you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at head Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 92 and my name's Martin and with me once again... Jimmy Nails. Jimmy Nails. How are you, mate? Good, mate. How are you? I'm good. So, I mean, you know this and I know this, but I don't know whether recent listeners know this, but you were our very first guest we ever had on Head to Head, I think on episode two. Yeah, that is very true. Far out. And we had you on last year to talk about the Brisbane Masters. This year, Brisbane Masters is just freaking massive. It is now, I think it's called something else, and it's a much bigger event. For you, I guess probably the question I want to ask is, why should people want to come to this event and tell me all about it? Well, so yeah, the Masters is still the Masters, but it's all moved under a bigger umbrella. So the umbrella is the Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective, which is a not-for-profit group that I started with the other arcade bars in Brisbane. And we formulated that because we've been offered a space to run a pinball and arcade showcase at the Ecker. Do you know what the Ecker is? No. I kind of do. It's kind of like an exhibition centre or something. Yeah, it's kind of like, well, you know the Royal Show in Melbourne? Yes, I do. That's that. It's just got a very funny colloquial name up here for some reason. Okay. But it's the Queensland Royal Show, locally known as the ECHA. So I was just having a trawl through their webpage before of all the stuff that's going to be on around us. So it's a huge space. There's carnival rides. There's show bags. There's a wine hall. There's a craft beer hall. There's monster trucks, motocross, every animal under the sun. It's mostly an agricultural show, so there's a lot of, like, wood chopping and cow judging. Yeah, livestock, all that kind of stuff. Okay, so I've got to admit, I did not realise that this was going to be on as part of the Royal Queensland Show. Yeah, it is. That already is freaking huge. Yeah, it's nuts. So what's going to be, I think, most fun about this event is you'll be able to spend, you know, five, ten hours a day playing pinball. But on your breaks or in between events, you'll be able to walk out into one of the silliest and craziest agricultural and carnivals in the world. So especially for our overseas guests, they're going to get every element of Australian life magnified by a thousand at this event. So it's going to be pretty funny. there's a lot of there's a really good beer and wine element as well which a lot of we love as well like you can you can go to the wine hall and not pay a cent and come out pretty happy at the other end so and then there's like sideshow alleys so there's all the carnival rides and games you can go do um so we're we're kind of up the back um against one of the i guess the perimeters where there's a huge bar called the stockman's bar and right next that's the biggest bar within the grounds. It's got a big beer garden and whatnot in front of it and right next to that is us. We're 380 square metres right next to the bar. So, hoping to squeeze in 50 pinballs and 25 arcade machines and 150 people hopefully. And so just for a tournament or is there also just games on free play as well? So there'll be a lot of in-between events. The games will be on Cointrop for the general public because they really want to push the public to come through the space as well. Especially the first weekend, we'll probably only be using 50% to 60% of the pinballs on site for the events. So the remaining machines will be on free pay for the public. So I'm probably going to have a few people hanging around basically as helpers to kind of talk to the general public as they're coming into the space, explain to them what's going on, like, come over here there's a tournament happening here if you want to watch that there's some games over here on free play those games are on coin drop and just really trying to engage with the public and show them what we're doing that first weekend is i've also moved my huge donkey kong event the kong off which has been a netherworld event the last two years but it's kind of outgrown netherworld so we're moving the kong off into the b-pack showcase as well so that'll be running in the same space alongside the Classics event that first weekend. So then, before we get on to what's on for pinball, which is really the main course for us, talk to me about the Kong-Off, because I know that you have been doing this for a while, and you've been streaming it on the Netherworld Twitch page as well, and some very well-known people have come for it. Why is it so big now? I think the Kong-Off has been running in batting across the US I think for 7 years now it's a pretty big event probably one of the biggest arcade events on the planet obviously it's all culminated from the King of Kong documentary from 10 odd years ago where Billy Mitchell and Walter Day I guess made competitive gaming really put it in the spotlight and a lot of people got back into the competitive element of gaming really got hard into Donkey Kong. So there's a lot of players that play Donkey Kong to a really high level and giving them a chance to all meet and hang out in the same space for the weekend. I guess the same reason we love pinball meets, the same reason they love Kong Off. So I don't think I realized what I was doing or what an impact it would have when I decided to call the Australian one the Kong Off. But Richie Knuckles got in contact straight away and said, this is amazing, can I come? so he's been to the last two comm-offs in Australia he's the creator of the original comm-offs and then this year thanks to some sponsors we've gone pretty crazy and we're flying out Richie Billy Mitchell and Walter Day for the first weekend which is going to be going to be something I don't think I've ever been starstruck but I might just be by Billy so we shall see I've met Billy I met him at I think it was, well, I was F Indisc, but it was Arcade Expo. Yeah. He's just a very approachable guy. Yeah, he is. From the phone conversations I've had with him over the last couple of years, he's an extremely lovely guy. So he's bringing his wife and son, I believe. Richie's bringing his daughter along, so it's going to be a pretty fun weekend. And Walter Day, I think, is turning 70 this weekend, so pretty excited to get him over. He's going to be performing his Walter Day trading card ceremony at some stage on that first weekend. So lots of people coming along just to meet those guys. And the come-off will be hopefully as big as it's been last year. 50 to 60 strong players we got last year, so hoping to do the same this year. But is it always one of these things where, you know, someone's always going to win and everybody else is an also-ran? No, no way, no. it's super competitive no it's um uh finals can you know like you would know the finals and the pressure of finals format can do can do amazing things to you so i think the first year it's come off the favorites got bumped out in the first round he just had a extreme probably the worst game he'd had in like five years just happened to happen in the first round of finals so the favourite was out first round first year and I would say the favourite or the defending champion was out the second round this year and the favourite this year was out in the third so it's definitely that pressure environment makes it at anyone's game literally anyone who can turn up and get above say 200,000 it's their chance to win and how long does a 200,000 score game last well that's only probably 45 minutes I think it's only 45 minutes I don't know about you but if I can last 5 minutes on Donkey Kong I'm happy yeah I'm probably pushing 15 at best so kill screen I think is about 2 and a half to 3 hours so we saw a kill screen at the first tournament I'm going to make a big kill screen bounty this time to push the guys to really try and throw one down on the first weekend But these guys are pretty amazing players. They're pretty incredible to watch. When you learn a little bit about the screens and how to control the barrels and stuff like that, it's a pretty fascinating game. Okay. And do you have multiple machines running concurrently? We'll have... Last year, Netherworld built five Donkey Kongs from scratch. So we will be... We'll have nine Donkey Kongs with original hardware running... Yes. That weekend, yeah. You don't want MAME-based. We definitely don't. People could get into trouble for that. They definitely will. Awkward, yes. All right, so then talk to me about the Brisbane Masters and all the pinball thing that's happening. Because I know you've also got people coming out for that. Yeah, so we're running 10 days straight. The ECA goes for 10 days. So we're running 10 days straight of IFPA events in Brisbane. so it does move around a little bit the first weekend we're doing a pump and dump on the opening Friday the Saturday we're doing a Classics target match play and a Classics flip frenzy and then on the Sunday we're doing a 10 strikes fair strikes tournament plus a split flipper tournament in the evening and then it breaks out a little bit, the Monday night is at Pinkadia the Tuesday night is at Netherworld the Wednesday night is down the Gold Coast and then we're back to Brisbane for a Herb warm-up tournament. The Queensland Women's Pinball Championship is on and then culminating on the final weekend with Brisbane Masters. So we're on the Stern Pro Circuit for the first time, which is pretty thrilling. Congratulations for that. We've mentioned that many times and just super stoked that you're on the radar. On the radar, man. I couldn't believe it when Luke gave me the call. So that was a straight yes. I didn't think about that for a second. I didn't ring Lambeau to double-check. I'm just like, yes, please. So pretty thrilled with that. And that's already drawn a few international players. Colin Urban is coming with his whole family, I believe, or at least his mum and dad. Who else is coming? Escher Lefkoff is coming. Escher Lefkoff, I've heard, is coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a few other regular international pinball players like Connor Stowe and Jessica Donato will be there. Awesome. And then obviously we fall to some more of our special guests. So thanks to our sponsors, we're flying out Bowen Kerins, which, you know, a lot of us could credit for learning some finer flipper and pinball skills probably over the last decade. Yeah, no doubt has been instrumental in a lot of us. I'm certainly understanding the rules of machines better. But, yeah, flipper skills as well. his tutorials are great because and I did one and I'll link this in the show notes for those people who haven't seen it but we did a video at Texas Pinball Festival of him playing Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle and just the way that he explains what he's doing and then does it is just mesmerising isn't it I know so very, I met Bowen at Pinberg last year and had lunch with him a couple of times, he's extremely again extremely approachable and and friendly so he's pretty thrilled to come he's bringing his partner as well he's here i think for 10 days i think he gets here on the first monday um so he'll he'll do he'll travel down he'll go down the coast and see everyone and um here through the whole weekend and then um Steve Ritchie as well is coming okay so let's talk about that was that really easy to do did you just go hey steve we'll fly you out and he went yep or Or was there sort of timing around that? And how long have you been planning that? Steve was, of all the guests coming, Steve was the easiest to get, to negotiate with, I guess. Steve was, Dr. John had kind of worded him up a little bit and had suggested it to Steve that I might call. And Steve was like, yep, tell him to call, I'm in. And I did, and he was just like, yep, let's go, I'm ready to go. You tell me the dates, you tell me where I've got to be. And he's just been amazing. He's like, tell everybody to bring everything. I want to sign the whole of Australia. I want to eat all the weirdest and most wonderful food you can find me. I want to drink the worst beer you can find me. Well, even then, the worst beer in Australia is still pretty good, as long as it's not 4X. No, he's mentioned 4X a couple of times, so I think he's pretty keen to try the local macro stuff, but very excited to get him. I have a feeling we'll have something like 12-plus Steve Ritchie titles at the event, probably more. Okay. So maybe we'll have a Steve Ritchie Hall of Fame, a Wall of Fame somewhere in the... But that would be pretty cool, so very excited. I've been emailing him a little bit this week, and he's a very funny man. He's very excited. I mean, that's cool right there. And we sort of mentioned it a few weeks ago that Steve Ritchie was coming, and it was just this holy crap moment where you just go, right? This is what's really good about the event that you're putting on is obviously we're getting players that are coming over as well, but also to have these very well-known people that we just never thought would ever come to Australia. Actually, you and I know we were trying to organise a couple of years ago for Bowen to come out, but just timing wasn't great at the time for Bowen. So just freaking amazing that you were able to get him out. Yeah, it's brilliant. Like, obviously, he'll be coming pretty much straight off the back of Pinberg, so I guess he'll be sleeping most of the way here, and hopefully he'll be a million dollars. But he's got a really nice apartment right next to Netherworld, so they'll be pretty comfortable. The Echo Space showgrounds is only about a five-minute walk from Netherworld. Okay. So that's something I'd like to let everyone know as well. So any event entry fee you buy, So if you buy a ticket to the Masters or the Classics match play, every entry fee includes a free gate pass into the ECCA showgrounds. Ah, good. I've yet to buy my ticket, so thank you. So they're a line there worth, you know, $30 to $40 just to get in the gate. So ECCA have copped us a real – they've been super friendly. They're very excited to get everybody in. They actually asked me to send them some documentaries that all their staff can watch to get excited about everyone who coming so um they getting really behind it but um so the idea then will be um players will drop by netherworld when they get to brisbane and you'll essentially be collecting from us there a show bag and in the show bag it'll have your your event lanyard it'll have your gate passes however many days of gate passes you need it'll have a little bit of swag from all the sponsors our merchandise store is going to go live in the next couple of days so you'll have Masters t-shirts, I've got short sleeve, long sleeve I've got hoodies, hats, beanies so anything that you pre-purchase through the store between now and the end of July, that will be ready and waiting for you when you get to Netherworld to collect your show bag so I'm pretty excited to put all those together, a lot of the sponsors are putting together something special for the people that bought the zipper pass as well um so we sold 45 of those at the what's the zipper pass uh the zip pass is the all access you're you get access into every event okay um so it's it was that was 300 we had that for sale for two weeks before everything else went on sale uh it comes with a free t-shirt a limited edition pin a bunch of limited swag and And, yeah, special lanyard. So pretty thrilled just to get that many people that excited that early. So it kind of means that the first weekend was pretty much half sold out before we'd even begun. So that made us a really strong start. So when the merch does go up for purchase, where's it going to be available? It'll just be on a – a friend of mine's got a merchandise company, so that'll just be a BPAC page. Okay. And I'll put that link up hopefully early next week, and you'll be able to see all that. There's different colored T-shirts. You pick your own size. And, yeah, I just wanted to have a bit more variety than having another black T-shirt, which were also, like, if you open my cupboard, it's just a sea of black T-shirts. I actually had two. I had to rearrange my wardrobe the other day, and I've actually now got them categorized. And I've got my biggest category is pinball shirts. Yeah. And I think nine out of ten of them are black. Yeah, it's amazing, right. So I did want to have, you will be able to choose between, I think it's army green, a really nice navy or black. Yep. And you can also choose to have the main artwork on the front or you can have it on the back with a pocket. Okay. I just wanted to give everyone that option this year so we weren't for something different. The artwork, I think, is great. Brian Holderman, who I met at Pinberg, got along with him really well. He's done the master's artwork. I don't know if you've seen the poster, but it's amazing. Yeah. It's incredible. so yeah, and then all the Kong-Off stuff will be very, the Kong-Off artworks, we've done the same thing with T-shirts and hoodies and whatnot, so pretty excited to get that up for everyone to see. Yeah, and look, you're obviously going to put it up on your Facebook page, so I'd encourage everybody to get to the Facebook page. You can just, you know, do a Facebook search for Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective, or it's facebook.com slash B-N-E-P-A-C. That will get you there as well, so. I just did a nice link this week. I've created a bios page where I would love people to get on and just tell us a little bit about themselves and where they're coming from and to send me a photo. I'd love to keep track of how many people are coming from NZ, from the US, from different states. So that should be a fun little page for us to keep track of. Yeah, and I hope that we do get, if people are listening to this podcast and they're sort of, you know, do I or don't I? Just do because you know it's very rare you get an event that goes for 10 days and as you said it there's so much to do you can actually do pinball the whole time or you can do the show the whole time or you can go around and check out some of brisbane as well yeah brisbane has an incredible little microcosmos of arcade bars as well so yeah there is heaps to do uh even just within walking distance of of the showgrounds so yeah okay so tell me tell me more about the the main event so this is the last three days what's the what's the format for this one so brisbane masters we've actually amped up a tiny bit um where brisbane masters starts at 10 a.m on the final saturday and it's seven rounds of match play uh swiss style so the first round is random depending on your ifpa ranking uh earlier that week uh and then after that it's uh swiss style so one plays four uh 5 to 8 and so on 7 rounds of match play, 3 games per round so that will finish around let's say 7 or 8 o'clock on the Saturday evening and then we've got a stall ball cup that night for a bit of a wind down and fun tournament and then the top 72 come back on Sunday and they're broken up into grades so there's A grade A, B, C and D grade finals A grade is the top 24 and then B, C and D are the next groups of 16 down so hoping to get to I think we had 122 players last year, I'd love to get to 140 or more this year so to come back and play on the Sunday you've only got to make the top 50% cut I guess and then the I really love our format, our finals format so the machines are broken down, as you'll see on the Saturday, into banks. And on the Sunday, the highest seed in a matchup chooses a bank of machines. And A-grade play all A-grade matchups that are best of five, and B, C, and Ds are best of three. So the highest seed in group A, in A-grade, will choose a bank first, and then the next seed and down until the final seed in group D chooses the last bank on the table, basically. But, yeah, I really love watching people make that decision. You know, you might have a – it's pretty rare you're going to spot a perfect bank on there. You're going to have to take a hit probably out of five games. There's no way – it's very rare you're going to see five games that's just your bank and that that bank might be there to choose. So it's pretty fun watching people agonize over that. I'm not playing this year. I'm just going to TD. So I'll be managing all that just to make sure everything runs smoothly. so I thoroughly enjoy watching people sweat on the Sunday finals I totally get that so last year I think at Melbourne Match Play I'd qualified first so I got to choose a bank that was going to be taken out and I was leaving it up until the last minute I wasn't going to tell anybody but everyone was coming up saying oh it's definitely going to be this bank because I know you don't like this game or you love this game and people sweat on it because they just don't know It's hard for you to prepare for either the rules and all these that you need or how comfortable you are with the machines until it's known. Yes. So that's lots of fun. I like how you're doing that too. Yeah, I really, really like the format. So it makes for good fun. And then I think another good thing we'll do on the finals, we'll push probably out to hopefully five or six that evening, and then we've got the closing party flip frenzy starting not long after. So Masters last year went really well because just, you know, often you're at a major tournament, and by the time you get to the A-grade finals, there's only a handful of people left around. But this way, the majority of people are coming back in for the closing party, so hopefully we have, you know, 100, 200 people around to watch the A-grade final. Vinnie and I are going to work really, really hard on the stream this year, so not just on the stream but also the live feed within the space and making sure there's a couple of spots for people to watch the final. and you've seen our new fancy mobile rig, which we've been talking about this week. Yes, that's right. I just got my frame yesterday. Great. I don't know whether it is what I need, but it's based on your specs. So if it's wrong, it's your fault. It is my fault. Well, mine turned all put together as well. So yours is obviously flat-packed in pieces. Yeah, well, that's right, because they had to ship it down from Brisbane to Melbourne. Yeah. So I'm anxious to open it up just in case. I'm really happy with ours. Even though the wheels look quite small, it feels really sturdy. It moves really easily. I had it running at Death by Pinball this year, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago now. And just the actual speed in which you can move it from a machine to a machine is incredible. It's only, you know, slide it over, click the feet down into lock, adjust two cameras within a few seconds and and you're away again so and how's how's the line of sight with the um hdmi transmitters is that easy it's very very literal it has to actually be a line of sight so even at netherworld i was going from room to room uh and not every time but going through the two rooms i had to cross a pillar and so the line of sight was lost for a second and a couple of times one of them would lose the transmission. So it's very literal. So I'm hoping, well, at least at the B-Pack showcase, it's just one giant space. There are no pillars. There's no partitions or anything that will be in the way. So hoping if I put the transmitters up high enough, we'll be able to cover the entire floor. Yeah. So streamers of the world, we all owe Carl D'Python Anghelo a debt of gratitude for coming up with this concept because I see them popping up everywhere and Melbourne Silver Ball is going to be the same soon. Right, yeah, I'm really happy with ours. And now I just pull it out, I stream every Thursday, so I'm just getting used to it and being able to pull it out and set it up in a few minutes instead of 30. And so with all the different events that you've got over the 10 days, Are any of them capped or is it just sign up and away you go? Sign up and away. I mean, capped, you're talking 150 plus, which if we get to that for Masters, I'll be absolutely thrilled. I hope we do. We're nearly up to 90 already, so we're still three months out and we're up to 90. So I think I'm pretty confident we'll get to 130 plus. One event has already sold out, which is the Classics Flip Frenzy on the first weekend. only because that's split frenzies as you know are capped by the amount of machines yeah correct I'm going to have 50 on the floor but only 20 to 30 of them are going to be classic that weekend the space will be classic heavy that weekend and I'll balance the floor out as the week goes on but yeah so that's been capped at 65 maybe 70 at the minute so that event has sold out but everything else you're looking at 140 plus, no problem. Yeah, okay. Well, as I said before, I would like to see more people travelling and the last bit of enticement I will give everybody is the fact that our, I saw it yesterday, the Australian dollar is now sitting at 68 US cents. Whoa. Like, it's shithouse. It is terrible. So it's terrible for us going around the world but if you come to Australia and your money will just go so far. So just do it. My God. I can't reiterate how much fun the actual Queensland Royal Show space is going to be. Just how much fun it's going to be to be able to walk out of the showcase area into some of the silliest and funnest events you'll see. I'm probably going to do a bounty of some type to see who can come back with the biggest plush toy for the week that they've won in Sideshow Alley. but there's all that type of stuff you know the laughing clowns and throwing darts at balloons and the milk bottles and all that sort of stuff is there the creepy laughing clowns yeah there's probably a spooky train ride or something like that yeah a haunted house or you know ghost train ghost train is what I'm thinking they'll have one of those also known as the death trap but sure let's not go there and then in the middle of the week we're doing some fun stuff as well I'm doing like kids pinball and arcade masterclasses on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Awesome. Because traditionally there's around Brisbane, different regions of Brisbane get a public holiday through the ECCA week. So instead of the entire state getting a holiday on the same day, they put it into banks. So like the northern regions have a holiday, for example, on the Monday, the south on the Tuesday, the city on the Wednesday. So I think over 400,000 people come through the ECCA. So we're doing kids stuff on the mornings through the week. I'm doing an under-16s IFPA event through the week, parent and child competitions as well, just to try and, again, have people with friendly faces in the space just engaging with the public throughout and just explaining to them why we're here and what we're doing and what competitive pinball and arcade looks like. so really looking forward to that and seeing how what sort of take up we get from the general public who might not have seen I mean there's always got to be space in events too, it'll be interesting to see if we get walk-ups on the day asking if they can yeah, I reckon you will because you know I mean how many times do you hear someone say oh pinball is that still a thing and you will get people walking going holy crap they're still doing pinball and I've never seen so many machines in my life that'll happen I really hope it does like all of this is going to be you know when the Royal Show comes out you get the newspaper guide a few weeks before with all the show bags and what not all of these events are going to be in that guide so people will be able to look in there and be like oh what's this what's the Queensland Women's Pinball Championship so they might, fingers crossed you get people wandering down asking questions and wanting to know what we're doing and they'll be again there'll always be a little bank or a little area of machines that are available for the public, I think the only time we'll be hopefully using 100% of the machines is the Masters weekend but through the week and those early weekends we'll only be using 60-70% of the games and yeah hoping to get some fun stuff there we'll have a couple of re-themes, my Attack of the Hot Monster will be there someone's doing, Dr John and Emily are doing a re-theme at the minute as well. I did send Haggis an Instagram message a while back to see if he'd be ready to bring something down. I'll get in touch with Damien, see what he's got. Yeah, man, get in his ear, see if we can get along. And then obviously I think at this stage, Black Knight will still be the feature game from AMD, from Stern. Yes. Have you got one yet? No, I'm yet to play one. I unboxed Monsters this week. Oh, you did too? You got the black and white premium. Yeah. What do you think of it? I love it. It's beautiful to look at. I really like the artwork. I freaking love it. No doubt about that. I played 10 games yesterday, though I have something embarrassing to say. I can't really comment on the gameplay because I realized this morning that I uploaded the pro code update into it. Oh, man. Because I played like 20 games yesterday and I couldn get into the lower play field Because it doesn activate when you got pro soccer So yeah that embarrassing I didn know you could do that I always thought they were sort of locked into the models but it turns out you can. Yeah. So, Hugh was in, my tech was in this morning, and he's like, so, about the mini playfield. Well, get it uploaded and play it and let me know what you think, because you may go on the rollercoaster ride that I have, which is loved it, hated it, love it. Yeah, I feel, yeah. I mean, for us, it's very on theme for Netherworld. Anything kind of ghoulish, dark, you know, movie or monster theme just fits perfectly to the space. So it'll have no trouble, I guess, making money on the bar, just whether the competitive and the regular players love it. But it plays fast. My Lord, when we were comboing loops and stuff yesterday, man, that ball moves. It really does. Do you still have your Batman? I do, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because that's an interesting one, because I remember I actually came to Netherworld, and I think you'd only had it for about a week. Yeah. And remember at the time, it was code-wise. You were pretty disappointed by it. Oh, man, I was really upset. I think I'm nice about that by saying pretty disappointed. I think at the time you were just thinking to yourself, that was a terrible commercial decision. Yeah, well, I was. I remember unboxing it, you know, playing the second or third game and getting through all there was to get through and standing back and being like, how did I just spend $14,000 on? What have I done? And how has that been at Netherworld as far as earnings go? Really strong. it earns the same now with 1.0 code that it did with .6 code so to the general public it doesn't really make that much of a difference but competitive wise and tournament wise it's and for me just now it's you know you look at that moment where it took two games to get through everything now now I could play for an hour and a half and I wouldn't get through everything so it's pretty fast and so your partner that does the Brisbane Masters, we had him on the show last year, which is Lambo. He loves Batman. It was kind of his go-to game at the Australian Championship Series. Yeah, he crushes it. I think he got something obscene on our one recently. But yeah, he plays that machine very, very well. And what else has he been playing? Deadpool really well lately at the bar as well. Did you know that they're bringing out a Catwoman edition of Batman? Yeah, I did see it. I haven't looked into it. I did see a couple of photos through the week. Yeah, so... I really love the game. You know, getting to the... you know, trying to work your way towards the Batusi and those little mini wizard modes and trying to find the right combination of minor villains is pretty good fun. Like you said, it's so vast. You can have the game of your life that goes for 90 minutes and still only get 40% of the way into the game, so... Well, and this is the whole thing, right? Now that you've got these combinations between minor and major villains, what you can actually do to combine those things is, I wouldn't say it's endless, but there are so many combinations and people are just coming up with new strategies all the time because they're working out that something combined with another thing and those minor villains could be, you know, level one, two or three, actually does something completely different. So that's a phenomenal gap. Has the list of machines been out in the public for the Brisbane Masters? No, not yet. So Lambeau, I got all of the techs and anyone and all of the venues to send Lambeau a list of games available just this week. So he's going through that right now to try and put together a perfect list. I'll sit down with him probably next week. Actually, we'll probably have an entire committee meeting and sit down and go through the list and try and make things as broad and as fun and interesting as we can. Like I said, we'll be pushing to get as many Steve Ritchie titles in as we can. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Grant Quinn's already said he's bringing three Steve Ritchie games. So AMD will send up two or three Black Knights. I put a deposit down for L.E. Wonka. Oh, did you? Yes. So. Well, we should be doing, I say we, but in Melbourne, so we should be having a launch party. I think it's going to be the 30th of this month with the Bayside Pinball Club. So. Great. we will get to play it. I believe it's in the country now, the sample machine, and should be available any day. So I'm looking forward to that because I was pretty cool on it when I first saw, you know, like the stream and the video foot and the pictures, and they never really show off a machine to its greatest, if you know what I mean. So I'm keen to see Wonka and see how it plays because all reports, people are saying it shoots really well. Okay, great. I have pretty high hopes for that game. I mean, that would be a favourite film. There's so many iconic moments in that film that I hope that the film clips and the quotes and the lines make it into the game somehow. Yeah. It doesn't look like there's many there now, but dear Lord, I hope a lot of them get in there. It's a massive missed opportunity if it's not. Because, again, you have so many iconic characters and moments that happen in the film. You could build entire rule sets around it. Yep. So looking forward to it. Again, like you say, when it's just a top-down camera on a playfield for a launch, it doesn't really give you a lot to go on. You can't really make a judgment off something like that. Yeah, exactly. Because I remember when I was at TPF and I was showing the Yellow Brick Road edition of Wizard of Oz, and people were seeing pictures of it going on or whatever. It was like, oh, no, no, no, you've actually got to see this thing in person. It's so much better in reality than what you see in pictures. Yeah. and so you sort of more on netherworld so you are obviously a big supporter of the manufacturers themselves and that's probably what I want to talk about is the sponsors that are helping you with BPAC so I know obviously AMD are supporting you and Hutchies, Hutchison Builders which you know we all know Hutch and has been a big supporter of that as well how important is that to you not just to put the event on but to put the type of event on that you want? Yeah, I think, I mean, I was, I got a, you know, God bless Jack and Scott. I mean, I planned on putting a big kind of pitch document together to try and find a big sponsor because I already had, I knew AMD would be involved, I knew most of the arcade bars would help out but I really wanted to do something. Once I saw the space at Eka and what the potential was, I really wanted to find a big sponsor. um so i was planning on writing a big proposal with a beautiful you know presentation but i'm like i'll just send uh jack and his dad a cheeky message first to see if they're interested on facebook and they literally replied straight away and said yep we're in tell me what you want when so that was pretty incredible unfortunately jack's not going to be there um he's in london at the minute doing an nba and he's not going to be back in time which is a bummer but um his brother Terence will be about and Scott will be about plenty but yeah if you've met Scott you know how much he loves these machines he let me borrow his Beatles the other week just to put him to the bar just for a laugh so very generous with his machines and his time this is what's really interesting because the people that will look at BPAC and Bristol Masters and you'll see that it's sponsored by Hutchinson Builders and you'll think how is that possible that this and this Hutchinson Builders is like massive in Australia, incredibly well known, right? And you think, how is that even possible? And then what you've got to realise is that someone that works there, someone that's part of the family, is a massive pinhead, and that's Jack, and I've played against Jack a number of times. He used to come down for Brisbane, not for Brisbane, for Melbourne Match Play. Is he still big into the competitive scene up there? No, Jack's been in London for nearly two years. There you go, that's why I haven't seen it. Yeah, I have to warn you though man he is still an unbelievable player he came back came back through the bar in october and he and i had two beers and like four games of iron maiden and he just crushed and he's like i haven't played pinball in like a year and i'm like holy lord dude you're still so great so my my moment with him is i remember uh at melbourne match play he was the only person i think that really knew how to crush CSI and did every single time and everyone just rolled their eyes. Oh my god, I'm up against Jack. He's going to pick CSI. Nobody knew how to play it. Nobody knew the feel of it because we just don't see machines like that often. Consistently crushed it. Oh man, he's a great player. One of my favourite moments of finals pinball ever was a Jack moment. I can't think if it was ACS or Masters at Toowong Bowls a few years ago. and he was playing CJ in a final on Bad Cats, and he was down by a couple of million. And no one the whole weekend had been able to combo that left ramp for jackpots. Last match, they were tied one game all, third ball, Jack's down by a couple of million, and he hit that ramp like seven times in a row on the fly and then just fell back into the crowd and let the ball drain. I hate people but it was like that a couple of weeks ago again at the Bayside comp that we had where they had a Avengers right? Now that Black Widow ramp right? as soon as you just hear people just either roll their eyes or just go oh god and then you watch someone like Jordan Treadway just looping that ramp like four or five times, it's like, oh my god, I could never do something like that. Is Jordan coming to Masters? I really hope he does. I don't know. I haven't seen him play in a long time, so I'm hoping to get to see him play this. Yeah, look, he's still playing in local comps and he's still beating everybody and you know, you know, as soon as there's like, oh damn, okay, well, who's playing for second? That's really what we do. He's that good, and he still is that good. He is, mate. Hopefully he makes it up. Yeah. So, obviously, you're not doing Pinberg this year because you've got a big event. Yes. I am officially letting people know I am definitely not going to Pinberg now. You and I, obviously, we spoke about this during the week as well, and it's just a perfect storm of events, and, you know, actually also the Australian dollar being terrible really doesn't help as well. So it also means that I'll be able to go to Brisbane Masters and that'll be my mega tournament fix for the year. I mean, sure, it's not 1,000 players, but it's still pretty big. Yeah, still pretty big. Still, I feel the quality of play is going to be pretty high. Yes. The people that are coming, whether we've got like six people now from the top 100 are going to be there, I think. Wow. and then you've got to assume that most of the top 100 from Australia will be there so yeah it's going to be fierce competition no doubt which is good and this is the first time I've actually been to the Bumper Masters for real I don't know why I mean everybody I know goes and I've just sort of never have but this year for sure I'm really looking forward to it thrilled to hear you coming mate that's awesome yeah I reckon it's going to be awesome what else do you want to tell people about with the event I'm not sure I just really wanted to reiterate just that idea that any of it entry fee includes a gate pass, you get to come by Netherworld and pick up your show bag on the way in, please get on and do the bio so we know who's coming and who you are I guess again just thanking the sponsors, we touched a little bit on the sponsors before but AMD have sponsored Masters now, this is the second year, which is amazing Michael and I'm even trying to convince Bruce to come up oh Brucey baby so I believe they do and then obviously Netherworld sponsoring the Kong Off for the most part, Pinkadia sponsoring the Queensland Women's Championship Game the System have been really positive, pretty much as soon as I announced this Mark Bell got in contact and was just like what is this craziness that you're doing, how can I help so he's been really positive and he's sponsoring the Classics Pinball tournament on the first weekend so that just boosts, that money basically goes straight to the prize pools, anything from the minor sponsors so all the Hacho's sponsorship went to the special guests plus that's also paid for like, we have to get public liability insurance, we have to create the not-for-profit we've got to hire furniture possibly some equipment just general production costs you know, just fuel for the guys moving machines and things like that. But that's easily covered all that. We've stretched that pretty far. And then the rest goes to prize pools. So, I mean, even at this stage with how many tickets we've sold, we're going to be giving away well over $20,000 in cash through the 10 days. Easily. Easily. Bloody hell. It'll probably be closer to $30,000 by the time most stuff sells out. And so, like, for the main event, right, You won't really know until people have actually, like the amount of competitors are there, or do you already have a fixed amount that you're saying this is what it's worth? Well, last year, the winner of Brisbane Masters, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure first place took two grand. So that's a pretty big incentive, even for an international player to come across. Well, that's kind of where I was leading. Again, back to my come from overseas, this will pay for your airfare if you win. Oh, easy. so just do it just do it so uh yeah really really thrilled and you know that again just adds to the i guess the trying to make this a world-class event and just having really good prize pools i think adds to that and makes it enticing uh we want to create a world-class event we want to you know me and lambo take running of the masters very seriously and we want it to be as good a version of as it can be so and that's just another element making it you know big cash prizes at the end makes that those those decisions through the finals all the more exciting to watch and more stressful to make so yeah and eka have been really good they i kind of got through them just through acquaintance through the bar because i was looking for a bigger site well every year masters has moved location because it's gotten bigger i think it might have been 60 people four years ago to 120 last year so already looking for a bigger space um and got to the ecker and and they've been the more i the more i show them how you know professional we're being about this the more generous they're becoming so they've decided to carpet the space they're now putting in air conditioning to the space for us they putting in a special generator so we can don have any power problems a bunch of other stuff I doing a media launch with them on July 4th which will be with all the major television stations so they want me there with some of our better players and a couple of pinball machines and some arcade machines they're really interested actually in the Australian element of pinball and arcade history so I'm going to take Pincadia have a Hankin Orbit 1 on the floor so I'm going to take that along to the media launch because they're super interested in what part has Australia played in the history of pinball and what did we do through the 70s and 80s and I've learned a little bit recently about LAI through Norbit and Jarman and Juan at TimeZone I didn't realize a lot of those guys were kind of on the cusp of lai and everything that was happening yeah i had no idea about that until recently so pretty fascinated by all that so well there's always you know lai produced cabs pinballs around that the trident on the floor at netherworlds and lai i think tebow has an lai produced dracula lai that's like leisure and allied isn't it yeah leisure and allied industries yeah pretty fascinating little company that was around that were kind of booming through the 90s. Yeah. So then tell me more. We've sort of said on this podcast, and I know we said it last year, but again we say that Brisbane, and let's roll the Gold Coast into that as well, is pretty much the pinball capital of Australia. Talk to me about how all the different venues are going. Yeah, going strong. I think I moved up here five years ago and immediately sourced or tried to find what was happening and found Lambo. Well, I think it was even called the Brisbane Pinball Club then. He was running out of a time zone in the city. And even before that, Gavin Droogie, George Mueller was running the Gold Coast Pinball Club. I think he started even before we started down in Melbourne. He started a couple of months before us in 2013, I think. And actually, Matt Hetherington found a photo recently. I hardly recall doing this, but I obviously did. I flew up from Melbourne to attend a Gold Coast Pinball Club meet before I started the Melbourne one just to get a feel for it, look at the software they were using and how they were running an event. So they were very, like Gavin was unbelievable, extremely friendly. Everyone was that night and super supportive. And I guess that attitude's still pretty strong in Brisbane. Everyone goes to everybody's events. Everyone, you know, advertises each other's events. there is an unbelievable amount of stuff on Pincaidia do I think every second Tuesday, Netherworld does a every second Tuesday night Gold Coast is once a month, Cooley's once a month on a Wednesday, you've got the guys up on the sunny coast now doing events, Vaughan's doing an amazing job up there he does a very professional job, he sends out a newsletter every month the guys in Townsville and then you've got did you go to Pinball House last time you were in Brisbane? No I didn't I think it might have been just before it opened maybe yeah it's great but he just turned one so Pinball House had it's first birthday last weekend actually oh well yeah it would have been I came to Netherworld really not that long after you'd opened and how long ago was that now? How long has Netherworld been open? Nearly two and a half years. Far out, man. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And I think it's still considered the benchmark for a pinball venue. Well, a venue with pinball. Remember we sort of talked about that, about the importance of the venue being amazing first and pinball just also being good to add to it. Yeah, and I think that's something Netherworld does really well is that there are many elements or factors to the business, but we take all of them very seriously. So, you know, the kitchen's vegan menu and offerings are pretty unique and pretty wild. The beer list, even though we don't describe ourselves as a craft beer venue, we have one of the best beer lists in Brisbane. And obviously the care and the time we put into the machines hopefully shows and having pretty much two full-time techs in, Dave and Hugh, looking after just, you know, 40 machines really between them two and myself. we probably do 80 to 100 hours between us a week on those 40 machines but hopefully that shows and we try our best to keep them running as perfectly as we can and to cycle them through as well always be having new stuff coming through and projects out the back that we're working on awesome well there you go that's how it's done and hopefully you know other cities major cities sort of start following suit and expanding what they're doing. So I think you've proved what can be done and people are like, okay, well, I want to do it too. Yeah. Well, that's fine. And what I like about you is you've never seen that as competition. You've always seen that as just, you know, enhancing the scene, which is going to be better for everybody. Yeah, it is, it is. And even that, you know, making the... I love that the other venues in Brisbane take such care in their machines as well because the worst thing you'd want is an arcade bar with extremely poorly maintained machines because that's just going to give someone a bad experience in an arcade bar and they're unlikely to want to visit another one. It really does, yeah. But it looks like you guys and Ryan are doing a lot of work to get the competitive scene booming in Melbourne again. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Ryan, more so than me, He's absolutely just gone gangbusters when it comes to, you know, just don't get in the way. It's, you know, he's absolutely just right into it, which is fantastic. And that's his passion. We're obviously, we've got Flip Out coming up again this year at the end of the year. And, you know, I thought we had 80 competitors. So we're hoping, God, if we can get to 100. It's like we're a couple of years behind the Brisbane Masters. But I've always looked at that as being, I guess, what I'm chasing. like that's the benchmark that I'm going for is, and we will probably always be behind you because you are a few years ahead of us but again, I kind of say thank you for letting me steal what you're doing but I also do that because, I probably don't even ask but I know that you wouldn't care, you'd be like shit, just do it because we need to have more than just one big event and we're hoping that the flip out tournament this year hopefully gets to 100, I think again we had 80 in the flip frenzy as well we just want these to get better because it is good for pinball and for you and I it's really satisfying to be able to do something for the community that just gets bigger 100% and those events you look forward to them all year, they're so much fun to be around with 100 of your mates and playing the game you love it's a riot of a weekend every time regardless of where you finish so yeah it's exactly right and you would know as well and I had it with Flipette people coming up and saying oh my god that was fantastic it was well run but what I love about that is you just go thank you so much I'm glad you enjoyed it and you think oh thank god they didn't see all the shit that was happening in the background it's such a freaking nightmare to run these things and things go wrong all the time where you've got to constantly make decisions and it's not just about you know machines breaking down or having to do rulings. It's the actual running of the event. It's pretty taxing and you've got to be on top of everything. And as long as people don't see that, then you know you've done a good job. Yeah, 100%. So there you go. Love it. Man, thank you again for coming on. Your third time on. Oh, thanks. Thanks, mate. That's amazing. And I look forward to seeing you, when is it? The 9th to the 18th of August, is that right? Yep, yep, spot on. Fantastic. At the ECHA, which is in Bowen Hills. I mean, I'm sounding like I know all this stuff off the top of my head. I'm literally reading Wikipedia. The Royal Queensland Show, ECHA, is Queensland's largest and most loved annual event, attracting on average 400,000 people. Ew! That's, yeah. If you're looking for our webpage, it's B-N-E-P-A-C.org. And then if you want to look for tickets, you just go to Eventbrite and just put BPAC into the search bar and all the tickets will come up. there's heaps of information on the web page. Heaps and heaps. I'll tell you what isn't, though. Whilst we've been talking, I've been on the ECA site themselves. Yeah. I can't find anything mentioned about what you're doing there on their site. No, no, we're still planning all that to go into the entertainment guide on there. Ah, good, good, good. That's where it's on there. Yeah, it's definitely coming. Yeah, well, it's one of those things where, do you want 300 people in your tournament? Not really. No, not really. Not really. No, because you don't have that many people on the machine. But one last thing about that as well. One thing I've known about the Brisbane Masters is that your techs have been absolutely right on the machines. What have you got this year for that? Someone just offered me recently maybe they're going to potentially come along and help out with just doing tech work for the weekend. Dave and Hugh are there. John Glover's offered to take some time off. I've had a couple of other guys that have taken the entire 10 days off just to help tech. So we're super confident. The best thing about the long lead-in to Masters, even though we'll obviously have machines break down and probably drop out between the 9th and the 17th, the other thing we'll be doing is dialing those machines in to perfection. So hopefully come the 17th, everything's playing perfectly for that sort of tournament environment. So I feel like there's plenty of time for people to come in. I mean, the machines are going to be on coin drop all week, so there's plenty of time to come by and test the machines out, let us know of any faults. So, yeah, pretty excited. So what sort of... What subscription do you do when it comes to setting up these machines tough? Do you go ultra-brutal or do you go somewhere in the middle? Yeah, it's a pretty tough one. I think you're always probably trying to err between... somewhere between in the middle and tough. Yeah. I think actually at Death by Pinball I was too nice. I should have been a bit more brutal. I was, you know, I feel I was a bit too soft because Death by Pinball is a hard enough event as it is. Yeah. So I went a bit easier on the settings, but I felt like that was a mistake. We probably could have, not that getting through the rounds makes any difference, but I changed the format of Death by Pinball to try and reduce the time between rounds, but because I wasn't brutal enough with the settings, we were still having guys blowing up machines. So, yeah, that's the hardest thing to manage, is how do we get time to move along and not upset everybody with how the machines are set. Yeah. So, I mean, just basic stuff like having... Actually, something that blew me away about Pinberg, I don't know if you had the same experience, but I found that the tilt settings on most machines I played were very similar. Yes. Which I couldn't believe how similar they were across so many titles was, you know, one medium shove you'd get away with but anything beyond that and you're toast that's right there was not a lot of leeway in between that yeah so I would just say again they've got so much lead up to the event and they've probably got the same person feeling out each machine so they would know sort of a consistent setting for that yeah which is what we'll be doing again I think the tilt's really important you know removing rubbers on some games makes sense but on others it's brutal Hopefully we'll have a bunch of EMs. So I know Stephen Riding's got a bunch he's working on. I've recently got my high hand up and running. I've got a kingpin in the shop at the minute. So I would love to get at least half a dozen EMs into the mix. So, yeah, I think. But that's why I'm really liking the long lead time up to the 17th to make sure everything's playing as it should. We've also got like a three-week bump in from the night, the full night. So we can literally start bumping machines in mid-July, which we're definitely going to start doing. There's big roller doors on either side of this space, so we'll have our own keys and 24-hour access, so we'll be able to move, especially the arcade machines, I want to get in ASAP because they're obviously so temperamental moving any old cab like that. So I want to get them in and happy and settled as soon as we can, and then we'll start moving machines in, get them on site, get them leveled and happy and um and we'll probably look at ordering a bunch of spare parts from pinball spare parts once we get the machine list locked down so we do have you know flipper switches and plungers and links ready to go if if we do have breakdowns through the week and yeah but our techs techs work super super hard getting them ready and even the guys the guys take a lot of pride the machines that come out of personal private collections guys take a lot of pride in that as well which we really really appreciate so um it's very rare you get a machine from a private or a you know offer that's in that that's in bad shape they're usually in perfect working order so i can't thank the guys enough for taking the time to a first loading a machine into that sort of environment where they're going to get hundreds upon hundreds of plays in 10 days but uh and hopefully the coin drop the coin drop will be split that hopefully there'll be some earnings as well from Coindrop, so there's a little bit of incentive there and a bit of feedback for any parts that may break. And yeah, hopefully we get hundreds of thousands of new people through to see what it's all about. What do you think about having the commentators commentating the final with volume so the players can hear? Okay. I am against it. But I'm against it from a personal point of view, in that I find that really distracting. Admittedly, if it was me, I would have headphones on, so it wouldn't distract me personally. But no, me personally, I would say don't do it. You know, we had... Remember we had Levy on, and that's exactly what they did for the New York City Pinball Championships, and he was defending that position, saying it's a good thing. So I think there's arguments before and against. you're never going to be able to get everybody happy with that either way I mean we had a challenge a couple of times with Flipout last year the finals everybody's quiet and so they're just watching and so the commentator that we had there he was almost having to whisper down the door and it was the same thing at the ACS even though we were up on the stage the finals were happening on machines just in front of us So we had to be really quiet because I don't want to yell in front of these people as they're focusing. I mean, this is like the big moment. So anyway, that's my thoughts on it. Yeah, it's a funny one. Well, I mean, hopefully I'll have a couple of viewing areas. And Vinny is such a great tech, there might be an opportunity where we just have...