and I want nothing more for it to grow. And sometimes I feel like if things are a little bit stagnant, things need to be shaken up a little bit so that they can be discussed in different viewpoints. So hopefully you all understood where I'm coming from. And maybe, just maybe either one or two ideas that I have every once in a while might make a little bit of sense if we allow them to. That's all. Or maybe I'm just a freaking idiot. Bye, bye, bye. Thanks, Joel. Yes, no, thank you, Zach. Thank you, Zach, for letting me stream on this channel. Mike, go for it, man. You can catch us on Pinballers, twitch.tv slash pinballers. Streaming, we don't really have a schedule anymore, but you can check us out on Facebook, Pinball Retro Streams, Instagram at pinballerstv. We are, a little plug for ourselves, We are hoping to stream the Ontario Provincial Championships this weekend on our channel, Saturday at noon, Eastern Time, on Pinballers, provided the internet is suitable enough for us to do so. So check out that stream. You'll see some of the best players in Ontario, including TPN's own myself, Carter. Jeff Teolis will be there as well, competing, and some other great players in Ontario as well. So check that out if you can. Otherwise, if the Internet's not good enough, I'm going to record it locally and we'll pop it up on YouTube for you guys to check out as well. Perfect. Yeah, and I'm Joel Engelbert. This has been the Flip N Out Pinball stream. Every Wednesday from 10 to midnight, please come join the chat. I apologize. The chat was moving quick. The chat was moving quick tonight. We had a lot of people here. It was awesome. So I try to read and stay on top of every comment and try to keep the conversation going as best we can. But if you're seeing this after the fact on YouTube, yeah, please join the chat live. It's a good time. Otherwise, any comment that you put, I try to read those and stay on top of those as well. Appreciate you, Zach. Appreciate you, Zach, for letting me borrow these games and letting me stream here on the Flip N Out Pinball channel. Let's get you a 60th anniversary. You want to? I'm in. Let's do it. That would be great. And Craig and Mike. That's my good point. Yeah. That's my good point. Craig and Mike, appreciate you guys. Appreciate you guys for being here tonight. But, yeah, thanks for everybody that was here. I love this. This is only the third week of streaming on YouTube, and I love that the people are here. People follow. People. Yeah, smash that like button. Smash that like button. Click the bell. Click the bell. Why wouldn't you? Do it. Well, there's only one way we can end this stream. And, Craig, you've got to take us out, man. Oh, so satisfying. She might want to sit upstairs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel good. I feel good now. You need a cigarette. All right. Perfect. All right. We'll see you guys later. I didn't even have it on turbo there. It wasn't even on turbo. Oh, turbo. We need to wait for that. All right. Have a great night, Chad. See you guys. Bye, guys.