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BDYETP 75: Danesi leads next P3 release, BBB Re-Remake, Scooby Updates, Cheater Ramps, Q&A

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 23m·analyzed·Feb 12, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

P3 Scott Denise news, BBB remake rumors, Scooby updates, and debate over cheater ramp mods

Summary

Nick Lane and Kevin Manning discuss Multimorphic's appointment of Scott Denise as creative director for the next P3 module, Big Bang Bar remake rumors, Scooby-Doo gameplay reveal and production updates, Swords of Vengeance 2.0 kit announcement, and an extended discussion critiquing 'cheater ramps'—aftermarket modifications that change game geometry and rules without designer intent.

Key Claims

  • Scott Denise is the creative director for the next P3 module from Multimorphic

    high confidence · Multimorphic sent out regular owner updates with this announcement snuck in at the end

  • Scott Denise has previously worked on audio for Weird Al, Silver Falls, Rocks, and Flipper Foxtrot on P3

    high confidence · Kevin mentions Denise's prior P3 involvement in detail

  • Big Bang Bar remake is allegedly being made by an unexpected company; rumored to be Raw Thrills rather than Chicago Gaming

    medium confidence · NAP Arcade reported Chicago Gaming but Kevin heard Raw Thrills as more unexpected option

  • Scooby-Doo gameplay video was pre-recorded, showed one four-player game lasting approximately 45 minutes to one hour

    high confidence · Kevin describes watching the gameplay reveal video on YouTube

  • Scooby-Doo is still not sold out, contrary to trend of previous Spooky releases

    high confidence · Kevin notes sales have slowed compared to TNA 2.0 and earlier Spooky releases

  • Spooky is still hiring voice talent including Scott Innes for Scooby-Doo during production/shipping phase

    high confidence · Kevin questions why voice talent hiring is happening at this stage rather than during development

  • Swords of Fury original had production run of 2,705 units

    high confidence · Neil W. in chat provides specific production number

  • James (friend of hosts) is getting a Scooby-Doo machine for streaming purposes

    high confidence · Kevin mentions James will receive and stream the game

Notable Quotes

  • “I think Scott is a – I think he tends towards innovation, and I think he doesn't think just strictly what's traditional, right? And to me, that's the P3, right? Like thinking outside the box a little bit, being willing to take risks, being willing to do something different.”

    Nick Lane @ Early segment on Scott Denise — Explains reasoning for Scott Denise fit on P3 platform—innovation and risk-taking

  • “You've now changed it, so when you do... You put a ramp in there, but when you put it in there, you no longer own a Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro the way I say I own a Black Knight Sword of the Rage Pro, you have something different.”

    Nick Lane @ Cheater Ramps discussion — Core argument against cheater ramp modifications: changing game geometry changes what the game fundamentally is

  • “It's like in golf. I play it how it lies. That's what the designer intended for it. Steve Ritchie didn't go on and say, hey, go ahead and add this. I fucked up on my design after a 40-year kind of concept.”

    Nick Lane @ Black Knight discussion — Philosophy defending designer intent over player modification preferences

  • “This is, we're talking, what, 10, 20, almost 30 years ago now. Like, I don't know. I think you and I definitely gravitate towards newer games, and a lot of the pinball market gravitates towards newer games.”

    Kevin Manning @ Big Bang Bar discussion — Acknowledges age and relative obscurity of original Big Bang Bar as appeal factor

  • “I just wish that spooky at this point in time they've been in business for so many years now that I wish they just graduated to a more sophisticated company right that's all”

    Kevin Manning @ Scooby-Doo discussion — Critique of Spooky's production process maturity despite years in business

  • “Between TNA and this, there's, I should say, TNA 2.0 and this. yeah sales have definitely slowed so I think I just wish that spooky at this point in time they've been in business for so many years now that I wish they just graduated to a more sophisticated company”

    Kevin Manning @ Scooby-Doo production discussion — Market signal: Spooky game sales slowdown compared to prior releases

Entities

Scott DenisepersonMultimorphiccompanyScott DenisepersonNick LanepersonKevin ManningpersonBig Bang BargameChicago Gaming CompanycompanyRaw Thrillscompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball hiring voice talent (Scott Innes) during production/shipping phase rather than during development, suggesting process maturity issues

    medium · Kevin questions why voice talent hiring is announced at this stage; frames as concerning about development timeline

  • ?

    community_signal: High score integrity concern: example of player modifying game settings to 'super easy,' crushing game, then bragging about high score on Pinside as if playing unmodified game

    medium · Kevin describes anecdote about 'friend' (likely personal experience or close contact) modifying settings and bragging about score

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Hosts criticize aftermarket 'cheater ramp' modifications that alter game geometry and ball feed patterns, arguing modifications change the game into something other than the designer-intended product

    high · Extended discussion of Black Knight Sword of Rage and Iron Maiden modifications with explicit critique of designer-intent violation

  • $

    market_signal: Swords of Fury original production was 2,705 units—notably low for 1980s/90s era game, explaining rarity and collector appeal

    high · Neil W. in chat provides specific production number; Kevin contextualizes as low relative to Adams Family (20,000 units)

  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball's sales slowdown: Scooby-Doo and TNA 2.0 not selling out, contrasting with prior Spooky release sellout trends

    high · Kevin explicitly notes sales have slowed and machines are still available for purchase

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.250

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got news of a new P3 module, Big Bang Bar remake, Scooby-Doo updates. We're also going to talk about the hot topic, cheater ramps. All that and more coming right up. Double Super Jet Pod! I need a ramp I need a loop I want targets I can hit I need the scoop I need a double super Jackpot is my life That's right And now, the Hall and Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Woo-boom shakalaka! What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Brody, You Even Talk Pinball for February 2023. What's going on? This is Kevin. Over here, over there is Nick. That's right. If you didn't know, we're not going to know. I didn't have my original sound on, but I got it on now, so it should be better. There you go. It was the toss. The audio engineer is going to get fired. That's right. Was it Sergeant Ski's fired? Yeah. We need a new audio engineer next time. We haven't paid him, so. Oh, okay. It's hard to get fired. What's going on? So, Nick, what's new with you? I have no idea. I don't know. It's another month, another show. I don't even know what happened the last month. Yeah, not much. I was trying to think what we talked about last month. It's going to be a great episode. Actually, I do know what we talked about last month, but anyways, I don't know. All right. Another month. Something Neo Geo. Well, yeah, I got a table full of parts. We'll talk about that in game room updates. We got some news. We got some Q&A. We got some good stuff this month. It's going to be a little different, a little fun. Let's get right into it with some pinball news. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. So hot, it's on fire. All right. Up first, leading it off this time, this month, we're going over here, and we're going to talk about Scott Denisey is the creative director for the next P3 games, which I'm super stoked about as a P3 owner. I think it's one of the things we all kind of hoped was going to happen once we knew he was getting involved with Multimorphic. He got a P3, then he started working on sound stuff. He did the audio package for Weird Al and wrote a couple songs for that. He put some of his music into Silver Falls and into Rocks, and he's got one of his tracks in Flipper Foxtrot. So he's been pretty heavily involved in a number of different Multimorphic projects since he started there. But this is going to be the first physical new module that he's involved in the creation of.
2:51
Scooby-Doo
game
Spooky Pinballcompany
Swords of Vengeancegame
Paradigm Tiltcompany
Anthony Van Winkleperson
Black Knight Sword of Ragegame
Steve Ritchieperson
Iron Maidengame
Keith Elwinperson
NAP Arcadecompany
Josh Sharpperson
Scott Innesperson
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Scott Denise appointed as creative director for next Multimorphic P3 module, representing expanded role from prior audio/music contributions

    high · Multimorphic sent out regular owner update announcing Denise's role

  • ?

    announcement: Swords of Vengeance 2.0 kit announced by Paradigm Tilt—remake of classic Swords of Fury with new rules, code, music, and screen animations

    high · Kevin discusses concept art and formal announcement of game in development

  • ?

    announcement: Spooky Pinball revealed Scooby-Doo gameplay video in pre-recorded YouTube format showing one hour-long four-player game

    high · Kevin describes watching the gameplay reveal video; discusses length and production quality

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Big Bang Bar remake allegedly in development; manufacturer unclear—NAP Arcade reported Chicago Gaming but Kevin heard Raw Thrills as more unexpected option; Josh Sharp connection to Raw Thrills noted

    medium · NAP Arcade post naming Chicago Gaming; Kevin's speculation about Raw Thrills based on industry knowledge

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Spooky Pinball reputation shift: hosts moving from 'startup pass' mentality to expectation of production sophistication after years in business

    high · Kevin explicitly states Spooky should have 'graduated to a more sophisticated company' after being in business for years

    • Multimorphic does it a little differently. They don't have, like, a playfield designer and a programmer and this and that. They obviously have people who specialize in all these things. But they put together a creative team, and they all work on it collaboratively. So he's heading up the creative design for this next module. So that's kind of how it's going to work.
    3:11
    This was – so Multimorphic sends out their, like, regular updates via email to owners of the P3 platform. And then this was kind of snuck in right at the end that he was the creative director of the next game. So if you don't know Scott, he's the creator of Total Nuclear Annihilation and Rick and Morty for Spooky. Those are the projects he's most well-known for. But, yeah, he's been working on a bunch of P3 stuff ever since.
    3:40
    Nick, what do you think about Scott doing a new game for the P3? Sounds like a good fit. I think the P3 is a good platform for Scott.
    3:49
    Yeah, what makes you say that? Like, you think it's, like, the amount of, like, innovation and stuff he can do on that platform? Or what do you think? What?
    3:58
    What do you think makes him a good match for the P3? I don't understand. You want me to back up my opinion?
    4:06
    Yeah. This is pinball, Kevin. You just say your opinion and walk away. All right, moving on. No, I think that Scott is a – I think he tends towards innovation, and I think he doesn't think just strictly what's traditional, right?
    4:23
    And to me, that's the P3, right? Like thinking outside the box a little bit, being willing to take risks, being willing to do something different.
    4:31
    That's kind of like what Scott does, and that's kind of what the P3 does. So it sounds like a good match. Yeah, I agree with you.
    4:40
    I mostly just wanted to see how much base he can get out of the subwoofer in the P3. So if the song in rocks is any indication, I'm going to need some more Rattle-resistant tape on my glass, but maybe even hook up a subwoofer up to the P3 and really bring it home. So I'm looking forward to that. So hopefully we'll be getting more news from that soon. Not much else to report on that It's just a little teaser there from the folks out At Multimorphic But you know when there's a month with not much With not much pinball news There's no new pinball reveal We haven't actually seen any gameplay of The $20,000 007 game yet Those aren't shipping yet You know 007 The other version You can finally stack modes and multiballs Thank god This is the top story of the month It's cool because they caught up to like late 90s rules That's where they're at right now Watch the progress happen Five months later you finally stack a mode into multiball I haven't gone in that thread But the amount of celebration that must be going on That you can finally stack a mode with multiball They must be insane Put the bar that low Yeah you know you just lower it so far And then you know any little incremental update It's like they're up to code point 8.7 or something like that such a hill to climb with that game f in the chat though for people who don't like stacking they thought they had their game exactly exactly finally i don't have to worry about stacking you know i start a new thing it just totally ends the mode i don't they're just gonna stay on the old code they're gonna unplug their game from the internet so it never updates and that's it they've got their simple game where they don't have to worry about stacking no one's giving them shit bro you didn't stack that mode with that multi-ball and they're You know, like, that's it. Oh, God. I don't understand. What's going on?
    6:31
    All right. You ready for some other hot news? Let's go over here to our friends at Nap Arcade. A rumor, unexpected company to remake one of the world's rarest ML machines this spring. They're talking about Capcom's Big Bang Bar. and I guess technically this would be a re-remake because this was already remade once in like the late 2000s and so this is a Capcom game that never made it to full production in the late 90s and then in the 2000s there was a small run of I think like 100 or so and then it's just kind of been one of those holy grail games that collectors gravitated towards because there weren't that many. There's always this high-dollar-value game.
    7:24
    You've played Big Bang Bar, right, Nick? I've played it a handful of times, and it's been a while. Not even remotely enough time to form an opinion about the game. Yeah, it's fun, but it's like a 90s game. It's pretty basic. I don't know. Yeah, it's a game of its time, right? Like, this is, we're talking, what, 10, 20, almost 30 years ago now. Like, I don't know. I think you and I definitely gravitate towards newer games, and a lot of the pinball market gravitates towards newer games. And, you know, Big Bang Bar, what made it interesting was it was this rare game, right, that most people haven't played. Not saying it's a good or bad game, right, But, like, it was that rarity that got the attention and got people to want it more than anything else. And, yeah, I mean, that's – I'm glad they're making more of it for people who want it. Like, I like seeing that, right? Like, there's a market for the game and there's people who want it. It's always good news when they're producing more of that game so that people can have it at a, you know, quote-unquote, reasonable price. Yeah.
    8:33
    Two things. I think it's going to lose a little bit of its allure once there's more of them out there. You know what I mean? once people get their hands on it and are like, oh, okay. Yeah, he's fine.
    8:43
    The other thing is, the interesting part about this news is it's allegedly an unexpected company making this game. So the NAP Arcade post says Chicago Gaming Company, but I've heard Raw Thrills, which to me would be more unexpected than Chicago Gaming. Chicago Gaming seems like they're the company that makes remakes. Like you would expect them to be the one to make this. But if raw thrills is getting into pinball, that could be interesting.
    9:13
    You know, do we need another manufacturer? I don't know. So, but if, you know, raw thrills is really,
    9:22
    they're the main manufacturer of arcade games these days. Them and basically ice are like the two big players in the arcade and redemption area. So if they start getting into pinball and, you know, Josh sharp works there. so this would not be a huge stretch to imagine they might have interest in doing this. What we need from Raw Thrills is Big Buck Hunter Reloaded pinball machine. We've got the Pro. We need the Reloaded, just like there's the Pro Arcade Machine and the Reloaded Arcade Machine. You've got to make it happen, Josh. All right? Are you happy with the reception that the original one got? We're going to give you a second chance. I love it. We all know I love the original Big Buck Hunter Pro pinball, But as the kids like to say, do better. What's on your ideal big buck hunter pinball machine? What do you want to see on there? What I want to see for the new one? Yeah, yeah.
    10:16
    Oh, well, we've got to have ladies dancing. That was omitted from the original one now that we've got LCD screens. Like, let's use those assets.
    10:27
    I think a couple movable deer. You know, like, you've got to go bigger, right? Like, you've got one deer on the original one. You need a bunch of animals that run across and just total chaos and murder.
    10:39
    Such a big focus of that game is not hitting the does. You need a do that you need to avoid, right? Yeah, you do. That would be true. Even if it's not an actual thing in the game, something in the rules that plays to that, I think. I'm not saying this is a good idea. All right, but we're just spitballing here. I say a thing where, I don't know, you lock the balls. This is just stupid thinking out loud. You lock the balls on the in-lane. That's an in-lane ball lock. This is probably not going to work in any way. And then when you've either locked them all or drained the ones in the out-lane, then the game sends all the animals out and feeds you the balls, and you try to murder as many animals and not hit, and those also pop up, like pop-up targets or something. I got an idea for this. What if... Is that not... If I'm going for not terrible, if I can get a not, that's not a terrible idea. I'll take it. What if instead of in-lane ball locks, you had a ball lock on the apron that was shaped like a dick, and then they shot out like that?
    11:45
    Scooby did that. Scooby already has the in-lane dick lock. Man, we're like 15 minutes into the show, and we already got there. Well, you did it. You were just... You couldn't wait. You guided me there. there's story number two we're really pulling out the news this month speaking of spooky leads us right into our next story Scooby Doo, they finally revealed some gameplay video and they did this so it was not a live stream it was a pre-recorded YouTube video that they premiered on YouTube and they basically showed one four player game that took about an hour.
    12:30
    And did you watch this, Nick? Wait, it was a, like they played one game of four players and the game was an hour long? Yeah, pretty much. It was like 45 minutes, I think. Oh, wow. Okay, so that's a long, unless these guys are all really good, that's a long playing game. I still see the dicks on that pixelated image you put, Kevin. We'll never not see them.
    12:50
    Ooh, Big Buck on the P3. Hmm, I like that. Sorry, I'm going back to Big Buck. is that a show that I have no interest in Scooby-Doo? Did you watch the gameplay video or not?
    13:01
    I like, not really. I clicked on my, I saw it in my feed. I clicked on it on my phone, watched it for maybe 45 seconds and then turned it off, you know? Because it's hard to, I don't know. It's hard to really know. You know?
    13:15
    Yeah, I guess my overall impression was it was not as bad as I was expecting, but my expectations were pretty low.
    13:23
    Coming out of Halloween and Ultraman. It looks better than I was expecting. But again, yeah, it's going to come down to what is the depth of the rules? What's the polish? Is the game going to crash like Ultraman and Halloween do? You know? If you tilt the game, is it going to start your ball over like Halloween did for us that one time? You know, you need all this. When they present a video like that and it's all like, alright, we got this one really good game. Nothing bad happened. put that one that's gonna be the game that goes out and we're not gonna do it live um they presented this in a more controlled format so they could have avoided some of that stuff but we'll see man they're they're making them they're they're building them so they're still not sold out though so if you if you still want one you can get one um here's some of the production updates um i think they're working on the first 50 they said um and they're also still hiring voice talent which I found interesting. They put up this post saying, oh yeah, we hired Scott Innes, who has done voices for over 500 Scooby-Doo toys, video games, movies, blah, blah, blah. Like, aren't these the details you should already have as part of the game development process? Shouldn't there already be all of this stuff in the game before you start building it and shipping it out? And if it's not, would I make a big deal about the fact that we're just hiring this person?
    14:48
    Maybe not. I don't know. I think it just speaks to their process, their build and production process. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think we have more than... We have plenty of justification to be skeptical, right? And I think, number one, it's always the build quality seems to be the number one issue. Like, yeah, I can get to the game crashing or the lackluster rules or bad audio. I can't even get to those issues when I can't get past issue number one with build quality issues. That's a big hang-up for me. So, listen, I hope they have a better product. I hope it's better than what we saw with Halloween where more than a year later there's issues with that game.
    15:38
    I don't know. Listen, it remains to be seen. James is getting one, right? Yes. Yeah, so we'll get to stream it. We'll get to stream it. Maybe we'll make the ball fall in the cabinet. You know, we'll see. Stay tuned. Yeah.
    15:55
    Yeah, and like I mentioned, if you want to buy one, you can still buy one because they're not sold out. So, again, kind of bucking the trend of all the previous spooky releases, you know, that sold out in hours or days. Between TNA and this, there's, I should say, TNA 2.0 and this. yeah sales have definitely slowed so I think I just wish that spooky at this point in time they've been in business for so many years now that I wish they just graduated to a more sophisticated company right that's all you know I think we're we're I don't think we're even remotely harsh or hard on them at at this point and I think it's like long overdue like I think they got a pass for a long time because we thought this like new startup kind of deal but no this is like they've played plenty of games, plenty of issues, and they just kind of move forward and crank forward. Why? Because, well, people keep on buying them. So I can't, in that sense, like, you know, they're doing something somewhat rational. Yeah. In that case, they're definitely meeting a market need. There's a, you know, a audience who are hungry for these themes and they like their, you know, their limited run games and stuff like that. So I can appreciate that. But yeah, like you said, maybe, maybe it's time to step it up. And you know, the fact that these aren't selling out shows that maybe the party's over a little bit when it comes to, you know, what they've shown so far, hopefully their new platform and, and everything will, will be like up to speed where they, uh,
    17:22
    I'm going to make a real bold prediction. Kevin, this game is going to be better than Halloween. Oh man. All right. That's, that's a hot take right there. That's the hot take. Yeah. I hope so. Because yeah.
    17:36
    Yeah. Where's, um, man, I wanted to show Swords of Vengeance, and I don't have it here. Hang on a sec. We're really...
    17:46
    Yeah, it is in here. It's Saturday morning. Take a sip of your coffee and give Kevin a fucking break. I didn't have my stuff sorted out. So here we go. Here's Swords of Vengeance. We have a new, basically 2.0 kit for an old pinball machine. this is Anthony Van Winkle from Paradigm Tilt that's the company making Swords of Fury 2.0 they're calling it Swords of Vengeance it's basically bringing new rules, new code, new music new audio I was really pretty impressed with the concept art that they showed and it's going to have some of these animations and stuff on the screen you can see some of the display animations here It's pretty well done.
    18:38
    Be curious to see how they integrate that play field, because that's a game I liked a lot, but the gameplay on it is very one-dimensional.
    18:46
    Basically, if you're playing it, you're probably either trying to start a multiball or do the drop targets at the top on the old code.
    18:54
    And yeah, so it's an interesting layout that I think some cool stuff could be done with, and obviously everybody likes the Lion Man theme. so this is one I'll be interested to follow up with but after stuff like the Funhaus 2.0 I'm a little hesitant I think there's great ambition with these games and these 2.0 updates but realizing the update to a classic game like that it's not always easy and even simple things like the voice, it's not simple if it was simple, they would have got it right. Like the voice of Rudy in Funhaus 2.0. Like Funhaus is so iconic that you associate Rudy with that voice and it's not the right voice and you can't get over it. And, you know, will it have the sophistication of an actual like, you know, Stern or J.J.P. game or whatever?
    19:53
    This remains to be seen. It's always hard for new startup companies, right? Yeah, I saw somebody's comment when this was posted that, this is kind of great and all, but I wish it came out on the P3 or something.
    20:07
    And yeah, I agree with that. How many people have Swords of Fury? What is it called? Swords of Vengeance is the new one. What's the original one called? Swords of Fury, yeah.
    20:19
    How many people have Swords of Fury? And it looks like there's a good amount of time put into this and invested in it.
    20:27
    It's kind of cool, but But I think you're going to ultimately reach a larger audience if you made it for the P3. And maybe he could bring it over to the P3 and make something unique out of it. I don't know. Yeah, that'd be cool to see, like, a Surge of Fury 2.0 on the P3.
    20:43
    Let's go. Let's make it happen. We need like the Lion Man trilogy so maybe the third one could be on the P3 All right so stay tuned for more on that I be keeping a lookout It does make me kind of wish I had kept my Swords of Fury so I could check this out but we'll see. We'll see. Maybe it'll come back around. But then again, maybe it'll push the prices of Swords of Fury up through the roof, and then I won't feel like paying that much for it. Yeah, so Neil W. in chat says the production on it was 2,705 units on Swords of Fury. That's a very low production when you consider Adam's family, like, best-selling, quote-unquote, is like 20,000, right? Like, in that time period, the 80s and 90s, that's low production. You've got to figure maybe half of those went overseas or, you know, 40%. There's not a lot out there. There's not a lot, unfortunately. So very cool. I love watching what these creative people are doing to bring life to these older games. I think my one thing is, like, I just hope it can find a larger audience, right, especially if it is good. Yeah, exactly. How much does the kit cost? Dave Zarrigate is asking. Yeah, it's not for sale yet. They just announced that it's being developed. There had been some news of this previously, but now this is like a more formal announcement of the game finally.
    22:01
    So, yeah, so cost is to be determined still, and I guess we'll see. We'll keep you posted in the months to come.
    22:09
    And that's all we got for news this month. That's it. January, not a great month for news and pinball, but we got some other cool stuff we're going to talk about. And Nick brought up this topic, this next topic, that he wanted to get into this one. And I'm dubbing it Cheater Ramps, but I think he's okay. I think we touched upon it, like, not in an official segment on a podcast. It came up.
    22:32
    But this is the official bro discussion on what Kevin has appropriately titled Cheater Ramps. All right. So you mentioned the Black Knight Sword of Rage one. What inspired you to want to talk about this this month? I kind of forgot about this. I've seen this before. Somebody created this return ramp on Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro for the left side. So on Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro, and also on the premium, there's not a return ramp on the left. They said, you know what? I don't think Steve Ritchie knows what the fuck he's doing. But I do. You know what this game needs? It needs a return ramp to feed the left flipper. That's what the game needs. That's what's missing from this game. So somebody went out there and they crafted this. And the return ramp looks kind of nice. I think they did a nice job of it. So instead of the up kicker on the pro on the far left shot, kicking it up to a return ramp on the right, which is the way the game was designed, okay, It will return it on the left Right So I don't think it returns it I think to get it to use the return ramp on the right It would be just the up kicker now From the shield if I'm not mistaken Yeah so the center ramp Just to the left of the Knight will return it to the right And then the far left orbit Instead of kicking it onto the Wireform it returns it to the left Alright so here's the deal We're going to have to put this disclaimer because somebody, some genius is going to refute us with this. Listen, it's my game. I can do what I want with it, all right? This is, I find the game more fun. If I put this, I really wish, put the ball on the left flipper when I hit that shot. I'm going to do what I want with it. Fuck you, Nick and Kevin. Okay. Fair. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, in all due respect, whatever you purchase and buy, you can obviously, we would not say you can't do that, right? I saw a post recently where they were showing this, and most people were like, oh, that's great, and I was just surprised because I have a totally different take, and I know you do as well, and I showed this to Martha, and she was horrified. She's like, there's nothing wrong with the game. But I just want to put it out there. Yes, of course you can do what you want with the game, and we can also share our thoughts and feelings on that, right? This is a fun discussion. Listen, I can buy a pinball machine and drill a hole through the play field if I want, a little gobble hole where it falls into the thing. I can take feces and smear it all over the game which will slow the game down and then let the ball roll around in it you can do what you want it's fine here's the thing I'm curious to hear your reaction to Kev and unfortunately you're in line with me so we're not going to hear a really good other side other than it's my game I can do what I want which we're not refuting right when you do something like that you've changed the geometry and the rules of the game. The rules of the game is that when you hit the left orbit, it feeds to the right flipper. And here's the thing with Black Knight. Like, that's how... Black Knight is a right flipper-heavy game on the first one, on the second one, and on the third one. That's consistent with the design of that game. You've now changed it, so when you do... You put a ramp in there, but when you put it in there, you no longer own a Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro the way I say I own a Black Knight Sword of the Rage Pro, you have something different. You have a Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro-esque, E-S-Q-U-E. It's kind of like Black Knight, but you've fundamentally changed it. So if you want to say, if you got that cheater ramp and you beat the game, you didn't beat Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro. You beat a different version of the game that you've modified that is not the same thing. And again, maybe you're not making those claims. Maybe you're not bragging about it. be your final fit. That's cool. That's fine. That's just my approach. It's like in golf. I play it how it lies. That's what the designer intended for it. Steve Ritchie didn't go on and say, hey, go ahead and add this. I fucked up on my design after a 40-year kind of concept. You can just put a return ramp there.
    26:45
    That's the thing. I'd be curious in the YouTube comments. I'd like to hear a really good defense other than, it's my game. I bought it. I find it more fun. I'm going to do that, which I'm not refuting. I want to hear a better argument than I can do what I want with something I own, which is not refuting. I just thought of another one, too, so we have another one we can talk about it.
    27:11
    So AFX in chat says it is a right flipper-heavy game, though. Which, true. That's what the designer intended. It is true. The game is designed to be a right flipper-heavy game. That is how it was designed. going back to Black Knight 1, especially Black Knight 2, and now Black Knight 3. It sounds like, if you want to change the game, it sounds like you don't want a Black Knight sort of Rage Pro. It sounds like that's not the game that you want. You want a game that has a left return ramp to the flipper.
    27:44
    Alright, so that's Black Knight. Can I, one more thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll find some more pictures later. Some people won't be able to handle this part of the discussion because they think I'm convoluting it too much. And I'm not saying anybody's doing this, but it goes to the point of changing a game so much.
    28:02
    All right, and I risk saying this because people, I know, can't separate my argument from what I'm saying.
    28:10
    But it does go to changing the game a lot and then bragging about, like, a high score, which I'm not saying, I've not witnessed anybody doing in this circumstance. I just want to be very, very clear.
    28:19
    And I'm not going to dox this person in case they listen to the podcast. so you can feel private shame.
    28:24
    But I'm going to talk in generalities. We have a friend who often gets mentioned on this show. He bought a game that was made in the last five years. And the person he bought it from on Pinside has the Pinside high score on the game, or at least did a few months ago.
    28:43
    When our friend got home, and the high score is ridiculous, by the way. When my friend got home, he looked at the settings in the game, and this particular game seems to have a lot of settings that you can change. Everything was made super easy.
    28:59
    So this guy put all his games super easy, crushed the game because he made it super easy, and then had the audacity to brag about it on Pinside by entering the high score as if he played the same game as everybody else. I'm not saying anybody who's doing the cheater ramp, so don't get convoluted. It just reminded me of that story. That game also had the other thing our friend told us is this guy was bragging about how his girlfriend or wife also had blown the game up. And I guess there's a switch broken somewhere on the game, and there's a mode in the game that, because that switch was broken, it just gave out free points like candy on Halloween.
    29:39
    So, it's just like this is the kind of thinking that happens. Okay, alright, we're going to step back from that story. It's not really related. It's just related in the sense that somebody who would butcher Black Knight Sword of Rage and then brag about their score because you know that there is a person who would do this. Maybe most people won't. All right, let's move on to the next. It is true, though, because you're not playing the same game. You're playing a different game once you start changing the way the balls feed and stuff like that. Yeah. And Turbo asked if this was the same guy making ramps for games, or was this another person inspired by him? No, this is a different person, but we're going to get to that person. I just thought of one of his that I want to mention. So, all right, let's move on to Cheetah Ramp number two. This is the Iron Maiden 180-degree ramp mod. And I thought of this one after Nick mentioned the Black Knight Sword Rage one because I saw this one.
    30:32
    And one of our groups of friends was talking about this the one day, and they thought it was cool, and I was like, really? Like, why would you do this? So for some reason, this person decided that they wanted to add a ramp to the dead end super jackpot shot on Stern's Iron Maiden. Because obviously Keith Elwin didn't know what he was doing when he designed this game. Yeah.
    30:59
    Nice try, Keith. But this guy on pin side found a way to fix your broken game. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, Keith should thank this guy, really, because he solved the glaring problem of not having a ramp there. And I fail to see, like, at least on Black Knight, it's like, okay, the game didn't return the ball to the left flipper very much, and that's something I want. So I'm going to add this ramp. Don't give them a reason, Kevin. Don't give them. But here, I see zero point of this. Like the ball goes, instead of coming back on the play field, it comes back on a little ramp and puts it basically in the same spot. It would have been anyways. I do not see the point of this. Somebody, somebody, this is, this is dumber. There's no doubt. Like, this is like,
    31:48
    I'll grant you that. Yeah. I'll grant you that. Let me see. I know there's some up close photos. The people who did the black night sort of rage, uh, sort of, uh, a mod can at least say, well, at least I didn't do that shit to iron maiden. Like that's like, They can at least look at them and snicker. Yeah. Let's watch a little video. Oh, that's a great video.
    32:11
    Oh, my fucking God. Look at that. Maybe this one might be a little better. Yeah. So it just pops it back and forth.
    32:21
    Wait, why did it go around that time? Well, because he hit the other loop. Oh, because that's the dead-end switch, right? Right, yeah. So instead of hitting the dead-end switch, it just comes back. All right, so you're cheating. That's not how the game plays. You no longer have an Iron Maiden when you do that. You have an Iron Maiden-esque game.
    32:39
    You don't. Oh, you can dock. Kevin's docked some people on Pinside who have signed up for this. I just wanted to see the number of people that preordered this. How many cheaters we got? Like 35?
    32:49
    37? Yeah. 37 cheaters. Yeah. He had the price here. The price was crazy. Oh, yeah. I know why you just laughed. Dude, I feel a little sick in my stomach. the price was expensive. It was like $400 or something like that.
    33:05
    How much? The ramp doesn't even look good, right? It looks like an eyesore. Yeah. Rough estimate. Maybe that's a... Maybe we'll... Sorry, Kev. Maybe we'll match the other ramps, right? Maybe that's just a... Yeah, this is a prototype in that first post. But they were saying they estimated the price in this one to be in the neighborhood of $400 to $500. And I'm assuming you're going to have to, like, screw the ramp into your playfield. Fuck that. Yeah. You're basically destroying your game. But, you know, go ahead and do what you like. If Keith wanted the game to do that, he would have that in there. That's not the way the game plays. The game hits a target and comes flying back out of it. That's it. That's how it plays.
    33:45
    Do what you want with your games, but you don't have an Iron Maiden anymore. You have something else.
    33:50
    Yeah, so there's your turnaround ramp. Kyle Boss is on the list and he doesn't even own a Maiden. I'm on the list. Sign me up. Oh, so bad Alright, well there you go As we were talking, I remembered this one What is that monstrosity? That is your boy Logan Pinball That everybody likes Keith, how do you feel about all these people fixing your game? They're so nice They should just write directly to you Maybe you can reach out to them before you complete Jaws or whatever And ask for their approval Where they would stick fucking shots Maybe the best designer like vying for the maybe the best designer of all time like where he's going to be considered one of the best designer crushing it and then he's got amateurs on pin side sticking shit in his game and changing the game around okay i fixed it i don't like it i made it better i made it better where's that i wish you had keyed up where that person tried to restore the picture of jesus that's right that's what i think of everybody knows about it i just wanted to put that gif in there when people were talking about uh it's not a it's not a gif but like it's not available I wanted to put that in there. That's what I think of. Fixed it. So this one's brought to us by the gentleman who fixed TNA by adding ramps to that. This is the bridge wireform mod for Godzilla Pro. So he felt that the game, like it was too slow, the ball coming down the spiral ramps to return it to the opposite flipper. and yeah so he made them straight ramps that go straight through the building to the other side so wait a minute yeah this guy changed it so it doesn't feed to the left flipper anymore correct they feed to the opposite flippers so you don't have okay well no this one just doesn't have the other ramp on there yet oh he hasn't put it on there yet yeah yeah he's gonna have it on there there you go there's the full God, that's ugly Dude, there's nothing wrong with this game There's nothing wrong Do what you want when you buy it, but it sounds like you don't want a Godzilla The other thing is Or you pretend you're better than Keith Elwin and like, oh, my game's better Yeah, the ramps on Godzilla are designed to give the building time to raise and lower and if you speed that up it's going to throw all that off so they were intentionally designed to go the speed they are so you can set up your shots to the to the building once it raises and lowers well he's so well he's designing for the pro so that argument that's true i guess yeah that's not a an issue on the pro right but still dude the the balls are constantly in motion on godzilla you can take a half a second break. Just fucking chill.
    36:51
    There you go. But he fixed it. That's ugly. Just buy a Rojo. Alright, so if you want more, you can troll Pinside for other ramp mods. But that's what we got for you.
    37:04
    Alright. Alright, Cheater Ramps everybody. Alright, let's do some game room updates. Let's talk about that again.
    37:09
    Nick, what have you been working on in your game room? Wasn't doing anything? I put some art blades on. What? All by yourself or did you have help? well I have to have help because someone's got to hold the play field up so Patrick showed me how to do it on Godzilla so then last weekend I put Martha and I put Art Blades on Black Knight and on Mandalorian Premium and at first so the way as everybody knows I can't put my play field up I have to physically hold it up and then somebody else has to do work or somebody else has to hold it up because my ceiling is just too stupid and low. Yeah, take the legs off. Yeah, that's easy.
    37:54
    Let's do that real quick. No, it's easier to hold it up and have somebody work on it. So that's what we did. And first I held it up and Martha was trying to put it on and we almost ended our relationship at that point.
    38:07
    I wish you were live streaming that. I would watch that. It'd be funny for everybody but me and Martha. Everybody but you guys. Yeah.
    38:15
    And then she's like, you do it. I was like, okay. But here's the deal. It was pretty straightforward and simple. I see people taking the play field off. You can do that. But you can just lean the play field up and do it. And you can even have somebody holding the play field up and do it. The key is, the way Patrick showed me, is to do the wet method. So take the sticker off the art blade and then spread it down with some Windex. right like they didn't soak it but also you know put on a decent amount right where we think might be middle and then you start at one end and line it start the other end and you kind of like you know get a line with the hole and because it's it's wet you can you can slide it a little bit and move it to make those like fine-tuned adjustments and then uh once it looks aligned you kind of try to see if there's any bubbles in the middle if there's bubbles in the middle you just peel back one end, put it back with the bubbles. You know, sometimes there was a little, like, I'd peel it off many times, put it back, change it around. There was definitely some fussing, but the wet method is 100% the way to go, in my opinion, because it allows you to do micro-adjustments. It allows you to pull it off, pull it back on, put it out right, and then it will stick and stay. And I put on enough Windex so it's not, like, dripping from the side. I think maybe one time it did. It's not a big deal. You just wipe it off. Oh, shit, the payphone's ringing. Can you hear the payphone? I can. Hang on. Let me see who's calling.
    39:43
    Unbelievable. I'm sorry for you people who pay for this. It's my mom. I'll talk to my mom later. Mom, I wish it was Scott. It was Scott. We put him on the air. So, yeah. Hopefully, Scott's still around. It's easy. It's a Nick-approved fix.
    39:59
    Yeah, hopefully, Scott's still around because we have a question for him. what do you the lift cart so i have to spend two hundred dollars take the legs off and then store the lift cart some way like no it's not easier like holding holding the play field's not terrible here's the other key ingredient though it's the um let's look at what they're called but like the uh art blade protectors that pinball life sells everybody should own that whether you have art blades or not um you know certainly putting the playfield up and down over time, you're going to introduce potential scratches even if it's just like there's no art blades. The black paint on the side will take some abuse, take some damage. That's maybe one of the best things I own are those art blade plastic protectors. It really gives peace of mind. I never bought side art before those things existed. It's kind of cool, the side art, but I'm afraid of damaging it and then it looks pretty bad.
    40:55
    Yeah. The art protectors are cool. so you did Art Blades I've been mostly working on my Matahari so for those watching at home you can see the table full of crap and parts behind me from the Matahari I've been working on our friend Matt's been helping me out diagnosing that today I just got a delivery from Pinball Life which included new legs, a lockdown bar because it didn't come with it, this is the one that I got from the auction a couple months ago and a thumblock and I got new, I only really needed one leg, but I bought a set of four from Pinball Life because that was the only place I could find them. Look how bent this leg is. Holy crap. It's so bad. Like, what did they do to this leg?
    41:39
    So I got a fresh set of legs for it it looking good um the lock bar is the lock bar receiver is pretty rusty and gross so i had to like hammer it to get it to open up all the way i took a screwdriver and like a hammer and pounded it over and got it in but the lockdown bar is on um i streamed it the other day as a joke at the end of my stream i put the uh i put the the rig over and showed it off all the mechanical stuff on it is working now finally the lights are sort of working i've got all the gi back up and running i've been slowly working my way through repinning all the connectors on it because uh most of them are really bad because of all the battery corrosion so that's a tedious thing that's been taking me some time but i'm seeing some progress now so that's encouraging and i just got to get to it and finish that up but and then it's going to be a matter of figuring out which lights are burnt out versus you know which ones are not getting the power they need to turn on. So we're getting there. You can play it now. It's coming along. So once it's up and running, we'll do a bro show on Mata Hari, and maybe it'll last two hours.
    42:47
    The other upgrade in the game room is I upgraded my Wi-Fi, my internet. And if you're – I'm probably late to the game on this, but I got a Wi-Fi 6 system. it's a an arrow the one that amazon does and holy crap is it so much better than my old setup i get full speed down here my i used to have like two routers and i think they were like screwing each other up a little bit and slowing down slowing down my internet past my main router um so now everything works really good i got it all hardwired in to the three i have three of the little modules throughout my house and i get solid solid speed throughout my house so if you're looking to upgrade your internet, I recommend one of these Wi-Fi 6 systems. They do a good job of covering your whole house and also maintaining the speed across a wider network. I'm sure I'm late to the game, but if you're a streamer and you want to have solid Wi-Fi in your game room for streaming, I recommend checking out one of those systems if you haven't.
    43:46
    Finally, this is not a game room update, but I played in a tournament and I did pretty good. I got second in the Skillshot 007 launch party out in Syracuse. Ryan Zlomek, who you might remember from our show we had him on, and he talked about opening a pinball venue and he did it during the pandemic and gave us some tips and insight on what it takes to run a successful venue. So they did a great job out there, had a great time. Cool atmosphere. I like their collection of games, too. So they have, like, basically one wall of new Stearns, and then they have a wall of 80s and 90s Bally Williams, and then they have another wall of early solid states. all kind of around the venue. And they run a good show. They run a good tournament. The actual execution of the tournament was good. The vibe was good. They had food and drinks as part of the event. So it was not one of those tournaments where you're eight hours in and going, I haven't eaten anything yet today. It was good. So I would recommend going out there if you're in the area. I will definitely be back for more tournaments out at SkillShotty. It's about an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes from where I live, but it's worth the drive, I think. They don't do a lot of tournaments, a couple a year, but it's worth checking out for sure.
    45:08
    All right. We haven't done this in a while, so I said... Kevin, Kevin. What's up? I wasn't done with my game room updates. Oh, you weren't? I thought that was all you did. No. What else did you have? I had Color DMD and a Big Buck Hunter Pro pinball machine. Oh, should I forget it? I saw that in person. Yeah, it's beautiful. So that's it. All right. I'm good. What's your favorite animation in color on Big Bud?
    45:32
    I like how in the attract mode it shows the digitized video of the animals from the game. That's nice. I don't think I paid attention to that. I'll have to watch it for that next time. I mean, you can see, like, in the replay animation, it does show now in color of, like, shooting the cow shit. So that's the replay animation. There you go. So it's in color, just in case there's any doubt what's happening. It's crystal clear now. That's right. Love that guy. All right. Cool. Are we ready for Q&A? So we haven't done Q&A in a while. and knowing it was a lighter month news-wise, I figured it was a good time to revisit some viewer-listener Q&A. So I put the call out and we got some good questions. So the first one comes to us from Sarjanski in Discord, and this kind of plays into our game room updates. He wants to know, what are your opinions on what makes a game room better? Like, if you were building a game room, what kind of things would be good to have?
    46:30
    So Nick wants a higher ceiling, right? uh yeah i mean we'll take that for granted so i'm trying to think what makes a game room better all right let me take it let me try to tackle this i've not seen these questions yet so this is off the cuff um one day i would like to build a new game room like a like a new kind of custom house custom game room and what would i like to see in there i think um certainly like obviously you gotta have the right amount of space that's coming to the right amount height. I think more height's better. Make sure you can fit toppers.
    47:05
    I like lighting, right? There's an art to the lighting in the game room. You want to have like, you want to be able to see in the game room a little bit, but you can have your game room illuminated just by the games, but I think maybe introducing some other lighting options for ambient lighting in the room is good. I don't know how I would go about doing that per se, but it's certainly a consideration when building the game room and what you're doing for that. I always like to see people's options. There's the carpet. What carpet are you going to go? Are you going to go kind of that zany, I'm a bowling alley arcade carpet? Are you going to try to do something a little more understated? Are you going to go with maybe a hardwood floor type of setup? If you do non-rug, like a hardwood floor type setup, you're going to have to have the games on rubber casters so you're not scratching the shit out of the floor. Those are considerations.
    48:01
    What makes a game room better? I think maybe controlling for a lot of the sound in the room. If you have a lot of people, the flippers clacking, so maybe some acoustic treatments. We're getting fancy, really high on thinking, but there's the acoustic treatment of it. That's something that I would consider. I think to me having a bar in some area of the game room is something that I would like to see in there. I think a good obviously this is a pinball show but like having an arcade game or two in there to make it a complete arcade game room I think that makes sense and then you know the rest is like showing off your personality like Kevin has a lot of albums in his game room of bands that he likes and that kind of shows off Kevin's personality a bit you know I have things that might be a little personal to me in my game room I'm showing I'm flexing my trophies or like you know there's art that we have in our game room. So I don't know if that's a great answer or anything that hasn't been considered, maybe that people don't think about. Do you, Kev? What am I missing? Yeah, I had the luxury of building a game room from the ground up. And, you know, obviously, if my budget was unlimited, I would have gone a lot different way. You know, you can do a lot more with a lot more money you put into it. But one of the things I really like about my game room is that it's on the ground floor. So it's, it's the back half of my garage and I'm able to load games and unload games all by myself. No stairs involved. It makes, you know, I think about the thought process that you have to go through and the level of commitment you have to go through to buy a new game. It's like, oh man, do I really want to go through taking the head off and having friends over and doing all that? I can just be like, oh, there's a, there's a cheap game. I'm going to go grab it, play it for a little while and then get rid of it if I don't like it. You know what I mean? I love that.
    49:54
    Dude, you hit the nail on the head. That is number one. And it's funny I didn't bring that up. My thought in designing my game room, number one, no stairs.
    50:04
    Try to do no stairs. No matter what. You're buying a house, looking for a new house, building a game room. Try to find something that you can get your games in without having to contend with stairs. That's it. Kevin's got a great point. Kevin is able to rotate his collection a lot more than I can because he doesn't have to contend with that. And it can be self-sufficient. You know, it was rough during the pandemic when, you know, we're not having people over and stuff. I didn't really do anything with my collection. It was just too difficult.
    50:33
    Yeah, so I think obviously every game room needs a payphone so your mom can call during the podcast and ring off the hook. But it's, you know, I joke, but it is stuff like that that I think makes the game room a little more interesting. when I had Lee over here the night after I, the first time after I installed that. Like, everybody was screwing around on a payphone and calling each other, and I'm calling you from a payphone, and Jay took a selfie with the payphone and stuff. So it's, like, cool stuff that, you know, I posted a video of it on Instagram, and somebody was like, this is the biggest flex I've ever seen. Meanwhile, I have a game room full of Vim on Machines and arcade games, But the payphone was the biggest flex, the $200 payphone that I installed. So, yeah, it's all about the things that make it interesting and cool. I like neon signs, so I have the neon signs and the Run DMT clock and stuff like that. Any little personal touches you can add along the way are cool things. I like console gaming, too, so I've integrated console gaming and arcade and pinball machines. I personally like arcade games a lot too so I have a mix of games I think the racing and shooting games are a good way for people who are just casual or non-gamers who come over and check out your game room anybody can point a gun and shoot it at it and anybody knows how to drive so those are the kind of icebreaker games that will get people into playing and hanging out and having a good time even if they're not into even if they're not into pinball, right? Yeah, the other thing I would add to that, that I definitely want in my game room, my dream game room is a jukebox.
    52:23
    Love to get like one of the, I'd rather do like a newer one, but the old style. So the Rockola ones make the ones that look like the, was the Wurlitzer kind of bubbler, like a bubbler CD jukebox, but a new one, right? So you don't have to contend with a lot of potential issues. And, you know, speaking of sound, I would definitely go all out and put speakers in the ceiling, too. So if I just wanted to stream music from that jukebox or maybe another audio setup, I have that as well. Yeah, I like that.
    52:55
    We had some recommendations from Chad. They were chiming in with their things your game room needs. Indoor halfpipe.
    53:04
    Space for seating when groups come over. That's a good idea. When I do tournaments and league and stuff, I have a hallway outside my game room. I'll put chairs and stuff out there for people to sit in. It's hard to dedicate space in the game room to furniture when you're not using it all the time. It's like, oh, I could put a game there instead of a couch.
    53:25
    But having room for people to spread out and relax and escape a little bit too is good. Borgadog wants a urinal.
    53:34
    Hopefully you got it in a separate room, not just right by your pinball machines. But I could see that being a thing in the game room bathroom. Yeah, Kyle Bostos is a tech curator I would do, I mean, so I'm going to go straight above that Legit bar, right? Legit, like I would almost do Like a British style pub bar in there Yeah, I think big, if you're going to do it, you're going to go crazy Right, like I think about this routinely Yeah, I thought it'd be cool to have Like a vending machine, like a soda vending machine That you could put stuff in But those things just like, take so much power Like they would just like destroy your energy bill It's like so, they're so inefficient But just from like the aesthetics of it they make ones that like hang on the wall like that would be cool but it's not something i'd get but um laser tag area mini jumbotron yeah agreement on the acoustic panels and stuff so uh there you go yeah so maybe maybe if you can't get a ground floor game room or like a walkout basement you could get either an escalera or i've seen people put in lifts or hoists or instead like crazy solutions but even that like you want to avoid doing that stuff if you can like if you You just walk it in and out. It's so much better than messing around with that stuff. An Escalera is terrifying for me. Oh, yeah. Like, that thing just, like, look, if shit goes wrong, you're going to the hospital, you're dead. You know, it was serious, right? Like, you don't want to be killed by this hobby. That's my, call me crazy. So your recommendation is anything that doesn't kill you. Make your life easy. I mean, this hobby is a crazy hobby, right? We're moving these 300-some pound games, right? And Calvin's got the ideal setup.
    55:09
    He doesn't have to contend with stairs. The other thing that anybody can do right now, which is something that I do, is I love having my game plugged into outlets that I can turn on with my phone, right? So like Wi-Fi enabled. I can hit a bunch of buttons on my phone, and then when I turn on my entire game room and walk downstairs and the arcade's ready. and there's something about that like I'm just going to walk into the arcade and it's ready it's a cool experience to have, it's totally different than I'm going to walk downstairs, I've got to have my lights on, then I've got to individually walk around turn on 13 games, turn on Big Buck Hunter turn on the lights and then walk upstairs turn the lights off so I can have the arcade vibe I go boop boop boop, that's how it sounds in my head and then it's ready, then I go downstairs yeah I see that It gives you that whole vibe of just walking in the arcade and having a good time. I like it. I haven't set it up so it plays Journey when I do that, like in Tron, but that's a flex.
    56:11
    Speaking of, we're going to get nerdy. I'm going to California in two weeks, and we're going to go to the place where they shot the original Tron movie, the building where Flynn's Arcade was. We're going to go visit it. I'm like, why not? Let's go check it out. There's a restaurant in there now. You can go eat. We're going to go have lunch. they're making Tron 3 huh oh yeah allegedly we'll see how that turns out alright more Q&A thank you Sergeant Ski good discussion on that one alright from Dan Psychosonic on Twitter he wants to know what do you expect will be the initial reaction to the first Scooby Doo pins landing in the next week or two really hard to say obviously like the people who are in on it and getting it in on early, a lot of times there's this bias that they're going to, they can take a lot of shit, right? Like they're almost like apologists because they've got their dream theme made. And, and I understand that, you know? So I think that they, they're way more likely to give spooky a pass or do some cope like, Oh, it's early. It's going to get better. I was able to, you know, like they, they can take a lot. so that's what I expect for the early reactions to be you know we'll see how it progresses over time we'll see how it progresses over time I'm curious to see if they fix their quality issues I don't think they have but I'd be curious that's that's a good step one which we talked about earlier yeah I think the uh like I agree that you know the people who bought in early are going to be happy with whatever they get pretty much at least the start right um but then i think the the shine will wear off the the initial like ooh shiny i got my i'm one of the first people to get this game and then then people will start like actually looking at what's there we'll start hearing about you know any issues that may arise i mean with any new game that's what happens um and then i'm mostly i'm most curious to see how this new board set is going to work out for them like we got into this last month about how, you know, after, you know, what have they done, like six or seven games? They've gone through like four different board sets at this point.
    58:26
    Is this the one that's going to stick? Is it going to be reliable? Is it not going to crash? Is the play field going to be the right thickness? You know, is the ball going to fall in the cabinet? These are all the answers I need.
    58:39
    That's what I'm looking forward to. Questions you shouldn't have to ask yourself when buying a pinball machine, right? And that's kind of the point. Yeah, exactly. By the way, shout out to Donnie in chat. Always good to see you. Donnie's always here on the Saturday mornings. We've got to go to – he has Tom Ballroom. Love Tom Ballroom, by the way. We should go see Snarky Puppy in April Cabin. All right. Sounds good. Sign me up. All right. Needs more pinball there, though. You know what I mean?
    59:08
    All right. We've got a long one here from Josh Oaker sent us in via email. It's a multi-part question. So we'll tackle the first part first. He says, pitch me on open play fields like which seem common or as the default physics design on most new games, period. And most new CERN, certainly. I haven't heard or read any discussion about when play field designs seem to change to a more fan based layout where most action is pushed to the top of the play field. Here I'm thinking about design trends by era. Take, for example, Jungle Lord and Flash Gordon versus Rush and Led Zeppelin. Um, this is more of a nerd question than a ratings one. Am I crazy to see a pattern of most new games as having open playfields when flipping new games, leave me cold, which is fine and well, however, before I write off most new games as likely not for me, can you tell me what about open playfield gameplay I might be missing? I don't want to be too glib when rolling my eyes at a fan layout style pin where most sharp shooting happens to send the ball up the playfield without a bounce and return it to right back to the in lane via wire form again variety is cool but given how ubiquitous fan slash open layouts are simply curious how people who like them describe them and why so i gotta reread that i was i was donnie's hooking us up with uh you want me to reread i don't think i don't think that i don't think anybody who's listening to this podcast want you to read that's a lot there okay so the the the how would you condense it okay yeah yeah yeah the cliff notes is open play fields why are they so popular right now and uh why don't we see more games like the older stuff like flash gordon and jungle lord that had like two level play fields and you know more stuff i guess closer to the flippers versus sharp shots far away there's safer returns to the player all right well let's tackle this i mean his example says um take for example jungle lord and flash gordon versus russian led zeppelin like i mean rush is not exactly an open play field design there's there's shots close to the flipper, especially on the left-hand side of that. So that's not an open play field. Certainly Led Zeppelin is.
    61:17
    You know, I... Alright, let's continue. This is more of a new... Am I crazy to see a pattern in most new games as having open play fields?
    61:29
    I don't... I don't know, Kevin. What do you... I think that there's some tried and true playfield layouts that people tend to like and that sell well and work. So I think designers certainly want to play it safe and stick with designs that are well-received and do work. I think, you know, like Black Knight, sort of Rage Pro, is a fan layout per se, but it's also not an open playfield. I mean, if you miss a shot, the shots are so close to the flippers that you probably will brick and drain. Same with Mandalorian. So those are two games that I can think of off the top of my head. And even Rush on the left side, if you miss, you're going to probably brick and drain. So they're not all following this kind of open play field. And when you say open, I take it to mean that there's a lot of space on the play field that not utilized with shots or posts or pop numbers Like Godzilla is kind of an open play field There a lot of space that just not used in the Balkan Rome Why might we see things like that Well, there's people that don't like Black Knight because it's brutal.
    62:45
    And I think that's really punishing towards a more casual and newer player. Same with Mandalorian. Mandalorian does well on location, does well for me as an operator, does well for other operators because of the theme, and people will play it regardless. but I do see complaints that it's too hard. I love that it's hard, right? I think it's easier to get away with making a game that's a little easier, open play field, more space, more forgiveness, right? You have an open play field, less things for the ball to bounce off and drain. Now, do I have a preference for one or the other? I think years ago I used to say I do like games where the shots are way back, and I think I was saying that because we didn't see a lot of those. Like we didn't see a lot of like the 24 kind of layout. You know, there's like 24 has shots way back. Led Zeppelin kind of mimicked that in some way. So it was just nice to have something different. I think I like a variety. And at the end of the day, it's how do the shots feel and how are the shots incorporated into the rules?
    63:46
    Hopefully that answers the question. Yeah, I think it's giving people what they want, what sells, you know. People want to feel like they're good at pinball, and giving people shots that return to flippers safely, if you make a shot, makes you feel good, and it gives you another chance to take another shot without having to recover the ball.
    64:08
    And if Stern makes, say, a Mando, and Mando doesn't sell as well as a Godzilla, maybe some of that is the fact that the game is more punishing or whatever. you know there's a lot of factors that go into a a play field design and why it sells and and you know its theme and music and assets and all that stuff but uh if they see a trend over time that the players buy more of the games with the open layouts that they can have longer play times on then maybe that's what they make and you know they have to walk a balance of sure um it's good for a home player but on location you want people putting more money in so uh operators probably like a game like Mando better than a Godzilla, unless the game is so hard people don't end up playing it again, right? You got to find like this middle ground, a good balance of giving people enough gameplay for their money, but also not making it so long that the operator is not making their money either. Yeah. And look, and you mentioned Jungle Lord, like, look, they have black, like the way the shots are on Jungle Lord in proximity to flippers, it's kind of the same as they are on Black Knight sort of rage, it's kind of the same as they are on Game of Thrones it's kind of the same they are on Mando, so we are getting games that still have shots closer to the flippers, I think we've been getting pretty good variety there I think that if you like games like that there are games like that that exist today Black Knight Premium LE does kick you to an upper play field like the maybe you're alluding to on like flash gordon uh or jungle lord and so does game of thrones premium in le i mean coincidentally they're kind of similar in design philosophy right they play differently but those games do exist for sure yeah yeah i agree i think we're not all current pinball is is family out or shots far away we're getting a good mix and you know maybe if you're you know try like jersey jack games or a p3 game or you know if you're getting kind of it to me it seems like this person is more getting just like bored of new sterns all the time so maybe if there's some other manufacturers or go back to play some bally williams games um you know mix up the things that you're playing because if you do play a single manufacturer all the time, they do start to feel samey after a while. So, you know, mix up what you're exposing yourself to go back. I mean, there's a hundred years of history in pinball. So go back and, you know, explore the classics, see what other manufacturers are putting out. And, and you know, I think there's, there's enough out there both classic and modern that you're going to find something that you like. It's a, it's a good question, right? Like, you know, I know what, I think I know what you're saying and, you know, fan layouts can be a little bit boring. I think, uh, You know, Mando's a fan layout, but it's fun.
    67:10
    It's not a baby game fan layout, right? Like sometimes to me fan layouts can be too easy or long playing, but again, it's how the rules incorporate that. Is it supposed to be a long playing game? Well, then that makes sense. It should be a little easier. All right, let's move on to question number two. This is for me. Go ahead, Kev. Since it's for you, I'll ask it to you. When a game is on location, how much does it need to make per week or per month for it to be worth it to you? For an individual pin, what is both the expected return for you to be satisfied with the title or, conversely, the minimum threshold under which you would pull it and replace it with something else? Location being equal, on your Business of Pinball episode, you mentioned offhand something like if a pin was doing $40 a week or something, you'd pull it from that bar.
    67:53
    So it's different for me because this is certainly a side business, right? it's not my main source of income I do it for reasons in addition to making money if this was my full time job I'd be probably way more aggressive and could really give you better figures in terms of what I want to see a pin make I have some games out there now at a location where it's just not they're not earning much right and I've been thinking recently about pulling those games and maybe be putting someplace else. But the problem for me is that I don't have a lot of time to invest in this business. So I'm okay settling for, you know, those games may be late making less than they should be. And it comes down to a personal thing, right? Like what if every operator might have a different criteria, like they maybe want the game paid off in a year or two years or three years, right? They, they, they probably have an idea of when they're happy with when it should be paid off. And that's probably going to vary by the market that they're in. Certainly a larger market, larger city, maybe where there's not a lot of competition, they can be more aggressive in terms of what they want to see it make versus smaller city and area. So not an exact answer, right? My situation is somewhat unique, but it hopefully gives you some idea. I would say that if I was doing this in Buffalo for full-time hobby, I'm sorry, full-time work, I would try to have these things paid off in three years, I think would be my minimum, try to get three-year payback. And if it wasn't on track to do that, I would move it around until it at least got to that, with the ideal being like a year. That'd be like, I'd be ecstatic if this thing paid for itself in a year. Are you factoring in resale value when you're talking about paying it off or no? You're just like earning enough to buy it again. Paying for itself. Yeah, paying for itself. The game is $7,000. It's, you know, cover the cost of the game in that period of time before it's generating a profit, right? Okay. Yep. Makes sense.
    70:03
    Related question from Sargent Ski. He said he would like to hear Nick's thoughts as an operator about the bubble and whether the current pricing is going to either force people out, kill the market, or drive a consolidation. Yeah. I see you put bubble in quotes, and probably because you and I are on the same page with this. I mean, I've been hearing about a pinball bubble probably since I got into the hobby in 2010, right?
    70:25
    You know, is this a bubble? Is it not a bubble? I don't know. Eventually, it's maybe going to be a bubble, right? You keep on saying it long enough, it will happen. But here's the reality of the situation.
    70:36
    You've got – this is bad news, right? You've got pinball – the cost of a new pinball machine going up quite rapidly. you've got also less people going out and playing pinball than pre-pandemic. You know, I'm going to throw out, maybe we're roughly at 80%, right, of what it was pre-pandemic. So we're making less money, period.
    71:02
    How much can somebody get squeezed on that? I don't know. Honestly, not sure. I wanted to actually, I was curious. I was going to reach out to Zach at Flippin' Out and ask him if he's seen a decrease in pinball orders versus like last year. What trends he's seeing. Because that's like an economic indicator to me, right? When people are buying less of these expensive toys, things are slowing down. It would be interesting to see how it plays out. I really don't know. I think to be successful as an operator, you need to have a lot of locations and a lot of machines and critical mass in machines and locations. And then you can certainly make money that way. And as long as these games tend to hold their value or even go up a little bit, you can have a nice little business. And I've had this conversation with my business partners, and I think that we're going to see pinball trend up. um you know in trending up i mean like people coming into the hobby and interest in people accumulating and collecting for at least another 10 years at least i think it's going to be 20 years right you know kevin and i are both in our 40s kevin do you have any plans to get out of the pinball hobby anytime soon nope nope i'm in it maybe i'm not going anywhere i'll probably be collecting for the rest of my life right like hopefully maybe i have a good another 40 years left in me or so who knows and i think there's a lot of collectors in the range of you know, 30 years old to maybe 60, and maybe the median or sweet spot is somewhere in the 40s. So I would look at it like this. There's going to be that desire for pinball machines for the next 20 years pretty easily. I'll reassess 20 years from now, where is it headed? Do we continue to see, you know, as, you know, these kids grow up and they become in their 30s, then they start collecting pinball machines. And I think pinball machines are sort of, I don't want to say becoming normalized in seeing in somebody's house. But I'm happy to theorize that, look, in the 80s or 90s, you didn't see a lot of pinball collections in the house because they were everywhere. You didn't think to put a pinball machine. When it dried up and they were not on location, these pinball machines started going into houses. And then you go to somebody's house and you see they have a pinball machine and you're like, shit, I never considered having a pinball machine in my house. So then more people start putting in their house. And as you know, if you've bought a pinball machine, typically they multiply. You don't just have one. You start buying more. So I think more people are coming into the hobby, certainly than people who actually leave the hobby at a significant rate. We see more people coming in and competing year after year. We have an economic disaster in the next 10 years. Sure, you might see a glut of pinball machines or prices come down with people selling it. But I don't think the desire to own or have pinball machines in a house It's going to change anytime soon. And I also don't see us going back to the 80s or 90s where pinball machine is everywhere. And you're like, why would I have this in my home? It's just like I'm tripping over pinball machines when I leave my house. And also people are spending more time at home. So again, long story short, I think next 20 years we're still going to see an increase in desire and demand in pinball machines. How fast does the price go up? Does it retrace a little bit because of something bad in the marketplace? maybe perhaps but you know bullish bullish on pinball kevin yeah i'm with you because even if you look at like the financial crash of 2008 yeah pinball took a hit and it you know things things got real close to shutting down but they didn't and then after that it was this massive boom that's been carrying on through through today so i think you know if there's going to be ebbs and flows over the years but i think in um i'm on the grand scale the long tail of pinball, it's an upward trend for sure.
    74:48
    If we got Scott Denisey in chat still, we got a question for him because I think this person thought Scott was going to be on the show. Wants to know if Scott regrets selling his Aftershock Earthshaker. If he's in chat and wants to answer that, we'll let you know his answer to that. I love seeing posts, by the way, when people are like, I love seeing posts where people are like, my first pinball machine. It's beautiful. I tear up a little bit. It's great.
    75:13
    While we wait and maybe get an answer from Scott, let's thank our partners, shall we? You want to do the honors or should I?
    75:23
    Sure. We want to thank our premier partner, Penn Stadium. Penn Stadium lights. It is the premier lighting kit for your pinball machine controlled by iOS, Android, app. Light up your pinball machine with Penn Stadium lighting kits. He's got a new one out, too. It's a Penn Stadium Neo. What is it, Alpha?
    75:42
    Ultra? I think. I'm sorry, Scott. I'm going to get fucked up. We love you, Scott. Thank you. We love you.
    75:49
    All right. I was checking it out the other day, and while I'm doing a terrible off-the-cuff ad read, what I like about it is he's found a way to do an even slimmer profile to it, right? So it's thinner, but it's just as good as the other. Oh, it's Adam. The Neo Adam.
    76:10
    So, yeah. Great product. Highly recommend. 10% off when using code Buffalo. Other sponsors very quickly. Comment Pinball. FlippinOutPinball.com. PinballRaffle.org. Titan Pinball. Multimorphic. Pinside.com. And Jersey Jack Pinball. All right. Thank you all.
    76:27
    And with that, let's bring you over here. Thanks again for another month. You can follow us on all the social media channels if you haven't yet. If you want to send us a question, we will answer it on the show if it's a good one. Make it a good question and we'll answer it. Talkpinball at gmail.com. We got good questions. I like those. I like that. We did. Yeah. It was a good month for some Q&A.
    76:51
    If you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to us on Twitch or share your Twitch Prime Gaming. What are they calling it now? Amazon Gaming. Whatever they're calling it now. You get a free sub per month to any channel on Twitch. We'd appreciate it if you shared that with us. You can send a PayPal donation to buffalopinball at gmail.com. or you can drop a review, a five-star review. And we should thank – so after we shared our one-star review last month that somebody shared, the spooky owner who was not too thrilled with our take on spooky pinball machines, we got numerous five-star reviews on iTunes. So thank you for that. I'm really grateful. Let's read one of them. A lot of good reviews.
    77:32
    So thank you guys for taking five minutes out of your day. It's kind of you. We hear you. We see you. We appreciate you. All right. This is one. Just, you know, just randomly picked it. Randomly picked it. Here we go. Randomly selected. Best Pinball Podcast is the title from, looks like, Skywalker, SQ Walker. All right. This is by far the best pinball podcast. Base. I like it. He's not wrong.
    77:59
    They have great insight and honest opinions, impressions, and reviews. Nick is hilarious with his no-holds-barred attitude with each manufacturing game. It's refreshing. Send him a fucking mug, Kevin. Mug for that guy. Mugs. Oh, mugs.
    78:13
    I was thinking of giving them less than five stars until they started talking about Playfield artwork dildos. Definitely five stars, baby. The reviews are in, folks.
    78:23
    That's right. We got new merch, too. There's another way you can support the channel. Exclamation point, merch and chat if you're watching on Twitch. You get yourself a sweet Buffalo Pinball mug. We do a terrible job hyping. I didn't even know we had mugs. I forgot. We do a terrible job. We probably should hype some of the... We're in a weird place with merch, but we do have some merch. Yeah, the Street Mike's always got good stuff.
    78:46
    Yeah, it's good. Yeah, there's another good review, too. You got that one pulled up, too, or no? No, you got it? Go ahead. Maybe I didn't see the more recent one. Let me see. I'll get it. It's fun to read people saying nice things about us instead of bad things all the time. All right, here we go.
    79:04
    No. I always say these bad things all the time. Not really. But we tend to focus on the bad things. Oh, sure, sure. We're a hashtag positivity.
    79:13
    Yeah. Title, these guys are pretty funny, from Briscoe's Horse. I'll take it. It took a while to grow on me, but now I am hooked. Also, yes, Spooky has some serious issues, and you guys are spot on. Keep up the great work, boys. So there you go. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. That's good stuff. Let's do one more. One more. Latest episode, Dark Knockout. But hey, guys, long-time listener and YouTube viewer, but your last few episodes around Spooky are hilarious, and the remarks about hobbyists are spot on. Thank you for being honest in reviews overall, regardless of manufacturer, instead of a mindless cheerleaders. Keep up the great work. Thank you. Are we done patting ourselves on the back? We're done. Well, actually, it was them patting us on the back and then us reading. It's pretty meta. It is. But don't go anywhere, because I know y'all have been hanging out for the latest episode of Topper Talk with Goran. We've got that coming at you right next. But until next time, have a good month, and we'll see you on the channel.
    80:19
    It's Topper Talk with Goran right now. Let's all have some fun. This is about plastic on top of your pin. Go and buy one now. There's a topper here and a topper there. Here a topper, there a topper, everywhere a topper. It's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Gorin. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Gorn, the part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Now, today we're going to throw back to an older, simpler topper, but also a very neat one. And that topper is for the Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard pinball machine. So let's head into the office and talk about it now. All right. So here we are in the office and let's jump right into it. So as you can see, we're talking about the Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard. And the topper on it is a very simple topper. The Who's Tommy, a big part of it is obviously some pinball wizard. So that's how the pinball machine got its name. And naturally, they wanted to put a giant pinball on the topper. Now, there's something really cool about this pinball. When I saw it, I thought, OK, they just put a big ball bearing up on top and that that's what it is. but I played it for the first time the other day when I walked up to it and looked at the topper there was something pretty cool that I saw. It actually has on top of the back box artwork that is mirrored inside of the pinball and it says official Tommy pinball wizard and it points to the player which I thought was a really really neat touch something that I wasn't expecting and put a smile on my face you can see that here from this photo as well you can see how it's It's painted onto the top of the back box so it reflects into the pinball. It's very simple. It's not electronic. It just sits up there. But if you remember, the purpose of toppers back in the day, they usually came with the game and more operators were people who bought pinball machines. And the purpose of the topper was to attract a customer over to that new game to play it. And that's exactly what this giant pinball on top of the machine does. It's shiny. It attracts people over. But it also puts a smile on someone's face when they see that fun little nod and lettering inside of the reflection of the pinball on top. So you have a positive experience. It gives you a positive, lasting memory in your mind. So I think this topper does its job. And for what it is, it's a really, really awesome piece to sit on top of the pinball machine.
    83:03
    Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Topper Talk with Goran. Tune into the next podcast for another episode. And as always, get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk.