It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teeolis. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We've got a great Facebook group as well. We're on Twitter, X, Instagram, at pinballprofile. You can email pinballprofile at gmail.com. And if you'd like to show your support, don't worry. The show is always free. But we certainly thank those like Francis W., GME Law, Jerry S., Jake C., Bart V., and more who help us on Patreon. That's patreon.com slash pinballprofile. If you heard the recent top 10 pinball profile most intriguing people of 2025, this person technically would be two of those 10. I singled them out individually, but when I was talking about all the great people in Arizona, you have to include Retro Ralph. Retro Ralph, it's great to talk to you. Jeff, thanks for having me. I'm very excited for this. You have been just on fire with your creations. I guess what I need to know, and some people listening for the first time want to know, you don't just start like that with 75,000 followers on YouTube. It all had to start somewhere. Where was the beginning for you? It was sharing my love of arcade gaming and retro gaming was how it started. And it was a friend of mine who encouraged me to say, hey, I think that people would be interested in some of the stuff you do around arcade gaming and some of the retro gaming stuff. And I, before that, was not a very big social media user, to be honest. I was almost like more of an off the grid kind of person. So it was definitely a little bit of a stretch for me to do, but I immediately enjoyed it and people seemed to like it. So it just and it just kind of took off from there. It yeah, I was shocked, too, because I didn't think it would grow as fast as it did. And it's been a really fun eight years on YouTube. They always say, you know, if you enjoy what you're doing, it's not really work. But I know from what you do, it's a lot of work. It's not easy to put this together to come up with the content. I only do audio. You do video. The editing is a lot harder. I guess with audio you can nitpick here some ums and ahs and mistakes here and there. And that's easy, quick cuts of the digital blade, if you will, but not as easy to do with video. You need maybe a couple of different cameras, a couple of different takes, got to remember where your last mark was, all that stuff. You do it seamlessly. It's incredible. Thank you. I appreciate that. I do have help, though, so it's not just me. It started off that it was just me, and now if anybody sees me around, they kind of joke that I have a team of people, but it's really just me and another guy, Mason Conrad. So I'm typically filming everything unless he's with me. And and but he's taken on a lot of the editing efforts in the in the last couple of years just because my day job has become so busy that I can't continue to publish things at some kind of cadence because I'm sure you you also feel the this stress we put on ourselves to put out content at some kind of, you know, cadence. And so he's really helped me keep the cadence going when my day job becomes too overwhelming to do all of it. So I do have help. And so shout out to Mason Conrad. He's been a giant help for me over the years. And he's a good friend, too. So listen, if I could have somebody edit my podcasts, I would do one every single day. This part's the easy part. Talking to you, Ralph, is the easy part. So I'm going to go back and edit the top 10 most intriguing people. Take your name out, put in Mason Conrad because I know the people who edit, those guys are the real superstars. He's done a tremendous job. We've been working together for so long that he wasn't very interested in the arcade side of things, I will say that. When I kind of closed the chapter as far as being an arcade collector and a restoration person, he really gravitated toward pinball. He's like, man, the artwork and the colorful playfields. And he liked it more. So it was interesting because he started to learn because before I'd have to say, OK, I just filmed these 10 shots and here's all the B-roll and here's my idea and what I want, how I want to put this together. And he kind of just didn't care about arcade gaming. But pinball, he really gravitated toward it. Now, he's not going to go buy a pinball machine or anything, but we have this like understood vision now of like what a pinball video should be. And it's pretty cool. So it's cool having a partner that's also interested in the content because I'll tell you, the arcade stuff was like a bore fest for him. He did not care. Can I ask is that because I mean, certainly there are more video games than pinball machines, but they're all unique. And I guess really all you can film is the screen and maybe somebody holding a joystick or a handheld control. Whereas a pinball machine, like you said, there's different parts of the play field, different angles you can take versus just a screen. There's the score, there's the back glass, there's the side cabinet art, there's the stories behind it, there's under the cab, there's all this thing under the glass. Is that why it became more interesting maybe to Mason, maybe to your viewers? I think for Mason, so it should be known that he's 27. So he did not grow up in the arcade. So that stuff just wasn't of interest to him. And what I think is he grew up in the era of digital everything. I'm in front of a screen all day. There's definitely something when I have talked to him about it, about the tactile piece and the analog-ish piece of a pinball machine that intrigues him. And so, but it was beyond that. He also really appreciates art. So he looks at it. And also the other thing you brought it up, pinball just can look really cool when you film it. There's so many different cool angles you can film of like a ramp or a whirlpool or just anything, just slow motion ball hitting a flipper and bouncing off. It's just there's so many cool things. And so I think he saw it as there's way more artistic possibilities filming pinball than there is in arcade gaming. So that helped me a lot because he showed way more interest. So when I was getting excited about it, he was equally as excited. So some of these more what really the video is where he's really involved are these ones that are these longer form videos that could be 25 to 30 minutes. And yeah, it's just it shows in the content, I think, that that we have a really good working relationship at this point. But but also that he understands when I tell him, hey, you really need to film this. Well, depending on if I'm filming it or he's filming it, I could say this shot would I look think I look look much better from this angle. And he's like, yeah, yeah, you're right. Or he might say that to me if I give him some content when because he's not always filming it. I usually film about 90 percent of it. It's just on the big projects that I bring him in for it. Just because they're too heavy of a lift for me to try to I would take me months to do that without him, basically. So has he always done all of the editing or did you start off doing it? No, no, I was I did it for a very probably like three years into my YouTube journey. And then he started to slowly take over some stuff. I I really just used him to create thumbnails at first because I didn't know that that was like, because like I said, I wasn't really a social media guy. So someone introduced me to him and said, hey, your thumbnails, they were like, your thumbnails are pretty bad. I think if you talk to this guy, Mason, he could get people to really want to engage with the content more through like an engaging thumbnail. So that's all he did for a while. He was just making thumbnails. And then I happened to land a larger video project. And I asked him, do you edit at all? Because this is a kind of cumbersome thing. And I don't think I can churn through this fast enough because there's a little bit of a timeline involved. And he's like, yeah, I can edit. And so it started there. And then he progressively would do a little bit more, a little bit more. But there was a time where I was doing almost all of it. It just became really hard to manage it with the day job that I have. So I wonder if you're like me, and this is kind of just talking shop a little bit. When you go back and listen, because you've been doing this for eight years, I've been doing this for 10 years on this podcast and certainly a lot more on radio before that. But when you go back and watch some of your creations, if you do, are you like me? And you cringe and go, oh, I could have done something different there. For me, when I started in radio interviewing rock stars and stuff and some of my heroes, I'm like, oh, yeah, that was cool. I got to talk to such and such. And I could post that now. That'd be kind of cool. But I'm embarrassed to because I didn't like some of the questions I had or just some of the giddy laughs or whatever it was. Are you like that at all? Jeff, 100 percent. I go back sometimes to look at it. No, I go back sometimes to look at it just to just to also see how much that I've changed as far as my on camera presence, because it wasn't very good at first. It was bad. I there were there's a couple of videos where I wasn't even looking at the camera lens. So like the comment was, uh, where who are you looking at? Wow. And I quickly was like, wow, yeah, I should probably look at the camera and or just my use of B-roll. I would hang on a scene for too long and I talking about something but it would have been more engaging had I incorporated more B content So I learned a lot of that like in my first couple years doing it of hey I got a I can like people are going to get bored if they just looking at a static thing for too long And then I really started to incorporate like beat. I'd say the biggest thing where I saw a big progression in my content was really leveraging a lot of B-roll content to make sure that, you know, And you don't want to quick cut too much because then people will complain that, hey, you're not showing me the thing or whatever you're trying to present to me enough. So I learned a lot about pacing and when to use B-roll. But that was all before Mason. That was just me. And I'm sure you can understand this. It was a struggle of, all right, I'm buying the wrong equipment because I don't know what I'm doing. My lights aren't good. This isn't a good enough camera lens. This DSLR is old. I went through all of that. I spent thousands of dollars going through trial and error because at the time we didn't really have... I mean, sure, I could have gone to websites and looked up stuff, but nowadays I could go into ChatGPT and say, I'm a brand new YouTube person and I'm due to make content. Can you suggest the best budget camera for me to get started and lighting? And it would tell me almost everything I need. But for me, I just spent thousands of dollars trying to figure it out. And then finally, I got to a place where I felt like, all right, my audio is good. My video is good. But that was years before I felt like I even had it at a place where, to your point, where if I look back, I wouldn't cringe on what I was producing. So see, we absorb this content all the time. It's different to produce it. And what you think you know and what you think you like, are you adding all those elements in it? You talk about B-roll, for example, and I've been watching obviously Kerry Hardy for years and what Jack Danger's done. But I really learned a lot about B-roll working with Emoto Harney and working with her a lot at Indisc, doing the commentating that I do and setting up some of the interviews and just her shooting all this great B-roll. And you don't see it when you're actually live producing it or doing the commentating. But when they put it all together, you're just like, wow, what visionary. So it's great that you, even though we're giving all credit to Mason, listen, I'm taking everything back I've ever said about you. It all goes to Mason, but still, for you to have the foresight to get that B-roll, to give Mason the pieces, it's a great learning curve and it shows in your product. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, he tells me all the time because he works with other clients. He probably wouldn't want me saying this, but he works with other clients and sometimes he'll go, man, thank you so much for being so good at the camera parts. And I label all that. Like I give him basically like if I let's say I took a let's just say it's Beetlejuice or whatever the game is. I will title all the clips, what they are, and then usually I'm giving them the raw outline of this is how I view the video flowing, and then I kind of break that all down. So I'm almost giving them the whole storyboard and everything, and then it's just a matter of we go back and forth a lot of times of, oh, you know what, Mason, when I said the captive ball, you'd put the wrong clip in. There's a clip called Hit the Captive Ball. So I really try to make it so that him and I, the whole storyboard is there and then him and I can work on is he aligning the clips in the right places. And then the one thing that I can't do that I really rely on him on that we've started to incorporate into videos is I never learned After Effects. And he's able to do some amazing things with After Effects that it really amps up the video. And that's the kind of thing. I never learned it myself. So while I can do editing and most of that stuff, the After Effects really, it's like a polish. It's a certain polish to the video that makes it just so much more professional looking. So he's just such a talented guy and I'm lucky to have that partnership with him. You mentioned Beetlejuice. That's one of the games in your garage there. A wonderful game. Instant sellout for Spooky Pinball. Evil Dead took a little while. Got there, sold out. People love the Evil Dead. And I wonder with you, with Beetlejuice, you've praised certainly Spooky, as we all do, with Christopher Franchi's artwork, with just the assets that they've got. But, you know, you're also critical in not a negative way, just comparing it, let's say, to Evil Dead and obviously Bruce Campbell doing call-outs, whereas they're not quite there and maybe they will come for Beetlejuice. So I guess my question to you is, when you're critiquing these, when you're really giving your honest opinion, is it the bad with the good? Are you always trying to be a little more positive? I mean, I'd say in general, in just life, not the content that I cover, I'm a very positive person to begin with. So I think I always look at things from a positive angle. But when I do give criticism, I want it to be constructive criticism and not just, you know, because I think it's easy to say, I don't like this, I don't like that. But that doesn't tell you anything. You know, what is it that you don't like? And I think that's what I try to do is just say, say, look, I'm not I don't want to be overly positive that I just love everything because that's not the reality. I want my content to also be a reflection of how I am as a person because then it's authentically me. And I just feel like that is what I try to put on camera is how I feel about things. And I'm not a big fan of and I know there are people that create content like this. That's kind of like the shocking hot takes. I'm not a shocking hot take person even in my daily life. So I just try to be constructive. And I also think that being a content creator comes with some responsibility that our niche hobby is so small. And I do think that if you do that like really critical but but almost like over the top on purpose content, I do think there's some damage that you can do to a product or to a product launch if you do that. Now, I'm OK. Those people are going to exist if they're going to make that kind of content. I just don't, that's not how I am. So while I might consume some of that content myself, I do think this hobby is so small that sometimes those hot takes can also have a damaging effect on the overall success of a product in our small hobby. Yeah, sadly, I've seen that too. And I'm the same with you here on Pinball Profile. This is, if you will, a marketing piece for whoever I'm talking to. It's a way to get to know them. It's definitely more on the rah-rah side, but it's just what's the positive thing about the people I interview and the products that we talk about. And I'm more on that, especially I have difficulty being critical of anything. I haven't actually had my hands on it. If I've seen a launch and maybe I wasn't at Expo or TPF and they show a game, I can't give you an opinion. Only the positive things. I can say I want to play it. It looks great. Love the theme. Blah, blah, blah. But not I don't think it's good. The codes. I haven't played it yet. You have to play a game really to have a true honest opinion. I mean, you don't have to play a game to have interest in a game. Like the next game I want to talk to you about is Pokemon. You and I know nothing about Pokemon before Pokemon ever came out, but I still want to play it. I realize that it's an important IP and you might have screwed up a little bit there, Ralph, when you went to the Stern launch and showed up in your Transformers outfit. I thought that was hilarious. They surprised you with a quick Pokemon. Thank God Erica was there with her Pikachu. But again, there's a game probably you and I had no interest in really playing. And now look at you. You're an owner of one. That was unexpected, Jeff, to be honest. I thought I was going to go to that media day and play it. And that was going to be it. Like I'd play it on location at the Electric Bat or wherever I go in Phoenix. And I thought that was going to be the end of it. But I really did enjoy the game. It's hard not to like it because it's colorful. It's fun. And I know it gets a little bit of, you know, some of the hot takes are it's a simple layout. And I can't disagree with that. I mean, it is a simple layout, but I think that's the power of if you can take this product, which is multimedia, it's audio, it's video, it's the way it shoots and the layout and design and the artwork and all the whole package and the theme integration. And if you can create something fun when all those pieces come together, then sometimes it It surprises you as to a game you might gravitate toward, even when the theme wouldn't be something that you'd typically go for. Because like you said, I didn't grow up with it. My kids did do the Pokemon Go thing for a short period of time, so I was in there much older now. So I was introduced to it through that, but beyond that, Jeff, I really didn't know much about Pokemon. I mean, I knew Pikachu. That was the only one I could name. That's it. Charmander, maybe? And Meowth. So there's my three. That's all I'm sticking with. See, you were ahead of the game for me. I didn't even know those two. Well, I like to stay in touch. I like to be hip with the kids. You know me. But it is, first of all, great IP, great theme. I think it's just going to be an absolute winner for Stern. I know people are trying to catch them all. Even you, Ralph, are trying to get them all. And you're learning this. I mean, I'm like that with other games. I never saw the TV show Game of Thrones, but I'm seeing these machines everywhere. I'm like, I guess I got to learn it. There are other games like that where you just don know the IP but the games might get you interested in the actual product I don know if I start playing Pokemon but I definitely want to learn the game and to see someone like yourself and you not alone especially when you think of people who buy pinball machines they probably the most the majority of people in their homes are probably over the age of 40 So probably not the ideal Pokemon players but maybe their kids are And it amazing that it been so successful Yeah, it's been pretty cool to see. And I think Stern had had, you know, I mean, it's obviously, they're not a publicly traded company, so we don't see their sales and we don't know. But we can kind of look at how many are out there or go to Pinball Map and see how locations have adopted it. But I think this is one where they have a hit on their hands, that's for sure. And I think they kind of needed it. They had a couple themes that maybe weren't as popular, even though I think, you know, I personally really like the John Wick movies. And I think the game is a decent game. And they've done some things with the code which have made it more interesting to me. But I don't know that that game, you know, in comparison, I think it's going to outsell it tremendously. And I think they needed that right now. So it's cool. I'm happy to see them have some success with something, especially something that, like you said, the demographics kind of interesting because I don't know that most people our age are really into it. But if the game is fun and people are having a good time with it and the theme is integrated well, then maybe there'll be people like me who would never think to buy a Pokemon pinball machine and they might take the plunge. So it's pretty cool. It is such a fine line. I can't imagine how difficult it is for Stern or for any company, JJP, any of the big companies, even the boutiques, to say, we're going to put our money behind this IP. And the balance of, like you say, the most important thing, it has to be fun, but it has to be challenging too. But will that get that second dollar to go back in? I had somebody just show up at our local arcade, Maple Pinball in Mississauga, and they looked at the 70 machines in there and saw The Walking Dead. And the guy goes, I love The Walking Dead, meaning the TV show. Well, sure, do you want to play it? And I'm thinking, God, you picked one of the hardest games. Like, you're going to get beat up. You know, there's no Bozo multiball like hit the T-Rex on Jurassic Park and now you've got a multiball. You're going to have to hit that prison thing a billion times. You're probably not going to get to Wellwalker or Bloodbath or anything like that. Have fun. Like he probably wasn't like he was like, I like the theme, but the game is just too tough for a beginner. So that tough balance, you know, I wonder where these companies are. Stern's a little different because they mass produce so many and they're going in arcades. It's got to be fun. It's got to be really not for the elite players where a game like Walking Dead's pretty tough. Yeah, it's interesting you brought that one up because that was my first tournament I ever played, I think was in 2020. So I was just like really getting into pinball and I'm like, oh, I want to go to a tournament. So I went, there's a buddy of mine that owns this comic book store and it's unfortunately not here anymore, but it was half comic book store and half arcade. And the first game I got was The Walking Dead. Now, keep in mind that I was not someone that was playing pinball at any kind of regular basis. In that game, I want to say, Jeff, I don't even know that I did anything. I just felt like I came out of the pop bumpers and drained down the middle and I was like, wait, that's it? So that didn't go well for me. I'm actually pretty decent at the game now, but it takes like that's a game where I feel like you got to have some skills. You have to at least develop some basic skills to really enjoy it because you can't really just flail and do much of anything in the game because it's so brutal. But but now I'm really enjoying it now that my skills have developed a bit. It's another fine line to figure out when you're the big company like Stern or Jersey Jack and you come out with the limited edition. And we don't want to be stuck with these. You know, we don't want the distributors to have piles of these that just they can't move. But a game like Pokemon, they might have come up a little short with 750. That could have done very, very well if they increased that, maybe even double. I know. I thought about that, too. I thought about do they, you know, I kind of in my mind because we both work and, you know, I don't know if you have professional careers, you think about, is there a boardroom meeting right now where Seth Davis just threw a bunch of papers off the desk and he's like, why did we only go with 750? We should have done 1400. I don't know, because it's definitely leaving money on the table, but I do get that the pinball community enjoys things that are limited because it feels special to own. So I guess from that regard, people are going to feel pretty special that they own these, you know, if you're one of these 750 people because they're going to be very collectible as time goes on and they should hold their value if what's happening right now is indicative of what could be in the future. So as we were talking about Beetlejuice before, and that was kind of an instant sellout, there is, I mean, it's a real thing, FOMO, that fear of missing out. And we were worried at a time when people were like, I'm not putting my money down until I play it. But that FOMO came in and you're like, I've got to get this thing. Or maybe I get on the list and I don't sell my spot if that's something people do. It's great to see these boutique companies. Spooky's done it. Barrels of fun with a, it is a IP, but it's not like I can tell you people where I live have no idea what the Winchester Mystery House is. But I know people in my area who bought the game. So that's again, wow, we love Carl D'Angelo. We know he, we've been watching him for years on his stream. We've seen what he's done with Neverdrains and IE Pinball and Nindisk and on and on. It's kind of like a trust factor and like, you know what, the price was right, you know, and people were like that with, when Turner came on and we're seeing that with some of these boutique companies. Again, the smaller companies can't really afford to have a miss because that's a, ooh, that's a long time on the production line and that's, they have to make their own business. I'm going to get your money back and be able to get the next one going. But it's interesting to see your thoughts on Kisumu back in pinball. Jeff, the fear of missing out is a big thing, and I do think it is back in pinball. But I'm also really bad when it comes to fear of missing out because my whole life I've been into the latest technology gadget or whatever it might be, and I was always one that wanted to consume that stuff because I enjoyed having conversations with other people that were also I'm not sure if I'm not buying that thing, whether it be the first iPhone or the Palm Pilot or whatever piece of tech it was. I was always really interested to get my hands on it. So I had an opinion of it. I could talk with knowledge about it. So with pinball, I'm kind of that way, too. And it's good and bad because the problem I face is that I can't just keep on bringing in everything new because it's this revolving door. And there's just too many games being made now, which is crazy because there's more pinball being produced now than ever, it seems like, or as far as manufacturers, how many there are in the world at this point. So I do get excited, but I do think there is also that, to your point earlier about it's good sometimes to play it because the thing that FOMO drives is it drives purchases before you even have your hands on it. So there is that risk you run of, well, am I going to get this game and not like it? Because you're just going on whatever the manufacturer decides to share, whether that be a really cool teaser trailer like with Avatar. And it's like, you know, $100,000 produced, heavily produced video where it's hard not to want to play it because you're like, wow, this is making this look amazing. I'm in the world of Pandora. So the companies are doing a good job, I think, giving you content to get you excited or hyped about a product. But there's also that, yeah, there's that balance of like, how do I temper this so I'm not wanting to just buy every single new game because not everyone has infinite space and money. So we have to be somewhat selective. But it's hard not to fall into that FOMO trap because some of the stuff these boutique companies are making is really cool. Like they're really cool and they're starting to put more and more into the games, things almost that feel like the 90s, right? It feels like games from the 90s where they're just packed with stuff to do or cool things to interact with the ball, whether it be an interesting mechanism or it's packed with toys or things that really draw you in. So, yeah, it's a real thing, and I think it feels like it's back because if someone can sell out a game, I mean, Spooky, their last two, they practically sold them out without anybody. Well, they did. I mean, Evil Dead took a little bit longer, but Beetlejuice, no one had even played it or even seen it, and it was technically already sold out. So that's pretty impressive. Ralph, you mentioned a problem that's in the scale of things. It's not a real world problem by any means, but there's only so much space in your garage or in your basement, in your arcade. There's only so much money in your bank account. There's only so many games you can get. When one comes in, sometimes one has to go. And so that's kind of where I'm at with my collection is if I'm bringing something in, it's got to be better than one going out. And they're making great games. It's really, really tough. So you have that problem, too, don't you? I do And the thing is the thing I trying to balance and it very hard is I can fall too in love with a game because if I let say I fall in love with the whole collection well now nothing can go out because I considering everything I in love with So I have to make tough choices because I do still have a little bit of a collector mentality Like there are games that I really enjoy that I know it would like you have to pry it from my cold dead hands Jaws is one of those games I love Jaws so much The theme is something that I grew up with watching with my stepfather. He was a big Jaws fan. So it was something that my grandfather too, he really loved Jaws. So there's a little bit of a sentimental piece, but I also really love that game. But for me, I'm always constantly wanting to make new content on the new games. So I can't have too many that I consider ones that won't leave the collection because then I have no games to rotate in and out. Like you said, money is kind of a concern. So I usually have to sell a game. I really want to be a little bit responsible with my money when it comes to the hobby. So I'll try to sell a game, get some money back from that game. So I'm not in the red all the time, too. So that's also a fine line you have to play between space, money, and then hopefully not falling in love with too many of these that you feel like they can't leave because then you can't bring anything new in. So it's a constant struggle, but I think for me it's a little different and I constantly have to explain it to people because people go, why did you get rid of this and why did you get rid of that? And they think I get rid of it because I don't like it. And it's like, no, that's not really the case. It's I had to make a tough choice. And while I I'll just give you an example, like while I like this game, I got rid of Metallica Remastered. I really like Metallica. I like the original and I like the remastered, but it was one I was noticing I was playing less as I've kind of progressed through and seen all the games. So it's like, well, that one was that one will have to go and it's on location at a bunch of places. So if I need to scratch that Metallica itch, I can go play it somewhere. So I have to make choices like that. And they're not easy. But if I loved everything, then I'd never be able to bring in anything new. So that's kind of my philosophy around it. And it's a little bit different because I'm someone that wants to make content, too. That is a factor. When you mentioned something like a popular game like Jaws, like Metallica, for me, it was Iron Maiden. And these are games I go to all the time when I'm at an arcade and play them. Do I own any of them? No. And the only reason I don't is because of spacing and because they are available to play everywhere. So I kind of like kind of the quirky ones here and there. But the games that have come and gone, I can think of 10 that I still wish I had. But sometimes you got to rotate them. And like you say, you progress through them and it's time to try something new, especially for you, a content creator, Who's got to offer something different, which brings me to my next question. Here we are in 2026 and it's becoming more and more prominent. I want to know your thoughts as far as your own content and as far as pinball companies and the use of AI. So I don't really use much AI myself in the content that I make. I'd say every now and then I do. I have used Sora, which makes these funny videos, and I might make those every now and then. And if the community is freaking out or doing something I think is silly, I almost use it as a means to – I'll make a joke out of it, but I feel like it's not coming from me. It's coming from the AI version of me. So I'll give you an example. I thought it was kind of silly when everyone was freaking out about the cabinets that they were making – how they were making Spike 3 and they changed the cabinet because it's just like everyone became a wood expert overnight. And so I made this joke thing where I was like, I can't believe, and it's an AI version of me saying, I can't believe that they would use a five-ply wood with whatever. I don't even remember the name of it. I had to go look it up because I didn't know the technical names of all the different composite woods and stuff and materials. And people got a really big kick out of it. So I'll do that. But I do limit it because I really don't want people thinking that the majority of my content is AI because it's literally not. It's probably just a small, like maybe 1% of the time when I do a goofy video like that, where I couldn't take a 2x4 and smash a Stern pinball machine, or I wouldn't do that, but AI version of me could, or do something outlandish that I couldn't do in real life. So I might use it every now and then for that kind of stuff, for like a short or something like that. I don't use stock footage or anything like that, or very, very rarely, and I don't really view that as AI. But every now and then if I needed like a shot of Chicago, I might use a stock piece of footage for something like that. But I try not to use any of that. But when you talk about AI and pinball, I really think that there's a charm to pinball being this hand-built thing. And I think there's always been a big focus, even though there are years where pinball art got a little weird. I think there's an appreciation for the whole package, like I said before, and art is a big piece of that. And while I have no problems with an artist using AI as an assisted tool, because I think sometimes they might use it for little things, you know, things that we would never even notice they used it for to speed up their workflow. Because at the end of the day, this is a commercial product. So it's not like the Mona Lisa. It's actual commercial products. So I think there's times where they can speed up their workflow by maybe cutting a corner on something that might be like a little minor detail in the artwork that we wouldn't even know that was AI. I'm fine with that because I think there's tools now that are labeled as AI, which they're not really AI at the end of the day. They're just now called AI, like assisted tools when people are putting artwork packages together. But if it became, I think I would be disappointed if artwork on a pinball machine became 100% AI because I love, like, I really love and appreciate some of the stuff that like Zombie Yeti does and Christopher Franchi does. And it's very clear that they pour their heart and soul into a lot of what they put together. So to me, I would be disappointed if AI became a part of that. Now, where AI probably is used a lot that people probably don't even realize, I would think in code development, there's definitely code developers that are using AI all over the place. For things like, all right, I'm going to create a rule set for a game and they might run it through an AI algorithm to check it for error checking and things like that. I don't really think that's anything we should really be concerned about. But if it was purely all AI generated, yeah, I think it would lose its charm and a lot of why we love it. So I hope that it's used minimally just to speed up workflows. And it's not something where like five years from now, you and I are having another conversation and the art just looks like a computer made it because I don't think I'd be very happy if that if that happened. Speeding up the process, our final round pinball website was made in five minutes by AI. We just needed something once the pinball network died. We need something to be able to distribute the so, yeah, it's used. And, you know, I think you're right about the coding and things like that, because it's easy. For me, it's going to save some time. In my business, if you take something from somebody within your own market, well, that's definitely stealing. But if you find something in another market, that's called research. And it's still the same thing, but I may have been, oh, I don't know, once or twice, influenced by my Rush to the North tournaments, by Rush album covers that I've asked Joel DeGuzman, I mean, can you maybe tinker it here and there, but they're completely original, 100%. Same with the new Beast poster we just did for the big tournament coming up July and August at Pocketeer Billiards. Don't anybody, do me a favor, just do not look up the movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms because I don't know where they got the artwork from that and where we got the artwork from our Beast poster because they're totally different. But anyway, I'm with you on AI. Listen, I don't want to keep you on too long. We've already ticked off the carpenters, the woodworkers, and we found out that Mason Conrad is really the true talent. I don't want people to get off Retro Ralph. I want them to watch you on JBS show with Jamie and Kale. You guys do a great job. I want them to go to YouTube to Retro Ralph, and I want to thank you for coming on this program. Yeah, I had a great time, Jeff. It's a pleasure. I was very honored that you asked me to come on. So yeah, hopefully we can have another conversation in the future too. I would love that. Keep up the great work, buddy. Thanks, Jeff. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. Email pinballprofile at gmail.com. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter, X, Instagram at pinballprofile. If you'd like to show your support, don't worry, the show will always be free, but we do want to thank those on patreon.com slash pinballprofile. People like Ken G., Lua W., Tony V., Derek S., Colin M., Erika's Pinball Journey, and more. Thank you so much again for your support on Patreon. Go check out Retro Ralph on YouTube. I'm Jeff Teolis.