Hello and welcome to episode 18 of the pinball studio podcast. I'm your host Sterling Martin and today we've got Omoto Harne of Captain's Crazy Paradise for Arcade in Alabama and also you may know her from Marco Pinball. But first off, let's mention the sponsors. Old Town Pinball. Do you need a new or used pinball machine? Head over to oldtownpinball.com. Also, The Electric Playground. Time to level up your game room with a new topper. Check out their website teppinball.com. And last but not least, Spooky Pinball. Order your Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scooby Doo or Looney Tunes today. Just check out their website spookipinball.com to learn more. Also, I want to give a shout out to Marco Pinball because they sponsored my tournament group this year and sent us a huge box of all kinds of goodies from Marco Pinball. Anyway, to order all your pinball parts, make sure to check out marcopinball.com. Anyway, welcome to the show, Emoto. Hard prepping for Texas Pinball Festival, which is next weekend, so really excited about that, but also excited to be here at the Pinball Studio Podcast. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. I've been wanting to do this for a while. Yeah. We're fellow Georgians. You got to stick together. I haven't come visit your new spot yet, but I promise this year it's going to happen. So tell us. Yeah. I got to make it out to your arcade as well. It looks like a freaking awesome spot. You got it set up really cool for all the TVs and everything. Yeah. I can get the all rigged to like a live streaming setup and my dream is you as the twitch user can choose which camera you want to look at okay just choose between like the 13 bank and be like I want to look at this guy you know yeah awesome um so tell us everything you've been doing uh getting ready for the Texas Pinball Festival oh man so this year is going to be huge with Texas Pinball we have been starting to Usually support, I mean, we've always been supporting them, but showcase all the homebrew and custom games. And for several years at TPF, we've helped that homebrew area. We have, you know, around five, six, seven games each year after our big homebrew village that we built in Pinball Expo, I think helped kind of propel this. So this year we have 16 homebrew games signed up. That's freaking awesome. Yeah, I don't ever remember TPF having like a huge homebrew section. I missed last year though, so I can't speak about last year. Yeah, so we're in a completely new area of the floor plan for anyone that's attending, a much bigger footprint. And again, it's all branded under like our pin dev con experience with Fast Pinball and Trident Pinball. So we're going to have them set up teaching people how to make their own games as well as showcasing all these awesome games. And a lot of cool pinball content creator collaborations this year too at Texas. So we're going to be live streaming with Marco TV with the help of Mystery Pinball Theater 3000, Manu, and Fliptronics and Erica's Pinball Journey. They're going to all help record live stream gameplay of all the homebrew games. So if you don't get to participate in the show or attend, you can check those out later and get stoked and see when they're going to be at a next show. And then. Man, it's so much going on. Dirty Pool Pinball, Jeff Dodson reached out to me and we just had recently put a free sound effects kit on our website. For anyone that needed like cool spinner rips or drop target hits, you know the sound. Yeah, I downloaded that myself. Oh, sweet, oh yeah, cause you're working on a homebrew. I am. Can't wait for us to present your game too. Yeah, next year, next year. Next year, I'm holding you to it. But he's gonna come out, we're building like a pyramid, it's not a pyramid, but the pyramid sound booth. We're gonna record homebrew call outs from the community. So we built a really simple script of like multiball, skill shot, you know, tilt warning, all that type of stuff for call outs. And anyone can come into the booth, record all those sounds, and he's going to make it into a fun library. And then we're going to post it for free on our website, too. So that's really exciting. And we're just I imagine it's going to get all sorts of cool, different call outs from different types of people from the We're going to be talking about the homebrew community and hearing yourself in someone else's game will be really exciting and stuff too. Yeah, that's super cool. I'm really excited for the homebrew community. It seems like it's really started to take off these past couple of years. Yeah, absolutely. It's flourishing and it's just so exciting to watch people follow their passions, find a theme that really resonates with them, and then build a game ground up. I've always been passionate about that ever since I saw Scott Danesi's Whitewood of Total Nuclear Annihilation at Texas Pinball Festival in 2017. And it was everyone was just like crowding around that game being like, what is this? And it was so much fun to play with the stealing each other's lock balls for multiball and the music soundtrack was pumping. Right. You know, and then, you know, that went on to being picked up by Spooky and made a distributed game which is super cool and... Right. Yeah. Have you ever thought about building a homebrew yourself or maybe you and a couple of your friends maybe pitching in and building one? I'm actually, I pinky swore Ricardo who built Coming to America last year, last last year at Expo that I would have one ready at Expo 2027. So you better get on it. Yes. Hard body too coming soon. Hard body too. I know. Well, so I do have lots of re-theme ideas. We face a horror-ridden world! Sorry… If you a pirouette hitin' out b changes, I want to make it into like a Japanese Yakuza onsen. Ooh, that would be cool. Yeah, so I have re-themed ideas, a homebrew idea. Honestly, it's probably going to be some sort of like tour around the world visiting arcades sort of thing because that's, you know, a big passion of mine as well. For sure, for sure. Yeah, I can't wait to announce my homebrew. I'm trying to keep it a secret for the time being. I know you're keeping it a secret. It's like I don't want to make an announcement until I feel like I have something more in the works. Like I'm working on it, but it's so far, so far out. I feel like I don't need to even mention it quite yet. For sure. Do you worry that if you mention it, then other people will work on the same theme? I don't know. There's a few people that know the theme. And Don has told it to Spooky, I think, a couple of times. And he's like, Spooky, you need to get this theme. And I'm like, Don, back off of my theme. You're giving hints. You're giving hints to the community right now. I guess. Not that they've signed the license or anything or even maybe not even interested. I'm not even sure. But anyway, I think it'll appeal to a lot of the whole 80s, 90s kids. So I'm excited for it. I love it. Yeah, I can't wait for it. Texas is a great place to bring a game to showcase it just because it's you know one of the best festivals of the year and then Pinball Expo we go big last year we had 40 homebrew games wow i'm my guess and goal is we will probably get to like 60 this year that's insane i don't even have the space to do that but But it's really exciting. I come from a indie filmmaker background. So Captain Crazy Paradise, my actual company is Captain Crazy Productions, and we're a video production company out of Atlanta. And since 2008, so we're almost to 20 years of video production. And we would make a lot of indie films and stuff back in the day. So there's so much like crossover between like indie filmmaking or just filmmaking in general and then pinball making. You know, you have like the director, which is the designer and, you know, the producers and stuff. So supporting the indie film festivals back in my early 20s was such a huge part of my life. Right. Now I feel like it's kind of coming together again with supporting the homebrew in this capacity because it's, you know, They're basically indie pinball makers, you know, at the end of the day. And it's been such an amazing journey with Marco since I started working with them in 2019. We're totally aligned, like everything we do, like we want to support the community. You know, they just help propel me to do all these efforts with the shows and the homebrew community. And then also like the tech knowledge and educational stuff And the Pintech database we're building as well too. So it's like homebrew stuff and then teaching people how to work on games. That's like my two big passions right now in pinball. So going to shows and doing seminars. We have five or so tech seminars over the weekend. After this show, we'll be going to Golden State Pinball Festival and running Pinball University, We've been working with people like you, you know, who have been doing this for decades and decades, like learning from them has just been amazing, you know, and documenting that type of information to me is like neurotically important because it's not just like a piece of paper that you can just like put in your pocket. You like really truly written any, you know, there we have like pin wiki and other great sites, but pinball repair is like witchcraft. It's not the easiest thing to learn. And I will say like how I discovered yourself even is from the Pintech live videos back when you were doing them with Kyle originally. And that's where I learned really a lot of how to work on these machines was from some of those old Pintech videos. Yeah, Kyle was amazing and it's so awesome that he's at Stern doing some great stuff with them too. Yeah. And yeah, you know, like at shows we always try to do like a live demo on mechanics. Like Fipper Rebuild is like the number one thing, you know, with so many new people coming into pinball. It's the gateway into gaining your confidence into doing more pinball repair. Because it's intimidating. Like soldering is intimidating and then using a meter is intimidating because if you use it wrong you can like blow up something really quick. Oh, even pulling the glass off and lifting the playfield. When I got my first game I was so terrified to pull the glass off and lift the playfield. I was talking to a board tech at the time, Chris Hibbler, and he's like, dude, don't worry about it. Just lift the playfield. You'll be fine. He's so amazing, man. Oh, yeah. He is a legend. Chris Hibbler is a legend. He has worked on so many of my games. Oh, my gosh, that is really cool. I have not met him in person yet, but it's like he's on the top of my list of people that I want to work with. Right. I think he's retired now from board work for the most part, which is really sad because I used him for like everything. Yeah, but he's still I see him still like on all the forums and on Facebook giving advice to others. And I love that, you know, spreading the knowledge because at the end of the day, all we're doing is helping each other keep pinball alive. Absolutely. So the techs coming down to Texas Pinball Festival, we have like Todd Tucky and Frank from TNT Amusements, Eugene Mosh, who's also a legendary board repair guy over the past 30 years. Sean Palmer, Brian Haskell, Matthew Talley, like the list goes on. We just have such a great community and growing it together where everyone kind of is going for the same purpose. Like, let's teach people how to keep these games running, you know? Yeah. Did I hear a TPF they're doing some kind of like repair day or something? I think it's on Wednesday. Yeah. So this is our first year doing it. It's a big Marcos sponsored endeavor, TPF Tech Day. And it's basically you come in a day early if you have issues with your games you kind of fill out a form and we kind of suss it out to see if it's something we can work on and we're basically teaching you how to work on your game so you're learning but also your game's getting fixed you get into the show early you know and it's it's really exciting and this is our first year trying it out and every year we will grow it into something. Yeah, that's a super cool idea, I think. Especially in the past, there's always been some, you know, games that were down and stuff. So maybe hopefully this will help, you know, Texas Pinball Fest will not have those type of issues. Yeah, absolutely. Knowledge is power, right? More people that can like work on their own games. That's the other thing, too. Like, when I talk to professional technicians and stuff, I, you know, there's this thing in the industry where you're like, Oh, well, if you teach someone else my craft, Jon pumps off throughout the day 1.25-le demote military era John Popadiuk, orbit ramps, Scott Danesi. So, I feel like more people knowing how to do those things allow them to free up to work on the bigger, more masterful repairs. But, everyone's been really cool about sharing the knowledge. That's awesome. That really cool because I think in other trades they would be more secretive about sharing that but no they all about like yes please teach this person how to take the glass off and lift the playfield up and adjust that switch So I don't have to make a two hour long drive to do this quick little job. Yeah, I'm always, I actually do tech work in the Savannah area and there's constantly like, sometimes I know it's like a five minute fix. I'm like, will you please just lift the playfield and look at this one thing? Thanks for watching. Happy holidays, ham Claire, Inkjet I'm going to go over working on them. I just want to play them. Oh, isn't, oh, I know you will experience this when you're in a tournament and you're playing, you play in your tournament? Yeah. So you're playing it and then like you notice something about the game and then now you can't even focus on your tournament strategy. You're just looking at that one piece that's dangling off or like, oh my God, look at that right there. I need to get to that. Or there's someone like screaming in the background like I need I got a stuck ball and I'm just like I'll be there in a minute I swear that's why I made a second tournament director so like people that do run tournaments I would highly recommend like bringing on a second tournament director. Absolutely yeah have some sort of backup yeah and it's always like right before tournaments like you get your games all ready to go and then as soon as the tournament starts that's when And it's like, okay, this wire broke, this drop target broke, you know, like the pop bumper is not reading is like, oh my god. I will say that tournament players will always let you know all the issues with your games where like casuals might not notice, you know, one switch not scoring or something where someone in a tournament will let you know really quickly. Absolutely. They are the best play testers for your arcade. That's for sure. Well, Emoto, tell us all how did you get into this whole hobby? Where did all of this start off for you? Well, I've been a gamer my whole life. I grew up in the arcade scene of like the late 90s, early 2000s before the kind of really big arcade crash where everyone closed down. Yep. So I was really into the rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and then the fighting games. That was like my era growing up in my teens. Yeah. So I love arcade culture. That's where I made all my best friends. You know, we all went to different schools, but we would meet up at the arcade. You know, I am an extreme introvert. So there's something about like, once you go into an arcade, it kind of release attention I'm going to go to the bar and, you know, be really awkward. Right. Have some fun activity. So I've always loved arcades and when they started making a big comeback in 2011, that's I believe when Galloping Ghost opened up or at least when I first discovered it, we were up shooting a horror movie in Chicago area. Okay. I was trying to find something to do with a friend and then I saw that this arcade opened up and they had over 200 games all on free play for like one rate and walking in there I me and my brother were together and I was like in tears it was like this is so amazing because arcades had been dead for like five six seven years from there like we couldn't find anything in Georgia after Aladdin's castles maybe a Dave and Buster's but that's the closest thing yeah I Yeah, and that's like mostly ticket redemption games and stuff. Right. So anyways, when I saw Galloping Ghosts, I was like, man, what other arcades are opening up and existing in all these cities and states? So I, as a filmmaker, I wanted to do like promo videos for them and do like a quick walkthrough like, hey, check out this arcade. You know, you guys got to come play here. And then I started my YouTube channel Emoto Arcade. And it was basically like every time I traveled for work, I would see if there was a local arcade, I would go there, do some B roll and stuff, and then pop a little video up promoting them. Because I was just so excited arcades were making a comeback. Yeah, that's super cool. And I didn't want that to die. It was really important to me. So it's funny because, and sorry, this is a really long story. No, no, you're good. I would go to these arcades for so many years and like focus on like oh my gosh they have tech and tag full cabinet or look they have two uh whatever rhythm games and then i would do like a quick two second sweep of the pinball right and be like oh yeah there's some pinball over there and like kind of walk away and i look back at that footage i'm like oh my god umoto pause what games are those right why didn't i care that back then But it wasn't until 2016 when I heard about the Arcade Expo show, which was at the Museum of Pinball in Banning, California. Rest in peace no longer exists. But they had over 600 pinball machines, another 600 in arcade games. So I went to that show, did one of my little walkthrough things, and then met the curators of that museum. And they were just like, come check out the pinball. You know, and I'm like, okay, okay, let's check this out. And like, you know, back then, growing up in like the video craze kind of era, pinball was just a money eater. I didn't understand it. Well, that's why I didn't play it a lot. You know, I hit it in some quarters and it would die or maybe the game wasn't well maintained back then or something. So it was like, ah, whatever, pinball. But then I was standing there. Kenny Hardy brought me over and he was like, watch this tournament. It was one of the first INDISC tournaments that they were hosting there. And that's where I first saw the TV screen and the camera over the playfield like I have at my arcade. And he was like, watch these guys play. And I was like, okay, whatever. And I'm like watching it and I was like, holy smokes, how do they do all of that? You know, they're keeping the game in play. And it It was actually Keith Elwin versus Zach Sharp. Oh, wow. Okay. So I was watching like the most butter pinball gameplay ever and like how they manipulated the ball to go exactly where they were. I was like, wow, like that opened my eyes on like the skill level that comes with playing these games and of mastering it. And then he took me over to a whodunit machine and was like, and look, games have rules. They have storylines. This is like clue. You have to find out who the murderer is and like walk me through it and stuff. And then, you know, this game was over here is designed by George Gomez and this game over here is designed by George Gomez. And I just fell in such a deep rabbit hole at that show. And from there, I committed to doing all of their marketing and stuff for all the shows and spent a lot of time at that museum with them and just, just... So you were hooked. I've been a whole dive into pinball, man. It was like the bug caught. And then they took me to Texas Pinball Festival. It was like my first real pinball show in 2016 and it was during the Ghostbusters. Yeah. And then I saw George Gomez walking around. I was like, oh my God, that's the guy that designed all these other games that I saw at the museum. And so I asked to interview him and he was my very first pinball designer interview. Wow. So freaking nervous. Ghostbusters is right when I jumped in the hobby. I just bought Back to the Future and I was like, let me see if they still, you know, like, let me research these. Do they still make them? And then like Ghostbusters had just launched and I'm like, what? They made Ghostbusters? Yeah, man. Yeah. Theme wise, you know, I was excited. Absolutely. And it's just, it's just, you know, I'm and then I met the Marco crew from Marco Specialties and they were building cool booth stuff and I went to the Southern Fried Gaming Expo show and they have like all their truss layout and stuff that we do, the metal truss beams and I would ask them if I could climb it up and climb up it and put GoPros there so I could do like time lapses of the show. So every time I would go to a new pinball show, I'd look for the Marco team and be like, oh yeah, can I rig my cameras to your, to your trust system? Right. And that turned into like, Mark Mandeltort helping me buy my first pinball machine, which was Hard Body. And that was a game I played at the museum and at friends houses in Georgia, where I was like, I'm not going to buy a pinball machine unless it's hard body. And then I went to Southern Friday and Mark's like, there's a hard body over there. And then he walked it over and like helped me buy it. And then, you know, if you buy pinball machines, everyone knows you buy one and then they multiply. Absolutely. So without that, and then in 2019, I started working with them on an official capacity I'm a director of marketing and do a lot of stuff with the website and I have a lot of And when I say new challenges, trying to get zone Martha wear and Boxerstein size money's going to do more. Just because has 250 subscribers and I have over a millionurance I'm so thankful for being setup to help more than inevitably. I am Candya Koenig. Thank you for having fun with us. Glad to see next week after 6 afternoon podcast. You had a great week. If anyone wants to check out our Property Shirley Walyhan website, like I always, always want to hear it. Please shoot me a message to Emotoinander, Marco pinball.com. Or if it's easier to remember Marco TV at marcopinball.com. Both of those go to me and we take all of the feedback at Marco, like very seriously. And we check into it. And it's specially down to like what we really love is we do this product compatibility break down for parts. This game, this part fits in your game and works and we don't have it listed, like, please let us know. I'll show you a free shipping code for your hassle, you know, because you're just making everyone's life easier, including me as a tech. So it's like, the more we can pour into making this like giant parts database, we have over 40, 000 parts on our website. So it's hard to organize. I can only imagine and then tying them all these different titles. Yeah, it's a labor of love but the whole team is super passionate about it. Mark was my mentor for many years as he was to other people in the org and he was just legendary with his knowledge about pinball parts and the industry and supporting the community especially. So we just do everything we can, you know, to keep his legacy alive and to keep pinball life. That was, you know, his whole goal. Keep pinball out of the landfills. You know, well, Marco was super helpful for me when I was getting into the hobby, y'all's website, because you could click on a game and then it would show the parts related to that game. Because prior to that, I was going on like eBay and like trying to find like individual I love our our So, right now, if you're looking up a particular part number and it's not showing up on our website, try making it shorter. So for example, if you're looking up a coil that's like AR26-1300-4 and it's not coming up in our search, start from the back and make it smaller because, you know what I mean, to kind of find it a little bit easier. If you type in 26-1300, you can kind of see the coils that follow in that line or whatever. Right. And you'll be able to find it a little bit easier because a lot of times like each little part number section coordinates to something specific to that part, right? So like a lot of times like the beginning letters of a coil is either because it has Obligatory If all else fails and you can't find a part, just hit us up. We are always happy to help people try to find the parts and navigate. And the cool thing about the pinball industry and the part side, like all of us work together, you know? Right. We are not competitors. You know, we may have some crossover of the same parts and everything like that, but we all work together. We all just, again, do the whole thing. And that's the whole thing, keeping pinball alive. That's the end goal. Yeah, I love that y'all are bringing so many parts back to life because otherwise we couldn't restore these machines and, you know, keep them going for many more years to come. Yeah, totally. NPI, like new products and stuff, like if you're willing to give us a part of that you can't find that's unobtainium, we'll take that part and archive it and find a way to remake it for us. And then, you know, give you a part back, give you a fresh one and stuff like that. So that's actually really helpful. That's awesome. You know what I mean? To do stuff like that. And there's so many people in the community that, that do that. And that's how we are able to get these kind of like very unique, specific to this game part created is because the community is helping us as well too. Tell Marco to make me a Bram Stoker's Dracula ramp. Oh yeah. Apparently, what's the guy, Rampomatic? Rampomatic. He doesn't have it. Hmm. There's, so there's like three main ramp companies. He might have it, but it's not listed on his website, or wasn't. And they all work together too, so they don't step on each other's toes, because making ramps isn't easy. No. So there's Starship Fantasy, Rampomatic, and Encore are kind of like the three heavy hitters of ramps. Okay, I need to check the other ones out. Yeah, I only checked out Ramp-O-Matic. Who's the one at TPF every year with the long table? We have the lower center plastic ramp for Dracula. Yeah, I need the big, big huge one. Yeah, someone needs to make it. But you know what? You know how they get it made? If they're not, you have to give them a good ramp that they can make a mold. Mike I should just pull my ramp and send it to someone Is it wire form Is it the wire form No it a big plastic ramp Oh it a plastic Oh yeah yeah you said that I looking it up Man, you gotta get that thing fixed up and put it in the arcade. Well, that's the thing. So, I'm up to around 40 games, we are, and I can only fit 19 comfortably in the arcade currently. Okay. So, I have to choose. Time to expand. And yeah, it's definitely time to expand. That's that's the goal. We want to be bigger, for sure. But so and I love all my games, too. So it's so hard. Oh, I bet. Swap games out. I'm like, no, I don't want to take out Lord of the Rings for, you know, whatever. Yeah. A black knight or a dark knight, you know, I was like, OK, I'll switch a George Gomez for a George Gomez or something. Did you did you guys order a Pokemon for the arcade? We are so excited for Pokemon. I got the premium. Oh, nice. I had to spring for the premium. The Ellie looks beautiful, but you know, I'm, yeah, congratulations to all those folks. I wish I would have bought one now. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, I'm excited to play it at Texas as well too. Yeah, I haven't even seen it yet. Yeah, they're bringing it out. So I'm super stoked about that. But yeah, it's like I have King Kong in storage right now, which sucks. No, I love King Kong. I need to start a route and get them. Okay hair group. I like that. That's a cool idea. Yeah They got it though There should be some poke are y'all bringing any pokemons or is that probably gonna be someone else? We are bringing a poke- we will have a Pokemon in our booth. It is Luke and Owen Underwood's homebrew Pokemon. Oh, okay, nice. Also a really awesome game. So we will have that version of Pokemon at our booth. And then yeah, fun I think is bringing probably like 20 Pokemons or something. So there'll be plenty of pros and premiums for people to play at that show. I think Jack Danger and George Gomez and Tanyo Klyce are going to all be there and doing seminars on like the making of Steve Bowden and Tanyo on Saturday afternoon are going to do a walkthrough of how to play the game. And TPF does live stream all of their seminars as well too. So you can go on Twitch. The Winner is a member of the Winner's Club, a non-profit organization that supports the development and development of pinball games. I was like, I'm going to do it again. And then it turned into I didn't really plan for it and Spooky needed more room. So now we've just de cided on setting a canopy up and we're just going to put some more Beetlejuice games in there. Oh, okay. Word. Well, I mean, the more Beetlejuice is the merrier, right? Like, we're all so excited to play that game. Absolutely. Did you order a Beetlejuice? No. The only spooky game I have right now is the TNA. That's a good one though. Yeah, I had to. I was searching for that game and wanted it for the longest, longest time. And then Charles Thomas, who's an awesome collector and friend of ours in the community. If you don't know Charles, then y'all know who he is. He's the nicest guy. One of the nicest guys in pinball. He's So great. He sold me his very graciously. Okay, cool. I was going to a good home, so he was like, okay, here you go. So I finally got one. It's bolted to the ground at the arcade, and I just swapped the games out around it. Yeah, I've got Charles' TPF ticket, actually. He was going to work the booth or be one of the booth people. So I'll see him there. I love Charles. I love Scott Danesi. I mean, there's so many cool people in pinball, man. I've been in a lot of different gaming communities and different hobby communities and pinball just stole my heart and there's no looking back. Like everyone is so cool. You know, we have our little pockets of drama and stuff, but for the most part, this is the nicest group of people I've ever been with and I just love it. Someone's texting me. Hopefully it's not coming through on the podcast. It probably is. I didn't hear anything. Okay, good. It's popular over here. Spooky pinball being like, hey, you need to do this. Well, can you think of any other cool things going on at TPF this coming next week? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So we have the seminars, we have the live streaming, the sound booths with Dirty Pool Pinball, the 15 homebrew games. The tournaments? We're not doing tournaments at our booth, but there is a Wizards World tournament that's going on at TPF at the after party, Exhibitor after party, which is always really fun. We're going to have some live DJs playing at our booth, so come over and dance with us. And yeah, besides like what we're doing, there's so many other awesome stuff going on with pinball. I think American pinball. I'm excited for them. I just saw their seminar listed. Barrels of Fun has a seminar. I think every single OEM has a seminar listed this year. So that's really exciting. And yeah, man, what else is going on at Texas? It's a lot. Yeah, the tech day, the new tech day. Oh yeah, yeah, barbecue? Is there barbecue? Oh, that restaurant everyone wants to go to. What's the name of that restaurant that everyone wants to go to when you're at Texas? Hutchins? Or that's the one I go to with everyone, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Hutchins. Yeah, it's like, you have to go to Hutchins when you go to Texas Pinball Festival. Oh, I think, oh God, why can't I think of their name? I wanted to say Hangover, but that's totally not it. That amazing group from like, they host karaoke Thursday night at a bar down the street and that's always so much fun. I'm not sure. Hangover, pinball, oh my gosh, guys, I'm so sorry. It's on the tip of my tongue now. I see their logo. I do too. And they're like the night, they're the cool, and like we went to that karaoke night one time and John Borg was there singing with his heart out. Oh, hilarious. And it was just like the best thing. Well, I know we're jumping all around, but it's fine. Yeah, hang our pinball. That's it. Hang our pinball. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So go check them out and sing some karaoke. Yeah, we're jumping around. We're going to make some Bram Stoker's ramps. We got that. You got that. You got your notes. Texas. Homebrew. You're making a homebrew. I'm committed to making a homebrew. I'm finding out really quickly making a homebrew is a very big project. Oh, I'm horrified, man. And I'm gonna millennial it up all the way to the end which means wait to the last minute Because diamonds are formed under pressure. The CAD part's what's killing me. Like everything's gotta be in CAD so it can be printed and made into a play field one day. And it needs to be in CAD for, you know, the artist to draw all the artwork on it. And that part sucks. Oh my gosh. Yeah, isn't it exciting? Problem solving. Yeah. That's a fun thing to do. Problem not in a negative way, but you know, just solving things. Yeah. Oh, at 7ish p.m. on Saturday, Alex Gerst Band's playing out in the hall. Okay. It's, oh my gosh, I should have put like TPF notes, but it's Alex Gerst, which if you remember he made that awesome like hard body music video and then the TPF music video that he did last year. I did not see this. I'm gonna go ahead and record them so we can make some fun music videos over it later. So I'm excited for that too. That's great. Yeah, I know we're jumping all around. Tell us how did you come to opening up your own arcade? At what point in your whole pinball journey were you like, I'm gonna open up my own place? Oh, my gosh, that was my parents doing, like pushing us right now. So my whole life growing up, me and my brother were always like when we retire, we're going to open up an arcade and that's like where we're going to be and hang out. And, you know, he works in video production, too. So he's also like busy going all across the country doing stuff, video and audio. Okay. But in the meantime, I've been collecting pinball machines and putting them in my house, my parents house. Ascensionßen Words They got bored, you know, because we're all like workhorses. We love working and doing stuff and creating. And just over Thanksgiving, they're like, Hey, so we know it was your retirement plan, but how about we do that early and open an arcade together now? Yeah. And we'll run it. And we were like, so we did that. We combined all our forces and money and decided to open up Captain Crazy's Paradise. We're in Gulf Shores, Alabama, right off the Gulf Coast. And yeah, it's a, we have 60 games in there. Right now I have 18 pinball machines and then the rest are video arcade games. It is free play format, primarily because I always loved free play. It's just... Yeah, I've always preferred... You can train on the pinball machines. You could go in there and just practice bounce passes or different flipper skills and stuff. For these old video arcade games, you can play it all the way through and see the ending of House of Dead 2, the ending of Cruisin' USA just because you're playing it. It's really cool. We have a couple gaming bays where we put modern like console games on it and steam games. So we have like a 15 foot screen where like kids come in every day and play Fortnite, you know, or Roblox is really big with kids and it's just a it's a really cool hangout area. My parents do run the day to day ops when me and my brother gallivanting around the US and they are amazing for doing that. Well, that's nice because you can still go to these pinball shows. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So many arcade owners. I know that's like the problem. They're like, I can't ever get away to any of these shows. I know. It's so sad. I know you guys just need to get your parents to work. I'm just kidding. We all work together. No one works for anyone. We are all the bosses and all We do have some awesome like part-time team members too, our pinball pirates and stuff. Awesome. So it's fun growing the community down there because pinball doesn't have a lot of location play down in the Gulf Coast quite yet. Most of the arcades, like if you did a vacation with your family down in Gulf Shores, it's like there's five arcades there and they're All Ticket Redemption Arcades. So it's just like kiddie gambling galore. So we were one of the first arcades like in that area that just we're just video games and pinball. Y'all build it and they will come. Yeah, there's a cool spot in Pensacola, which is about an hour away, called The Grid. And they do a lot of like pinball events and stuff, too. And we love supporting them. We're all coming together. Rad Bar, which is a little bit further down in Florida, just helping build the community, starting to host tournaments. We're all Stern Army, so we hold our monthlies for that, launch parties and everything. It's been really great. Tournaments, I think, really help build the community too. That's where I met so many people in the whole pinball hobby. I've probably met like 200 people just through my tournaments. It's crazy. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's really cool. And then as long as you like, one of the big things is like we want people to have fun and have like a good atmosphere. And even though we're competing against each other, we're congratulating each other on good games and high-fiving and clapping and honoring, you know. You know, so yeah, that's been really cool. My next, excuse me, hold on. Edit that out. My next big goal is to start a Little Flippers chapter. Okay, for kids? Yup, so Little Flippers is a nonprofit Oregon community. I think we have about 15 chapters now across the US and growing and basically it's like a pinball club for kids. So ages five to 12, you kind of age out once you become 13, you can play with the adults or we're, you know, maybe we'll make a teen one. But watching these kids like hone in into these games is like the coolest thing ever, you know? So it's like you host a once a month event, you teach the kids how to play pinball, you do like a little mini tournament so they can get, you know, sportsmanship and stuff with playing with others. And it's just been a great way to I'm interested in this. The future of pinball. I want to do this. Yeah, Pinball Studio needs one as well. Everyone needs one. Because we have some kids. That's the future of pinball. Yeah we have some kids that compete with us And one of my buddies his kids are young and they are freaking good Oh yeah Dude they younger and younger They just so young They just so young I think it's really awesome watching. I think the top 20 or top 100 of IFPA, there's got to be the majority of them under 20 years old. Absolutely. Some of the best players that come and play here are under like 25, I would say. That's super rad. So yeah, we're all doing our job because then they'll help pinball live. Yeah, we got to build this community so it can live on for so many more years. Yep. Oh, Liam Bradley, who's a tournament player, Liam and Miles, they're really awesome kids up in the Carolinas. They're both working on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy homebrew pinball machine. So he wants to be a designer when he grows up. And he's like 14 or 15 right now, you know, and he's slaying in tournaments. Last year or the year before, he won the Texas Wizards Youth Tournament. Oh, wow. He's aged out of it by now. Who's the next Keith Elwin? Yeah. I don't know. I went from wanting to be a pinball designer to being like, I think I'm going to build one homebrew and then I'm done. Well, but you're... I may change my mind. I don't know. We'll see. You may change your mind. You know what I mean? Like, it's hard to make a pinball on your own. But to make a pinball with a team, just like it's hard to make a movie on your own. But you crew up and you work with people like collaborating with others on a creative space is super rewarding. And you, you know, find people you like working with and they all have different skills and strengths and you combine together to create this like ultimate machine. It's really awesome. And, you know, when you maybe eventually become a professional pinball designer, Sterling, you'll have a crew of 300 people making your games for you. So you don't have to feel as stressed. I did. I did build a crew for my for my homebrew. So I do have like I forget there's like ten of us working on the game. So I got like a mechanical guy. He's been working on the mech. They're the main mech for the game. So he's got that like probably like 70% done. Then I got an artist that's pretty much done with the back glass and then he's going to start on the side art and all that. But I'm still stuck in the CAD trying to cut the first play field. It's like, dang it. Oh, man. Do you ever reach out to like the discord community? I have, yeah. Yeah. That's the other thing too, like not to constantly beat the dead horse, but the community is awesome. And then like the pocket of homebrew community of makers is really great too. Like if you join the Fast Slack channel or whatever it is, or Trident's Discord community, or Jake Danzig's Facebook, Strictly Custom Games. You know, everyone on all of those forums and communications, like everyone is there to help, like drop in your code and be like, oh, yeah, I see an issue in your code or whatever. Or, you know, I don't know what the next steps to get over this issue I'm having. You know, everyone is always happy to help you through that. So. Oh, yeah, they've all been extremely helpful so far. I've been in the Slack group and on Jake's Facebook page and stuff, chatting with them. It's just a matter of getting to the point where some of them can help me out. Because none of them are gonna draw your CAD design for you unless you send it to them. That's just been... Just invite them over. Just do like this cool pinball studio tournament event weekend, but like base it around homebrewers and then fly out all the people to come and then you're like, haha, we're gonna play pinball, but also So we're gonna work on this game. Yeah, I'll get it done. I just got to get over this one hump. Once I have it flipping, I'll be happy. And the one thing I was really worried about was the programming side of it. And I did get a programmer on it that's programmed pinball machines. So that made me feel a whole lot better about the whole process. That is awesome. Can you say who's on your team? Can you like name drop your team? I don't really have it all listed. Y'all honestly wouldn't know most of these people. They aren't like people that a lot of people have met at like shows and stuff. It's a lot of local people, honestly. Okay, cool. But yeah, I'll drop it all soon enough once I have a list in front of me. I don't want to like forget to give someone a shout out. No, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. No, you're good. You didn't say anything. Like, who are these awesome people? Yeah, bring your game to Southern Fried. We do our homebrew. Yep, that's the plan. We can get con space there too. And, yeah, then start taking them on tour. There's so many amazing pinball shows. Yeah, my plan is to debut it at TPF, which I don't know if that'll happen or not, but that's the plan. And then bring it to Southern Fried that year as well. And then finish off the year at Pinball Expo. That sounds perfect. Wow, that's a drive too. So is Texas. I could definitely do pinball at the beach probably. Like that's that's definitely drivable for me. Yeah. The problem is I have a huge job every year that's gonna always land on pinball at the beach unless they move it like a week, which I wish they would because everyone said it was pretty cold. Oh yeah, you know. I'm like just bump it one week. Yeah. Yeah, sign like a petition or something. Petition.org. Move pinball at the beat. Yeah, one week. But yeah, all these long drives that you take, like, that's the best time to catch up on all your pinball podcast content anyway. Oh, yeah, I do a lot of traveling for work. So I'm like, when people make 20 minute long podcast, I'm like, man, you got to make that thing two hours long so it'll last during my drive. Do this for me. Yeah, do it for me. That's what I love when like Triple Drain does like a two hour and like 20 minute long episode. Oh man, when I was watching like the early days of like the pinball show, or listening to it on my car, and they kept making the goat scream, but it wasn't like mixed level. It was like below my speed. I had to like quickly run to, you know, reach my hand up to turn it down. I think that goat makes so many people angry. I'm like, they got me again. The freaking, I have the speakers turned all the way up to hear them and then the goat freaking screams in my ear while I'm driving at 3am in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Thanks guys. I'm awake now. Right. It's helpful. Yeah, I love it. There's so much good pinball content. I listen to like the Silver Ball Chronicles a lot because they have that kind of storytelling aspect to it. The days of macho pinball. Oh, man. Man, that was some great content. Heck yeah. Didn't they think you were macho pinball at one point? Yeah. There was this whole conspiracy where people thought I was macho pinball. It was either me or Christopher Franchi. It was Jason, right? It was me or Christopher Franchi. Yeah, it ended up not being any of us, by the way. I was honored to, like, someone thought that I could actually pull that off. Oh, it used to make me crack up. I didn't even know what it was. I just clicked on it and I'm like, what is this? And then there was another one and another one. Yeah, you're like, welcome to the pinball podcast. Yeah, that was fun. We had the macho pinball one time, intercept the twippies. Oh, I think I've seen that. Yeah, I wasn't there, but I watched it on YouTube or something. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Good times, man. Awesome. Well, TPF should be a blast. Well, I definitely got to come and say hey while I'm there. I've met you in passing a few times. You probably don't remember me, but yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody there and hanging out. And I'm kind of glad I'm not doing the booth all weekend because now I can just mingle and hang out. Oh, man, don't rub it in. Yeah, and let me say that when I'm at shows, like I'm working and a lot of like moving parts are going around in my head. So if there's ever a moment where like I'm speeding past you and you're like, oh my God, Emoto didn't say hi to me or she's like dismissive. Like I am truly sorry for that. Like I am not trying to be that person and I feel bad. Yeah, shoot me a message emoto at Marco pinball.com or find me on Facebook. All of our content I put all under Marco. So we're on YouTube under Marco Pinball and Twitch as well. We still try to stream every Thursday at 3pm Eastern for Pintech Live. I have not been as diligent the past few months, but we are going to pick that up after TPF again and have a lot of other guest technicians come in and stuff. So that'll be really cool. And yeah, awesome. Come to a pinball show. I will probably be there. I guess I can list off like what shows we're going to this year. Yeah, go ahead. So, Texas Pinball Festival, then we'll probably be walking Midwest Gaming Classic. We really love that show. We're not going to be presenting this year, which is heartbreaking, but it's just time capacity and everything. And then I'll be running, oh, then we go to Pin Festival Allentown, which if you're not familiar with that show, that's a great swap meet show. So like if you're looking for some rare parts to get your game working or to work on your It's a great place to go for a homebrew, like that's the place to go to start digging in some bins and stuff. You'll find some really cool stuff there, really good prices on game sales there, or like just cabinets. I think Crystal Demnick, when we went up one year, she bought a cabinet for like a couple hundred bucks for her homebrew game that was already like just ready to go. Nice. Then we go to Golden State Pinball Festival in Lodi, California. That's where I run the Pinball University series with them, which is just educational content all weekend. And that's a really awesome show. Then we'll be at Northwest Pinball Show doing a PindevCon booth there with Fast and Trident. And then from there, Southern Fried Arcade Gaming Expo. That is in July this year in Atlanta. And that's an all-mixture show, so great show to bring your family of gamers if they're not like super diehard pinballers like ours, like we are. There's so many other things that they can get into as well too, including watching live wrestling or a hot chili pepper eating contest. And we always help out our home city show in Columbia, South Carolina, which is Soda City Comic Con. We'll set up some games there. I will probably go up to Cleveland Pinball Show. They always have an awesome seminar track and I like to live stream it. So I usually go up there for that and support that show. It's a really cool smaller show. And we'll head to Pinball Expo, which is going to be huge with our homebrew village that we're doing. And then not setting up a booth, not working at all, but this is my decompression show is Houston Arcade Expo in November. I think it's November 15th or the 17th or something this year. I've got to go to that one. This is my show where I just hang out and play games and dance. It's such a cool show. They have the house lights off the whole time with like RGB lights and lasers and live music in the actual game hall. Scott Danesi usually comes out every year and does an awesome DJ set and Atari Matt and a bunch of other cool performers are always there. And it's just The greatest party show of the year and it's like you know the Texas pinball community I mean like these guys know how to get down so uh that is my decompression so and I look forward to it every year and that's our show season for the year awesome and I wish I could add more like Pintastic is another great show. Already sounds amazing. Massachusetts and if you are in the northeast and getting into homebrew, they have a really big homebrew community up there. That's where John Manulin, which he makes all those augmented reality like the Pinball 2000 cabinet games and stuff. He's like a mad scientist with pumping out homebrew pinball games and all of his engineering and stuff is really rad. So that's a really cool show to go to. That's in April coming up. And then I really want to go to the VFW show, Clay Harrell's show and see his amazing collection. I have not made it up there yet. Wow. Well, you got quite the busy year, it sounds like. I know. And then, you know, running the arcade and like, you know, making a team effort on making our website better and doing all the things with all the pinball, man. Eat Sleep Drink Pinball. Well thank you so much for all you do and I hope to hang out with you some at TPF. Thanks Sterling it was so great to chat with you. Absolutely. Next time find me at Texas. Find her at Texas. And let's chat and hang out. Especially the Exhibitor After Party. Let's hang out, let's play some dollar games. Awesome. Tommy Dollars. All right, I'll see you later. Thank you so much. All right, bye. Bye.