Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Dirty Pool podcast. Uh I'm getting glad that it's uh it didn't crash and I set up the correct [music] uh scene this time. You know, it's going to be a good uh today. I'm joined by none other than Abe Flips, who you may know from many, many years ago ran some of the most, I would say, highly viewed and very respected pinball tutorial videos on YouTube. I know you're rolling your eyes, Abe, but it's true. Just take the compliment. Uh yeah, it's Abe Flips everybody. Hey everybody, thanks for having me, Jeff. Hi. Absolutely, dude. Thank you so much for coming on. I know you and I talked about this a little bit. You were a little apprehensive uh based on like somewhat of a language barrier and also not wanting to be on camera. I appreciate you taking the plunge. Uh please know that so much of the community is very curious about mastering pinball. You your recordings in general. Uh you've brought kind of a new era of pinball tutorial videos. You and I just talked about this that the only good pinball tutorial anything before now was pinball 101. Keith Owen and his brother Randy made a very amazing and kind of mixed comedy slash like pinball tutorial video back in 2008 2009 I think. I just looked this up. You'd think I would remember it. Um but you have now taken that concept and made mastering pinball which is great. Let's talk about that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, okay. So, you disappeared for quite a while and you had announced there was like a trailer for Mastering Pinball years ago. I want to say maybe three years ago. When When was that? [clears throat] Is my timeline off? Help me out here. Yeah, I think it should be like 20 months, something like that. Two years. Okay, so just under two years. And then you disappeared. And then I was like, I don't know if this video is going to happen. And then holy [] out of nowhere, boom, mastering pinball is here. And uh I will we're going to pull it up here so everybody could take a look. Uh I want before we get into actually viewing some of what this is, uh this is kind of what the online page portal looks like if you purchase it, which I did before we even talked about this. You did offer to send me a code, but I had already bought it. So booyah. [laughter] Uh, so this is what you get. It's a uh broken down by chapters that you can easily kind of like jump through. You can find different sections of it. And uh, yeah, you're going to see all sorts of cool stuff. You shot an enormous amount of slow motion video for this. Do I dare ask how many terabytes of slow-mo were involved in the production of this? Huh, that's a a good question. Oh, I I really can't tell you right now off of my head. Did you Did you dump Did you jump through like external drive after external drive or did you set up like a big raid array just to host everything? No. Um I think I I needed two additional ones um with yeah a lot of terabytes. Amazing. That's a lot. Uh, you mentioned Okay, so you mentioned that someone else assisted you in terms of getting the production for this, but the production quality for this and the amount of of high-speed video is just like astronomical. Um, please, you got to tell us about this process. I I can tell you're nervous. There's no reason to be, dude. Like everything about this and the pinball content you're creating. This is like some of the most important pinball content that has been made in in forever. I mean, you have people that are bitching and moaning about pinball machines that come out, but here you are training people like flipper skills, helping introduce new people to pinball with insane slow-mo video that like accurately depicts it in a format that's like really easy to digest. Like, you should be very proud. Please don't be shy. What you want to know about this? Yeah. Thanks, man. Um, yeah, it started with eight flips on YouTube. Um, and the first idea was I want to do a big film, right, with every skill involved. But my friend, my mentor Simon, uh, he was helping me with filming and stuff. He told me that's too much. I should, uh, divide it in separate techniques. So that's how a flip started. And yeah, after I recorded most of the stuff I wanted to record and I was quite happy with it, um, I thought, uh, what can I do now? Right? Like, how can you level up that situation? One thing that you do that I really like that you take the time to do is you'll talk about a concept, but then you'll visualize it with graphics. So, for example, in your older videos on YouTube, you know, you talk about shielding and then you'll show like, you know, illuminated kind of like cone of light that that gives an example of what that looks like. And we'll show that because you do it again obviously in mastering pinball. But, you know, that extra step to visualize what these concepts are like really helps a lot. Yeah. Uh, so tell me I'm going to play a little bit muted in the background, but tell me a little bit about like what it's what it's like to film slow-mo and set up the videos that are necessary for this just because of like I just I don't think people understand the amount of work that goes into content creation at this level. I mean, look at this right here. On top of it just being beautiful footage, like being able to kind of like look into inside the time that occurs really helps you structural like understand what you're doing with a pinball flipper. Yeah, exactly. Uh yeah, I start out uh with an idea. Let's say drop catch. And I I got the information for drop catch from an old uh book. It call it's called pinball wizard dry or something like that. Really old book. And they were explaining that you can drop the flipper later so the ball will go up the in lane. Something like that. And I try to wrap my hand around it and [clears throat] uh maybe um get a new idea how the drop catch works and reflect and then I write the script and think about what I want to record and yeah then also I get the slowmo cam of course and I'm watching what's happening. Uh yes. And then I'm thinking of how I can visualize an idea I have in my head like the shielding stuff. Uh I wasn't sure how that works. I just saw people lifting up their flippers and I wondered why because the ball didn't approach the center or something like that. But I saw it's like a habit. Sure. So I tried to wrap my head head around it [clears throat] and yeah, I came up with this shielding concept and it makes sense. I thought that, how do you say, flashlight is the best way to see how the ball could come down. And yeah, and I really love too that you take the time to to not only uh Whoops. Let me pull up the [] chat directly over the video. Uh you take the time to show what the consequences of one versus the other are. So you don't you don't just teach the flipper skill itself, but you take the time to show what when and where to apply it. So, for example, you talk about not doing a drop catch when the ball is towards the very end of the flipper because the ball spin can then essentially have it run right off the flipper and then show visual examples of that. Like literally right here, which is amazing. Um, so here I'm going to I'm going to rewind it. Let's let people kind of listen to a little bit of this. We'll let like a good minute of it play. The variability of the drop catch makes it one of the most versatile and powerful skills in pinball. You can catch the ball from any direction, even with the upper flipper. The key is that the ball must approach the base of the flipper. Otherwise, it won't gain enough backspin upon contact and will drain down the middle. When the ball comes to rest on the flipper after a catch, it will slowly roll back down. This drastically changes the timing for the follow-up shot. Adjust your timing by shooting later than usual. This takes some practice, but pays off in the long run. So, I mean, not only I'm assuming that uh you you paid a voiceover actor and just dumped the script on him and have him read the entire thing and then cut it up to actually sync with the footage. It was Jeff the Oh, know [laughter] him. Amazing. Wow. So, man, and then I should of course give a shout out to Scott Deni also who lent the soundtrack to the entire video, which it is a good hour and 44 minutes. You'll hear tracks. I believe there's some Final Resistance in here. There's definitely some uh TNA bangers in there. Um, yeah, I have to add something here. Scotty uh was doing everything for free. So, he gave away his music for free. So, thanks again. Shout out to Scotty. Without him, it wouldn't be wouldn't been possible. Scott is such a genuously genuinely genuine nice person that it's it's almost sickening. [laughter] But that's super awesome. Uh Scott, who you also can go view on the podcast if you're curious and want to hear more about TNA and the development of that. Um yeah, go follow Scott Denise and and go play TNA if you don't if you don't know what that is and haven't had your ass reamed by a pinball machine in a while cuz it's pretty brutal. [laughter] Um yeah, but I want to say uh the the online version you see here uh has more variety of music and the Blu-ray you you buy is Scotia only. So it's a special thing. Very cool. Um yeah, which is neat that you can acquire both if you want to have a physical a physical piece of this. When you decided to produce it as a physical uh release as well, like what was the decision behind that? Is that like an homage to Pinball 101 or Uh, no. I I didn't want to do it. Just people were complaining. It's a good reason to do it online. Yeah. And Yeah. Actually, I just um started the um So, another thing that really blew me away is that there's like a lot of pinball machines in this. It's not like you just did these flipper tricks and tutorials on like three games. I mean, there's a slew. So, I'm guessing that there was a large like where did you film this and travel to in order to get so much production? Yeah, I Hold on one second. I noticed that, too. Are we back? I just got a notification that OBS disconnected and reconnect. Yeah. Oh, and apparently we reconnected. Are we back? I did. I got a notification that OBS disconnected and reconnected. Yeah, I think chat chat's telling me we're back now. Okay. Are we Are we back? Okay, good. We're good. Um, so I what I was saying was I was surprised that like the tutorial videos like I expected maybe a handful of pinball machines. Maybe the ones that were in your personal collection or that were at an arcade near you, but no, there's like many many games across all different eras, all different genres. I noticed there was Dune in there. Appreciate that. Uh, but you've included I mean there was Valhalla, there's some, you know, there's some American old American pinball on there. You know, we're looking at Jackpot right now. Where did you travel and how did you have access to these machines to film? Yeah, a lot of it was filmed at my home. Um, for example, the Iron Maiden one, the Jurassic Park one. Of course, there are different Iron Maidens and Jurassic Parks, but most of it was um filmed at home. And a friend of mine, Oliver, has a a flipper cellar we call it. You go downstairs and he has a lot of machines. It's like a pinball dungeon, one might say. Dungeon. Yeah. [laughter] Um, another location is at um was in Munich in the pinball launch it's called. Uh, there's no official access you can go in, but they were nice enough uh to lend uh the or to give us the opportunity to record with Johannes Ottomaya. So, we met there two times. They have over 100 pinball machines. And that's a lot. Also, Stefan Reed from RS Pinball um was nice enough to let me record his machines in the club book. Pretty awesome to have some world ranked players assist you in terms of getting footage that you need. Is there so when you step up to a game and you're doing like a particular flipper trick, did you decide did you just record like what a drop catch was on like every game you filmed so that you would have options for it or was this more like planned out? Oh yeah, I've I've had to do a plan what I still need to record. So I got huge sheets and I write down everything I want to record. And also sometimes I just let the uh camera record and when there happened a cool thing I will cut it. It it was a lot of it is filmed with an old Sony FS700. Um and it has like eight times uh no 250 fps. So you can slow it down like right eight times or something like that. Okay. I guess it depends on how Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, that's great. But I mean, some of the stuff you shot here is clearly like 10,000 frames per second or more. I mean, for some of the Exactly. So, the basic camera has is the FS700. Um, the high detailed shot with the 25,500 FPS is the uh the camera is called Amber. Yeah, we landed it. Uh, it cost a few thousand bucks. We had it for over two weeks, I think. And yeah, we recorded as much footage as we could. Sure, I would see why. I mean, camera rentals are not cheap. You need lenses, you need batteries, you need memory cards that go with it. I mean, anybody who's rented a a package or a kit before. It's not just like, you know, you're not just getting the camera. You need to get like this mountain of other gear that helps supplement it. Yeah. and Simon supported me in this regard and we were able to capture I think nearly everything. I mean, I would say so. I I remember I got about halfway through it when I was watching it the other day just so that I would be able to talk about everything in it and the difference between your other stuff. And I saw I was like once we got through the flipper skills and kind of got into like nudging and stuff, I was like, "Oh man, he didn't do loop pass." And then of course later you do loop pass. And so it's like even the kind of more I don't know, not obscure, but you know, there's some pretty you've really touched base on every possible flipper skill and every possible thing. And not only that, just mentality for the game as well. Um, we talked about extending the flipper reach uh earlier as being kind of like one of your favorite parts because uh Exactly. you had learned something new and I guess I mean I kind of learned something new as well cuz it's the mentality here. So I'm going to I'm going to let this play play in the background kind of low volume. But do you want to talk about the section increase the flippers reach by pushing the machine sideways before executing the flip? So I was recording him. I own all the footage and watched it later on slow motion and was checking out what he was doing. And that's one thing I I learned. He was pushing the machine sideways and uh delayed his uh flipper button. So he pressed the button later. So he notched first and pressed afterwards. this gently. This means you can one or both hands while dig out deeper from from below toward the end because when you just slap the button from the side, the flipper goes up and to the side. But when you push it first to the side, it comes up later. Yeah. And that's the technique. You see the finger, I push the machine to the side and click the what I learned on the fly. After the recordings, I had to figure out how I want to do it. Yeah, I learned it and I implement it in my gameplay and I do it now. So, an excellent combination. Uh, yeah, I'm trying to figure out what the right volume level is. Let me see if I put it up to one or two%. Is that too much? Chat's saying they can't quite hear you very clearly because I'm playing the audio for the video in the background. Tell you what, we'll just leave it muted and then we'll we'll play the section with audio uh later for for relevant parts. Um, so but you were saying like the essentially that he moves the game and then disengages the flipper later, which is a much more advanced skill than just kind of yolo slapping it, which is kind of what I would do, which is just like hit the hell out of the machine and have it flip at the same time, but by then your flipper is already raised and it's it's no longer effectively saving the ball. Um, exactly. So yeah, I mean, uh, let's see. Kaden Harrison is asking if you ever played pinball on Visual Pinball X. Have you play Have you done any VPX stuff? Yeah, actually I owned a uh a virtual pinball machine uh high-end like €8,000 it was here with 4K and I think 200 FPS or something like that. Sure. Um I I wanted to learn rules especially for with this machine. Um but in the end it was too much work and not enough tables which were programmed well. There are tables which are pro programmed well with micro flips and everything working but it takes a lot of time to to get it set up well and yeah I don't know I I sold it well and you also uh well and on real machines too like having it set up so you could do micr flips as well even outside of the virtual space um you know Joe the dragon said that but flippers and hardware are different and you address this in the video you talk about how many of these skill sets obviously the whole like micro flip section is a good example where you know you talk about how like on older ballet games the micro flip is a lot easier to engage because of the leaf switch versus an opto and now on start machines that it's still possible but harder. I mean a lot of this stuff is addressed you know in the description of it. Um so epgeek hey what's up Eric? Eric from barrels of fun hanging out with us uh says that it's crazy that you didn't know a lot of this stuff before making the videos. I mean, you really did kind of like dive in to learn a lot of production, post-production skills, and I mean, you had obviously some editorial knowledge because of the videos you had been making on YouTube. What would you say was like the biggest transition from doing like a YouTube video to doing like a produced like feature, I guess, for lack of a better word. Um, yeah, before that I was doing everything on my own. Uh but now I've had to um get in contact with other other people like Johannes or Scotti. So that was new for me. Um yeah, what else? Licensing. Um the worst part was merchandise and artwork because all uh yeah the adver ad advertising sorry. Oh, sure. The marketing angle of it is like huge, right? You're you're essentially Yeah. A necessary evil though. I mean, you spend all this time making a product like this. You like you would do it a disservice not to support it for people that are interested in that kind of stuff. Um Johnny Button asked a question. He said that dang, there's no shipping to the States for the Blu-ray. Is that something that you that should be available? There is shipping. It It should work. It doesn't work. Well, if it doesn't work, this is great. Let's communitywise we can troubleshoot this. Uh yeah, Johnny Button, send a screenshot over. We got to figure this out so that the people in the states that want to get uh mastering pinball dethrown pinball 101. We got to get those DVDs over here [laughter] or Blu-rays, I'm sorry. Uh good good thing is uh the production uh is in USA, so you will get it fast. Okay, fantastic. So that's easy shipping for people that want to get a a physical media of it. Um Exactly. I mean, check it out. If it doesn't work uh to order in the United States, we will figure that out in the next days. It's no problem. So, one thing I did notice, it seemed like you you know, you have a lot of like kind of comedy nods in a lot of your like YouTube videos, but you like tone that down a lot for mastering pinball. There is one or two moments. Uh can I can I show the the drop catch intro? I think that's or I'm sorry, the live catch intro. Live catch. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Let's look at this. A few shots. The live catch is an impressive but challenging technique reused. I think that shot was recorded also on the YouTube things. I I I love this shot. I'm I'm going to play with audio. Okay. [laughter] However, if you manage by defying physics to catch the ball perfectly, this can lead to flipper godlike tendencies. The key is to keep your emotions in check and maintain. How many times did you shoot that eyebrow lift in order to get it right? Oh, I don't know. Maybe 10 times. I made a few recordings and then I took the best one. See, people don't understand the like the the trouble and tribulations you got to go through to get the right shot. Oh, yes. You It's not just about the slow-mo, man. It's about the eyebrow raises, too. [laughter] That's a serious expression. Yeah. I The thing is I do that a lot. It's It's like a insecurity movement. I always do that. Just I don't know. I do it. So, it was natural, I guess. I I think it's I think it's great. I mean, I think the comedy aspect of it really helps. Like, I mean, you're you're talking about an hour and a half of extremely, you know, analytical pinball information. You need something to kind of change it up. Um, so here you can see that you used like, uh, non-standard balls. And I know that in a lot of your live streams sometimes you have these balls in your games. Did you do that to help accentuate ball spin so that it's visual and because I know that you've talked about how ball spin is a huge component of it in a lot of the videos. Yes, exactly. That's the reason and what you're seeing here. Um yes, it's that you see the ball spin. Uh it's very hard to see on a shiny ball what happens. It's true. Yeah. And it's very very obvious when you've got this like cobalt spider pattern or the like kind of 50/50 one. Um, thanks. Kaden Harrison is asking, "What's the YouTube channel called?" I think it's just Abe Flips, right? Can the Can a mod drop the Abee's actual YouTube channel instead of just the website? If you want to see this, this is www.abflips.com. That is where Mastering Pinball is available u for purchase both streaming and uh digital. And then you too can watch 10,000 frames per second slow motion and find out why your your pinball skills aren't as good as they should be. [laughter] [snorts] Yeah. So, uh, all right. Uh, yeah. I mean, tell me more about the production, man. Like, what were some things that you were surprised that were way difficult that maybe should have been like super easy? Like, conceptually, you were just like, "Oh, I just need a shot of this thing." And then when you actually sat down to get it, it was just like a pain in the ass. either the the machine wasn't cooperating or yeah the hardest skills were I think safes because you can't uh reproduce uh the same feed over and over again easy I I built myself a a little uh ramp where the where I can drop the ball and it goes to the same position every time so you get consistent speed and consistent drop it exactly um that was hard also On the notching chapter, I always wanted the same feed so the ball approaches the slingshot at the same position. Sure. So I so I can test out how the ball shoots away and what I can do to influence it. I think that was very challenging. Um what else? Uh yeah, the animation stuff was very challenging because I'm not a um yeah film guy. I I don't know the software. I've had to learn everything from ground. I love that. I love that you just wanted to make like the best possible pinball tutorial and just like figured it out as you were producing it. [laughter] Amazing. I guess that's the love for pinball. And I mean, yeah, that's Yeah. Um, you can tell you composited a lot of stuff, too. Like in the aiming and shooting section is kind of a good example right off the bat. Like you give an example of like uh how on the how flipping timings change where the ball trajectory is. I think it's right coming up here. And you know, you composited like 10 different shots off the flipper here so people could see what it looks like. I think it's right now. Yes. Here we go. Machine gun Godzilla. Yes. [clears throat] Those are ideas I have in my head. Yeah. Exactly. That's it. Yeah. So I mean compositing this kind of stuff is not I mean it's not crazy difficult but it is timeconuming. How what was the production time from start to finish from when you were like started writing the script to finishing rendering the last encoded version of it for you know distribution? Yeah. So I was able to reuse uh the best shots from my YouTube channel. Why should I record them? Saying you need to do original footage for everything. Yeah. But I guess that was just like 30%. the the rest is completely new and fresh. Um yeah, it took me I guess one and a half year something like that from start to finish. But as I said before, why it took so long? It's also the artwork, the music, the licensing, um the merchandise. I totally underestimated that. So I would have [clears throat] been right on time [laughter] if I just have had to do the movie. So yeah, I don't think as much as we were curious why you had disappeared, I don't think anybody is complaining that this is available now. Um Jeff, I didn't disappear. I I made monthly uh updates on the Kickstarter campaign. So follow me on See, I wasn't part of the Kickstarter campaign, so that's why I'm I'm ignorant on that aspect. But I disappeared on YouTube. That's true. That's that's what I because we you know I not you were like posting like crazy but uh you know you were streaming less it seemed like as well it was just anybody knows that when you get involved in a project like this it is I mean you can say yourself was it was a lot more work than you expected right? Yes it was absolutely well totally worth it in my opinion. Um, you know, I mentioned when we were talking at the at the beginning, I was watching about half of it just to kind of get educated and then Sid and I played a game on Shadow, we played a game on Lord of the Rings, and I I was immediately applying stuff that you had said in the video. And what really kind of blows me away about it is like for an experienced player like myself, even though I'm sure chat's going to disagree with that one, but someone who knows what these skills are already, right, and knows how to execute them even though they're not good at doing them, being able to see it in slow motion and to like just understand the mechanics of it at a like subframe speed really helps you kind of like figure it out to apply it better. And I was genuinely playing better after just watching like half of it. And uh I I just I just think that's extremely cool. Um nice. Yeah. All right. So, what was the most enjoyable moment of filming the entire thing? Whether it was working with a certain person in particular, whether it was getting to play on a game that's maybe super rare that you got to shoot slow-mo of, any anything like that? Uh yeah, I think reviewing Johannes footage was very great because it was so enlightening for me. lighting, how do you say? Yeah, I was watching it and I discovered so many things I wasn't aware of and new possibilities. So, it was like also ego-driven because I wanted to learn what he's doing. So, it was always okay, first I want to learn it and then I I I got to show it to other people, right? So, it's it was yeah, perfect. and I have the different camera angles and I was really able to see everything what what he did. That was really enjoyable. Uh the other thing was where we landed the uh highspeed camera, the Ember [clears throat] one. Um I think we shoot a whole week straight every day and my friend was coming Simon and yeah it was filming the whole day. That was experience and yeah that sounds awesome. So, for people that don't know, like uh slow-mo cameras require like an astronomical amount of light. Do you feel like you need to go to the optometrist afterwards now that your retinas have been like completely burned out from recording hours and hours of slow-mo footage? Yeah, it it was okay. Uh my friend, he he got big lights, a lot of lights. Uh when you when you watch the outro, uh I think you can go there. It's the last chapter. Um, when you let it play or skip a little bit, I think you you should see a little making off and there [laughter] are some scenes. Wow, look at the amount of diffusers there. Good lord. Yeah. [laughter] Did you put sunscreen on? Uh, once I used sunglasses because it was brutal, but it it Yeah, it worked. Yeah, that's the B guy is Simon. He really shout out. He's he's the best. Greenhouse Productions. Uh yes, my buddy. So Jeff is talking. Yeah. Now that now that uh you've got all this education in more film making, do you think that there are other pinball films in the future that you're interested in doing or do you feel like you've kind of done what you needed to for pinball education in terms of tutorial videos? Yeah, sure. I I I'm interested in progressing with the pinball career, so to say. Um that's why I have the on my homepage um the master class you can join and it is connected with a discord channel and people can share their experiences tournament related or technique questions or questions for their movie. Uh the the Discord is free and the master class is like €4 a month and I I try to upload videos when I have a idea. For example, uh I didn't include the CMAC bounce. I'm not sure if you didn't include the which one? Yeah, CMAC. You know Cmac, the world class player. Oh, I know Zmac. [laughter] There's a particular move he does uh when the ball rolls over the flipper, he does the bad bounces on the tip of the flipper. It's called the Cmac bounce. Yeah. And I didn't um cover that really on the on the film. So, I made a little uh 2 minutes clip. Um yeah, and I mean that's a great idea. Each player has some of their own unique uh finesse or or talent that they bring to it. Zack McCarthy clearly has that. I bet there's other players that have moves that are pretty unique to their play style. Um, exactly. Something else you do cover, you do talk about how uh I believe it's in the nudging section, how each player has kind of like a lot of their own kind of finesse and technique in terms of how they like uh [clears throat] place their hands on the flippers, how they actually like physically move the game. Yeah. Yeah, I always try to u encourage people encourage people to use different techniques because your different uh height for examples I'm a small person so I can't much like your hanes because he he's more like top down and I'm a little bit more in front so yeah you got to figure out what works for you for example stage flipping he does with two fingers he he pushes in and just give a little pressure. Um, so he can control the pressure for stage flipping and I use a different technique. So I'm always telling people try what works and Yeah. for for a person who is new to the channel and doesn't know what stage flipping is. Do you want to explain what double leaf switches are? [laughter] Yeah, basically when you have a game with with an upper flipper, so a third flipper on top, you can use the upper flipper individually from the lower flipper one by pressing the button halfway in because there are two switches. You push it inside and you touch the first switch. The first switch is the low lower flipper button and you push it further, it touches touches the second lift switch and the upper flipper is uh yeah get gets action. I saw micro how you can control Yeah, there's some footage inside the cabinet, I think, of the uh flipper flipper button assembly for that. Um Pat the weirdo says that you're his hero and that your videos are the go-to when people ask where to start for pinball videos. And that's absolutely true. At least the YouTube ones work now. Yeah, maybe it's this one, right? [laughter] Yes, hopefully. Yeah, I heard so many good words about the movie. Really, one of the best things was they said there's a time before mastering pinball and the time after mastering pinball. Especially for tournament players, it will accelerate their the their start, especially I would say. Sure. Or anybody who just that's but that's why I like this. It isn't just for tournament players, like for sure, but it's just for anybody who's curious how pinball machines function. The kind of like, you know, people uh that are totally new to pinball and see me playing are like, what? You know, there's more than just luck involved and you you're like, god damn it, like [laughter] like for sure you can generally get the ball to do whatever you want to a certain degree. Uh so this clearly helps illustrate that. Uh, Nuclear Blacks making a joke that you should cover my special skill set which is draining because he's a big Yes. Yes. [laughter] Um, yeah. I mean, I don't Let's Let's play a little bit of a section. I'm going to let uh chat please fire away if there's any additional questions. I know that Abe wanted to keep this short because he was afraid about talking it. I'm going to not allow that and force you to stay here and cover as much as this as possible so people What's that? I feel comfortable now. So awesome. That's good. I love to hear it. Well, you you put so much effort into this and uh you know, it's just it's very clear, you know, in my interview with Cliff, as many of you saw, we talked about kind of like genuine pinball content, and this is that this is genuine pinball content. It's not like of course you're making money off of it. You've also spent thousands of dollars running a [] camera. Like that's okay for sure. But this is truly made so that there's a good resource for people to find education on stuff about pinball. And even here, like this is a great section. You talk about uh looseness in the uh flipper uh bushing and that you know plastic bushings that get worn in can have like space to wiggle which allows for dead bounces. So then not only are you learning a little bit about mechanics of how pinball flippers work, but you're also learning, you know, flipper technique at the same time. Brilliant. I [] love it. [laughter] Yeah, [clears throat] that the thing we saw just beforehand without the rubber. I didn't knew you can do the it's called stern catch where you lift the flipper and the ball rolls very uh how do you say not bouncy? The opposite of bouncy smooth. Very smooth. Yeah. Exactly. Even without rubber, I thought you need the rubber. So, it uh reduced. Yeah. The transition. But actually, in your in your section about flipper alignment talks about inconsistent rolls from cradling. I feel I think that's in the cradling section. Uh but you know, you address what some of the issues are with that as well. I actually didn't know. I've seen I've always seen it heard it as like a tip pass, the what you're calling the stern catch. So, that that was news to me. I didn't realize that that had its own own uh uh whatever. Oh, no. It's called a tip pass, but there's the movement be beforehand. Um when you raise the flipper in the exact moment the ball comes down, uh sometimes the ball doesn't roll over the the flipper. And it's called stern catch because um it was the first game was AC/DC. Uh, and there were you were able to stop the ball this way. Not just by lifting it up, but lifting it up in the exact moment. So the ball gets very smooth rolling and then rolls backwards. So that's the string catch. But you can combine it with a micro flip and do the tip pass. So what what Abee's talking about, which he just described, but specifically when that flipper goes up, it causes the rubber to kind of like violently move. And that violent movement kind of nullifies some of the ball's momentum. So that it is a smooth transition up the flipper instead of kind of bouncing up and down it. Would would you say that's accurate? Yeah. That's in the shield or that's in the cradle section, right? I don't know. [laughter] [snorts] Hour, hour and 44 minutes. You're like, it's somewhere in there. Yeah. I mean, the stern coach is in the micro flip section. Okay, there we go. because it's a it's a preparation for a smooth uh micro flip flick. There we go. Micro Yeah. So, you can see like the flipper is being raised right as the ball enters the transition point. Uh yeah, that's why it rolls so smooth afterwards, which if you've ever tried to slow down Yeah, I know. Split. I I was trying to find it again. I couldn't remember. Uh, if you've ever wondered why sometimes when you lift your flipper up, the ball slows down smoothly and other times it's it's not, now you know. Thanks to you, thanks to the power of ultra slow-mo. Um, well, we should obviously we should let's all learn how to death save since this has been something that has been happening over and over again on my 007 without too much influence by myself. Can you can you give a tell us what a death save is before I we dive into it? Oh, yeah. Sure. You You can save the ball when it's going the right out lane. You You get it up from below. Eric's busting my balls for giving away the whole video. Well, let me tell you. I asked Abe at the beginning. I was like, "Hey, like, do you really want to play a ton of this because it's going to give away so much of it. People can just watch this. What do you How do you feel about that?" And what did you say, Abe? Uh, I say it's fine because it's it's um it's a video you want to go back to and you can't really see everything here. So, let's just enjoy what you want to show. He said, "Play the whole thing." I was like, I'm not going to do that. [laughter] All right. Here we go. This is the death save section, everybody. Yeah. Death saves are often frowned upon and are strictly prohibited at tournaments. When executed correctly, they are far less rough than their reputation suggests. The prerequisite is a relatively slippery floor along with the necessary skill and finesse. The death save consists of two floors. As the ball rolls along the apron toward the center, push the machine to the left first to accelerate the ball. Just before the ball's impact, perform a short, sharp counter movement directed forward and to the right to amplify the ball's bounce. Raise the left flipper during this to clear the ball's path. If the sequence is timed correctly, the death save can be performed [music] with relatively little force, and depending on the tilt setting, you can typically incur one or two warnings. [music] Caution. Only attempt death saves if the machine's owner allows it and the machine is not on rubber feet or otherwise immovable. [music] Carl to watch too much video can damage my game through the wall. In such cases, center posts and anti-rebound wire forms make this technique even more difficult. In these situations, it's best to avoid attempting death saves. Pretty cool. And uh you know, again, kind of what we were saying earlier, it's neat. I mean, there were four or five different machines in that. There were multiple angles for everything. I mean, kudos, man. You did an amazing job. Um, thanks. So, is this how you are doing your death saves? You're doing No. On. So, my bond is feeding so fast down the right out lane that I may or may not be given just a little tiny bump up and Oh, yeah. It's back in. You know, it's like Yeah. Yeah. The Yoda save. [laughter] It's still not legal in tournaments because I am influencing the game. But you know, yeah, I'm trying to get to these wizard modes, Abe, like I don't have time to train, you know. Exactly. Um, okay. Fire away chat. This is the last opportunity until I beg Abe to come back on for whatever future things he has going on. Um, you know, this is not a paid sponsorship by any means. I bought this. I just truly think that this is amazing pinball education. And uh if you're curious about being a better pinball player, like this is something you should maybe check out. Ashcore, don't worry. It's on VOD. You can go back and watch it again. Um all right, take take the floor. Abe, is there anything that you'd like to say to to the people that are watching? Um or anything MN Retro Gamers is asking what your favorite game is. Let's go with favorite game and then also favorite game that you actually shot for the video. Yeah. Uh, Jurassic Park is my still my favorite game. It's the code is awesome. It's simply great. And right now, um, King Kong, it's getting up there. The code is evolving and I really enjoy it. I'm also a huge Kong lover and it warms my heart for you saying that. For the haters that are going to be like, "Oh, A Flips is just an Lwin lover, blah, blah, blah." What do you say to that? Yes, I am poetry. He makes the best games in my opinion. Um, yeah, I really enjoy it. I totally agree. Nothing more to say. I I love Stern. It's It's really the flipper feeling. I think it's Yeah, maybe the components flipper feeling is great. That's a issue I have with other pinball companies. Um, I I yeah, I like the Sterns the best, but Spooky is is getting there. I haven't played them too much. Um, Barriers of Fun is I think they're You work at Paris of Fun. What you don't have to plug barrels for that, but I totally agree with you. Anyone who's played Labyrinth and then has played Winchester or Dune knows that the flippers feel better now. And yeah, I think flipper feeling is something that anybody who works in pinball knows and wants to make feel as as amazing as possible. I mean, it's the uh conduit you have between you and the game. And if it doesn't feel amazing, then it's already a problem. So, yeah, JH have had an huge improvement on the flippers. Yeah, Guns and Roses was not an enjoyable experience uh in my opinion. Yeah. Um, but then they replaced the flipper board with a new like I don't know whether it was new capacitors or something. Something about the technology that went into the flippers changed and it was substantially better. Exactly. Yeah. Um, few good questions for you. Pat the weirdo wants to know, did you get a hold of Jeff for the audio or did uh he reach out to you wanting to be involved in the project? No, no, I reached out to him. I I heard that he's doing call outs for American pinball or he has done for the Valhalla game and I I knew he has a podcast and also a radio show. So I was asking him if he he's on board and yeah pretty natural pick. I mean did he how many takes did he do? It sounds like he kind of just blew through it. Yeah, he he did. He was a little bit late. I I got to say we we've had some delays because of this, but he's so busy and I was too. So, but in the end it turned out great, I think. Is this available because you you're from Austria. Is this available in German? Uh yes, we have on the homepage two languages. On the top right corner, you can see English and German. You can just press it and then it will be German. So, did you do the German recording? Uh, no. No. Or who did the German recording? You got to plug both sides. It's not just about English, baby. Like, somebody worked hard to record this whole thing in German, too. [laughter] [snorts] Yeah. Yeah, that's true. It's true. Here, we're going to listen to some in German. Carrie Hardy's here. Audioing is great on Barrels of Fun Games. Who did that? I don't know. Those games suck. Whoever does the audio for Barrels of Fun Games is trash. [laughter] So the German voice over was Robert Glasfutner. He also has a radio show on FM4. Uh yes. Uh he has a Vienna uh slang to him and I really enjoy it. Uh but um so I did for people who don't know what a Vienna slang is like me, what does that translate to? Oh. Um, you know, Farco, Rock Me Amadeos. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And like, yeah, this a little bit. It's a certain style, you know, from the Okay. Well, here we go. It's nudging in German. Nudging. Algamas. [music] forging. [music] They're good. Is they're good. Nice. They're good. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. They're good. Well, okay. I almost slipped into Spanish there because my German is such terrible. [laughter] Um, Mr. Furious user is saying he's only going to watch it in German. Well, fantastic. So, honestly, you could both learn to speak German and how to play pinball if you really dedicate yourself to this video. Yeah. Right. You can. Yes. [laughter] Uh, I have a little question for you, Jeff. Sure. I I already told you I'm a big fan of your Winchester music and sound effects you're doing. Uh it's really captivating and I started a few weeks ago a computer game. It's called uh Expedition 33. Do you know the game? I do. It's by the French studio that fractured off of Ubisoft. Exactly. And and uh there is there's one I don't know the English word for it. There's a house you can get inside and there's a soundtrack and it reminds me really of Winchester and the sounds there and I thought you were inspired by it or something like that. No, I I haven't played Expedition 33. I've seen it. I'm a fan of JRPGs to a certain degree and I heard that this one is kind of takes all of the best qualities of that and makes it like kind of a pretty unique experience. But uh no, I I haven't I haven't played that. Compliment. Thank you. I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. No. Uh Carl sent me a bunch of references of stuff. Believe it or not, most of the uh inspiration for the music for Winchester came from the game Seventh Guest. Um Carl and I are both fans of it. It's an old horror game from the 90s, a full motion video kind of like CDROM game where you kind of go through a house and solve puzzles. Um so a lot of the camera motions through the hallways going to certain doors and stuff are like kind of an homage to that. Not a lot not a lot of people got that reference just because it is fairly obscure. Um, but yeah, the soundtrack is is certain is certainly like that. There's some Easter eggs in the music, too, especially some of the wizard mode stuff coming up. But anyways, I I really appreciate that, Abe. I do. Thank you very much. I'm I I actually didn't know whether you had even heard it before until uh when I hopped on your stream and was like, "Hey, come on the show, please." [laughter] So, yeah. I was able to play the game at Stefan Stefan Reedler's location. Oh, awesome. Did it survive the international journey? I always can't I like I worry so much for these games when they have to like you know because pinball machines don't exactly like vibration and I don't know if it's by sea or by plane or what but like you know it [clears throat] it can be hard on the games. That's true. Especially there's also the playfield warping and stuff going on sometimes. Sure. Because the temperature differences and humidity differences during travel. Yeah. But it survived. [laughter] That's great. Um, I wonder what code version that was because man oh man, we've added so much and more to come for sure for everybody who has got a Winchester which is not a lot of people. [laughter] [snorts] Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. Two not enough games but good on the other side. Yeah. Next time that's that's for David to decide how many to make. [laughter] Um, are there any pinball machines for me to be able to hear the ball rolling in the machine? Even though I love pinball, I'm blind as well. Interesting. Uh, I have a project that I'm doing for an upcoming video that might be of interest to you regarding that using some pio pio electric or contact microphones. Um, so we'll I'll I'm looking forward to having more of that hop in on a different stream. But no, I would say that that is is not truly a thing that I've heard of. You could take the glass off and hear it a lot better. Yeah, maybe that's an option. Uh, all right. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you Abe again for taking the time. I know that it is extremely late for you in Austria. Um, it's okay. Yeah. Go check out for having me, Jeff. Go check out aflips.com. Go buy go buy mastering pinball because you should. [laughter] I'm just going to say it. You busted ass. making pinball stuff. Go check it out. Um, yeah. Yeah. We're going to praise the Great Pyramid now. You ready, Abe? Yeah, I'm ready. You got to go like that. And then you got to say, I praise the Great Pyramid. I praise the Great Pyramid. [laughter] You sound so enthusiastic. I also love that. Oh, right. Thank you, Johnny Button. Uh, so I noticed that one of the things that was missing from here, you had some classics, but you were missing some other classics. If you were to make a master in pinball 2.0, can I can I suggest maybe throw out some three classic games that maybe you could pick one of these from? Okay. All right. So, yeah. So, one of them that I would think would make a good game to to showcase in here in the future is Raven, right? Yes. Uh, another one that you could possibly pick for this is Raven. And then maybe maybe if you had a third choice for this out of these three, which one would you pick for including a classic? Uh, Raven. I see. Okay. That's the one with the nice back glass, right? That's one word for it. [laughter] In the pamphlet, it talks about how the photo shoot for it was like visionary and going to change the direction of Pinball Backlass. Do you feel that that Raven accomplished that goal? Yeah, I love it. So, which of those three would you pick? I guess I would take Raven. That's a good choice. The second one, specifically the number two. Yeah. [laughter] Amazing. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. Please go check out aflips.com. Uh I'll do the pyramid thing again. All praise. And uh as we end every broadcast, we're going to go raid. Let's go find someone who doesn't have a lot of views and make their day and dump a bunch of people on them. Uh if you've enjoyed this or jumped in the middle, please jump back to the beginning. Uh just hearing about how much effort went into this production was fascinating. At least for me, maybe it is for you, too. Uh yeah, in the meantime, bye. All right. Does your life lack purpose? Have you wondered is there anything more? [music] Join the cult of pinball. [music] The great pyramid accepts all into the cult of the great order. I [music] am Dr. Cornelius Pigostin, Imper and acolyte of the great pyramid. Join us on an ever [music] ending quest to spread.