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Episode 200 – Glenn’s Song

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 5m·analyzed·Feb 10, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Slam Tilt hits 200 episodes with guest Mark Panaccio and industry news on Stern CTO hire, tournament updates, and repair war stories.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast celebrates its 200th episode with special programming including interviews with Mark Panaccio (Stern/Insider Connected) and Stu, plus a custom song from Glenn Wechter. The hosts discuss Stern's new CTO appointment (Erica Fromm), pinball repairs at their Rochester Pinball Collective venue, and community tournament announcements including Pin Clash returning on Godzilla. Industry news includes Scott Denise joining Multimorphic as creative director and community feedback on recent releases like Star Wars and Toy Story pinball machines.

Key Claims

  • Stern appoints Erica Fromm as Chief Technology Officer for Insider Connected platform

    high confidence · Official announcement read directly by hosts with company statement from Seth Davis

  • Mark Panaccio worked at Williams in late 80s/early 90s, designed Fish Tales as his last game there, now works with Keith Elwin on Bond 60th anniversary game rules at Stern

    high confidence · Host Bruce states as established fact about guest

  • Scott Denise named creative director for next Multimorphic P3 pinball game

    high confidence · Listed as news item, hosts discuss implications for licensed vs unlicensed game

  • Weird Al Pinball by Multimorphic had strong sales and year-long backlog

    high confidence · Hosts cite this as proof of licensed game success and motivation for future licensed titles

  • Pin Clash tournament returning on Godzilla with qualifying period Feb 17 - April 2, finals May 13 at 3pm Eastern

    high confidence · Specific dates and details provided by hosts citing PennClashTourney.com

  • RPC (Rochester Pinball Collective) sponsoring Pin Clash tournament with logo/money donation for prizes

    high confidence · Host Ron confirms setup by Zach

  • Fathom Revisited had all three flipper bats fail simultaneously on same day due to cracks at metal-plastic junction

    high confidence · Host Bruce describes detailed repair experience at RPC with specific failure mode

  • Chicago Gaming Company hiring for pinball technician position

    high confidence · Listed as news with job description details

  • Erica Fromm's company Zero One Insights collaborated with Stern on Insider Connected platform, previously worked with WMS Gaming, IGT, Aristocrat, and other gaming companies

    high confidence · Host provides background details on Fromm's career in gaming technology

Notable Quotes

  • “We are the Slam Tilt Podcast... You and me, which is one thing, because we are the Slam Tilt Podcast.”

    Ron Hallett @ Later in episode — Shows host identity and emphasis on co-host dynamic as core to show

  • “It's like stepping in dog crap. Some people just want to be done with it. Some just say, oh, well.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ Mid-episode — Summarizes divide in community opinion about Star Wars Pinball Pro model

  • “Once you learn the rules, it's one of the funnest modern games.”

    Zach (co-host/operator) @ Mid-episode — Positive assessment of Star Wars Pinball after learning curve

  • “I want this to be free for everyone. And guess what? We may not have as many people as we could or should or want to, but I love what we do. And I do it for us.”

    Ron Hallett @ Late episode — Articulates show philosophy on avoiding paywall monetization despite pressure

  • “That is the new theme song. Whatever you have planned for 200 and future run, that is the new intro song.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ During Glenn's song segment — Immediate enthusiastic response to Glenn Wechter's custom song composition

  • “Do better, Stern. Do better. I swear. Yeah, everyone wants us free. You don't even tell us who won.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ Late episode — Criticism of Stern's promotional giveaway transparency and follow-through

Entities

Slam Tilt PodcastorganizationBruce NightingalepersonRon HallettpersonMark PanacciopersonErica FrommpersonScott DenisepersonKeith ElwinpersonGlenn Wechterperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Chicago Gaming Company actively recruiting pinball technician, likely for phone support/remote technical assistance role

    medium · Job posting listed with role requirements; hosts speculate it may be remote support rather than field technician

  • ?

    community_signal: Slam Tilt Podcast celebrates 200-episode milestone with special guest Mark Panaccio (Stern designer) and custom Glenn Wechter song composition

    high · Episode structure includes 200th guest interview and live premiere of custom song with multiple community shout-outs

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Star Wars Pinball Pro model generates divided community opinion; some appreciate once rules learned, others fundamentally dislike the design

    high · Facebook post exchange showing 'once you learn the rules, it's one of the funnest modern games' vs 'it's like stepping in dog crap'

  • ?

    event_signal: Pin Clash tournament returning on Godzilla with official dates (Feb 17-April 2 qualifying, May 13 finals) and RPC sponsorship

    high · Carl D'Angelo announcement with specific tournament structure and dates provided by hosts

  • $

    market_signal: Multimorphic's Weird Al Pinball demonstrates strong sales with year-long backlog, validating licensed game strategy and influencing future game selection

    high · Host discussing: 'Will they continue down the path of a licensed game because of the success of Weird Al? Yes. That proved what... you sold more units and you have a year backlog'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.375

0:00
🎵 Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Silk Podcast, a show about... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. You're going to interrupt the intro. Yeah. Episode 200, you're going to interrupt the... Okay. Where's the music? Where's the Beavis and Butthead? We are known for this. Well, it's episode 200. I figure I would do something special. Oh, you are special. I know. Oh, you are so special. Stop. Okay. It's in my contract. Your contract. Yes, I have a contract signed and sealed from the lawyers over in Australia that states that I get the Beavis and Budhead intro and a certain music. The law offices of Cheatham and Howell? Yes. All right, all right. I'll tell you what. Since you're being a pain in the ass, I'll play the Beavis and Budhead in the music, but you have to do the intro. Oh, God. I've got to do everything in this fucking show now. Yes, you do. Okay. All right, queuing it up now. Okay.
1:30
Hey, buddy, check it out. There's a marching band out here. Really? They suck. Yeah, but, um, you know, it could be kind of cool to be in a marching band. You know, those guys just poop right on the street. What are you talking about, Beavis? Oh, no, I'm serious. One time, when I was a kid, I saw this parade, and after the marching band went by, there were these big, huge turds everywhere.
1:53
And I was like, there was grass sticking out of them and stuff. Yeah, cool. Beavis, you dumbass. Those turds didn't come from the band. They came from the horses. Yeah, but... Oh, yeah, yeah. And that would explain the graph, yeah.
2:19
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Bruce Nightingale, with my co-host, Ron Hallett. Wow, I'm out of a job. I did like a game show. Oh, damn. Why do I even... I must have just leave right now then, after that. Jesus Christ. Thank you. Welcome to 200, baby. You're right. The fans would be pissed if Beavis and Butthead didn't play for episode 200. Okay.

  • Glenn Wechter created custom song for Slam Tilt episode 200, intended for potential future use as show intro/outro

    high confidence · Hosts play song live during episode, express enthusiasm for repurposing it

    • Zach
    person
    Seth Davisperson
    Rochester Pinball Collective (RPC)organization
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Multimorphiccompany
    Chicago Gaming Companycompany
    Pin Clash Tournamentevent
    Star Wars Pinballgame
    Toy Story Pinballgame
    Fathom Revisitedgame
    Weird Al Pinballgame
    Bond 60th Anniversary Pinballgame
    $

    market_signal: Stern promotional giveaways lack transparency on winners, frustrating community and potentially reducing engagement value

    medium · Host criticism: 'You don't even tell us who won. So we don't even know if anybody won... you keep on recycling the same fucking things'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Scott Denise appointed creative director for next Multimorphic P3 pinball game

    high · Listed as news item with hosts discussing implications: 'If it means another sound and light package, I'm all for it'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Erica Fromm appointed Chief Technology Officer at Stern Pinball to lead Insider Connected platform development

    high · Official statement from Seth Davis with details on her background and previous company (Zero One Insights)

  • ?

    product_concern: Fathom Revisited exhibits widespread flipper bat failure (all three units) due to crack defects at metal-plastic junction, indicating manufacturing quality issue

    high · Host Bruce detailed repair experience: 'I didn't see there was a crack on top of each flipper' and 'They crack around where the metal goes into the plastic, and then they're done'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern's Insider Connected platform receiving leadership focus and investment under new CTO with background in gaming technology systems

    high · Erica Fromm appointment with prior experience at WMS Gaming, IGT, Aristocrat; statement emphasizes commitment to IC platform evolution

    • 2:50
    But here we are. 200 fucking episodes. Oh, that's all. How much editing is that? Oh, that's a ton of editing. I've got to calculate this right here. Let's just say four hours an episode. How about we do that? So that's 800 hours. And we only have probably about 600 hours of content.
    3:15
    That's true. Whoopsie. That's true. It's probably about, yeah, it's probably about three hours to two hours each one. Yeah. Well, one to two hours. Actually, I can't remember the last time we only had one hour. Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a while. I'm sure there's people out there, man, I wish they'd have shorter podcasts. Yeah. And there's other people like, they're not long enough. I know. We have both. Well, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who's listened.
    3:42
    I hope you've enjoyed the ride. The ride. Yeah, the ride. I also thank everybody. Thank you for 200 episodes. Thank you for voting us into the Twippies. Oh, yeah, hopefully you win that Twippy. I just sent our... Our intro. Our reel. There was a name for it. But basically, the thing they're going to play during the ceremony when our name comes up on the screen. Yes. And luckily, it's all Ron.
    4:10
    It's Bruce and Ron. And it's almost all Ron. Thanks to the listeners for the suggestions. We got several. Yes, we did. Thank you, guys. Or maybe you can edit it again and put my intro in. Oh, no. No, too late. And remember, it's supposed to be for last year's stuff. I know. Copulation reel. That's what it was called. Yes. There we go. So we've got a 200th guest. Our 200th guest we have lined up. We'll save that for the end. Yes. We're going to go through some stuff first. But our 200th guest is going to be Mark Panaccio.
    4:45
    Thank you, Mark, for coming on. That was very – it was actually a great interview. That was a great interview. That was – I enjoyed it. The funniest thing about that interview to me is, for those who don't, Mark Panaccio, he worked at Williams in the late 80s, early 90s. And left. And did games like roller games. Yep. Fish Tales. Fish Tales was his last game there. That's how you end on a high note there. Now he works at Stern, and he is primarily, he works with the Insider Connected on the Insider Connected platform. But as you may or may not know, he is working with Keith Elwin on the Bond 60th anniversary game. So he's doing the rules for that. And speaking of Stern, they just hired somebody new to run the whole Insider Connected. Yeah, the new IT. Stern, new hire. You must be looking at my notes. I am. No, I'm not. I'm just psychic. Stern's pinball expends technology leadership, appoints Erica Fromm as chief technology officer. The CTO. Oh, and it looks like her company called Zero One Insights, they were the company that collaborated with Stern in coming up with the Insider Connected platform. Yes. She also looks like she worked, she was director of systems development at WMS Gaming back in the day. I think it was more the gambling side of it. Yeah, probably. and her company has worked with WMS, Aristocrat, IGT, Rocket Gaming Systems, and Rush Street Gaming. So in other words, she's been very involved with gaming. Yep. I've worked with IGT, a great company, out in Reno and other places. That's where I got to meet and talk to Mr. John Yossi. Let's see. And there's a statement here from Seth Davis. What voice could I use for Seth Davis? Seth McFarlane. I can't do Seth MacFarlane. Yeah, because it's just Stewie. So I do Stewie. Okay, so Seth Davis is now officially Stewie? Yep. Okay. And I haven't done Stewie in a while on this show. I know, so this is perfect. Let's see. What do you say, Seth? Stan is committed to investing in all of our pinball products, especially to the innovation and evolution of our insider-connected platform. Erica will continue to lead this charge and grow the future of pinball worldwide, said Seth Davis and me, president and CEO of Spinball Inc. Now we just screwed ever getting an interview with him. Why? Because he's silly? Yes. He might like that. Who knows? He might actually like it. So congratulations to Erica. Enjoy being the CTO of the biggest spinball company in the universe.
    7:29
    He literally took the first item on my nose. I blended it right in, didn't I? Well, Bruce, Chicago Gaming is looking for a pinball technician. Yeah.
    7:40
    I think, weren't they looking for one like a year ago? No, that was Jersey Jack. Oh, okay. Yep. So, okay. So, have you submitted your resume? No, I don't like Chicago.
    7:55
    Why? It's cold, just like Rochester. It's colder. It's colder? Yes. So, there you go. Chicago Gaming is looking for a pinball technician. Yep. Did you put your thing in? No. Did Zach put his in? No, I don't think so. No? He doesn't want to be a pinball technician? I wouldn't want to be. I already am. That's true. Let's see. What else? We're trying to blow through a lot of this stuff, folks, because we want to get to the interview. Plus, we have a pre-interview interview. You know how I love the pre thing. Oh, I know. The pre. You are very pre. I have gotten, I have gotten, I have got, I have secured whatever. I have gotten Stu. Stu is here. And Bruce is going to interview Stu because I can't stand the guy. I don't understand why you're letting him in the house. I don't know. But I'm going to leave the room, and Bruce, you can interview this moron. Chicago Gaming Company, with that help, applicant must possess the ability to manage their time, which I can do, A positive attitude and good communication skills.
    9:03
    I got that. I nailed this. Positive attitude, no. Oh, fuck yeah. Communication skills, I mean, I still don't know what you say. What? We've been doing 200 episodes. What the fuck? Exactly.
    9:14
    No, I would like that. If I was closer, or if it was, you know, remote, I'd be in all that, you know. You're going to remotely fix the machines. Yeah, because it's not a technician. I think they need somebody that is actually phone support. Oh. That's what I think this is. Okay. This is a phone support thing. This isn't you're not going into your house going, hi, I'm your pinball repair guy. I'm your Maytag. I'm going to have a hat on with the Chicago Gaming Company logo on it. Are you going to walk in like that? Hi, I'm your pinball repair guy. Yeah. No, you're the phone support guy. You're the guy who they're going to be calling and saying, hey, how do I fix this? I got this problem in my game. Oh, two of the solenoids don't work. Okay, here's what we do. What do you have in front of you? Do you have a volt meter? Do you have this? You know. And we go from there. You know, I think you can always tell anyone who's in any kind of support, because when they do the customer voice, they always make them sound like an idiot. You ever notice that? I feel I got that from my IT background.
    10:10
    It's always like, then the customer said, oh, but so could you work here. And then it's always the doofus voice for the customers.
    10:19
    I've been in a lot of customer service, and I'm glad I'm not in it now. Because, you know, the customer thinks that the tech thinks they're smarter than they are. And they are. They totally think that. Totally are. Totally. Also, Scott Denisey was named creative director for next multi-morphic P3 pinball game. So does that mean designer? Designer. I assume that's what that means. Yeah. If it means another sound and light package, I'm all for it. Let's see. I don't know if it's going to be a licensed game or not licensed or what it is, but. Who knows? We don't know. Will they continue down the path of a licensed game because of the success of Weird Al? Yes. That proved what, you know, think about it. You sold more units and you have a year backlog. Yep. Congratulations. This is a good thing. It is a good thing. I still have not played Weird Al. What? I haven't. Really? Yeah. I don't go to shows. No one has one here local. Oh. Except a guy out in Buffalo. Does anyone have a Bond 60th anniversary? No, not that I know of. Damn it. I counted on you guys. Did you buy one? No. I'm not paying $20,000 for that. You went to pay $200 in for the Project Pinball. Oh, yeah, that I did, but I didn't win. Neither did I. But we helped the kids. Yes. It's all about helping the kids. We saved the children. Saved the children.
    11:49
    What else do we got on here? Carl D'Angelo of IU Pinball announced Pin Clash is returning. Yes, it is. It's a tournament where it's all streamed.
    12:00
    Yes. That doesn't make any sense. All the contestants are all streaming. It's going to be on Godzilla this time. Godzilla.
    12:14
    So the way it works is there's a qualifying period, which is between February 17th and April 2nd. And there's all these rules and stuff. You can check it out at PennClashTourney.com. I think that the initial qualification challenge is, what is it, highest carnage bonus. Yeah. And one ball. Yes. So you've got to put your game on one ball versus. Yeah, I love my one ball. Your one ball man, yes. Yeah. There's got to be all kinds of people figuring out different ways to get that to work. Ridiculous levels.
    12:49
    And, yeah, I have zero chance. Not even going to try on that one. And then if you do qualify, you get to pay the $50 fee, so the three to four people who actually have a chance of winning it can get your money. Yes, exactly. Give it away to my buddy. Here, take my money. Well, Zach was second one year. I mean, you could have a situation where there's an upset, but it's going to be one of three or four people. it's probably going to be Escher I would assume, Escher will win because he's the greatest Godzilla player ever and stuff it's just like we said Raymond, you would never want to play Raymond Davidson on Simpsons Pinball Party you don't want to play Escher on Godzilla yeah, maybe his internet will go down that day there you go that is one I never thought of that you just do a DDoS attack against him there you go sorry man, guess you can't play we had Escher Let's see if we can get him back. Oh, I lost everything. Well, we have to kind of call you. If I remember, he did have shitty internet at one time, didn't he? Didn't he have, like, satellite internet or something? Yeah, you take that shit out, put a jam around there. I don't know. Well, that's the way we get the balloon from China. The balloon, yes. That's what it was there for. It was actually floating over Colorado, jamming the signal. Yes, there you go.
    14:09
    I've solved the mystery. Yes, we've tied it to current events. But guess what? There's a piece of news you don't know about Pink Clash That the finals are going to be May 13th at 3pm Eastern Nope RPC is sponsoring Part of the Pink Clash Wow, what does that mean? We actually donate our logo and money For the prizes towards the winner Wow We actually are advertising on Pink Clash Zach set that all up Good job, RPC. Yes, see? So we will be world famous. World famous? Yes. What else do I have here? Oh, I had a funny that just happened this morning. Oh, you know what it is because I sent a picture. Yes, and I already put that on the Slamtail podcast. Oh, there was a post in the Pinball Enthusiasts group in Facebook.
    15:08
    And it said, who has Star Wars Pro? And your thoughts on it seems pretty good to me. And, of course, Zach, or Zach, answers, once you learn the rules, it's one of the funnest modern games. Which I thumbs up, of course, because he's correct. No. And then Bruce posted, it's like stepping in dog crap. Some people just want to be done with it. Some just say, oh, well.
    15:31
    That is the truth. So I put that picture up on our Facebook page, and I said, this pretty much sums it up. Good thing you didn't ask about Stranger Things or something. Oh, God. He should ask you about Stranger Things. I'm curious about what he thinks. I hear there's people demanding to make another run. It's kind of like, where were you people before? Exactly. It's just like pirates. Where were you people before? Sorry, it doesn't work that way. I knew exactly where I was. Not buying that game. All right.
    16:06
    And then I have one more note. I have Poor Xenon. Oh, yes. What does that mean, Bruce? Please explain. That is a picture from a upstate New York. You can say the name of it. What is it? Binghamton?
    16:22
    Binghamton. Robot City. Yeah, it was on Facebook. They had a picture of a Xenon. With repair. That's pretty unique. Yeah, I would assume that the base plate for the flipper was kind of falling off because the screw holes were probably blown out. So their solution was quite interesting. Yeah, you fix it by going through the whole play field completely and leave it sticking up the screw through the play field to block the ball. And you put this out on the floor for all to see. Yeah. So basically they put screws that were way too big and way too long to hold the base plate on and went through the play field so far that the ball would actually hang up on it. Yes. And not once.
    17:11
    Twice. Yeah, two of them. Yeah. Poor Zenon. I mean, it's a shitty game, but still, it deserves better. Where do you operate like that? Like, hey, this screw went through. What do we do about this, Bob? Well, boss will never notice. We put it on the floor.
    17:32
    I wonder if they have more than 49 games. I don't think so. Working games? No. Oh. Since we're talking about poor repairs, have you had any good repairs? Zach actually had a fun one. Zach pulled his countdown out of his work. It was sitting at his work for two years. No, longer than that. Longer than that. I think it was all through COVID that thing was there. Yeah. And so we finally get to back, and they're like, oh, we had to turn it off because it was smoking.
    18:06
    Okay, great. So we brought it in. We look, and like, okay, what could have burned? What could have burned? And I've actually seen the worst coil ever. It actually, like, accordioned out when I took it apart. Accordion.
    18:21
    Yeah. A flinky. I was like, wow. It was so bad, it actually melted the sleeve onto the metal rod, you know, the throw rod. And I'm like, what the fuck? How am I going to get it? I'm actually grinding the plastic off the sleeve, off the metal. And then... The plunger, Bruce? The plunger. Okay. And then Zach takes off the transistor, and the transistor got so hot, it actually started warping and damaging the wood on the playfield underneath. and the weird thing is about this, you would think you have four drop target banks.
    19:01
    I wouldn't think. You definitely have four drop target banks in a countdown. How many do you think is on one fuse? All four. No. Oh. Three. And one is on one.
    19:14
    That seems very non-cotly. Exactly. So what happened was I guaranteed the game locked up all four drop targets. The three pulled away at the same time, blew the fuse. The other one said, hey, I can keep on going, and just smoked that coil.
    19:36
    Poor countdown. But it's back up and running. We're just doing a couple repairs to it, and then hopefully it'll be on the floor at RPC for you to enjoy. Will that get you to 50 games? No, because it's just an A-hole. Oh. Where is our PC again? What is that? That is the Rochester Pinball Collective, located in 2965 East Rochester, New York, on West Commercial Street.
    20:04
    Sweet. 2965. That took a while. I mean, you did the intro better than that. I know. Well, you know, that took it all out of me.
    20:12
    I blew my wand. Oh, okay. Let's see. Repairs. Mine's simple. Yeah. So I'm at League last Thursday. Okay. And it's at the end. I'm actually playing makeup games now because of a week I missed. So where were you at? Where was the League at? The Local. Where? The Local. Yes, I know you were local to play the pinball machine, but where was it? Rotterdam Mall. Okay, great. A place called The Local. So I, um, the final, what was I saying? So we're playing Toy Story. Ugh. Hey. Ugh. I have to say, man, I've got to stop making opinions about a game too early. I've got to wait. Because I'm digging the Toy Story. As long as I don't have to hear the music, I'm good. Say, put headphones on, you're good to go. This one, it's loud enough where you can almost make out the call-outs, and you can't really hear the music at all. It's perfect. Beautiful. And the flippers, they must have jacked the flipper power up on this thing, because the Duke Caboom ramp you can make every time. No problem. That's good. So that's good. The swings are still pathetic, but whatever. So we're playing. It's head-to-head. And it's ball one. My opponent's first. And he's having a good ball. He gets to a certain point, though, and the flipper starts to bind. It's starting to stick up. He locks the ball, and the flipper's like halfway up now.
    21:37
    So we wave the tech over. And I'm looking at it. It's like, yeah, it looks like it's just binding. It should be a simple, you know, one-minute fix. Easy fix. Well, it took like 10 minutes to get a tech there, and he didn't want to go to another game because he had 600K or something at that point. That's like $20 billion on attack from Mars, so yeah. I'm pitching in. I'm trying to help out like a tournament situation. We're going to play this like they wouldn't stop this, and it did have the tech over there. Well, the tech finally comes over, opens the thing up. I mean, I grab the flipper bat, and it's like it's not by me. Because I can pull it up and down. It's something else. Look inside. The coil stop fell off.
    22:24
    So take the coin box out. And I managed, I found both of the Allen screws and the lock washers. So then he had to go find the right Allen key, the right size, put the thing back on. You know, I'm basically helping the guy do it because he's not used to it. Gee, Mr. Thanks. So, yeah. So my opponent, like, get ready. As soon as we close the coin door, it's going to shoot this ball out. Yeah. Boom, shoots the ball out. And he plays a little bit longer. He didn't drain immediately. Oh, okay. That's good. That's always good when you have to wait 15 minutes, you know, and then you don't drain immediately. That's good. But then I did a bad thing. I played my ball one and doubled his score. Oh. Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh. I didn't have to play ball three. I won. I do have another repair item. Oh, what's that, Bruce? At the beautiful RPC. The beautiful RPC. What did you have to do, Bruce? We have a game called Fathom. Revisited. Revisited, yeah.
    23:23
    Yeah. All three flippers failed at once. You guys really should have waited and not got one of the first, like, five ever made. No, no, no. It's nothing to control with the electronics controls of the flippers. It's the bats. Oh, you know they have the bad bats? Yes. All three failed on the same day. Wow. At least they're consistent. That's very consistent. They must have been made at the exact same time. Oh, my God. The same amount of flips. Well, actually, no, left, right flip. How does that work? That is amazing. That goes against laws of averages and stuff. So I go over, I look up, I'm like, why is the flipper so much up in the air? Oh, they probably loosened up. And I'm moving it going, yeah, they're loose. I didn't see there was a crack on top of each flipper. Yeah, isn't it? You had the same issue with Kells. Yes. They crack around where the metal goes into the plastic, and then they're done. They're done. So luckily I had three Bally backups. It's just different coloring now. Three Bally bats. Yep. And all up and running again. But, oh, my God. I was like, what the fuck? So when we had our goodie bag of stuff for each manufacturer that fails. That's another bad option. you're going to get a bag full of flipper bats. Yes. Okay. Three flipper bats, two coil stops, and a computer for your alien.
    24:52
    That's true. Right or wrong? Oh, why couldn't they? I want an alien. Why couldn't it be someone else? Damn it. Hey, we make a good. You don't worry about this. You Italian. We take care of you, brother. Because all Italians take care of each other. Exactly. It's like your mafia, you know. All right. Let's get the ball bag out of the way. Oh, no. Hold on. Let me get my coffee off and relax. Then we'll finish with our two interviews. We'll do Stu. Yes. And then Mark Panaccio of Skirn Pinball. And then we'll come back for a little last part.
    25:33
    Yeah, you better get your coffee. The show's going to be a show now. Okay, what one is that? What? That's a showcase show. No, they're leaving the wheel. No, isn't that Family Feud?
    25:56
    Let's see. We'll get the other ones out of the way first. Yes. Esther's dad emailed us. Hey! Better known as Adam. Hi, Adam. Actually, I don't know if he wanted this. But basically he was saying, he remembers telling me that I should play in the in-disc classics match play. See?
    26:15
    So he is the reason. Why Ron is a winner. So thank you, Adam. And he listens to the podcast. That's always nice. Love it. I wonder if he just goes through, is there any tournament stuff? He's like the opposite of most people. Yeah, he's the opposite of everyone. No, no, no, tournament nuts. Oh, there we go. You guys really need to increase your amount of tournament talk. I only had 20 minutes the last one. Terrible. Sure.
    26:40
    Fuck you. Goddamn cocksucker. That's a typical episode. It was really hard getting that compilation for the Twippies to not have something with swearing in it. I know. Actually, the one I sent did have an F-bomb in it, but I censored it out. Shit, though.
    26:59
    All right. This is from Justin. Hi, Justin. Our guest from episode 190. He says, hi, boys. Congrats on 200 episodes of Great Pinball Tomfuckery. Oh, my. Yes. Wow, even the ball bag has F-bombed. I'm sure you've heard, but Mike Judge and Greg Daniels is bringing back King of the Hill on Hulu. Yes. I'll tell you what, boy, it's about goddamn time. Now is the time for King of the Hill Pinball. I'll tell you what. Well, if they ain't doing Beavis and Butthead, they sure as hell ain't doing King of the Hill. No. That's even more or less mainstream, whatever you want to call it. Yes. Oh, man, I'll tell you what, man, why can't we get a pinball game, man? You've got broken coilstops, man.
    27:43
    Let's see. Thanks for all the great content over the years, and here's to 200 more episodes. Cheers. Thank you, sir. He says, I'm still waiting on my Godzilla premium from Project Pinball. You win, Ron. See? Yeah, but his is free. Yeah, true, but he's still waiting. That's true.
    28:02
    The waiting is the hardest part. Thank you, Tyler, for your suggestions. You'll be happy to know that we use them. He was one of our listeners. You sent time stamps. Oh, yes. Thank you. Use this. Well, we use the Aussie one. Oh.
    28:26
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see. Then we have, okay, Glenn. Glenn Watcher, one of our former guests, he sent us a song for episode 200. And we both have not heard it. I purposely have not listened to it yet. We were saving it for when we're actually on the air. So we're going to listen to this right now. Live. Here we go. Ron and Bruce. Slapdash. Fuck yeah. Come on, eat some of their chocolate motherfucking bread rolls Flesh hell, fuck yeah Drifted to death for your own motherfucking way, yeah Gotta leave, sour your games off you Clap your hands right through the roof Because it's flesh hell, fuck yeah So yield the floor and rest your gays out Flesh hell, fuck yeah The worship at the altar of Steve Kerr's post, yeah It's a show that says we're good Fuck yeah!
    29:39
    Meteor! Level Zero! Clusterfuck! Josh the Guy! Timbogs! Bruce in the Tournament Shop! Car Holder! Cheetah! Xanadu! Cash Crab! ELO! Ball Pay! What you find? Give you love! Give you hate! Turret Talk, He-Man Princess, Dragon Fist, RBC, Petretti, Robert Mueller, Cash Crab, Wayne, James Simmons, Jake Vicker, Superman Talk, Brian C, Bumpin' Bonus, Mr. Dispense, Prepare! Fuck yeah!
    30:26
    Fuck yeah! Say goodbye, Bruce. Oh, my fucking God. That's fucking awesome. Wow. Holy fucker, LaRue. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah, first. Second, that is the new theme song. Whatever you have planned for 200 and future run, that is the new intro song. Yeah, but the problem is there's vocals, and then I have to talk over the vocals. It doesn't work that way, Bruce. There's a little break in between when he does that, you know. But, I mean, like, that's the first 20. Oh, it's fucking awesome. Glenn, holy fuck-a-loo-roo. Fuck yeah.
    31:09
    That my new thing Fuck yeah I promise I use it somewhere Bruce Don worry Oh my fucking God Hold on I think I got a little accent on my pants right there Oh. Oh, yeah. It's coming down.
    31:25
    Fuck yeah. And it was perfect for you, too, because it's... Oh, my God. Wow. I am blown the fuck away. I think the episode's over. I mean, nothing can keep... What can follow that? I don't know. Thanks for 200 episodes, everybody. That's it. The first guest is screwed now because we've just blown our wad. Oh, that'll be skew. Good. Oh, shit.
    31:50
    Glenn, that was awesome. Thank you, Glenn. And it will be used maybe at the end of every show. It's after Oh My My. Fuck yeah. Yeah, I'll think of something, Bruce. I'll think of something. A little bit every time. Like you cut it up a little bit. Oh, you mean to edit differently every time so I have even more work. Yes, perfect. I'm thinking of you people Screw Ron and his freedom and his he wants to buy my countdown this is one of the to buy the countdown you have to do this ok see so wait a minute to even buy the countdown I need to do stuff so it's like the stern thing for Batman 66 where you had to make a video and how much you wanted it even though you're still going to have to pay $15,000 for it or you You know, you just got to like, you know, like when you do those, the free hat. We have a free hat we're trying to give away on Stern. Or a free t-shirt. Oh, yeah, I want one. And they never tell you who won. So you don't know if anybody won. Do better, Stern. Do better. I swear. Yeah, everyone wants us free. You don't even tell us who won. So we don't even know if anybody won. So guess what? You keep on recycling the same fucking things.
    33:05
    Fuck yeah. Yeah. You know what I think of when I think of the Slam Tilt Podcast? I think of four things. Well, one of the things I think of is really long letters from the Pinball Princess. That's one of them. Oh, well, before I read it, what are the other three things? You and me, which is one thing, because we are the Slam Tilt Podcast. We are the Slam Tilt Podcast, yes. Zach. Our third host. Yep, and Steve from A Bonus, because we always say his name every show. We do? We do. Hi, Steve. We also, all of our fans, I think of whenever I do this, you know, think about it. I know you have Patreon with your other show, Ron. We do? Yes. And you know. My other show, Silver Ball Chronicles, which can be listened to on the Pinball Network. Yes. Thank you. Very good. Segway. Very. I almost missed it. See, I'm the one that's, hey, David Dennis, who's looking out for you this time? Yeah. Bruce. Yeah, it's Bruce. Not Ron.
    34:06
    But the way I look at it as Patreon, I'm not a fan of it. You know, some people are making probably $3,000 on this thing. I don't think anyone's making $3,000.
    34:17
    Supposedly someone is. Not us. And I don't want to. I want this to be free for everyone. And guess what? We may not have as many people as we could or should or want to, but I love what we do. And I do it for us. Plus, Bruce doesn't want to take anyone's money when he bashes the shit out of everyone. Fuck yeah. There you go.
    34:39
    So, from the pinball princess, here we go. Ready? Hello, Steph. Come on. Got a sip of water here. Yes. I'm going to mute because I'm going to have my coffee probably done by the time we're ready for this. Oh, she uses lots of fancy words, too.
    34:53
    I might need some helpers in pronunciation. Well, actually, forget it. You're not going to help me. Oh, what do you mean I'm not going to help you? I'm going to fucking help you. You just make up words. Dear Ron and Bruce, despite managing to keep relatively up-to-date on the podcast as of late, it appears that I have been wholly remiss in penning any sort of contribution for quite some time. My degenerate correspondence habits are meeting a swift end in the new year, however. I am writing to make amends for my lack of letters and to forge in writing a promise, or depending on perspective, a threat to transmit more letters to the legendary ball bag. I know. I love Seth. But maybe we need a new degenerate reward. What, most degenerate? Email writer? Yes. Yes, that has to be Seth. Especially with terms like verily.
    35:45
    Verily. I don't know what that is. Verily, my prose is purpling by the moment. That sounds weird. I sound like I should have some kind of British accent. I don't want something turning purple. Oh. Oh, they're the regularity of writing they have degenerated in 2022. The ability to use sesquipedalian verbiage and constructions, both as a natural consequence of my lexicon and as a deliberate hyperbole of the same. What the hell does that mean? Oh, translation. Look, I can still ham up my speech so well it's like I'm sending a pile of bacon. Bacon. Fucking love bacon. Who doesn't? It would appear that in refraining from sending letters to the ball bag, I have managed to instead amass a few notes taken during listening to the podcast that I subsequently buried deep within my note-taking apps. Beneath inane musings on dream themes and drafts for social media posts about pinball, in addition to a cornucopia of non-pinball, and therefore completely inconsequential in the eyes of this podcast, content, there were a few notes taken during Slam Tilt episodes. Okay, you ready for them? Yeah, take a breath, hold on. Breathe a little bit. Sorry. Now, if you do want to ever meet Steph, you can meet her at the Rochester Pinball Collective because she actually works there some days and runs the bells and chimes for Rochester, Newark, which is also at the Rochester Pinball Collective. Continue. One specifically was a notation made while on a pinball-related trip. I occasionally have the unique experience of listening to the Slam Tilt podcast while in the presence of the third host. Hi, Zach. This is something that is quite honestly an unparalleled listening situation. Not only do confusing tech questions receive a ready answer, but the experience of hearing the live reaction of a regular podcast voice creates a sort of parallel dynamic. Oh, my God. Two Zachs in one area? The episode that could have been. Oh, I know. It is the sort of experience that, with a regular recording, became its own entity, the Slam Tilt Podcast Reaction Podcast. Maybe we should record her on this episode. We have reactions. That's a big thing, isn't it? Reaction videos. Oh, yeah, like the videos. Oh, my God! Like, when everyone hears Glenn's song, that's going to be a good reaction video. Fuck yeah. Alas, that world would require audio recording as well as editing to account for interruption and tangents. It would also require consistently listening in a group setting, contrary to the occasional delight of the augmented podcast listening experience. In this particular instance, the subject was some manner of repair. Bruce was describing fixing the display on a Gottlieb 80A, possibly on the games, which I learned was made by Milestar. Is it Milestar or Milstar? Uh, Mil. I don't know. I like Milestar, but Milestar Electronics Incorporated, because per Bruce, Gottlieb was a licensing nightmare in the 80s. It was. It still is. While discussing this repair, Bruce mentioned something to the effect of, you shouldn't unplug displays while the machine is powered on on Gottlieb 80As, like you can with Bally Williams, which immediately prompted Zach to retort in a fairly exasperated Zach volume, Bruce, you literally blew the boards on hot-dogging doing that. I did not blow the boards on hot-dogging. I just blew the fuse. That's all. Not a board. Fuse. This raises the question of whether changing displays with the power on is a good idea, and any of it isn't. Or if only a pinball degenerate would risk such a thing. Yeah, Bruce would. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would just turn it off. You know, they have labels right over the displays that say high voltage, don't touch. Just Bruce rips those right off. On a second such occasion of listening with the third host, I recorded another note, which was, once again, a technical correction. Here Bruce mentioned a WPC setting that turns the voltage down on GI after two minutes. Zach contested that this is incorrect. It PWMs them. What the fuck's that? That does mean something. We should know what that means if we're supposed to be tech. My notes, after stating I don't know what that means, but that's what Zach said, tried to explain the concept of, oh, pulse with modulation.
    40:15
    That is, again, pulse with modulation. I don't know. Yes, the basics of pulse with modulation for an Arduino. And the thing is, it does cut the voltage back. Oh, I won't get it out of you. Oh, I'm going to get it out of you with Zach. He's going to say it doesn't cut the voltage. It just does this other thing in my body. Basically dims the lights, folks. That's all you need to know. I know what it's doing, what he's saying it's doing, but it does. Please feel free to discuss this in greater detail. We just did. Then my incredibly detailed and eloquently explanation. Eloquently explanation? Which stated that PWM pulses the lights instead of one big ZZZZZ. I don't know how long I've natted on for, but it feels like quite a while. Perhaps I am simply out of practice. Or perhaps Ron's voice is really half gone at this point. Is it? I don't know. It sounds pretty good. Yeah. I will end with one final note. On episode 197, you all derided the art of letter writing as some sort of outmoded 1920s technology.
    41:19
    First of all, the venerable practice of letter writing far precedes the 1900s. Second of all, I have a ridiculous surplus of stationery, and I'm not above rambling about pinball on it. I'm tempted to write a physical snail mail slam tilt letter. just to prove a point that only I cared about. Still emailing for now, player 31915. Wow. Thank you, Pinball Princess.
    41:45
    Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. I think it's time before our real interview. God. We're going to have to – well, you know, I kept promising that I would get this doofus on. Yeah. So I am going to step away. Actually, I'm going to step away. I've got to get a drink of water. But I'm going to step away. And I don't even know what to ask this douchebag. He'll just probably talk all over. Well, like, pretend he's a regular guest, you know? Games you like, games you hate. How did you get in this hobby? Yeah, ask him. You hate Stranger Things. Ask him about Stranger Things. See what he thinks about it. But, yeah. All right.
    42:23
    Hello there. Hi. Mine is Bruce Nightingale. Yes, I know who you are. Ron has told me about this stupid show. Okay. I've been on it before, remember? I don't remember that. I called in. I still don't remember that. It must have been unforgettable.
    42:40
    It was unforgettable. Yes, he told me about these. Like you do, yeah. Brucisms. Shit that makes no sense. Yes.
    42:49
    Unforgettable. That's what Stu is. That is true. I am quite unforgettable. I am the 1978 Playboy Launch Party champion. He raises pinball player alive. Well, I'm going to ask you a couple questions on this very informal interview. So speak as you would like, and I will do the same. Yes. Okay. How did you get into pinball, Stu? Well, as you may or may not know, I am from Transylvania, Romania. And we had pinball over there. Thank you, European distributors. But I have been doing this since I was a small child. I was good instantly. Literally the first time I ever played the game, I think I got the grand champion.
    43:34
    And pretty much that's it. I've been awesome ever since. Do you remember the first game you ever played? Ah, let's see. Do I remember? I think it was Six Million Dollar Man. Wow, that's a great game. It has six displays. It's a great game, isn't it? Eh, not a huge fan. Well, that means you have something in common with our host, other host, Ron Ellis. He complains all the time how he got screwed on the game. He's screwed that just played better. I agree. I totally agree. So, after you playing your first game and getting into this great hobby, what made you become the player you are today? I just was awesome immediately. I mean, there was really no effort there. Like, who did you beat in your prime time? I beat most of the best players of the era until I was banned by the IFPA. Why would you be banned? And let's talk about this banning. I keep on hearing about this, and I really need to know about it. They were scared of me. I would come to a tournament, and no one wanted to be there because they knew they were going to lose. So it was hurting the attendance of tournaments. So they just banned me from IFPA. Wow. Yes, I do not get along with the Sharps. Oh, wow. I did not know that. Oh, yes. Well, how could I? They banned me from their stupid little thing. You sound a little bitter, though. No comment. Okay. So your claim to fame, one of your claims to fame. I have many. Is the 1978 launch party. Can you tell us a little about how you first got into the contest and how you won it? It was at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. You know, back when pinball was actually a scene, it was a much cooler thing than it is now. It was like a high score type tournament. That's how they were doing it then. I had the highest score. That simple. Did the women all jump you at the end and, like, go, ooh, ah?
    45:37
    There was some action going on. Let's just say that, yes. Okay, there we go. You see, at that time, us pinball players were celebrities, unlike now. So Hugh Hefner invited you up to the private room, and you hung out, and you drank a little bit with Hugh. and did you get a free pinball machine from this? Of course I did. I've won tournaments where I've won a car. A car? What did you – Did you win a Yugo?
    46:06
    That's why I don't understand the big – you know, they're playing for peanuts now. I mean, we were on ABC's Wild World of Sports back in the day. Now it's like – I mean, what do you want, the Ocho? Like some pre-taped thing where they have – It's just, where's the personalities? Where is the... I remember, now, okay, I remember this now. I remember seeing you on Wild World of Sports with the agony of defeat.
    46:31
    No comment. Ron warned me about you. But it's like we were on Wild World of Sports. Everyone had, like, pinball jackets on and stuff. It was like a cool thing. Who were your sponsors back then? like Gold's Old Spice and Brute by Fabergé, was it? It might have been Budweiser, I think. Budweiser, ah. You know, actual sponsors, not like, what are the pinball sponsors now? They're just like pinball parts companies and what's your RPC thing? Like that's a sponsor. No, we got real sponsors back in the day.
    47:09
    Budweiser. See, that's what pinball needs. If they would ever unban me, I could actually start winning these tournaments again. You would see, you would actually get some people watching Twitch. I mean, what is it, the Indisc thing that just happened, like 15,000 people? They would have 30,000 people watching if I had been on the street. Maybe. Here's what you do. I have an idea for you. You put a wig on, and you change your voice a little bit, and you can get into Pink Clash.
    47:36
    Why would I wear a wig? My hair is incredible. But they'll notice you from your hair. Maybe you get a short haircut. You get a really short haircut. Let me tell you another issue with pinball today. See, to me, the best era of pinball, the 90s Williams games, that is the pinnacle right there. And now it's just like the games are just too freaking complicated. No one understands what the hell they're doing. So do you like the new games that are coming out, like from Stern? Do you like the new Bond? Well, why don't you give me your little game you like and you hate? Game you like. Okay, so I'm going to say game you like and game you hate. Read them off to us. So the game I like, of course, is Jokers, my favorite game. It's in stereo, you know. Yes, yes, it is. I love me some Jokers. Played a ton of that back in the day. Is that the only game they had in Transylvania in the 80s? I was here by then. Oh. Now, obviously, I was here. You know, I said I was in Chicago for the Playboy launch party. That was in the early 80s, though. Maybe you got to afford it. That was in 1978, you fool. Okay, did you get deported? I did not get deported. Okay.
    48:49
    You're having some fun with this, aren't you? Me? No, never. I am a serious interviewer here, sir. Yes, you sound really serious. Very serious. Now, my least favorite game. Let's see. Ah, there's so many. There's so many. I agree. You must follow me with that part of it. I don't. You know, one game I really hate lately? It's a game that Ron has in his basement. Freaking Rush. Rush, wow, the newest game Number one, the band is like Come on, really? That's just like Geeky band, who the hell, no No, make a real game Like at least ACDC, I could see Okay, I can see that for a band game Rush, that's Yeah, then you have all these like Brainiac tournament types who do The rules and make them like so complicated You have no idea what you're doing Even though Ron says It's, no, Ron doesn't know what he's talking about. Look at this. You have to put a mod on that game so you can see the insert for that little interloop thing because you can't even see it. So that's the only flaw in that game? That's an extremely complex rule set. It doesn't tell you what to do. You can't read anything on the display. Oh, I agree with you on that one. Definitely. I mean, just like I said, 90s, Williams games, everything's on the play field. Anyone can understand it. These new games, they're still complicated. I don't understand. I don't get it. Okay. Well, we got your game you like, game you hate. Would you like to tell us your thoughts on pinball lately?
    50:22
    I mean, the tournament scene, they need more personalities like me. I just find it boring to watch most of the time. Like I said, we need more athletes like me, an actual athlete playing pinball. I mean, when you see them, like, wiping off the lockdown bar, because, I mean, are you sweating? You're playing pinball. If you're sweating playing pinball, you have issues. You need to get in better shape or something.
    50:46
    Is there anything you'd like to tell the youth of pinball to try to make them a better player? It looks like the youth is doing pretty good right now because they're kicking the shit out of all the old people. So maybe they actually have followed some of your speakings. No, they just know all these inane rules that are on these games. It's like it's become more of a, like you're going to school or something, as opposed to actually playing a game. Back in my day, we were celebrities. Everyone knew who I was. I was Stu McVicar, the 1978 Playboy Launch Party Champion. Is there any other tournament you won besides that? I won the 1988 Jokers Launch Party Championship. Aha, so now we have two claims to fame. I usually don't bring that one up because most people don't know what the hell Jokers is. it's in stereo you know it is in stereo just like the state of the east were before that the day the east games they just ripped off williams and they weren't this good wow okay except lethal weapon three i always liked that one wow you and ron are like a lot on some of your games yes some of them yes i don't understand his thing with rush but i mean we both like lethal weapon three. I'll give him that. As a Slam Tilt podcast person, I have to ask, what are your thoughts on early Stern pinball machines, since we love them so much?
    52:08
    Yes, I go for them. You go for them. They're different. They're not the same, like all the Valley games that just have the saucer up top and orbit spinners, and they're all the same and boring. No, at least they were different. Now, I have one more question, and then we'll be done with your valuable time that we've had here today. Yes, my valuable time. If you would like to put your thing out to the Sharps and maybe we can get past this troubled waters, what would you like to say to the Sharps right now to maybe try to get back into the IFPA?
    52:44
    Yeah, screw them. Your movie sucks. I don't believe any of it. It's all a fallacy.
    52:54
    Okay. Well, thank you, Stu McVickers, the launch party champion for Playboy. Yeah, you jokers. I will say one more thing. Okay. I hear you don't like Stranger Things. It does suck. I have to agree. It was better when it was AFM. Oh, I totally agree. Me and Ron don't agree on that one either. Good. I have more respect for you right now. Yes. Well, this has been Stu McVicker. Yes, you can see me on Ron's channel. I guess it's your channel, Slamfield Podcast. whenever I decide to play. Did you notice the other day I went on, I had never played Godzilla before, and within four games I beat his grand champion score. Did you notice that? Well, he sucks at pinball. I thought he was supposedly good. He told me at Indy's he actually did something. He actually won money. He won money. How much money did he win? Almost, well, back then in Playboy, when it was sold, it was probably $1,400 or $1,500. He won $1,800.
    53:52
    All right. Not as impressive as when I won a car, but still. I agree. Not bad for him. He won, of course, right? No, he got second. Second? What is he, Josh Sharp? No, that's not the way it works. He is the first loser. No, he is the first loser. You have to win. Win or it? Now, wait a sec. Maybe I know why you're not in IFPA now. If you didn't win, you just wanted to drop the mic and walk off the stage, right?
    54:16
    I don't understand what you just said. Well, like, you know, you get so frustrated. If you can't win and you don't miss. No, there is no can't. I win. Ah. I just win. That's the way it is. So if you face Keith Elwood. Yes. You mean the guy who finished second twice? Yep. Or Raymond Davidson. The man who can't beat Escher? Or Escher Lefkoff. What would you, you know, how would you handle these guys playing the pressure? Or is it all on them? Like Escher? I would do something with the lockdown bar because, you know, he sweats a lot. He's always wiping it off. So I would do something, slick that up so his hands fall off or he goes to the machine and falls over. I'm not the buff doing stuff like that. Oh, so. Oh, that was gamesmanship back in the day when I played. You do what you have to to win. So you're kind of like the Black Sox of 1990. I mean, that might be another reason they banned me from IFPA, honestly. Oh, so we might have the behind the scenes. It's called gamesmanship. It's not cheating. Did you sweep the leg? That's what I want to know. Did you sweep the leg? I may have been known to sweep the leg once or twice, yes.
    55:28
    You're not passing my score, I'll tell you that. You did not have a problem with that. No, not at all. Okay. Now we have the behind the scenes. Yes, all right. I've had enough of you. Okay. So until next time, well, I probably will never be on this show again because you guys suck. But Clam Tilt Podcast, stream, check it out. I'm on there occasionally whenever I feel like it. Maybe I'll show up and beat whatever high score Ron has on Rush, a game I don't even like. I think you need to play me. Why would I play you? You're never here. Well, when I do come out next time, we'll have to make a date and see who can win the best of seven. That's easy. For all. Guaranteed. Wow. Okay. Yes. All right. See you later, losers. Until next time. I'm just kidding. I'm not coming back. Bye. Where is Ron when I need him? God, I hope he gets back on this thing real fast. I'm right here. Did you push him out the door or something? Yeah, he's gone. God, that was rough. You owe me one. That was rough. I thought he'd be a better interview. You owe me one. Just complaining about the body. But we did find out why he got banned from the IFPA now. Yeah, he's a freaking cheater. I'm sorry, gamesmanship. Gamesmanship. Yeah, right. He's a gamer. Yeah, he's a gamer, all right. And screw him, Rush is awesome. And so is Stranger Things. I kind of agree with him on something like Game Fix. Oh, shut up, you. All right.
    56:57
    So here we go, folks. Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you at Slam Pilt Podcast our interview with Mark Panaccio.
    57:06
    And here we are today. We have our episode 200 guest. Dun, dun, dun. From Stern Pinball, and formerly Williams Pinball, Mark Panaccio. Good morning. Hey, how you doing? How's it going? Everything's going great. So we're just going to get started. You're currently with Stern Pinball. That's correct. And currently working on the, and we'll get into this later, the James Bond's 60th anniversary game. You are correct. But you started in pinball at Williams. A long time ago. So it's been 30 years since I did my last game, so I think that's a record between games. We'll see if anybody can beat that.
    57:52
    Yeah, that is, yeah. I wonder if Harry Williams could have beat that. No, probably around 20 for him. So, yeah, you might have it there.
    58:02
    There's a few people who could come out of the woodwork and beat me, we'll see. But I think this might be a record. I think so, too.
    58:10
    Well, why don't you tell us, how did you get into this crazy industry of pinball? Let's see. My family moved to a suburb of Akron, Ohio, in 1970. And I remember being really, really young, playing pinball behind the cash registers at the Zare. I don't remember what games they were, but I know they were Gottliebs because they had that little red credit button on the coin door. and I don't remember if I was double flipping, but let's just say I probably was because I was probably six. I started paying attention to it a little bit later in kind of like the golden age of the EMs with like Space Mission, OXO, other games of that era. And I remember that's when I started paying attention to like what the names of the manufacturers were. So I knew Gottlieb. I knew Williams. I knew Bailey. I noticed every once in a while, let's see, a Chicago coin. And I started noticing the games. Then I think I was probably 14, and I got the Bobby Clare Natkin and Steve Kirk book, All About Pinball, which I basically read until the book fell apart. It just disintegrated. All the pages came out. But I learned, okay, pinballs are 1-1-1-16th-inch diameter. So I looked in the phone book, and I found a ball-bearing distributor and went there and bought some pinballs. So I had pinballs. Then I had my mom take me to the operator, and I was going to make a game. I went in there, and I said, I want to buy some parts to make a game. And the guy's like, no, you can't make a game. But he took me next door and showed me their warehouse where I got to see all the games. they were working on and games they pulled out. And that was really cool. Played pinball through college. I had an Oxo when I was in college. And then I had a Paragon and a Phoenix when I was in college. When I had an Oxo, the tilt relay stopped working one day. And my friends, instead of telling me, they went and got some floor wax and waxed the floor underneath the game. So I come back from class and they're sliding the game back and forth. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing? You can't do this. And then when I got out of college around 86, I started playing pinball a little bit more. And I remember really, really liking high speed. I would go play high speed every day during lunch where I was working. And I remember, like, trapping the ball and looking up close at the display and going, okay, what's this thing doing? I was looking at the score sweep. I remember looking at Data East games and thinking, okay, these look pretty cool. So I sent a resume to Williams. I sent a resume to Bailey. And I tried really hard to send a resume to Data East, but I could never get their contact information. I would call the operator in Chicago. I'd ask for the phone number. She'd give me a number. I'd call it. It'd say the number was disconnected. So I don't know what they were connecting me to. But I never got a resume into Data East. But I did get one into Valley and Williams. Never heard from Valley. Williams, I got a call like two days later after I sent the resume, and I talked to one person, and I talked to him a couple times, and it just never really went anywhere. So about three months later, which would have been about March of 88, I just came to Chicago. I hitched a ride with a friend of mine who has come to Chicago for an interview. I came to Chicago and I called up this person, went and had lunch with them.
    61:55
    And I don't know if you've ever bombed an interview, but I bombed that interview. It's like they'd ask me a question. I was out to lunch at like a pizza place down the street. They'd ask me a question. I would open my mouth and just nonsense would come out. It was just, it was, I bombed the interview. I knew I bombed the interview. They knew I bombed the interview. and then I called them up a week later and they're like, yeah, you're not the super guy for the job. And I like aw damn So meanwhile I was living with my parents in Ohio and they moved So I sort of became I guess technically homeless although I wasn homeless But I didn't have a place to live. I had all my stuff in storage in Akron. I'm in my car, and I'm like thinking, okay, I've got to figure out what I'm doing with my life. So I drove back and forth across the country a couple times, ended up back in Chicago. And I'm like, okay, you know what? I think I'll move to Chicago, and I'll give it two years, and I'll try to get a job at Williams again.
    62:57
    So I went into a recruiter, and he's like, who have you interviewed with? And I told him Williams. He goes, well, let me give them a call. So I think I had an interview with them the next day. I interviewed with Foots and Ed Sahaki, and that time I didn't blow the interview. I nailed that interview, and I remember the next day I had the job. So I was about as happy as you could be at that point. So a week later, I moved to Chicago and started at Williams.
    63:29
    What's that? Footson Reuter? I never can say his name right. I think, you know, everyone called him Foots. His name was Bill. Sometimes I called him Bill. He's a great guy. I loved working with Foots. I loved being around Foots. He was just a great guy to work with. I think it's Footson Reuter. he programmed the Joust video game he programmed so many great games yeah for us probably not familiar with our podcast but we're really into the old classic sterns you know from the late 70s early 80s and he did and he worked there and he did a lot of those I think he did Quicksilver maybe Flight 2000 I think he helped out with that yes he did a couple of the older sterns so I'm starting at Williams it was like September of 88 and I was just, at the time, I was in awe of Steve Ritchie. And this was simply because of high speed in that 14. I didn't even know that he had done Flash or Firepower or a couple other games. So it's like, it's my second day of work and I'd met almost everybody at that point in time that I was going to meet. Like Larry DeMar took me under his wing and showed me a bunch of stuff and I met Ed Boon and Foots and Barry. and I hadn't met Steve yet. So my second day, Larry brings me down the end of the hall. Steve, at one point, he was working in an office way far away from everybody else. They were still juggling the Williams and Bally people and trying to figure out, okay, who's trying to fit where. So I go into Steve's office like 3, 4 o'clock with Larry, and he introduced me to him. And Steve's in this back office, and he's got this game in a cabinet, and the cabinet must have been three feet deep. It was a giant, giant cabinet. there's no way you can ship a game like that. It was huge. And it was called Black Knight's Castle. And it was going to be three levels. And I remember meeting Steve, and I'm in awe of Steve. And the first thing Steve says to me is, he goes, I just met you, and already I don't like you. And I'm, oh, man. Oh, man.
    65:38
    And then the next thing he says to me is, let's go to dinner. So it was Steve being Steve. So my stomach stopped for like eight seconds there until it said, let's go to dinner, which, of course, I'm going to go to dinner with Steve. Why not? I mean, he was my idol at the time. And I'm in pinball. I'm happier than a pig in shit. And, you know, everything is good. So that's when I got to know Steve, and I went to dinner with him. And he was great, and he helped me out through lots of stuff. So that's how I ended up at Williams. And your first game at Williams? My first game at Williams was Earthshaker. Somehow there was like a scheduling issue, and I got put on Earthshaker within two weeks after I was starting there. So like two weeks after I'm there, all of a sudden, here, you're doing Earthshaker. And I remember the first meeting I went to, we used to have game meetings once a week, where there's a big conference room and there's like all the people on the game team are there. Plus there's like management, there's like Steve Kordek, there's people from sales. And Steve Kordek goes, and who is doing the software on this game? And they're like, Mark Panaccio. And he goes, and who else? And they're like, no, no, just Mark. And he's like sitting next to me. He goes, oh, I don't know about this. I think this is a bad idea. I wish we could get Foots and Rooter on this game. and Butch was busy doing lots of other stuff. So that was my introduction to Steve Kordek, which I later got to know Steve really well, and Steve was a great guy. But that was my introduction to Steve Kordek. I'm like, oh, man, this is going to be rough. The grandfather of Williams almost.
    67:28
    Oh, yeah. And at the time he was mostly just a figurehead, but he would come in and he had his office. He had his Grand Prix back glass on the wall and maybe space mission. And just going in and talking to him, it was just amazing some of the stuff that he just had been around, so much stuff. Yeah, he would have been there about 30 years at that point. So I think he started in 1960. Yeah. Williams, after already had been in the industry since like the 30s. Yeah, another story with Steve Kordick one time, I don't remember what game it was, but we had just gotten screen playfields back. And we're all in the art department looking at the screen playfields. And they're like, okay, let this game build up, and let's stick it on test next week or whatever. And Steve announces in front of everybody, Mark, I've got big problems with the software on this game. I want to talk to you about it, and I don't want this game going on test next week. So I want to talk to you about it now. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to have to talk to Steve. And we get out, and we're in the hallway, and he goes, I don't have a damn thing to say about the software. I can just tell you that you wanted a little more time. And I'm like, oh, okay, good. All right. And then we ended up testing like a week later, and everything was fine. But that was one point Steve did his thing, put his foot down, and bought me a little extra time.
    68:54
    Nice. So, yeah, I'm looking at Earthshaker. I would have been one of a few months of you starting, and you're already lead on a game, and it's a Pat Waller game. At the time, Pat had, I think it just was... He just had Banzai Run. So he wasn't the legendary Pat Waller yet. He just had that one crazy game. This would be his first kind of regular game. Yeah. And I released Rev. 1 of Earthshaker six months to the day after I started at the company. I'm not sure it was worthy of being Rev. 1, but it was definitely called Rev. 1. And so that was, I jumped right into the fire when I started at Williams. So you could be the first programmer who had to program a shaker motor?
    69:41
    Yeah. Yeah, everyone was a little afraid that it would, you know, that it was bad for the game, it would shake things apart. And, you know, we had it on test. I had, you know, there was a room where it was sitting down, and, like, every minute I would shake the game.
    69:56
    And I remember we tested that game. There was this arcade in Rockford, Illinois, which is like an hour or so west of Chicago, hidden away from anybody in the industry. It was an arcade. It was an elderly couple that ran it. They were super nice to everybody. They treated their employees like family. But I remember going there on a Saturday for the game on test and just watching the first person played it. And when they locked the ball, the guys, like, run around. And he went and he got the person who worked there and said, hey, something's wrong with this game. And, yeah, so that was the first game. And then I think Data East copied it pretty quickly on, was it Checkpoint was their first game with a Shaker motor?
    70:37
    And the Shaker motor's been in every Stern game since, I think. I think the LEs have them in, like, every game now. Yeah. And you could put a kid in all of them. We sell kids. And let's see. So you also had Earthshaker originally had the moving building that eventually went away. Yeah. I had the game with the moving building. My Earthshaker here has the moving building. I think we made 200 samples with the moving building. Then we had way too much money in the game, so we had to take the building out.
    71:08
    They took a color out of the cabinet, so that's why it went from light blue to dark blue. So the first 200 had the light blue. I have a light blue one. I like the dark blue one better. I thought that was a better-looking cabinet. And that was pretty much all we had to change on our shaker to get it at a price everybody was happy with. And it does extremely well. Say it sells, I'm looking here, 5,257 units, which any company would be happy with in this era. Oh, yeah. It was a lot of fun working on it. Like I said, it ended up really quick. and I think we won some kind of award at an AMA show or something like that. And then from there I went on to Elvira and the Party Monsters, and that was my first experience working with all the people from Bali. And what was really nice about working on that game was just how united everybody from Bali. It was still very much Bali Williams, Bali Williams. These were Bali people. These were Williams people. And just everybody who had come over from the Valley Company when Williams bought them, they were just all united behind the game. It was nice working with Dennis, although he ended up in the hospital. He had a motorcycle accident. He ended up in traction in the hospital for months. It's like Jim Patlett took over the game. Steve Ritchie, of course, was the one who told me that Dennis got in the accident because he was with him. and Steve tells me this story that is like so long and drawn out about Dennis having this happen to him. I thought Dennis was dead the way Steve was telling me the story, and it was just he got in an accident and broke his leg.
    72:48
    But, you know, Elvira ended up going to the AMA show that year. Talk about stress. The game right before Elvira was Transporter the Rescue.
    73:01
    Yep. And not the best game. And the sales on that didn't quite meet what they expected, so they sent everybody on the line home. So the half of the company that was making the Williams game was making games, and the other half of the factory was empty, and it's okay. When Mark is done, you guys can come back to work. So every day I'm like 25 now, I'm walking through an empty factory thinking, I've got to get this game done. Because these people want to come back to work. And eventually I did. And that one sold great for a ballet game, but it only sold 4,000, which was lower than a Williams game. But at the time, they had different distribution networks. And at that time, ballet didn't have the greatest reputation for some of their recent games. Then I finally got to work with Steve. I worked with Steve on Roller Games, which was a TV show that by the time the game came out, the TV show was no longer a TV show. and Steve's an interesting person. You've heard a lot of stories about Steve, I'm sure.
    74:09
    Steve can be a difficult person to work with and I have a lot of stories where it involves me not getting along with people so it can't always be the other person so I think I can be a difficult person to work with. But we didn't actually fight on that game. We got along really well. I remember some days coming in and we'd jump in Steve's van and we'd go to, like, every game that was on test, and it was like, you know, we'd be out in Rockford and we'd be in Indiana on the same day. We'd leave at, like, 9 in the morning, and we'd get back at, like, 9, 10 at night, and then we'd do it the next week. And we actually lobbied hard, Steve and I did, to get them to change the theme of that game because there was no more TV show. But that didn't happen. and I think the game does stand on its own. Like a lot of people play the game, don't even realize it was a TV show.
    75:05
    And after roller games, I was going to work with Steve again. The plan was for me to work with Steve again. But it was, you know, we didn't fight at all during the game, but somehow we got into a fight after the game. And it just started, I think I was probably emotionally 26 at the time, and Steve was probably emotionally 26 at the time, even though Steve was probably 40, 41. We just started yelling at each other, and it just escalated more and more. And it was a fight we were going to get over with, and we were going to be fine. But somehow I ended up blurting out, I'm not working on this game. And he's like, yes, you are. No, I'm not working on the game. And so he's got the whitewood in the doorway to my office, and we're screaming at each other. And he's pushing it in the door, and I'm pushing it out of the door. And he's like, you are working on this game. I'm like, I am not working on this game. And we push the badge in the door. Finally, he gave up, and it didn't come in the door. And then I go to, you know, there's steam coming out of my ears. My face is probably bright red. And I'm in my boss's boss's office going, I'm not working with Steve again.
    76:25
    And Dwight ended up doing that next game, which became Terminator 2, did very well for Dwight. And Steve and I became friends again. I think Steve is a great guy. I loved working with him. I talked to him at every show.
    76:40
    But it was just, I think, a bad day for both of us. and it escalated into yet another crazy event that happened with Steve and somebody else and yet another crazy event that happened with me and somebody else.
    76:53
    So from there I ended up doing Hurricane. We won't talk about Hurricane. I was going to bring up roller games with the Rock, Rock Roller Games. We love roller games. And they changed it so you didn't have the Rock, Rock Roller Games anymore for the European distributors. You know, we had the music from the game, and it was in the – the music from the TV show was in the game, and our German distributor – and the German distributor bought, like, 40% of everything we made at the time. So if they said, do this, don't do this, that's what you did. So the German distributor, Hans, came in, he listened to it, and he goes, I don't like the music. I'm not buying this game. So Dan, in a late attempt, wrote a really great tune, and that's what ended up in Roller Games.
    77:49
    Rock, rock, rock, and roller games. Roller games. Rock, rock, rock. Yeah, I had a Roller Games for years and years, and I know I talked to Steve at shows. He never wants to talk about Roller Games. You know, a lot of games had names that were somewhat derogatory that you would just use to be derogatory or just because they were what you called them. And Steve and I always called roller games Roller Pile. Roller Pile?
    78:16
    Yeah, high speed was like high cost. Yeah. Roller games is Roller Pile. I've never heard that. Nice. I think the game Fire, people used to call it Gravy, and I think it was from a dog food commercial, Gravy Train. He had dogs dressed as firemen, and somehow that became gravy.
    78:42
    There were a couple other games that just got, oh, Harley Davidson was the old, the belly Harley Davidson was hardly any fun.
    78:50
    That's true. So not every game got a name like that, but Roller Games was definitely Roller Pile. Yeah, Roller Pile. The thing is, I always loved that game. It also had a five bank drop. It was supposed to be drop targets. I don't remember if it was the sample run had five bank or if we did the 200 with the five bank. I think it might have been just the sample run with the five bank. And that was way too much money. So we had to do cost cutting on that game. We took out the five bank. We took out a couple switches that were like backup switches for the kickback and stuff like that. And then we took all the flash lamps out of the bag box. Yeah, through the run. So it depended on when you got the game, how much you had, because they cut it over time. Right, right. And then that's when System 11B became System 11C, because to cut the cost, We took all the sound hardware off the motherboard that was now being done on the sound board. So that's how B became C because we're like, well, don't stick this on the board. We won't use it. And that's how we cut some of the costs on that game. Yeah, I was way too much into roller games. I was studying the whole thing like over time. Just like the Williams logos would be on the speakers, but then the later models, they took them off. You know, the flashers, there's like three different sets. There's ones that have all the flashers, ones that the flashers aren't there, but the holes are there in the insert panel, and then there's ones that even the insert panel doesn't have the holes. Mine was an earlier one. It actually has the wiring for that second redundant switch in the kickback area that was removed. Now, what color wire forms did you get?
    80:40
    There were no color. They were the chrome. Okay, because we had tried to get those powder-coated, because at the time, Data East was powder-coating their wire forms. And we thought that looked really cool. So we found someplace to powder coat, and I don't think they were powder coating them. They were just painting them. And so the paint was just coming off left and right, and we were just getting beat up by, you know, I'd sit in the salesman's office, and he would play one phone message after another of just people complaining about the paint coming off. If they were powder coated, they would have been fine. but I think the person who the company that we went to for the powder coat wasn't actually powder coating them. So that's why the games have all different you know, I think my game has one or two wire forms that are like red and yellow and I think there might have been a blue one we used somewhere too. Yeah, through the run you see so many different configurations of... Yeah. So what was the second switch in the kickback area? What was that for? Just redundancy? That was just redundancy. That was first to go. And then when I took it out, the first software I took it out, I took it out of the game and I marked it unused, but I forgot to take it out of the switch test. So after, you know, 60 balls, it would start saying, switch number this unused is bad. So that was like the first rev after we took it out had that that I had to fix in later versions. Oh, yeah, the test report. Yeah, the test report. Unused switch, yeah. When it comes to roller games, I always thought this was a cool little coding touch. Because in roller games, you have the lock area, and then there's the diverter there that diverts it, either not in the lock or does the cool thing where it fires the balls out in a circle, and they go right back into the lock area, which I always thought was cool. But I've only seen this happen in this particular instance. If you have two balls locked, and you get sudden death, and you finish sudden death, when you finish sudden death, the last ball actually goes in the lock area. So you have three balls in the lock area, even though you haven't started multiball, and it will fire the diverter, which is just long enough to just hit the third ball and get it out of the lock area. I always thought that was cool. I remember that lock, the lock area, I could release one ball because, you know, one ball, you can only get rid of one ball. I could release three balls because that diverter would kick the ball out. But if there were two in there, I couldn't get rid of just one of them. I either had to get rid of two or none. So that diverter would just hit that third ball so I could hold it in there and then just kick it out. That was kind of cool. That wasn't expected, but it worked, so I used it.
    83:26
    And as you said, Hurricane doesn't exist. Why doesn't Hurricane exist? Nobody hits a home run every time.
    83:36
    And that was a fun single that was thrown out. And it's a shame because we all tried really hard on that game, and it just didn't work. It just didn't work. And it's a shame because the other two games in that series were just amazing games. Common and Cyclone were amazing games. Hurricane was not, and I, yeah, I have a Hurricane. I play it from time to time. but nobody hits a home run every time and I definitely didn't hit one that time.
    84:13
    But you got to work with Python. Python was great. I loved Python. Python was a cartoon. You almost didn't think of him as a person. I don't know how to describe him except that he was a cartoon. Now that I'm older, I can definitely see where Python needed help in a few areas but he was a blast to hang out with. I remember one time it was on that game and there was a bar down the street from Williams called Oinkers that a lot of people from Williams would go to after work and I went there on like a Tuesday and I'm talking to Python and Python is just spewing nonsense left and right and he's drinking beer. He's got a pitcher full of beer and he's got about eight or ten straws in the pitcher and he's drinking the beer with straws out of a pitcher. And Python, with a straight face, is telling me how he gave up drinking. And he's telling me he gave up drinking with a pitcher of beer in his hand and straws in his hand. And I look at him. He's like, yeah, man, I have given up drinking. And I'm like, what about this? He goes, except for weekends, holidays, and special occasions. Now, this was like a Tuesday in the middle of the week. There was no holiday. It wasn't a weekend. To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't a special occasion. But that was just Python. That was just the way he was. One time, I remember I was working on some game. It wasn't even a Python game, but it was like crunch time, end of the game. It's like 2 a.m. on a Saturday, and I'm working in my office, and all of a sudden Python pops in, and he's animated. He's in full Python mode, and you can just smell the alcohol coming off of him. and he grabs a marker and he starts drawing this ball mechanism animated he's drawing this ball mechanism on my whiteboard it was a ball popper and it was going somewhere else and he's drawing and drawing and then he goes to erase this and he realizes okay it was an indelible marker he used a sharpie and he goes I have some solvent in my office I will be right back and he disappears now I'm going back to work and it's like now it's 3 a.m. and he pops in my office again. He's got a bottle of Old Spice deodorant and he pops the bottle off the deodorant and he starts dumping it on my whitewood and he's trying to clean the stuff with the Old Spice deodorant. Now it reaped. The whole office smelled of this Old Spice deodorant like you dunked yourself in it. And he just did that and then he gives up and he can't clean it and he leaves. Now meanwhile, I got an office It smells like somebody dumped a bottle of Old Spice deodorant in it. So I just took the whiteboard off the wall.
    87:01
    I took the whiteboard off the wall. I didn't have a whiteboard anymore. I stuck it in the hallway. And like six months later, I'm in Dwight Sullivan's office, and he's got a whiteboard on his wall, and I can see like a ball popper mechanism that's like on it and a double marker. I go, where'd you get this whiteboard? He goes, in the hallway. and then I told him the story how it reeked of Old Spice deodorant. But, yeah, Python was a character, and it's too bad he's not around. I went and visited him when he was sick, and I remember going to Expo specifically just to hear his last talk. And have you guys seen the interview where he's, like, talking in his kitchen with like a leg of lamb hanging behind him. I recall that interview, yes. Where he compares himself to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Python never had a good thing to say about anybody. He would give backhanded compliments to everybody. Like when we were working on Earthshaker and the play fields, we just got the play fields printed and we're in the art department. And Earthshaker was a nice-looking play field. I thought Tim Elney did a really nice job on the play field. So Python takes me aside. He goes, I am glad to see he is finally using my colors. Now, the colors were primary colors. They're blue and, you know, and others and other primary colors. So I don't know what Python's colors were, but apparently Python approved of the play field because Tim was finally using his colors.
    88:33
    Yeah, I mean, he, some of the interviews, he's interesting in that, you know, some people, like Steve Ritchie's great, but I hate Pat Waller. Or, you know, this person is this, this person is that. Yeah, he's very interesting. He showed me his artwork he had done from before he was at Williams. He was doing political cartoons and other stuff, and he was incredibly talented. He was incredibly talented, but John Yelsey came to pinballs simply because Python couldn't be counted on doing his job. So Python wasn't the one who brought Yelsey in for Jokers. And then everybody who saw it is like, whoa, we got to keep this guy around. This guy's good.
    89:18
    And John came from slot machines. I did not know where he came from. He came from slot machines. I actually dealt with him out before he came to pinball and during pinball when I was in the photo industry. That's interesting.
    89:33
    When Python never finished anything on time, and I remember he always had a different excuse. the one time he told me that he didn't get the artwork done in time because he ate too much chicken.
    89:48
    And the reason why he didn't get the artwork on time because he ate too much chicken was all the antibiotics that they feed chicken made him catch a cold because the antibiotics wouldn't help him. So he'd been sick at home with the cold because he'd eaten too much chicken and therefore the antibiotics didn't make him any better. And he would have called, except you know how bad the phones work in this place.
    90:11
    Oh, wow. Yowsers. I remember Larry DeMarc going, yeah, I really felt bad for Python the first time his mom died.
    90:25
    Yeah, that one I've heard, yes, his mom died several times. Well, hurricane. So hurricane doesn't exist, except in your house off to the side. But the next game. Fish Hills. Fishtails was kind of my... When I started Fishtails, I knew I was going to be leaving pinball afterwards, and I'm really glad I got to work on Fishtails because that game sold better than any other game I'd worked on. That game was a lot of fun. I got to use the dot matrix display, which I had started work on when I was going to do Terminator 2 until Steve and I got into our disagreement there. So it was a lot of fun. I think everybody on the team worked great. It just kind of came together. It was one of those games we had, you know how you see a game and you see the rules and you're like, okay, well, these were the rules. But every game has, you know, two or three variations on the rules before you see it. Fishtails, we must have had 18. Mark Ritchie and I would talk and we'd come up with a plan for the multiball rules. and then he'd leave and then I'd start working on it and then like a half hour later he'd come in and say now what was it we agreed upon again and I'd explain it to him and then we'd come up with a new set of rules and then he'd leave and I'd work on that and then the next day he'd come in so we must have gone through ten sets of rules and I probably got five of them coded before we changed them and we ended up where multi-ball was much much simpler, a much simplified version than what we started, which I think was the right way to make that game. And, you know, we tested good. I think that was the first game that we put on test in a while where we went straight 50 cents, not three for a dollar, which didn't seem to hurt it at all. I think everything came out great on Fishtails. Yeah, I love the multi-ball rules on that. You get the three jackpots and then the supers are led at the captive ball. Yeah. Super cool. And the video mode on that game was, I would love to take credit for. I programmed the video mode. I did not design the video mode at all. Scott Slomiani, who did the dot matrix artwork, he basically came to me. He had designed the whole mode in his head. He came to me and said, here's the artwork. This is how I want it to work. And I'm like, this is great. And then it was just trying to, you know, I programmed it, and the computer that was running pinball machines were really, really underpowered. And so the first time I coded it, it ran like one-tenth the speed that it runs now, and it bogs now. So then it was probably a week of tweaking and taking this out and combining this together that we actually got it to run at full speed. And in fishtails, the reason why we have so many different fish behind the score in fishtails like this, I don't know how many different fish are going back and forth across the screen behind the scores. Anytime I didn have anything to give Scott and he would come and say okay what can I do next I like ah make more fish So that why we had so many different fish in the background on the score sweep on fishtails Nice And then you had the crazy fish topper Yeah that was, that was, we had, I think we had a, we had a topper that we bought like a rubber fish and then we decided, okay, we need to make it ourselves. And this guy, Jerry Pinsler, who had done a lot of, like, sculpting for us in the past. He sculpted the fish. I think there's actually, like, a pinball insert, which is the eye, and we just got one coil.
    94:17
    And, you know, anytime something big, it's like flap, flap, flap. That was, I think, the only game I worked on that had a topper prior to Bond 60th. And it was just something else in the game. So that game comes out, and you said that you knew you were leaving. You kind of left. The industry was at, I would say, almost its height in the late 80s, early 90s. I was burned out. And there were other reasons. I think I touched on it before that I seem to have a lot of stories where I don't get along with somebody. And it can't always be the other person. So I just needed a break. I was burned out.
    95:06
    I always kind of knew I'd be back, though. How I ended up at Stern, I was working in a couple different industries. I was working in the financial industry for about 10 years before I came to Stern. But a couple years before I came here, I had a day off from work, and I called up Steve Ritchie, and we went to lunch. So I drove to Stern, met Steve. He gave me a tour of the factory, and we went to lunch. And, you know, I saw a couple people that I'd known from before, and I just got such a warm feeling about the place. It just seemed like a really good place. Everybody was nice, and it's just like sometimes you walk into a place and you're like, this place feels really good. I walked into places before where that wasn't the case, But when I walked into Stern, it just felt like a good place. So I had, like I said, I'd worked in the financial industry for about 10 years. I had quit my job, and I had another job lined up. And I was waiting out 2020 with a non-compete agreement.
    96:12
    And, you know, three or four times during the year, I'd get, like, a text message from Mike Vinacore saying, hey, you know, we're looking for somebody at Stern. And I'm like, no, no, no. I got this other job lined up. I'm looking for that. And he's like, hey, you know, we still have a job in the systems department. It's starting if you're looking for it. And I'm like, no, no, I'm good. I'm starting this job next week. And then I got to that job, and the minute I started that other job, I'm like, I'm just not ready to go back into the financial industry. So normally I make fun of these people, but I worked at that place seven days. and on my seventh day I'm working and I'm texting like, hey, Mike, is that job still open?
    96:54
    And then so I got a call from Mark Guidarelli that night, and I've known him for 20 years or so, and then I think George Gomez called me the next day, told me what they were planning for Insider Connected, and ended up at Stern after that. I've been there, I think, in another month. It'll be two years.
    97:13
    And I started there on Insider Connected, and when I'm done with Bond 60 I'm going to go back to Insider Connected but just like how I ended up on Earthshaker this scheduling came up where it's like okay everybody's kind of tasked a little thin on this game and I knew it had the score reels and I'm like I want to do that. I want to write the code for the score reels. I want to be on that game and then I ended up working on Bond 60.
    97:43
    So you're going back You're going back to Insider Connected when you're done with the project? I'm going to go back to work on Insider Connected when I'm done. And that's a great team. We've got a lot of ideas.
    97:54
    Bond 60th edition is at least announced. And they showed it at an event at CES. Yeah. And it's going to be, I think they're making them soon. I think it's supposed to be end of January, beginning of February. I think you're about right. I haven't given them final software yet, but I'm prepping for that day. So it could be very soon we're going to start making them.
    98:18
    Anything you can tell us about just basic rules? Like if I'm going to play the game, what do I do in this new Bond 60th game? Okay. Well, the Bond 60th game, it's a one-level play field with score reels. It's got a rule set that is kind of a bridge between older games and modern games. There's the old-style games where you hit A, B, C, and you get your double bonus. It's got the score reels. It's got chime sounds. But it also has a lot of 80s-style sounds from, like, the early 80s Stern Games sounds. It sounds like that. And it's got modern sounds. There's a Moby tune in it from James Bond. There's ten drop targets on the game. We've got a bank of four, a bank of three, and an inline bank of three with a lock behind it on the right side. We've got four opto-spinners. We've got one spinning disc with Oddjobs hat on top of the disc. Like I said, we've got the score reels. There's the two eject holes, two pop bumpers. I still try to call them jet bumpers, but I'm hoping that's not the name of them anymore. So I still try to call those jet bumpers, and I'll still call a ball popper a ball popper and not a buck. This game doesn't have a ball popper or a buck. that it's got the topper 007 logo with I think 100 120 lights some I don't remember exactly the topper with the leds and the bond logo looks amazing there's I think four multi-balls there's a standard multi-ball where you hit three inlines locked behind it then you start a multi-ball you have to lock both balls you lock both balls then you get a third ball while you're in three ball multi-ball, you lock one ball, and then you shoot the captive ball for a jackpot, and then you shoot a bottom target for a super jackpot. There's gadgets you can light where you hit a drop target man, you spin the hat, you move the progress bar for the gadget, you get four gadgets, and you start gadget multi-ball, where in the gadget multi-ball, there are 60 movie gadgets that you have to hit the spinners and the spinning disc for, and those are kept on Insider Connected. So if you've gotten 20 of them this time, next time you play, as you keep going, you'll eventually get all of them, and that's one of the Insider Connected achievements where you can get all the 60 movie gadgets. We've got six actors who play James Bond on the backboard behind the playfield. The top left, E.J. Tolwin, that's Liz. That awards one of the Bonds. when you get all six of the Bond actors, you start playing Bond multiball, where you go through all 25 movies with the James Bond, wherein you get the movie logo on the little LCD screen. There's an LCD screen that's in the play field along with the score reels in the top. So the score is in the score reels, but the play field has, you know, the instructions, shoot this for jackpot, shoot this. So there's Bond multiball, gadget multiball. There's six different villain modes. so around the odd job hat are six different villains each of the villain modes is concentrated on one of the features of the game so the pop bumpers, the drop targets, the spinners a couple other shots of the thing you get all six of those modes then you play villain multiball and then if you do all of that there's a wizard mode which will build towards a 007 multiball where you have a bomb you have to defuse you build up points to build the bomb value, then the bomb starts picking, and you defuse the bomb, you defuse the bomb, you get bomb multi-ball, or you get four balls in play. The game has three different sets of chime sounds. At the start of the game, the game comes up and you can pick with the flippers which sound style you want to play with. So we've got three different sets of chime sounds. You can guess those three manufacturers that I won't mention directly with the sounds, but one starts with a W, one starts with a G, one starts with a B. And it sounds very much like those chimes. We've got an 80s mode, which sounds an awful lot like the early 80s Stern games. And then we've got a modern mode, which sounds an awful lot like sounds that are in games now. We had a great team. Keith Elwin, I'm sure you guys are aware of Keith. He did the play field. Mitch Deason helped me out with the code. Mitch did some of the lamp effects and some other things on the game. He did a lot with the code. Kevin O'Connor did the artwork on the play field and the back glass. Kevin's been around since Strikes and Spares. Rob Blakeman did the mechanics on the game. Chuck Ernst, Mark Galvez did the artwork on the LCD. And Jerry Thompson did the sounds.
    103:16
    People will probably have this by the time this episode comes out. So this could be a good tutorial for them. Yes, we know Keith very well. We call him the one. You know, when he and I would be, like, you know, flipping the whitewood, I would try something. He's like, okay, which shot? And then, boom, he would make it. Boom, he would make it. He's just amazing to watch play a game of pinball. I'm terrible, especially compared to somebody like Keith or Ray or Tim or anybody else. But just watching those guys play and just shot, shot, shot, they can just pick them off. Yeah, if you saw Raymond last night on the – No, not last night, this morning. This morning at 4 in the morning, they finally finished the state finals for Illinois. And he finished the Simpsons pinball party on stream while playing in a tournament. Well, finished. Well, that's not what it's called, right, Bruce? It's like the super duper extreme mega – He has to look at others. Yeah, the wizard mode. Yeah, and it's hard enough to even get to this thing, and there he does it in a competition with all these other great players. There's Ray. He had 100 people watching at 4 in the morning. That's 4 in the morning, yeah, central time. So it's 5 a.m. here.
    104:36
    I don't think they're going to be playing bomb that long. No. Because I think Keith said his high score on it was like 18K, so he wasn't really concerned. So I hear you have, like, above the reels there's actual lights. Like 10,000, 20,000, 30,000? There's 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, and the last one says over the top. Oh, nice. Which is when you're beyond that. So it's got the lights. I thought it would have been fun to have it say something like, you know, play Flipper's Field Games for fun and enjoyment or whatever those, the old Gottlieb used to say that. It's more fun to compete or something. Put that on somewhere. One to four can play, and it's more fun to compete. Actually, that would have been good because you could have tied that into Insider Connected. You know, it's more fun to compete on Insider Connected and then have the thing about Bobby, like below it, to scan in. So I just came up with an idea.
    105:34
    Steal it. All right. Well, that was a lot of cool stuff, a lot of cool stories there. I'm sure no one has ever heard. There's a Steve Ritchie story that needs to be told. Uh-oh. But I need to clear it with him.
    105:53
    I've told it to several people, and I've told it in front of him. But before I would tell it in, like, something that's going to be preserved, I'll need to clear it with him. So if you guys are interested at one point in time, we can try this again. Yes. Yeah, we could do that.
    106:10
    Because I've heard a lot of Steve stories from Steve. I think we were talking about code names before for games. I think, if I remember, Black Knight Sword of Rage, the codename was, I think, Paris? Yeah. Something like that. And I figured it had to do with his story about Black Knight 2000's Paris debut and their Paris distributor and the horse just taking a big, giant dump on the stage and all that whole story. I figured that had to be where it came from because he's told that story a lot. That makes sense. As the years go by, the story gets, like, the first time I heard it in the early 2000s, it was hardcore, and then it kind of gets a little more sanitized as the years go on.
    106:53
    Well, we look forward to that. We look forward to Bond's 60th anniversary. We have a couple questions for him. Oh, you have a couple questions for him, Bruce? What game does he like? Oh, yeah. I know, he's going to struggle with the Haiti Fed. Let me find the list. Oh, he's got the list. Games you like, games you hate. Games I liked when I was growing up. The games I liked growing up from the EM era, I liked Oxxo, Space Mission, 4 Million BC.
    107:24
    I really liked Chicago Coin Cinema, Boomerang, Grand Prix, Fast Draw, Target Alpha. Early solid state games, I liked Flash, I liked Firepower, I liked Paragon. Early alphas, I liked Taxi a lot, I liked High Speed, Flight 19,000. I really like Time Machine and Monday Night Football. I thought those two games really put Data East on the way of, you know, making games as good or better than what was coming out of Williams at the time. Monday Night Football, when you're shooting the bomb and you're shooting the goalpost, was a lot of fun. Time Machine I loved. The Chimes.
    108:04
    Later games, I really liked Whodunit. I thought that was an underrated game. I thought Dwight's set of rules on whodunit was just a fun game to play. I like all the recent sterns we've done. You know, the Cornerstone Bond, Rush, Godzilla, Mandalorian. I think all those games have been really well. I did the conversions for Insider Connected for Stranger Things and Beatles. I got to play both of those. I thought those games were both really great. Shooting that thing on Stranger Things is a lot of fun and really satisfying, and Beatles was just a great play field.
    108:41
    Let's see, games I don't like. EM games. I thought Rogo and Stratoflight were terrible from that era. Solid State games. Phoenix. I had a Phoenix. I don't know why. I never liked Phoenix. Totally agree with you so far. We're good on the hate. We're good.
    108:59
    Let's see. When people are capable of doing really great games and they don't, that's when it's disappointing. And you look at the games that Bally made right before Williams bought them. It was just the dark days for Bally. Like Blackwater 100, Escape from the Lost World, I think Dungeons and Dragons with those crazy return lanes. It's a shame because they did such amazing games. And you look at those, and it's just they tried really hard. They checked every box, and it just didn't work. we talked about how games we had names for. Motor Dome, we used to call Motor Home.
    109:45
    There were some godly games around that time. I don't remember. Hard, was it? Not Hardbody. Goldwing was bad. Yeah, it was just a bad era for pinball. And the thing is, they were all capable of doing so much better.
    110:03
    And, yeah, like I said, I made Hurricane. So what can I say? Nice. Someone else likes cinema other than me. I like cinema, too. Oh, I love those four eject holes in a row. Yeah, the eject holes in a row. I played this for the first time just last year, and me and my dad kept playing it over and over. It's like, this is pretty neat. And I really like Boomerang, with that, if you shot it just right, you get that ball of the loop all the way around. Yep, it does. It's the round orbit. It just keeps on going all the way around. Yep. Let me run through real quick what I hate about each game I worked on. Okay. I like this. Okay, what I hated about each game I worked on, Earthshaker, I would have done basically everything different. It was my first game. On your first game, you make all sorts of mistakes. On your second game, you correct them all, but you correct them too much. on your third game, you kind of hit the stride. So Earthshaker, everything under the hood, I would have done different. I don't know if it would have played any different or anybody would have noticed. I would have moved where I did the shaker motor because the shaker motor is a lot of times not predictable in how I'm trying to control it and it ended up being controlled.
    111:24
    Let's see, Elvira. The game was shipped at a time when, you know, everybody was working towards the same set of locks. So, you know, I'd lock the ball and you'd release it. The first time I programmed that game, I had it where everybody had individual locks, and we switched to shared locks, like, the night before we went out on test. I think I would have liked to have kept the individual locks. And roller games, sudden death is not fair, and I would have done more to make Sudden Death a little more fair. Hurricane we mentioned, we would have just skipped. Fish Tales, what I would have done on Fish Tales different, and I'm kind of sorry I didn't do it, is I would have kidnapped Mark Ritchie and not let him put lightning flippers on that game.
    112:13
    Now we have a question then about Sudden Death. How random is it? I look for, you know, I want to make sure it doesn't start while you're trapping the ball. So I look for activity. At the start of the ball, it just looks for activity. And if a random number gets to be, you know, a certain random number, it'll start the mode as long as it thinks you're doing something. And then if you haven't played it by ball three, it'll be a little more likely to start towards the beginning of ball three. but I know they're doing some things now on modes like that where it's so many switch hits and then starts that's how a lot of games have done some of that lately I wish I would have done a better job on that because especially if you're playing and you're trying to compete against somebody I may get it on ball one and you may not get it at all and I wish it would have been a little more fair Sundeath go for the wall funny story I own that game and didn't realize it was a show. And then when I heard about that it was a show, I realized that I had watched the show when I was a kid. It's like, look at me. And then it came back to me like, yes, the wall. They had the wall of death. I remember. And then team names like the Rockers. I remember them. The Violators. I bought the magazine. I went to the Jewel, which is the grocery store here, and I bought the only issue of Roller Games magazine. I might have been the only one. I don't think anybody else bought anything. Some people have really liked roller games. Like when I was working in the financial industry, people were talking about pinball. And one day some guy goes, yeah, I really like this. A kid playing roller games with pinball. And I'm thinking, you're saying this on purpose because you know I worked on the game. But he was completely unaware that I worked on it. I had it for years. I loved especially the locks. When you lock a ball, the little show that goes on. It dims the lights down and all that. I had a lot of fun on that game making the displays dim. I had one dim mode on the display, so all my blinking on, off, on, off on that game was really going bright, dim, bright, dim, bright, dim. That was a lot of surgery under the hood to make that happen. When we got to WPC, it was a lot easier because timers, and Larry did some great dimming stuff on the couple WPC games that had the segment displays, but there was a lot of surgery under the hood to make that roller game's display dim. So I hear you were a secret character in a game. I'm in a couple games. I'm in NBA Jam, which I didn't even know about until in my last job somebody came and said, you worked on NBA Jam, and I'm like, no, I didn't. I'm like, yeah, you're in the game. I'm like, really? Okay. And I'm in Open Ice, which is a video game I worked on, and I'm in the crowd in the WrestleMania arcade game. I'm one of the guys in the crowd there. Nice.
    115:16
    I like that. People know me as the guy in where I last worked. They knew me as the person who was in NBA Jam. That's funny. They did stuff where they would play as me and record the video.
    115:32
    That's really cool. He's on fire. I don't know what my stats were like in that game. Let's see.
    115:43
    He's going to look it up. No, don't look it up. He's looking it up. He's on fire. He's on fire, folks. Nope, doesn't show that much. Just shows the picture of you playing in footage. And that picture even did a game, like the old magazine GamePro at one time had an article where they showed all the hidden people. So in some old GamePro issues, there's a picture of me with, you know, I was losing my hair at the time, but I hadn't fully given up on the long hair.
    116:12
    And, yeah, it's so here and there. It's funny. If you watch the video, it's pretty cool. Your name's up there and everything.
    116:22
    I have no more questions, Ron. My questions are all done now. Yeah, my questions are all done now, too. Excellent. Well, Mark, thank you for coming on. Thank you very much. Hopefully you can get something out of this. No, no, we will, definitely. And we can't wait to hear that new Steve Ritchie story once it's been out. The Steve Ritchie story, I've got to tell, but I've got to get the permission. You've got to get permission. Get you back on when you do your next game. Hopefully that's not 30 years. No, it won't be. No. I guarantee it won't be. Thanks a lot for joining us. No, thank you. I'll probably see you at a show. Bruce barely makes it to shows anymore. Poor Bruce. But I might see him. Like if you're at Expo. Yeah, next year at Expo, definitely come talk. All right. Definitely. All right. So thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mark. You have a great night. You too. Bye. Bye-bye.
    117:18
    Okay, Bruce, to borrow a phrase from Marty Robbins, what did we learn? What did we learn? We learned that he is the longest designer, rule designer, between years. so almost 30 years. Largest rule designer between years. Another great quote. Yes, 30 years of working. About 30 years between games. Yes. That is impressive. That is very impressive. I don't think even Harry Williams could say that. No, I don't think so either. So we noticed that he has a great future upcoming with Stern, with games, and also with the Insider Connected. Well, he said he was going right back to the Insider Connected. but I mean, I love those stories. Those Steve Ritchie stories. I know. Did you ever hear about the Black Knight, was it Black Knight's Castle or was it going to be, it sounded like a pinball circus type game. Yeah. Like they were going to go towards that. I have never heard that before. No, that is pretty neat. Or I just picture them shoving the game in and out of the office. Like you're working on this. No, you're not. You're working on this. No, you're not.
    118:23
    Sounds like us when we argue about things. Oh yeah. All the time. Of course. Yes. You take this countdown I'll take it Damn it Well It's been 200 episodes Bruce Ready for 200 more? Yeah Unless I die in a plane crash next week Wow that's morbid Bruce It is very morbid But I am the guy who watches all those Airplane disaster shows Because I want to know what to do If I am in an accident And what not to do You burn up. No, no, no. Some you don't. Okay. Your neck is broken. Some you don't either. Okay. Some people do live in plane crashes. Some. So when you get on the plane, you make sure you see where the exit doors are. Yep. I do do that. And I listen to the, you know, in case we're going into the water, you know, I know where my swimming thing is. Yep. And I look at instructions to see how to open the door. Yes. Because I have visions that the person in the row had paid no attention to anything. They'll just sit there. And he's just sitting there trying to push. How do I open it? I'm not just trying to hit a button. It's like, no, you pull on these two things, you idiot. And you don't push the door out because it won't go out. You pull it in. Yeah. Yes, I agree.
    119:35
    Wow, that's a weird way to... Die? Die. Yeah, the episode's dying with that. Damn. No, it's not. It was a great episode. I would just say thank you to everyone.
    119:48
    Guys, you know, 200 years... 200 episodes... It feels like 200... It really does feel like 200 years. Pinball no longer exists and we'll still be talking about it. They're still around. What the hell is pinball? The fuck are they talking about? Back in my day, we had great games like Rush. We'll have our heads in bubbles like Futurama. Oh, yeah.
    120:10
    What is it, Nixon? Yes. Thank you to all our listeners. Let me look at our thing. We got plugs. I already did my plugs. So, again, we are the Slam Tilt Podcast. We can be found at, wow, at it. No, we're not shitting that. You put my Bruce's in, that stays in. Yeah, we are the Slam Tilt Podcast.
    120:38
    We can be found at slamtiltpodcast.com. The upper right-hand corner has all our links. You can correspond with us at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com. We are looking always for more guests. Sure. Bruce is always looking for more guests. I kind of like the Ron-Bruce thing, but hey, maybe our fans could tell us. Do you like more guests? Do you want just more Ron and Bruce? Nobody wants more Bruce. No one? Oh, everyone loves Bruce. Come on. They're all going to be asking for you to do the intro for now on after this episode. I'm waiting for Steve from a bonus to put me in as one of the pinball dictionary things as Bruce says. Oh, Bruce says it. Oh, there you go. I think it should happen. Make it snow, Steve. Make it so. Yes, yes. We haven't had them in a while. I mean, those are definitely Bruce-isms. Yeah. So many of them. It literally needs to have its own term because they don't make any sense. Not at all. Except to you. Except to me. I guess what matters. That's what matters. All right. Thanks, everyone. Here's to another 200 episodes. Until next time. And do you have one ready, Bruce? I do. You do? I do. I thought you said, oh, shit, I was going to be like, oh, he doesn't have one ready. I have it. It's an easy one. Oh, it's an easy one? Okay. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye to any names I've missed on the call outs.
    122:22
    I'll fight, never need to keep you alive. Meteor, Level Zero, Clusterbuck, Swords to Kind, Jam Balls, Rude Sism, Tournament Talk, Car Holder, Cheetah, Xanadu, Cash Grab ELO Paul Bird Worship Fire Game You Love Game You Hurt Turn It Dark Rainbow Princess Oh my Oh my.
    123:20
    Oh my. Ready? Ready for the comedy gold, I'm sure? Gold. It's like gold turd. A gold turd? I got a golden turd. I got a golden turd to make my day. That's the new Bond movie, Gold Turd. Gold turd. It hurts.
    123:57
    Can't stack the most with any multi-ball and ruin everything. It's only on .85. It's only 8.5. No, .85.
    124:12
    It's like, Jesus. That's going to be cold for the end. What did he have about the sun is the exact dimension of a pinball? Or something just crazy? No, the pinball is halfway between the atom and the sun, is what he said. Ah, yes, that is true. The pinball is what it's, yes. I worked at Disney, you know. That sounds a little like A cross between Python and Tryopians Excellent It totally is, you see if you make it raspier there I love you pinheads, you are so great How do you explain this to your imaginary girlfriend? I don't know Yes