Assuming this will get uploaded to YouTube after the fact. So for anybody watching this after the fact, this is my name is Joel. I typically stream for Flip N Out Pinball every other Thursday. And so this is every other Thursday from 10 to midnight Eastern Standard Time. So feel free to check it out live. Come chat it up with us. A lot of this conversation is just on the fly based on what we're reading in chat. So real quick introductions. I mean, both of you guys have been on this before. um you know feel free to introduce yourself uh and what was the last pinball game you played so craig feel free to go first hi i'm craig bobby i uh you can see me on the pinball show where i do the stern news correspondence and um you know i recently got a um captain marvel ramp mod oh yeah The lovely folks at Diddy's Mods. So I ordered that. I think the last time I was on the show, Joel, we talked about that. Yeah, with Tom. I didn't even know about that. Yeah. So what I figured out was, you know, I'm embarrassed to even say this, but I realized what the problem with the Captain Marvel ramp was after trying to get my head around this mod. And I couldn't get my head around it until I actually got it. So on the Captain Marvel ramp itself, about the first quarter of that ramp actually doesn't exist on the left side. So I think what happens is the ball goes up the ramp, and it doesn't have a surface on the left side to help carry it through, and therefore the ball rejects a little bit more than you might like. I was finding in my average games it was probably rejecting 40% of the time, sometimes 50, depending on how cleanly I would hit it. And since I put this thing in, which is a very easy install on the side, I'm probably up at 80%, 80 to 90. So it's a big improvement. So it really helps. I did notice a big difference when I put that in. Like right away, my first three shots, I was like boom, boom, boom. And I was like, shit, that's not like – It's only 2,000 plays late, yeah. Yeah. It seemed a lot more effortless, you know. Now, it still does reject, so don't get me wrong. It's not like – if you don't hit it cleanly or if you're not – but there are fewer balls that go like – I was starting to get a lot of balls that go like halfway up the ramp and then come down and reject that way. So anyway, and if the play field isn't polished correctly, you know, you start to get more. So I find that, you know, I can go longer without polishing and still have, you know, ball carry through. So, yeah. So, anyway, it's a good mod, you know, for $20. What the hell? Yeah, Jaeger, you know, yeah, you guys, we are talking about the Captain America, Captain Marvel ramp. Last time we did this, which was two weeks ago, we actually told Craig he should buy that mod, and he did. Cox, thank you for the 41 bits. 41, a unique number there. I don't know why you picked that, but I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Insanity Falls, you're the guy that on every Pinside, every TPN Pinside post you talk about. I think you just love all of our voices. You want to hear Tom read the, what was it, the Bally Manual, Parts Manual, and I think he wants to hear Craig Bob. Williams Manual. Williams Manual. As long as it wasn't Pinbot. Yeah, exactly. And Craig, do you remember what Insanity Falls said he wanted you to read? Yeah. I think he was talking about I was droning on too long. I think I put him to sleep the last time. He didn't know what I was saying. No, Insanity Falls? No, you're not? No, I don't believe you. There's insanity. I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, okay. Yeah. And greetings from L.A. Hello. Hey, everybody. Thanks for being here. Yeah. Oh, wow. Awesome. Go try it. Yeah. Thank you for, yeah, tribe members being here and everything. So I think actually my last game, I actually had the most successful Captain Marvel ramp shots I've ever had in a game, which was like 18 or 20 or something like that. Does it track that? So I was just seriously focused on hitting it. Yeah, it does. Nice. Yeah. So. I know, like, Led Zeppelin will track that. Working. Yeah, the tribe is here. I think I said something about reading your stuff. Yeah. Nice. Oh, yeah, all the tribes showing up. Well, awesome. And then, so, Craig, thank you for being here. Thank you, Craig, if you guys haven't listened to it yet. The Pinball Show, normally the last two weeks have been these two guys. Dennis did two weeks ago, and Craig did this week. So, the Pinball Show, feel free to listen to that. So, Dennis Creasel, thank you for being on here tonight. Feel free to introduce yourself, and what was the last game of pinball you played? I'm Dennis Creasel, and I think it's been a while, actually, since I've played pinball. I think the last game I played was Getaway High Speed 2 in a tournament, and that was the game that sent me home. Oh, wow. Okay, so you've taken some time off. You've got to get it all. Whoever gets the multiball and gets the jackpots going, and I could not lock that third ball. Yeah, you didn't do the thing. Yeah. I know the thing, and I know how to do it, but death. Yeah. Yeah. Well, awesome. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, thanks both of you guys for being on here today. I threw out the bat signal, and Nordman showed up, and Craig's always ready to party. I'm always lingering in the background. Yeah. Got to get my Insider Connect installed. So, Kaz, you got your kit, but you technically operate games, right? Is this your personal kit, or you got a kit for your games on location? Random side note, I know we have a few topics to talk about, but the Insider Connected Kit, Travis Murie, my podcast with Triple Drain, Tom and Travis, Travis and Tom have been somewhat critical of the Insider Connected Kit. Travis got his because he operates a few games, and he put one on Led Zeppelin, and I think he put a few other games that he was on location, but he just messaged our group the other day, and he goes, all right. He's like, that Insider Connected Kit really changes things. He goes, it makes you, because you have the individual objectives, you really have to learn the rules. So instead of having this one focus of just blowing the game up or trying to hit the wizard mode, you're trying to focus on very specific things. And Travis, I wasn't expecting him to be so, like, he came out of nowhere and was like, that thing's awesome. That thing worked really well and really changed it. Well, Travis is a big achievement fan on the video game side, I think so. I'm not surprised that it would change his behavior. Whoa, Jaeger said, our main location in Atlanta sent an email out saying he's removing all his kit and selling them because he doesn't want to buy them for all his old games. So he's saying he likes them, but he just can't. He doesn't want to commit to doing it for all of them. Is that what you're saying? Location games that come with a basic generic kit with no. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. Kind of believe that they're saying freaking can of kit Wi-Fi dongles because they're. Yeah, I know. They I saw the install. I don't know if you guys watch this Stern official install video, but they're like, you're either going to get distance. you're either going to get this dongle or you're going to get like this dongle that has a wifi antenna. It's like, they are just trying to do whatever they can to get, to get parts. Um, cause I'll install it on turtles. I also have stranger things, Amanda, but those two aren't updated. Oh, okay. That's, that's true. No, he's saying he's mad calling it a paywall. Uh, okay. So he just doesn't want to support it. Um, yeah, we, we just briefly were talking before we started on this and, we're talking about parts shortages and I have no idea. I mean, we don't know, but do you think, where do you think the part shortage is? Do you think it's node boards? Do you think it's USB dongles? Do you think it's custom parts like ramps that they can't get manufactured enough? Or do you think it's, that's kind of what I'm leaning to. Do you think it's the custom parts or do you think it's the generic, like everybody's trying to get, I don't know, like the parts needed for node board. Maybe on a node board there's one little capacitor that's sold out. I don't know. Do you guys have any thoughts on that? It's a guess, yeah. Yeah, I would suspect it's a variety of stuff. It's not just one issue. Given their behavior on which games they push back on production, it makes me think that there must be some unique things on occasion. But given the feedback regarding the struggles of people getting node boards, I'm guessing that probably falls into the processing chips, the semiconductor category. Yeah. You know, widespread demand. And we see that from other industries like automotive really struggling, siding chips specifically is the big problem. And what is even a certain pinball compared to a Ford? Gotcha. It's nothing. Yeah, for sure. So don't blow a node board right now. Yeah. Don't be putting in your JP movies hacks and ruining your node board. Oh, yeah. I've heard that that's Zach. I mean, Zach Minney was flipping out. He's mentioned that before, that he's had customers that they blow a node board, and he's trying to get, you know, CERN will say, we approve a replacement, but it's weeks for them to ship one because they, I'm curious if the line is like, there's probably that one part, maybe it is node boards that is like, oh, we got another shipment of 50, like bang, bang, bang, bang, you know, like knock those out. I don't know. Part of my suspicion about maybe why they've had a big sort of slew of the Jurassic Park pin additions here lately is there's so many fewer boards in it. Yeah. That would be a plus. They can get more out. You get the neophytes, you know, who aren't pinball people to buy it for Christmas. So there's a good financial reason to do it anyway. Yeah, good point. But if you got one board by controlling the whole play field, that's a lot less to have to worry about than trying to put together a Godzilla. Do you get one game out that uses one node board or do you get a standard game that uses like three? I don't know. Man, we rolled up to a rando store in Vegas with eight machines, no coin machines. I'm thinking Insider Connected with Payment Acceptor would have been awesome. From Patrick, thanks for being here. Totally agree. If they get to the point where Insider Connected can actually be some sort of payment system, I mean, I do know some of these family fund centers already pay, I forget exactly what it is, but there's already like a credit card type system or some sort of reader that you can put on pinball machines. And if they get to that, anything that can speed up the way that those machines can make money, I think that would be a big improvement. But Insider Falls is saying he's looked at the actual hardware. I mean, I've seen a few of the install videos, and the components that are in these Insider Connected kits are not – it's nothing crazy. So I understand. $200 is – it's hefty. Pretty sure they're supplying – It's the fifth of a topper. Yeah. And China just straight up stopped making that revision of board without saying anything. Can you imagine? Yeah. That would be rough. Golden Tee has – well, yeah, Golden Tee, Big Buck Hunter, but they have that. yep yep yep all right well um first off everybody in chat thank you for being here we do have at the bottom user ideas if there is specific you know if you guys have something that you'd like us to discuss feel free to throw it out otherwise we're going to kind of roll through that list that we have here um but yeah number one p3 this so there was a big announcement today that um p3 p3 multimorphic apparently has signed or they they basically said welcome to the team um and it was Bowen Kerins and Colin MacAlpine. P3 Multimorphic. Yeah. So those two people are incredibly good players, incredibly skilled, skilled players. Here we go. Let me change to this. So, yeah, here was the announcement. So Bowen Kerins right here and Colin MacAlpine. Colin MacAlpine, I don't know what he's rated. I mean, he's like top ten. He's a former Pinburgh winner. And so is Bowen. No, Bowen's never played Pinberg, right? Well, I think back before he was a tournament director, he did. And he may have won it back then. P3 protein packs. Kaz, I'm glad you listened to the – World-class players, we'll call them. They're both really good. And the reality is Bowen Kerins, he was a huge part of the rules in Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. So, like, Spooky had hired Bowen originally to do that. Bowen and Colin have full-time jobs. Yes, this is not their full-time job. Um, this is just, I think they're, I don't know. I don't know what that means. They just say, welcomes two new team members. I don't know if this is like, hey, we're going to give you a machine. It could be contract. Or if it's contracted out. That's my guess. I don't know. They're probably contracted to consult or develop rules on one or more games would be my guess. Which I, I think can only help P3. Speaking of boards, Multimorphics is pretty sitting pretty tight right now. Nobody realizes it. So P3 has not, as far as I know, has not increased the price of their game over the course of COVID, right? So the last two, three years. That's my knowledge. I don't think they've increased the price of their game. And if anybody's tried to do anything with a computer, I think you'd realize how incredibly hard it is to find graphics cards and how expensive they are. So I know for a fact there are components in a P3 that are more expensive than they were three years ago, for sure. But yet they are selling games. I know of like, I don't know, three different TPN people that have bought one in the last year. Yeah, Jordan and Becca did for sure this year. Yeah. So, yeah, they're not selling any. You don't think they're selling any? They are selling games for sure. They're back order for, oh, okay. So I do know that manufacturing is delayed. I mean, yeah, I think Jerry said it's three months to put in an order to get any P3 from him. Not horrible. Yeah. Not horrible. If the new license is good, that would be it. No, I mean, compared to the Stern wait list, it's not particularly shocking. If you ordered a P3 today, if you called up Jerry or placed an email, you could buy it online. If you ordered one right now and then you called up Zach at Flip N Out Pinball and said, I want a Godzilla Pro, I'm pretty confident you'd get your P3 first. I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But Zach's not – is Zach a distributor for P3 anymore? No, I don't know. I don't think he's soft, right? P3 even has any distributors. They have before. I don't know if they currently do. I don't know how many people buy through the distributor network because it's so easy to buy from the site. Yeah, good point. Around $10K for P3, not much more than a certain – you're right. I love Pinball Bob. How you doing, buddy? Three months has nothing been waiting since July. I know. JP, Bob, you've talked about that a long time. Can't call Zach to order P3. I mean, you can call him and tell him you want to order a P3, and he'll probably try to talk you out of it. But I don't know. I know Zach isn't in love with the P3. P3 is very hot or cold, very, very hot or cold. Yeah. And most of the cold, most of the people that I hear negatives from are the high-end players. So if Bowen and Collin can come in and make that a fun system, that would be pretty great. Night, guys. Long drive tomorrow. Finish it. Jaeger, thanks for being here, man. Yeah, I think it's a great move for them. Hopefully that kind of takes them to the next level, you know, both in design and, you know, some more accepted pinball rule sets. I think it's a good move for P3, but I don't know if it's a system moving move, if that makes sense. As respected of players as I think Colin and Bowen are, and as respected as I think Bowen's rule set was for Alice Cooper, neither of them have the reputation, as far as I am aware, for being, they're not a lineman. Their name doesn't move systems. Yeah. So it doesn't do that. I think it does feed to what Joel's brought up, though, about that could make the system more attractive, or the games, because let's face it, they're not going back, I'm assuming, and, like, changing all the rules to all the past games. I don't know if they're going to do, like, George Lucas special edition stuff on their old games or not. I get a little concerned at the notion of that. But the thing is, I don't know how, you know, like tournament-wise, how good or bad their games fare. I have never encountered a P3 in a tournament. No. I've only ever heard of Lexi being in one, and I heard it was a disaster. Like, everyone was upset. And I don't know if the game was a problem, like physically, or the rules had exploits and they were pissed about the exploits. I don't know because I wasn't there. I don't really care. So I'm not sure that that – I still remain in the camp that P3's problem is they need to get the licensed title out, and that will move more units than anything else it could possibly do. 100%. Ideally, with it being a good game. Yeah. And Heist is a good game. It's just if it had been Ocean's Eleven, that would have moved far more units than Heist is able to move. 100%. That's my theory. We discussed this on Triple Drain, which just came out a few days ago. And all we can think of is I think P3, the smart thing would be is my thought was, let's say, I don't know. I have no idea if this number is high or low, but let's say there's 100 P3s out there right now. The chances of when they release this next game, if this next game is going to be a licensed game, Scott Danesi is doing the music, and then now we know that Bowen and Colin MacAlpine is going to be involved in rules. If we know, I mean, it's already building to be probably potentially already better than everything they've made before. So let's say there's 100 P3 owners out there. Out of 100, how many people are going to buy this game? Probably all 100, probably every single one. So in my mind, I would assume if P3 is going to try to figure out what's the demand going to be for this, they need to be able to manufacture at least as many modules as they already have sold units. yet alone this could be if it's a good theme there could be people that buy in so what does jerry want to do i don't know i don't know if they're like just stock like stocking up for this release and that's the delay they want to make sure that they really have parts ready for this or if there's actually a delay with the license or what but i would hope i mean it would suck if they announce this tomorrow and they can make 20 there's going to be a ton of people waiting um or what are you Who would you prioritize, right? I mean, if they can make 20, do you prioritize the 20 units, the people that buy the P3 system, the full system for this new game, or do you prioritize your fan base, the people that have owned your system for the last few years, which is more important, growing your audience or treating the P3 fanboys right? I don't know. I don't know. Until we see it. We've never seen a game yet that, like, caused them to have to really stress about that decision. Like, oh, whoa, no, we're selling so many. You know, it's kind of like what reminds me of is when Jersey Jack released Guns N' Roses, and you could tell they were shocked at how quickly the collector's editions were moving, well above their expectations, because it exceeded everything else they had done since Woz. And so, and P30's never been in that boat. So I don't know what you do. I mean, my thought is with the current state of production, it might be as simple as they can build the modules easier than they can throw together the entire system. But on the other hand, you know, if the system is like, you know, he's got plenty of P3 rock boards and it's just dropping in 1080p monitors and they've got a, you know, a stockpile of those back from 2018. Yeah. You know, a lot of that tech stuff has gone down in price because it's old. Yeah, good point. That's the difference between that and pinball. Good point. More physical pinball, I should say. But I've pointed this out before. I mean, the challenge is if you're going to buy in, and I see Mervin here, Methadone, the needle's moved a bit closer. I mean, the fact that P3 hasn't increased their price, and every other machine, every other manufacturer, the price is going up and up and up and up. Now, all of a sudden, $10,000 for a P3 is not nearly as absurd as it used to be. And then you throw on top of that, these are their deals. You buy a P3 with one play field, you're looking at $10,895. You throw in a second play field, it's only roughly two grand more. You throw in a third play field, and now you're looking at, what is it, a little over $4,000 more. But if you look at each individual game kits, the game kits range from like $2,500 to, yeah, $2,500, $2,700. I mean, a few of them are cheaper. But some of these, I mean, that's not a bad gig. You can really jump in if you really want to. And then Insanity Folder. As long as those specific games are what you want. Yeah. Well, okay, let's say the new license is great. To throw in Heist is probably not a bad idea, you know? I mean, I would. If I loved the new game, then Heist would definitely be the, because in my view, it's the strongest of the modules. I agree. And San Diego Falls has pointed out that Multimorphic obviously does more than the P3. They're also producing all of the P-Rock boards. And he pointed out there's a lot of other systems that use P-Rock. But I do know a lot of those other systems, like Spooky, just moved. All previous Spooky games were on the P-Rock board until now. Well, what was not the original ones, right? Like, I know TNA was P-Rock. They went to P3 Rock as of TNA. And now it's Scoopers, right? So TNA, then Alice Cooper and Rick and Morty Use multi-morphics equipment And then they went Pentatar for whatever this new game is Halloween and Ultraman And then they used the Penhek board set For Jetsons, America's Most Haunted Rob Zombie, Dominoes Got it Yeah, so I was just fiddling with Solobowski. They were using P-Rock. I know American Pinball was using P-Rock, but I think, didn't they just announce that American Pinball is changing? They do intend to change because Amtron is a board maker. I don't know if they've done that yet, though. Got it. Why are so many people getting away from the P-Rock, though? Why pay a third party more money when you can do it yourself? You're making yourself. Okay, okay. Bob, my main issue with P3 is it still doesn't feel like a completely analog pinball machine, and that's why I like pinball. It's not a big deal. I understand, and that's something people either look past that or they can't. And I get that. That bottom half, almost two-thirds of the play field, physically feels the same every single game. But can you look past that and experience the crane, or can you experience the art or the fact that the ball is tracking? I don't know. Some people can and don't have any problem doing that, and other people just struggle when a normal pinball machine has too much open area in the bottom half of a play field. So I get what you're saying. Thoughts on this art. This is something they announced like two weeks ago, this pinball machine core art. Either of you guys have an opinion on this art package at all? Yeah, I like it. It's fine. I don't know who would buy it. Personally, I would. I would take, if I was going to buy a P3 right now, to me, I don't want to buy a P3 and have it dedicated to one game. I would keep it with this type of generic art because I look at the P3, and the main point of the P3 is to swap it out, right? So I don't want heist art on my game because I'm not always playing heist. That's my opinion. The magnet, too, right? So it's easy to peel on and peel off, I'm assuming. Albany Pinball, Americans still using P-Rock. Yeah, well, Legends of Valhalla, I think, was originally coded on P-Rock, so that would make sense. See, I would just take the P3 and I'd put it in between two of my other games, and that would be my solution. Yep. What the heck is Dennis doing here? He must love Joel and Craig because the Chiefs are on. Yeah, so Zach, Zach's here in chat. Zach, Dennis actually told us right before that he forgot that the Chiefs are on. So I think he's multitasking. If you need to take a break and celebrate, you know, every touchdown, go ahead. They're still losing right now, but they're very close. Don't worry. I'm okay. Perfect. No, I just – because they just played Sunday. I just put it off. Oh, yeah, they're going to play next Sunday. Nope. I was wrong. It was today. Oh, well. Mistakes were made. Trump actually did a rollover aspects of the lore. I mean, there are some really cool things about the lower half of the P3 machine and the fact that, you know, your score is down there. Everything is down there. It's pretty sick. There is actually – I wish I had it pulled up. There's actually a link on Pinside where there's a guy that he's selling a mod where he took a 5-inch screen and he's obviously splitting off the display from a CERN and he's putting this 5-inch screen down in the playfield, in your apron. So right at the very base of your apron, there's this 5-inch monitor and he's selling this as like a $200 mod if you want to add that to your game. So if you don't want to have to look up when you're playing pinball, there are ways to do it, even with other machines. But, I don't know. So you have to buy a whole new apron to fit that? Or where does it go? Well, apparently, Premium and LE Games, the apron, I did not know this, but the apron is further away. It's, like, thinner. It's further away from the glass. He's saying the apron on a plastic game, that screen would be too close to the, so he's basically saying he should, if you did that, if you wanted it on your Pro, you would either have to, like, cut a hole in your plastic apron and put it under it, or you should buy a metal apron from somewhere and swap out your aprons. Pirates had that from factory. Trump, actually, yes, they did have the compass to tell you where to look, but it wasn't – they didn't – unless Pirates now has a way that you can swap out the compass to look at your score, but being able to do that is pretty cool. But I don't know. $200, yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah, I saw that. It's called HHD. That's what it's called. Heads Down Display. Let me Google that real quick. Thank you, Bob. Head Down Display. I'll pull it up if I can find it. If somebody knows... Pimbar Light, maybe. Head Down Display. I miss Steve Bruton. If there's a way... No, I hear I am just Googling at this point. So you're right. I know that's what it's called, Bob, but I cannot find it. I wish somebody could send a link if they have it. It's a cool idea. I do like it. Oh, Bob, so you can't post links. Never mind. Do you know what the title is? Just post the title of it. When are we going to see some Godzilla accessories? Oh, good point, Zach. Is that like a prompt? It's like, oh, when are we going to be able to buy Godzilla accessories? And then flipping out here in chat goes, right now, bye, bye, bye. You can buy, yeah. Introducing Pinsight. There we go. Thank you, Bob. Introducing. Pinsight HDD. Pinsight HDD. There it is. All right. Let me, there we go. All right. We found it. I've got nothing. Zach's got nothing. He's holding out on us. All right. So here it is. Here is what I, here's what we saw. So if we look at these pictures, this is the whole thing. See down here in the apron? Right there. You got this little monitor. And so he's splitting off the graphics from the upper monitor and wiring it down, which is what we do for streamers. We have, we use these boards to grab that. It creates an HDMI signal. But he must have some other wiring harness in here to pull power. but he's like i mean here he has it on all of his games so it's like a little five inch monitor so i don't know oh there it is yeah i like it just like jjp exactly wow that looks great so it's not bad i i don't i mean it does feel like it's just a monitor that's set in there i don't know because you can see it's literally just set on top of the artwork unless you put like a magnet or something on the back. Yeah, you're kidding me? $200. $200 is what he's selling it for. So, I know that the LVDS board that we use in streaming is like $35. So, that's $35. He probably has an HDMI cable in there. And then he's got to be pulling power for this display from something. And then the monitor itself. On these spike systems, is there not a service outlet near the coin door anymore? I think there is. I think there is. I think he said it keeps it in place with a magnet. Okay, but realistically, max he has, there's probably $100 for the parts in here. This is a cool one. I don't know exactly how he did it, but over here in the Elvira, he was able to mount it. I think this is where what, like the piece of the couch was? I don't know. But you need if you could easily swap between games. I mean, if it's held on with a magnet, Mervin, you probably could swap. I think the service outlet is now in the head. Oh, you are right. The service outlet's all the way back. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. so i'm pretty sure it's straight lv lvds so he's not even oh good point so he's grabbing the lvds signal from the actual node board main node board and if this display is also lvds then he doesn't even have to convert it so then everything just got even cheaper oh my i still love your name by the way um where's the pin bar hey rob is here top rope i don't know it's not 200 for the parts but I get it. I mean, it's a pinball hobby. There's plenty of mods that people have $2 worth of filament that they printed on a 3D printer and painted it. But, I mean, it takes time to assemble them. So, I don't know. Thoughts on that? I mean, I'm just even in chat, I'm seeing some mixed reviews. Dennis, you don't have a – well, Craig, you do. Would you consider getting something like this for your Avengers? Do you feel like it's hard to look at? Ultimately, I don't think so. I think there's other mods I would get first before this for that kind of price. I entertain upgrading the speakers maybe a shaker motor You got to get the shaker motor Something that going to add a little bit I don find that to look up I mean a couple of times it got me but that was kind of like early in my experience with the game where I was really, you know, trying to look at the cause and effect of what I was doing on the board, you know. So I'd hit something and I'd be really, you know, anxious to see what effect that had on the back glass or on the LCD. but yeah, these days I find that I'm struggling to keep my head down or something like that, or I'm looking up at the wrong time or something like that. Yeah, there's never a good time to look up. Dennis, you don't like Shakers? That's what I'm reading in chat. I have a few. Yeah, it's a great mod. Yeah, I mean, if you look at this guy's games, he's got all the mods. So Art Blades, he's got Penn Stadium and all these, and I'm pretty sure all of these games that he's showing pictures of are LEs, so I think the creator of this mod has no problem spending money. Here's his toes right there, if anybody's into that. But it's interesting. I mean, it looks clean, which is a good thing. I'm assuming it's not that difficult to get it all, you know, tucked in there. I don't know, because there's a – I don't know on a metal apron if there's a hole on the other side. I would hate the wires to be going up this way and then through it. Yeah, like, yeah. I don't know. We'll see. I'm not a fan of this, by the way. This guy's flip rovers. He has a purple one on the left and an orange one on the right. I don't agree with that at all, but that just looks weird. Hot takes. Shaker motors make games worse. Do not agree. I am a huge fan of the shaker motor. Love it. I would think it depends a lot on the title with good calls and audio cues. I don't feel much need to look at this fight. Good point. Good point. Good point. Go to Great Links to stop my game shaking. Oh, I see. Yeah, Travis, the guys I do triple-during with, Travis and Tom both are totally against shaker builders. They don't like them. Yeah, they're like, it's going to make me tilt. Too distracting. You guys talk about the Godzilla 8.8 code yet? No, I haven't. That's a great – I know Dennis Creasel loves nothing more than talking about code updates. So strap in, Dennis. I'm sure it'll be something really important to the three people on this chat who have the game. So, go ahead. You play Godzilla, though. I mean, do you not care at all? The color will change probably by the time I play it again. So, no, I don't care. All right. Well, guess what? We're reading it anyway. Yeah, let's get into it. All I care about is what's new. That's all I care about. First three lines. Yeah, skill shot. So new movies, new secret skill shot, new super secret skill shot. That's good. Fix an issue, power line. There's now a micro wizard mode. Interesting choice of word. Micro wizard mode when you complete Tesla Strike. Okay, like that. I think that used to be referred to as a mode. Well, micro wizard mode when you tanks is completed. When you complete tank multiple on a city. Wow, okay. Okay, micro wizard mode when you complete bridge attack wizard mode. So these are all unique. Okay, what is this? Godzilla wallop. This is new. Dennis, I know you're loving it. Nothing better than watching somebody read a text file. Is this on the pro? This is the premium, but I would assume Godzilla wallop. Adding this rule will give awards to reverse shots through the building. Shoot during modes for helping spot a shot. Okay, so this is actually, I like this because this is a thing, and I would assume anybody that's played this, right here. So this is the main building shot. You go through the middle, and it goes, whoop, it just spits out on the left side. This left side is a hard shot. This is a hard shot. It's tight, and I don't think it's actually meant to be, like, there's never, this shot is never picked in a mode. You can see there's no insert in front of it. It's never, you're never supposed to shoot this shot. The problem is you do hit that shot. And when you hit this shot, it goes whipping right through the building and comes back at you down the middle. So it's actually kind of a wizard or a tough shot. Not only is it tough, okay, it gives a reward for the death shot. Trump Pantsy knows it is a dangerous shot. So the fact that now they're calling it the Godzilla wallop, adding this rule will give awards for reverse shots through the building, shoot during those, until spotting a shot. That's a consolation. I'm okay with that. adding a ball save for this shot for a limited amount of for a limited amount of uses that's also not a bad idea so hot notice that they added a ball save timer exactly yep a million points when the motor is running and no shots were spotted we're fine okay so i'm i'm cool with that because that was a shot that when i was streaming i would hit that thing and be and you get two ball saves for straight down that's awesome normal wizard mode but they call it a micro because it's the microscopic under the oh gotcha gotcha gotcha Godzilla Wallop. Godzilla Wallop. All right. They did that with Avengers, too. Like, when you go up into the Iron Man Tower, sometimes they give you an extended ball save when that ball comes down. That's nice. Because depending on what's going on in the game, it can be, you know, you don't necessarily have that. If you just let it go through that upper flipper, sometimes it can drain pretty quickly on you straight down. So, anyway. What about this right here? Saucer attack multiball. Flippers are now killed. when pop bumper is hit to start the multiball all balls will launch up the intro display i'm a fan of this i anytime that a game kills your flippers i'm a fan are you do you guys like that i think it creates a moment i yeah dennis can barely contain his kill it all do you like moments in pinball dennis do you care about are you a moment maker moment chaser or whatever that Zach's all about? I experienced that moment every time my last ball drained. Oh, when your ball, when your flippers died, yeah. Did you buy the TPN Moment Maker shirt, Dennis? Is that? I did not. No? How's that Triblind flipping out t-shirt treating you, by the way? My Hulk ones already got the image coming up, because that's what happens when you deviate from cotton. I love how different you and Zach feel on Triblind. I mean, you guys are completely on this. It is soft. I'm not denying that. Yeah. Super comfortable. I don't even feel like I'm wearing a shirt right now. Yeah. Screw code updates. I want to know, Creasel's great on Craig Bobby's co-hosting this week on the pinball show. Good question, Zach. Dennis, do you have any criticism or critique on Craig's co-hosting? It is about a B+. A B+. Sort of like a – He reminds me of a Canadian Greg Bone. Not quite as much of a yes man as Greg, but most of the way there. All right. All right. Tremendous bomb. Thank you for the follow. Appreciate that. I strongly disagree. I strongly disagree. No, you do not. I did enjoy your I was wronged by Rush story, though. That was fine. That was pretty great. Oh, I'm so sorry. I just saw her see a paper often. It was a mess at me. They told me, go away. You're not a girl. Oh, man. You're not sorry. You're not sorry. All right, I'm not. Is there anything else? This board is burned into my psyche forever. It seems like some of the people in chat have read this in detail. Is there anything else I'm missing here? DJ Mixer, calm down, Dennis. I know DJ Mixer, that's probably one of your big fan of that. Just nothing better than making your pinball machine a jukebox, right? I mean, people like that stuff. I would just put on an MP3, but turn the volume down. Fairly useless, I'm going to call it. So at the end of the day – You already hear that stuff enough when you're playing a game. Like, why in the world would anybody want to hear anything? I've never met anyone who was just like, gosh, I sure wish I could hear my game more. Never. Never. But they may be out there. If anything, I'm trying to drone it out with, like, you know, my own music just because of that. That's Dinden's nickname on the weekends. That was why all those pinball streamers got worked up about Twitch and the crackdown on DMCA is because everyone was violating copyright left and right because they were sick of hearing the games. Yeah, I don't. I mean, like when I had Led Zeppelin, that was a game that I didn't mind. But I would still, if I wanted to listen to Led Zeppelin, I'm not going to go down and turn on the pinball machine and turn on DJ Mixer. Ray Day, okay, Ray Day's got a point. Raymond comes in here, Stern Coder, and defends it. That is a valid point. Deadpool does actually have some good songs. I'll give you that. That's the only thing in Led Zeppelin, though. So, back to you, back to your statement. Ray Day said Deadpool. Ray Day said Deadpool? Well, it's got that fun disco multiball, so. Gotcha. All right, so what do we got here? So, P3 new hires. I think that's pretty cool. Good on them. Good on them. Oh, are we still on that topic? I forgot. Well, I'm just, we're closing it up. So, Pinball Industry Awards. This is why Triple Drain, by the way, is two hours every episode regardless. because we're just swinging it on from topics i will tell you tom holding them back i will tell you i try hard to get to keep it going but travis can go like he can i right when i think a topic's about done travis can just like dive into it so he's and then tom you know he sprinkles in his his color commentary it's great he talks yeah yeah he's great um what do we got deadpool's life Yeah, you're right. Bobby with Disney. Pinball Industry Awards. So what did they announce? They announced that we are doing it this year. I said we. I am not involved. And I'm okay with that. I know Zach's not involved. Yeah, I'm not involved either. I put my name in. No one called me. I blame David for that. Well, Joel definitely wasn't getting in given the kind of unilateral authority we've given to David Dennis on organizing the team this year. Giving him way too much power. Way too much power. Well, I'll be the only Canadian on this board. You know, for those who don't know, it really comes down to who's willing to do the work because it's a lot of work. Yeah. So every time we start doing that, I'm like, why are we doing this? Can I still vote in the Pinball Industry Awards? Yes. So they changed that. So before, I remember last year, we basically. Before we had a ban on cause flat out. before we put together a committee and the committee did all the nominations it was a group of i forget how many people were on that call like 12 12 people nominated everybody yeah i think we ended up with 12 on the for the excellence awards yeah those were the right to the the podcasts you know podcast writer photographer things like that do you need a pin number to vote yes um but this year they're changing it so this year we're open some more judges so this year we're opening up the judging pool to additional pinball hobbyist personalities to give you more people the opportunity to judge. So anybody that's a pinball social media provider, tournament organizers, top 50 ranked player overall and women can join podcasters, streamers, video content creators, and writers. So that's great. I hope – do you remember, Dennis, how many – it was like 100-something people voted, right? I think 40, actually, just 40. Oh, wow. I thought it was more than that. But it was – I mean, it was still a decent turnout. Yeah, no, we were really pleased with how many we thought. I was hoping we would get half that. I was hoping we could at least get 20. I had two goals was to pass that 20 mark, so I was really happy when we passed 30. And I wanted a majority of them to not be in TPN because the whole thing at the time was, oh, this is, you know, everyone. This is pinball, so everyone craps on everything that's new. and everyone was like, oh, this is all about people giving themselves their own awards and stuff. And so to me, for the category awards, it was really important to try and get a lot of non-TPN people involved. I actually did a lot of outreach to other groups, other media creators to see if they would do it, and a lot of them agreed. Good point. The biggest hurdle we had last year was so many people didn't want to vote, and many times they cited the fact that because of the pandemic they hadn't played so many of the games, They were just uncomfortable taking a ballot outright. So I'm hoping that's not nearly the same problem this year. Well, I mean, if it's the same, if it's the, we kind of discussed this on Triple Drainer last time we talked Twippy Awards, but it's just like, what games are you actually voting on? It's just, I would assume you have Led Zeppelin, you have Mando, you have Godzilla. Those are the three sterns. You have Halloween and Ultraman, Legends of Valhalla. I think that's it. When we got the three P3 releases. Oh, well, they didn't release any new modules, right? Because Heist was the year prior. It's about games, not modules. Gotcha. So you have Sorcerer's Apprentice, Silver Falls, and Scoot and Shoot. Scoot and Shoot. Scoot and Shoot's taking it all. And Halloween and Ultraman are treated as separate games as well. Gotcha. Okay. How is Cacton Canyon Remake being handled? Good question. We weren't aware of – I'm trying to actually – I have to check. I'm sorry. I can't remember if that's in or we didn't think they shipped any out by December 1st. I don't remember. I don't know if any consumers got in. Technically, they shipped them to the location. I think we left it out. I think we said it will have to be in next year's ballot. Gotcha. Okay. What does it say? What do they mean by these judges will vote in a – oh, no, sorry. The PAA judges will now vote via write-in for the Excellence Awards. What do they mean by that? So that's the big change. So last year there were three different award types, and there were three different processes for each. There was the Hall of Fame, which that was what had over 100 voters for the game. And that's going to be exactly like it was. That's the one thing that's open to a popular vote. Then we had the category awards, which are the awards for the games. And that was the panelists of Pinball Media. And this time that panel has expanded to be more informed hobbyists, I guess would be a good way to describe it. So that's why we're adding the tournament aspects. because that was a feedback thing we got from Lasco is, hey, you know, there are a lot of people who organize and participate in tournaments who would know these games. The idea is we want an audience that knows the games. We don't want people asking mailmen to go and vote for them and having no knowledge about pinball whatsoever. So we're using these things like being a podcaster or being a high-level tournament player as proxies for knowledge. And then last year we had that team of 12 TPN people that chose the Excellence Awards. This time, those excellence awards are just right in boxes for the category award judges. Got it. So TPN is not going to decide those anymore. It's going to be the same judges as the game awards. Yeah, and that was hard because as a member of TPN, we kind of made a rule of, like, let's not nominate any TPN people. Award ourselves. You know, like we don't want this to be TPN makes awards for TPN. So I'm all for more people and just write it in. And then there's no pressure discussion or anything like that. This was – I totally forgot about this. This was the Hall of Fame. So everybody, anybody had the ability to write this. Is Kelts on the ballot? I think it was on last year's ballot. It is not on this year's ballot. Why isn't the world's number one pinball podcaster helping? Number one pinball podcaster? Who would that be? Zach? I think it's Tom Graff is what I'm thinking. All planning for building the voting tools and stuff is all internal to TPN, but the votes will come from outside and in if you qualify. So this is pretty cool because last year we nominated a game per every 10 years, and so these were the games that won. We had one electromechanical Grand Prix. That was kind of expected. But you got Meteor in the 70s, 8-Ball Deluxe in the 80s, Medieval Madness in the 90s, Lord of the Rings 2000, and Wizard of Oz 2010. So now we technically need a 2020s, right? Yeah, I would think so. We didn't actually have any discussion about any reforms to that, so I'd have to check with. Last year, I think David built the ballot tool for that, and it was Jesse Jay from Jesse Jay's Pinball that really worked on getting that list created. So most of the list will just be carried over other than the – yeah, no, actually. I think Zach in chat would be correct. We probably wouldn't vote on the 2020s until we get all that decade out. So all that really has to happen is from last year, we just have to delete the ones that already won so you can't pick them again because they were a drop-down list, except for the EMs. I think we did a write-in for EMs because ain't no one got time for that. Yeah. Good question. Does Nordman and Dennis have different votes? I don't think Nordman will qualify for a ballot. All right. That's a bad day. So, yeah. If you're in the industry, you're disqualified, and he is the canary of the industry. That's right. So if you work for a manufacturer, you cannot vote. Correct. It makes sense. So, yeah, I remember it was a great award show last year. I think it was a lot of fun. I personally was involved. Dennis was highly involved in it. Craig, did you? Yeah, I was on that 12-person committee, I think. That's right, yeah. I feel like that was one of the first calls that we had together, but it was a good time. So I'm looking forward to it. It should be a good time. It says come January, right? Has there been a date set or is this the – Well, the way we're currently planning is there will not be a ceremony like we did last time. Okay. Aha. You're just going to, like, publish it? Yeah, basically. We've discussed some strategies on how to do it through social media with some, like, announcement things that we could roll out over multiple days. Got it. And just kind of be like that and not have it be the ceremony at all because last year we had Zach and Greg do the ceremony hosting, and it's a lot of work and that's not happening this year. And no one else felt capable of doing it like that. So we thought, well, what are some other ways? Because we want to make it be about the awards anyway. It's not about the night. And we're not – because we still wanted to do it in January. It's like unless you're doing the online ceremony, there's no other option. There's not like a show we could do it at or anything live. Yeah. So that was a decision that we reached as a, okay, we're going to move forward. and what can we sacrifice and still give the awards, you know, still do the crystals. And that was the piece that no one was comfortable replacing them on. Probably the piece, too, that's the most work. I mean, well, I don't know the most, but it's right up there. Yeah, I mean, just based off of what Zach said for the editing and the stress of all of that, it could very well be, I don't know, building the – I just finished a couple days ago building the judges' ballot this year. I have over 80 pieces of skip logic. I think it took me five hours to develop. So, but I still think the putting together the show would probably beat me out on time. Wow. Yeah. Maybe still get some acceptance video. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. If reach out to the people. So when they now have an acceptance clip of some sort would be cool. We discussed it. Yeah. Put it on the content. We talked a lot about a lot of different ways to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Trim the fat and let Greg do it solo. So that sounds good. Yeah, not a bad idea there. But, yeah, all good stuff. Looking forward to it. Any idea when – I mean, January is like – that's a few weeks away. Probably like the announcements of the winners, you mean? That will probably be last week of January. We will – the window for applying for ballots will be pretty short. It was short last year, too. I think it was like seven to ten days or something. Okay. And then at the start of the year, the ballots would be sent out. And because of the process we use where everyone applies, just says they want to be a judge, we vet that per our rules. And then we can send custom links for the voting so we can control the voting. We know there's not any shenanigans going on with bot votes or people voting multiple times and things. So it's really very structured in that regard. So tallying and all of that is really easy for us once we get the ballot. That's why I do all the skip logic up front. So the idea will be that will happen in the early part of January. Then once we know the winners of that, obviously the committee that's overseeing the awards will have to tally up the excellence handwritten stuff, figure out those winners. Everything else will be auto-tallied by SurveyMonkey, basically. And then we have to put together the announcement clips and stuff because we're leaning towards doing like a video strategy for that. It's just not going to be a ceremony in the traditional sense. Yeah. very cool yeah i mean i remember it was really good it was zach did a great job on it last year but um i have faith in that committee and i so the committee it's rebecca from fliptronic george fisher that's don't panic flip david dennis uh amanda hamilton she does the free play pinball podcast dennis greasel boom one the only and mike castleman he's from uh pinballers so they got two Canadians on the ballot. Oh, for God's sake. Yeah, fitting a third one on there, Craig. Yeah, that'd be tough. Whew. That's a lot, yeah. Pushing it, pushing it. So, yeah, awesome. Is there anything else, Dennis, you wanted to say about the PIAs? No. I mean, what people hate, let us know afterwards, and we should look about making improvements the following year. It's a learning process. The main thing I've always wanted to emphasize with it is that it's very much, it's not meant to compete with the Twippies. The Twippies are a different thing entirely as far as I'm concerned. And I think that's even more clear now than it was before given the structure. The biggest thing we got, I thought it came off really well last year. And ultimately once we were done with it pretty well received. I just think some people were kind of sad that they didn't get to vote. And it's like, well, you know, we have these conditions because we want to take these hobbyists, as we're using the term hobbyists rather than media and our personalities, because we've expanded so much beyond pinball media in and of itself. But the idea is these are individuals that are so vested in the hobby. In theory, they should know stuff about all the games. And we just can't, you just don't get that in any sort of People's Choice Award. Movies, books, video games, you know, all of them. So that's why we do it this way, is to see if we get different results. And in fact, I heard from someone today asking me when we were doing these, because they are planning, they're not, it's not TWIP. Someone else was planning some pinball ceremony stuff and awards in February. Oh, wow. And I said, you know, let me know when you have that stuff set because I'll promote it. Like on Eclectic Gamers and stuff, I'm more than happy to. The more shows, the better as far as I'm concerned. The more awards, the better. Were those the reach-arounds? The reach-arounds? No, this is a non-TPM thing. It wasn't a reach-arounds. Yeah. A reach-arounds are there. I'm hoping the reach-arounds happen again, but I have not. Jeff didn't ask me for anything with it last time, and I'm assuming he probably won't this time because what would I bring to the table? Nothing. Nothing. So, but I'm, it was so well received. I would think it would happen. Yeah, it was. Apparently some people actually thought that it was serious. So you never, it's pinball. You never get universal reception to anything. Some of y'all don't have any senses of humor. Good point. Humor, it's kind of like rumor. Isn't that, that's such a good transition. I'm pretty embarrassed for that. That was terrible. Rumors, rumors. Oh yeah, that's right. There it is right there. God has reached around. Did you buy that one, or what did you win it for? Give it a try. You bought that, right? That was one that you could pay for? I'll never tell. This was hard earned. God damn it. Zach, is Kaneda getting a Kudos? Kaneda Kudos Awards? I have no idea what they're doing. That's proudly right behind my monitor. Dennis, if this is rough, we can, if you, if the. What's been going on, it's for the – my heart can only take so much. And I'm just seeing these turnover and then another turnover. It's probably best you're not. I actually do get too anxious sometimes, which is silly. I'm getting too old for my heart to take that sort of stuff now. That is my dad in basketball. And my dad, Purdue basketball, Purdue College basketball is like his favorite. He's so passionate about it. And I realized watching a basketball game, basketball is so, I mean, it's constant. Like there's no, at least with football, a play happens, you take a breath. Play happens, you take a breath. Like basketball is just go, go, go, go. And it's, I mean, it's like first quarter and I'm already anxious. I'm like, I can't do this for the first half. I can't do, I cannot watch a whole game. And my dad, my dad will not watch, my dad will not watch basketball live. Purdue basketball, he will not watch it on the TV live. The only way he watches it live is if he's there, in person. and my parents, if you ever go to a Purdue basketball game, they buy tickets, they have season tickets on the very top row, and it's so that my dad can stand. He stands the entire game because he can't sit. So if you go to a Purdue basketball game and you look at, if you're there, just scan the top row all the way around, and you will see a guy standing up like this the whole time. He's either doing this or this the whole freaking game. That would be my dad. Go say, hey, Jim, your son's an idiot. Just lead with that, and he'll figure it out. My word is being able to podcast with Dennis Creasel every week. No trophy could make me more complete as a man. Wow. Wow, yeah. Speaking of Dennis and Zach, Dennis, I am curious. The two watches that you gave Zach, I saw your repair video on his watch. What type of watch? I want to pull up a picture. What was the type of watch that you got for Nicole? The brand is a defunct brand called R.A. Kenyon. Back pre-Quartz, there were a lot of brands like that that would get third-party movements, and so they didn't have to develop the hardware behind the watch. They would design the dial and get them put together, and R.A. Kenyon was one of those. So they used a Berman watch, which was a Swiss movement maker from the 30s until 1969. I think they went out of business. All right, so what can I search to find that watch? Pull that up there, Joel. Well, I couldn't find much info on the company itself, so about the only thing is if you search YouTube, you'll probably see my video. Oh, you did make a video. I'm not aware of any other repair video of one of those on YouTube, but I didn't look too closely because what I do is when I disassemble, I actually film it, any watch I do. I film it, even if I'm not going to put it online, and that's what I use as my guide in case I get stuck putting it back together. don't panic George is here is Dennis threatening to leave TPS is that why flipping out is showering him with excessive love here and on the last podcast with Greg Bobby I don't know Dennis when's your contract up on yeah well you know I'm coming up on the second year one because we started up in February so that's sort of my that's sort of the reset period in my mind the writers getting way longer on this one yeah well you know so this is things have grown this watch right here this is the one that you gave zach right this is the nicole this is nicole's watch okay that's beautiful i like the yeah i like the the i don't know i was gonna say numbers but there's got to be a technical term for that yeah yeah the numerals the numerals okay so that's that was what you got nicole so what did you get for Zach? He got him a Hamilton Pilot Pioneer Chronograph. Do you have a video on that? No, because that one was professionally serviced. That one should show up, I would think. What am I searching here? Hamilton, is it... Pilot Pioneer Chrono, I think. It's got a really long name. And no, Chris, I've not seen any good vampire pin since Stern Electronics Dracula. Which one of these? Because apparently there's a ton of them. You see the top row you've got? This up here? Seven from the left, I think. No, higher up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There you go. That's it. Got it. Ooh. Well, look at that. Yeah, that's a classic Hamilton for sure. but it's the chrono right isn't it yeah no that what he ended up loading isn't the right one that's a field watch yeah it's the one above it there joel like well apparently i can't count the seven there'll be other dials on it right dennis on the face yeah there's a they're called they're called sub dials and there are two it was uh it was a prior screen you clicked and you've gone into a different screen you didn't do the right left i meant the left of the photo this one Oh, damn it, Joel. So now go down a row. Straight down with your mouse. Right here? Yes, that's it. This is the one. I'm going to click on it. No, yeah. I'm going to click on it. Okay. Woo! Sorry, I keep looking at the Twitch feed, and I forget that there's the lag. Yeah. Oh, this is neat. So the date, but it's like at an angle. I've never seen that. Yeah, it's at the 430, yeah. The 430. God, I'm learning so much. That a normal spot to put it Is it a white face like that though Dennis Or is it black No they make a black one but the one I got him was a champagne dial Was it? Nice. Yeah. Very cool. Leather strap, or did you go with the... No, it's like that. It's the NATO. Is it? Yeah. Nylon NATO. Nice. It's kind of like, yeah, military, right? That's kind of what it's inspired from? Yeah, well, yeah, that's probably why they call it the pilot, pioneer. Yeah. It's based on a flight watch. The layout of those numerals is very, like, Allied World War II style. But they didn't have chronos back then. Rilla Pinball. Dennis, what are your thoughts on watch gang subscription services? What is that? I wouldn't do any subscription services. It's better to save money and buy a watch you want. All right. Saul Hudson. Do mine. Google Apple Watch Series 3. All right. Okay. Do you have a watch that keeps swatch internet time? What? Check your phone. I don't know what swatch internet time is. I do have one that syncs to the atomic clock, though. I have a G-Shock. So, that's that. Casio. Oh, this is cool. This is what, so, Zach just sent me this. So, that's what, that was your package. Those are nice. That's a very well done. Beautiful boxes. Well, very thoughtful. That's a great gift. That's a great gift. Letters to Santa. But you also, it wasn't just that you, you know, found those, right, Dennis? Like on the Kohl's, you actually serviced it yourself. Right. The Hamilton was a watch that I bought at one point, and it was like it was too big for me. So it's sort of like, okay, well, let's just give, you know, I thought I don't want to sell it. I'd rather give it, find someone that maybe is bigger than me that could wear it. And then, yeah, the other one was one I picked up off eBay as an old thing, And I, you know, I stripped it and serviced it and then put it back together and cleaned it up as best I could. Hey, Sam. Hey, are you calling me fat? No, I think he is. I think it is. And I think it's fair to say that, Zach, you are a larger person than Dennis Greasel. I think his wrist size is bigger than mine. I got a little, like, Trump wrist. Zach, you're not big. You just have a big old wrist. Big bone. That's what he's saying. Big bone. You have Trump wrist. Good one. Nice job. All right, so rumors, rumor time. What actually, what I wanted to talk about was Eclectic Gamers podcast, which Dennis and Tony host. He mentioned something, and this is the first that I'd heard of this. This is the first that I heard of this. So James Bond, James Bond. Really? I swear I've talked about James Bond on other shows. I have heard of James Bond, and every time I'm like, okay, James Bond, how would they do that? Because there's been so many different actors. If they only focus on one actor, you're not going to get the movie. You know, people are going to be upset. Like, I don't want Daniel Craig James Bond. I want this James Bond. I want the blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, do you do Zach's Stern hybrid model of, like, you don't pull any James Bond. You just get the James Bond theme, but now it's like a spy-themed game. I don't know. But I don't know where they're going to go with it. But, Dennis, you said on your podcast that the rumor that you were hearing is that they got Pierce Brosnan to do call-outs. now i do know for for a fact that you're rumored two episodes ago i don't know how factual that one was so i'm hoping it's called it is called rumor corner not fact corner oh good are you not rumor tamed right yeah so so i'm kind of in the watch hobby as well gold knives oh okay yeah so i am very curious that is a good thought and to be honest tony brought up a really he basically said, if they got Judi Dench, those would be some really good call-outs, like instructions and stuff. Well, I agree with him, but that wasn't what the rumor was. Yeah, yeah. Isn't she, hasn't Judi Dench been knighted? Sir Durbin? She is Dame Judi Dench. I don't know, but it's a good thought. It's a good conversation. I'll chat if you guys have any ideas. Now, maybe someone who's more familiar with the Goldeneye pin could say whether or not – did Pierce Brosnan do the call-outs for Goldeneye? Because I don't know. I've only played Goldeneye like twice, and they were at shows, and I couldn't hear it. Yeah, I don't know. Because he might have. I don't know. Maybe he's done them before. Steve, top tier. How you doing, man? James, I thought it would be cool, like Doctor Who, where you pick the doctor instead of pick your – I agree, but it's just – licensing runs everything, right? I mean, the chance that they license – Let's say Pierce Brosnan is in it. Could they only focus on his stuff? Are they going to pull clips from Casino Royale? Well, I think the idea is the call-outs are the – it's the narration, right? So the way I was envisioning it, at least, would be along the lines of who would be saying jackpot? Who's going to be saying shoot the left orbit to light Goldfinger's laser? And in that way, it doesn't really matter. Just like it doesn't matter that Carl Carl Weathers is voicing, talking about scenes from Mandalorian that he wasn't in. Yeah, good point. So that's kind of, but I don't know. And Frozen isn't exactly a young dude anymore either. Like he's, I don't know he would sound, well, who knows. I mean, it's still sound. I mean, the closest comparison I can give you is a little bit after Sean Connery retired from film acting, after the disastrous League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was probably reason enough to quit, he voiced a James Bond video game. And people loved it. But obviously he sounded so much older than when he played James Bond because even when he did, what, You Only Live Twice or whatever, the Thunderball remake for that non-Eon Studio one, that was like 80 or early 80s. I think it was 1980. so it'd been like over two decades since he'd played Bond but it didn't matter people were still like yeah say it like this they were into it so in a way yeah he might it's not going to sound like how he sounded in Die Another Day but but who cares it's just the idea of having that name associated with it I mean the rumors were always back until now that I'm hearing this whole back to the future thing with Elwynn on this Kapow stuff was that Elwynn is a huge Bond fan, and that Elwynn would do Bond, and if that's the case, that's what moves the games. Pierce doesn't really matter in a way. It doesn't matter who's your narrator, but it would be cool to a lot of people who, you know, they're like, I love that Hooper does the call-outs in Stranger Things, and I love that Carl Urban does the call-outs in Star Trek, and they look for that. They want that tie-in. Carl does the call-outs in Mandalorian. Yeah. Well, you mentioned on your podcast of, like, who was the last person to really do really, I don't know, Like, Lord of the Rings had Gimli, did all the call-outs. But to be honest, and I know this isn't probably fair, but The Hobbit, all of the call-outs are done by Gandalf, but it's not actual Sir Ian McKellen. It's not him. It's Bubbly Boboff. But it is a very good voice actor. Yeah, I actually thought it was him. That's how good he is, I think. It was really, really well done, which is totally different than like Guardians of the Galaxy. That all of the voice acting in that is nowhere near what it should be to the point where. But Hobbit's voice, like I actually felt like it's really good because of how great the voice actor was. Rating party. Hey, VR. Cade, how you doing? Thank you for the raid. Appreciate you. Yeah, I mean, they're great. They're great soundalikes out there. They don't all bubbly bobo their way through. so you had talked about I don't know why I thought of this but you talked about well look at Marc Silk what he did for the Turtles was really good yeah you had talked about Sean Connery sounding old but he's always been kind of older than you think he is but the reality this is a fun fact I remember seeing on the internet a while ago what do you think the age difference was between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery when they filmed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade it was Something like six years. Yeah, because Sean Connery is his father, right? So you would hope he's at least 18 years older? Because they look very different. It's 12. 12 years. So Harrison Ford looks younger than he should, and Sean Connery really embraced the gray hair and looked older than he is. I don't know. That's a fun fact you can tell your friends. What are they going to use that for? You know, a conversation starter. Hey, I'm Dennis. Did you know? Boom. Sean Connery ain't doing any new call-outs. Oh, good. Good. If we see a bond machine, we'll include all of the bonds, one bond or two to three bonds. Zach, what if it's your hybrid model, man? What if it's no bonds, you know? It's just you are the new bond. You are 007. I don't know. Harrison looking way better than Sean Connery. Yeah, good point. Wanted Back to the Future Too Late. The arcade, what do you mean you wanted Back to the Future? Yeah, what do you mean? It's coming. It's still coming. Yeah, but the arcade works for J.J.P. So what does he mean by wanted Back to the Future and it's too late? Yeah. I think do a Craig Bobby Bond only. Too confusing to do all the Bonds. I wanted to make that game. Yeah. I, yeah. I don't know. I know the only person that I know that's, like, super into James Bond is David Dennis. So I'm pretty sure he'd get into it. But I don't know. I think Roger Moore was the best James Bond. It's crazy. What is this? But here's a good question. I mean, what is this saying about Rush, though? like nobody like people are already past it you know what i mean like i feel like there are rush fans that are like i'm buying it like they already know they're buying it they already have a call in with the distributor they know they're buying rush and that's true for everything yeah but everybody else is like i don't care about rush but they're just i'm just gonna step away for one second i'll be back but we're already talking about the next pin like man he's running look could Craig go? He booked it out of there. I don't know. I just think that's interesting that we're already, yeah. Rush is Mega Man's dog. Good reference there, right? I am a big fan of Mega Man. There is, on pin side, there's a guy that took a flash. I don't know, Dennis, if you like Mega Man or not, but there's a guy that took a flash pinball machine and rethemed it to Mega Man, and it was actually really, it was really, really cool. I've only played, like, one Mega Man game, and I never won it. They're hard, yeah. Just had someone sign on to a Beyonce interest. Oh, boy. If there was a Beyonce pin, my wife would be all over it. Yeah. But Craig is backed. Craig is backed. All right, guys. Oh, you're good. Had to let the dog out, and that's not a euphemism. All right. JJP, Back to the Future would be awesome. It would. There would be a good mode where the play field would go back to being a white wow. Wow. Oh, Saul. Where the play field would go back to being a white wood after it all flaked off. That's really good. That was really good, Saul. Oh, my God. That was really good. Y'all are mean tonight. Wow. That was really creative, though. Well, yes, it was. Craig must not have to pee a bottle like that. Mega Man was too hard. Mega Man is a hard game. Those old Nintendo games were no joke. based on Craig's call of Active Future I've already got my name down for the next Elwynn LE thanks Craig yeah I mean there's Elwynn 4 for 4 right there's I mean Godzilla when I heard rumors Godzilla I've never cared about Godzilla at all don't care about it at all and so to me I'd already written it off like eh you know not for me but man I have had a lot of fun on that game to the point where it's like maybe this is for me I don't know um maybe it's the greatest pinball machine of all you know what you don't want to let your turtles go i know i know i don't want to talk i don't want to talk turtles is boxed up right now i'm in my unfinished area carpet goes in tuesday i will have pinball machines that i can play this room be done yeah it's my entire basement i could have learned how to do this project by now and done it myself you know i have this thing called a job and then i have these two kids that Oh, yeah, I forgot I'm unemployed. Focus on your – A lot of excuses. Yeah, Dennis, your snark is just – it's so impressive. It's so consistent and so good. Yeah. But children and then work happens after they go to bed. That's the problem. Yeah. Your kids are like two months old. Aren't they in bed like at four? I have a one-and-a-half-year-old. He goes to bed at 6.30, and then Autumn, my daughter, goes to bed about 8.30. So I have a bail, 8.30 to midnight every day. And believe it or not, sometimes I get tired. But what happens first, Haggis ships Fathom or Joel finishes – Kaz, the basement will be 6.30, yes. It's going to be a little early there, Joel. I'm getting carpet. Hey, I'm telling you. You're waking up at 4. No. So Calvin, literally, my son goes to bed about 6.30, 7 o'clock, and he will sleep until about 7, 7.30, 12 hours. He's out of here. Yeah, it's awesome. Wow. But not Autumn. No, she goes to bed about 8.30, and she pretty much wakes us up every day. Yeah. Was your daughter born in Autumn? No, she was born two days after the 4th of July. So it's like no consistency in your naming schemes. Well, okay, so my daughter's name is Autumn. and when we knew we were pregnant with our second kid, in my mind, I just assumed we were having a girl. I don't know why, I just assumed we were having a girl. So we're talking about names, and my wife really likes alliteration. And in my mind, I was like, April. We'll do April. April's a good name. It works. Our last name is Engelberth. April Engelberth. April and Autumn. Like, I like turtles. April and, you know, just like, I thought I was good on April. I mentioned it to my wife. She's like, I like that name. Ten minutes go by, she's like, we're not naming her April. I was like, why is that? She goes, I don't want people to just think we looked at a calendar and that's how we name our kids. That's a fair point. It was like, oh, crap. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Of course, the other scenario was her going to school and being like, why did you get named April? My dad likes turtles. Yeah. Have you seen turtles? Yeah. She's awesome. I'm not going to play that clip of that little boy. I like turtles. I like, oh, yeah. I like turtles. Been discussing .8 code, George. We already, yeah. Yeah, we're not. I can pull the text document up, but I think then Dennis will have to take a break. No, no. Dennis will have to take a break. All right. So rumors. Where is Rush? Where is Rush? So let's talk about. Yeah, now that's an interesting. All right. Everything. All my sources, my spy. And my spy network isn't nearly as good as Craig. Craig is like all like he is the mahogany conference table at Spur and Pinball. He's like a transformer. He turns himself into boring furniture. It's a Canadian thing. You wouldn't understand. And – but everything I had always heard was it's coming out in December. And now I don't believe it because what are they going to do? Unless they're going to like, here, it's at Logan Arcade. We're going to tell you like three days before Christmas. It doesn't make any sense. Well, when – but they did that right with Stranger Things. Stranger Things. Right, and that's my one thing. But they still – they never waited this close. No. And there was always rumors of them doing that. Like that was always the – by now we knew that that was kind of going to go down that way, I think. So I'm with Dennis. But I heard that that game will not be announced until that machine is on the line. It is not on the line yet. So I think it's just been delayed by parts is my feeling. I think they want to get it out. I think the plan was to get it out this month. So here, I'll share this. So Led Zeppelin Steve Dive on Twip, this week in pinball, came out December 15th. So what is today? And I say of all the months, it is December 16th. If parts are a problem and you're trying to push something through a supply chain, this is probably the worst month going to get stuff through the ports or however they're bringing it in. I mean, short of flying whatever parts they're short on. Even then, but anyway. Right here, December 30th. The problem is, on all the other games, the Godzillas, the Mandos, the Jurassic Parks, the Deadpools that they're trying to build, isn't the node boards at all. It's that their factory is so full of those fucking rush cabs that there's no room to put anything else there. They're probably trying to get them out. They're like tilting over, falling into other photos and stuff all over. That was like three months ago. So they ran out of space because of all the wood. Yeah. Saul had another go to here. That's what Craig's doing. He's hiding in a rush cabinet. I am. That's why he's blurring the background. The reality is that's just a green screen. He's at the Stern factory right now. That is the rush right behind me. He made a fort on a rush cabinet. Yeah. Saul says it looks like they are in a rush. So, wow. Good job. That was great. He's in the stern kitchen, yeah. What are the odds Elvira gets pushed to 2023 or just flat out canceled? That's a Zach question. I don't know. I don't – I mean, Elvira, the regular production – Highly probable. It's – I think they've already pretty much – They'll get their 40th anniversary. I think they've already released the schedule for next year on what current games are being made. And I know Zach had mentioned it on TPS. He said, what is it, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin? There was a third as well, but I don't remember which one. Guardians? Yeah, I think they're right. Yeah, Guardians. Those three games, they haven't officially said final run, but yet there are no plans to make them next year, which is kind of crazy. But two of those are older, so it's not – I mean, Zeppelin would be the only surprising one, except we know how it's sold, so it's not surprising. But they still do – they still say, hey, final run. Oh, there are still people putting in orders. Yeah. But clearly not enough for, like, they're having to, you're having to make some sacrifices at this point. Got to make some picks and chooses. Any news on JJP new game? I don't know. I mean, technically hot. American Pinball said they were supposed to make two this year. Don't see that happening unless they're squeezing something in here before the end of the year. P3 has been talking for quite a while that this next game is coming, it's coming, it's coming. Don't know if that's going to happen. Yeah. I think something happened with – I don't know because I've been confused by some of their decisions in the past, but to me it doesn't make any sense that they would have teased the licensed game this far along. I think they had meant it to come out sooner. So J.J.P. has not done anything this year besides Guns N' Roses, period. Well, they had a lot of demand for it. They did, but they don't have the fact that JJP will not be on a single ballot for TWIP. Yeah, it made my life easy for typing that stuff up. Not a single. They did not produce a single game this year besides. New game. New game, yeah. No new game, yeah. They produced plenty of Guns N' Roses. But I think Zach on TPS said that, that he's, at least with the allotment that he ordered, like they are, they're like getting through it. They're, so hopefully sooner than later. That's good. And they opened a second line, right? So that's where they did, they made the Wonkas. So we'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a JJP announcement around March-ish or so. Yeah. So still months out. George here. Every instance of a movie versus comic or generic art is always better as comic art. Combo that with how impossible it would be to get approval from the actors. Harry Potter book art for the win. I agree with you. Well, Craig. You sound like you don't agree with me. Well, no. Here's the question. So, Craig, The Avengers is sitting behind you. Would you have enjoyed that more if instead of it being comic book art, it was all art? It was Photoshop basically. From the movie? From the movies. With movie clips. I think the comic was the way to go on that title. Would you still think that if I could have gotten you Robert Downey Jr. to do the call-outs? Or anyone gets you. Like, I don't have him on the call-out. I would have loved it if he did the call-outs for the comic art. I mean, but I'd say no, I'd still prefer what they did. I actually don't mind the call-outs of Avengers, believe it or not. I don't find it as – I think they got close enough to the original characters that I'm fine with it. Well, what about – I didn't feel that way about Deadpool originally. But like Star Wars, though, there is a Star Wars, the normal art, and there was a Star Wars, the comic book art. And I think – I'm saying Insanity Falls disagrees, but I think overall, I think the comic book art version of Star Wars is the one that people are preferring. but that is comic book art on the play field and the back by everything but the movie clips are still yeah Star Wars was different the issue with Star Wars even though it's hand drawn to people to them it felt too much like it was the Photoshop days all over again same old poses you see on all the lunch boxes and everything else that's what set people off and when you comic-fied it at least it felt different Well, I mean, Stranger Things right here. These are straight. They got all the actors. They got all the Mando. Mando. They got all the actors. Stranger Thing art was criticized when it came out as a bunch of oversaturated. To me, I remember when it came out, I laughed and I said, this is exactly what pinball people want. You design this stuff out and then you take those sliders in Photoshop, take the saturation all the way to the right. There you go. That's what you guys want. You don't want real good art. You want oversaturated color. So you can say knocked it out of the park, color pops, da-da-da, all the same old tropes everyone says every game. But what about – so – but Mando. Mando is – they are – they got all the likenesses of the actors. So, I mean, Harry Potter, I know George is saying that. What are the chances that they would get all the actors? Obviously, if they did Harry Potter and they didn't get all the actors, if Daniel Ratcliffe is not on the play field, people are going to be pissed. But aren't most of those actors nobodies now? So it's probably not that hard. So who would be hard, Daniel Ratcliffe and Hermione? And maybe Alan Rickman, given that he's deceased and however much control his estate has. How good would Snape call-outs have been? How great would those have been? So those would have been – Mandalorian didn't have all the characters. Well, yeah, it was clear that Mando left her out on purpose. I would rather have no Harry Potter pin than a Harry Potter pin based on the literature pieces. That's Zach. I mean, it is still going to be based on the book regardless because, I mean, that is the source material. So what about that rumor that Homepins got the rights to that? Because they bonded over – what was it again? They bonded over – Their hate for minority groups. Yeah. Rickman Collins would be amazing. They would. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. All right, Harry, we're going to see. I'm curious about, I know Back to the Future is another dream team of Zach's that is rumored. It's rumored that it's going to be kind of like an Elvira model, like premium or higher. But are we getting Photoshopped art? Are we getting a comic book version of Back to the Future? Are we getting likenesses? Are you going to get, what is it, Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox on the play field? Yes. Oh, yeah, Craig, Mr. Mahogany Table here. What are you? You're saying yes, they got likenesses. Okay. All right. Comic book version of Back to the Future. I actually don't know that for a fact, but I would be, I don't know why you wouldn't have those guys involved. I just feel like you could get those guys, I think, on board. I don't know why I say that. That's just my gut feeling. I have no clue. Rush is actually just a code name for an actual Tom Sawyer pin. At 1130, I start to imagine everything is real that I think. Oh, man. We're going to have to see. I would really like to get a Stranger Things pro. So Stranger Things, Bob, Stranger Things is a much better game than it was originally expected. But I'm a fan of the premium, personally. I am surprised that they aren't going to make more. But then again, there's such a demand for all their games at this point. It's kind of crazy. I'd take a Christopher Lloyd, Santa, Buddy, Santa, and Paul machine. Yeah. Yeah, someone did a tally up of all the games in production at Stern right now. It's quite frankly ridiculous. It's like over two dozen. Including the separate trim. well I mean the reality is all of them sell right so would it make sense you got to draw a line at some point yeah but would it make sense to say we're only going to make premiums of the current like just drop the pro line because or where where do you think Stern makes the most money where do you think their biggest markup is I would assume they're they're all done with le's of all their old games but if they just said all right if you want to order Deadpool Guardians, Led Zeppelin, any of these older games, premium or nothing. Like that's all we're making. Would that make sense? I mean, I think the decision would be projected based off of what orders the dealers are putting in. Because, you know, my guess would be premium might be what moves on Deadpool and pro might be what moves on Guardians. So it just, you know, I don't know if I would commit it that far. It's just – if everything was completely – oh, sorry. I think we finally won it. I'm sorry. I was so good most of the way through. I was like, oh, wait. Shut up. Shut up. Deep breath. Okay. Okay. One job is to be tall, but he occasionally can run. Okay. I'm at peace now. So, yes, the – I think the issue right now is the backlog is so severe. So given that, it's just a question of, well, the thing you brought up, Joel, the challenge of having, okay, no 2022 Zeppelin, no 2022 Guardians, no 2022 whatever the third one was. It's like that's just because you've got too many, you can't, there are all these different parts and everything. You've got too many games potentially on the line. I think that they just need to – given the growth and what I think is when you ask what sells the most, it's the new stuff. So at this point, you just got to be like Iron Maiden. I know you're great, but you just got to go because we need to concentrate on where there's the most demand because how many people are you pissing off long term making people wait? Let me – I mean not to sound snobbish, but I don't wait six months for a pin. Yeah. Are you kidding me? That is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. It's almost better, I agree, it's almost better to cut your losses on those titles and make people happy in higher volume runs of the new games and get them going. But I'm sure they'd love to do that. I suspect it's not as easy as that, unfortunately. Well, I wait six months so you can wait a year. I mean, cutting out a run would be easy. they could easily just say, hey, we're not making these, you know, 15 Iron Maidens that people have been waiting for for two years. Well, that's – Sorry. Yeah, no, I mean, it sucks no matter what, but at some point, you've just got to be like – I mean, the things like node – that's the bottleneck, the main bottleneck is node boards. You should be dropping those into Godzillas and Mandos, not Guardians and Iron Maidens. It's just – Mm-hmm. But what do you think, I mean, I was trying to look at this. It's like, so Batman, they've run multiple times. And they have a, like, I would, I get it, though. But for the main target demographic, right, I mean, this is a theme that really screams to people. Same with Star Wars. Like, if somebody's brand new and says, I want to get into pinball, Star Wars is a huge title. But if you go with their older, like, Guardians of the Galaxy, I could see them saying Final Run. they're not even going to do it next year but why if it's not popular enough to do next year but they haven't announced final run I don't know do you just say sorry? I would even do something creative I know they would never do this but I'm just trying to think of you know as a PR move as well to say okay anyone that's got an Iron Maiden Pro on order we going to cancel that order but then we going to give you a premium of XYZ title that we about to run here So as compensation for waiting two years or waiting 18 months and then having your order canceled. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. It's all weird. I mean, because CERN, they don't, just because you get your order in with the distributor, you don't get locked in on the old price. So for example, right. So everyone right now has been waiting for Deadpool, waiting for Jurassic Park, waiting for Mando. They're not going to get it in this next two weeks. And they're going to get to enjoy their several hundred dollar price hike come January 1 through no fault of their own. So you see, there's like a PR thing that's a bit of a problem there already. I agree. I think it's insane. It's insane. Yeah, yeah. And so one of the examples, you know, in terms of like shedding the fat, so to speak, would be Elvira. They keep pushing it back. They clearly don't want to build them, so drop it. Drop it. You know, put people out of their misery. Sometimes Old Yeller needs to be taken around back and shot before the rabies fully takes hold. So just put it down and say, you know what, we're done, we're sorry. I don't know if you feel guilty about it. Give them a $200 off coupon to cover a Kinect kit. Yeah. And move on. I don't know. I mean, Elvira, if they're saying they don't want to build them, well, they just announced that 40th anniversary. So it's like, do they say that like, hey, guess what? Sorry for all you order that have orders placed for Elvira, but we're not going to build them anymore. You do have an option for this, though. Some people would probably pay for the upgrade. And well, Zach, do you have anybody? Do you, Zach? And maybe you answer this if you want. But did you have anybody that had an order placed for a normal Elvira? And when the 40th came out, they upgraded because they're like, finally, at least I can get one. and we'll pay. No. Okay. So nobody. Well, no. And I honestly, I think the reason why you saw Elvira 40 happen while there were other Elvira premiums in demand on order that still haven't happened solely came down to the fact of the money. Like at whatever we were hearing, $15,000 to CERN and then the distributors set the price from there. At that amount, you know what? I do a lot of work I hate when I get extra money. Yeah. I don't know. It's amazing what I can tolerate for a few thousand. They still haven't really squared away pricing for Elvira next year. I mean, it's a good point, though. When you look at the themes here, though, you know, this isn't like American pinball that they're like, all right, let's be done with Oktoberfest. Let's be done with Houdini. You know, like, did they have titles that they could probably be done with? Every one of these themes that they're still making, these are huge themes. And it's funny that I would, I think I agree. I think Iron Maiden is probably the least would be the first to go in my mind. But Guardians, oh my, brought that up that there's a new Guardians movie coming out. So this is still an impactful theme and is going to still be an impactful theme next year. Explain certain sections, Craig. Yeah. I wish I could explain their actions. I think some of this is a bit – I mean, I get the delay part of it. I think it is crazy that they are charging people despite the fact that people are waiting. Now, if your name is just on a list and you really haven't committed anything financially, I think it's open season at the end of the day because no one's committed to anything. But I think once money is exchanged and you're agreeing on a price, I'm handing you over a deposit based on a price that I am okay with, I think it is absolutely crazy that they come back and now want you to pay more money. I mean, if that doesn't feel like a Kickstarter campaign, I don't know what does. That happens all the time on Kickstarter campaigns where you plunk down your money, you're committing, and then six months into the project when all hell breaks loose, they're like, well, we can get them, but everyone has to pay another $100 now if you want them in the next six weeks. And sure enough, everyone ponies up another $100. Craig, I feel like you've been burned by a Kickstarter campaign. I don't know. It just smacks of that. I hate that feeling where you're committing to a – and we're not at $100. Now you've got to pay $125. But I just don't like the principle of it, especially on a high-priced item. It just feels very sleazy to me when you're already – it's already borderline. I shouldn't say it's already borderline highway robbery at this price, but you're plunking out a lot of dough, right? And then so for them to come back, and then you're waiting, and then they come and say, oh, actually, you know, we had to fly a lot of parts in, and oh, it's crazy, and it's like, that's not my fucking problem. That's called being a manufacturer, sorry. And I'm what they call a fucking customer, and I've committed to a price. But there's a contract there, you know? in my humblest opinion. Good point. I mean, I will tell you, I know Zach has alluded to that these Insider Connected kits, there's a good chance that in the future they probably are going to raise the price. So technically, I've had my name on a list with Zach to buy a certain Insider Connected kit since the day they were announced. And if all of a sudden, just like 2021, everything pinball related goes up. if all of a sudden Zach tells us, like, hey, everybody that's – all the consumers that have had an Insider Connect kit, instead of it being $200, they increase the price to $250. That would suck. I mean, there's no – Yeah, but I'm okay with that if no money is changed hands, Joel. That's the big difference. I don't like – I think as soon as money changes hands, I think that's essentially like a contract that's been made. And this isn't like you're building a house and the contractor and all of a sudden find something and, oh, okay, now it's going to be a little more, it's going to be a little more, you know, like. Yeah. I know there's a lot of unknowns in this day and age in terms of, you know, cost and there's stuff they don't foresee, but I think that's, frankly, I think it's bullshit. I think they know perfectly well what's involved or they should know. And if they don't know, they haven't done their homework and too bad, right? Zach's saying no money has changed hands, has to change hands. Exactly. If the company is not enforcing consumers to pay, that's on the dealers. I mean, obviously, nobody gave Zach money to be put on the Beyonce list. Or maybe they did. I don't know. I don't know. Agreed, but the contract of the distro not to pay. Yeah, but I think that's bullshit, too. The distributor is essentially an arm of the manufacturer. They're authorized to sell their products. So I think the manufacturer has got to back up the distributor on all that stuff, or else they're just hanging in the breeze. Like, I think that's like hanging the distributor out to dry, essentially, to be the bad guy all the time. Yeah. I don't know how you feel, buddy. The distros are the Sarumans to Stern's Saron. Well, they are. It is very clear that the distros, they take a beating. They take a beating. They have to be the ones that deliver the bad news. They have to be the ones that call the shots. And we don't have a Tom Bombadil to solve this. Yeah. I would love, I don't know. It's probably close to George. She's probably hopped off. I don't know if George is here to defend that. Well, if that's too bad for George. Came here to see Joel and ended up falling in love with Craig. So I appreciate you, man. Yeah, Craig, you have no hesitation to speak truth, but I get it. Fair enough. If a distro takes money, then they should eat the loss if they can't deliver at the contract. I get that. I understand. And if you compare this to – I don't know if it's – And I tighten up that communication. That's, again, that's the manufacturers and the distributors not – that's the manufacturer not keeping in touch with the distributor and vice versa. Well, what I was going to bring up, the Ford Bronco. Ford Bronco, right? It was announced. Everybody went nuts. People placed orders for those, right? I don't think over the course of the year plus that it's been delayed. I don't know if car dealerships are calling up customers and being like, oh, by the way, I don't – maybe I'm making that up. I don't know that. I wish Jedi McMuffin Tommy was on here because he bought one. Zach, what do you think? I think what happened there, yeah, I think what – correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the demand was so hot for those cars right out of the gate that there was basically no discounts. And I wouldn't doubt if some distributors were going over list just to, you know, because they knew they had a hot ticket on their hands, you know. So that's a little. Anyway, it's fine. Again, if you're willing to pay based on a price that's offered, I'm okay with that at the end of the day. But it's when you've paid, you know, you've put money down on something and then the rug is pulled out from under you that really disturbs me. Yeah, my overall vibe, and, you know, specific to Stern with kind of the cost issues and the shipping issues that we've seen in the pandemic, because they are by far the most prolific manufacturer in the game, is it seems like they've never really formulated, I almost get the sense they didn't even try, to formulate a plan on what to do. and things have gotten worse and worse. They're not used to backlogs like this. It used to be you put in an order for pretty much anything, and you were going to get it within a month, usually within a couple weeks. I mean, I got, again, going way back, but I got my Star Trek, and it was like three years after that game came out. And it's just like, yeah, yeah, they're going to do another build run in a couple of weeks, Dennis, and then you'll get your game within five days of that. And it was all real smooth and clear and all that. And then when, you know, in 2020, Gary goes on to a podcast, says they're 5,000 units behind schedule. And what have we seen? Cornerstone after cornerstone after cornerstone, announcement, announcement, announcement, plowing ahead like they think they're going to catch up somehow. But they keep dumping more volume into a hobby that has grown significantly as people have been trapped at home and have had additional money to spend on products like this because they haven't been spending them on vacation. And that's where I've always, I know not to go ad nauseum about it, but I've repeatedly brought up in my head, surely at some point, once the current license deals are arranged, like they're going to go down to two or one cornerstones in one year and finally get caught up, right? Right? That's right? That's the plan, right? And I'm starting to think that I'm wrong. There is no such plan. It's three cornerstones forever and ever and ever, and they just think they'll miracle themselves out of this, or people will just give up after they've jacked the price up $2,000 more on the Guardians games, and they'll just be like, okay, it's finally not worth it anymore. I quit. Good point. Don't forget about the operator angle. Like, I get the idea from the homeowner perspective of this whole, hey, you guys, you know, this is still, you can flip your game for more than you bought it for, so this is a great time to keep buying, even though the games are getting ridiculous and the amount of cash outlay you have to put into them. I mean, we're talking serious cash outlay you have to commit. That's not insignificant for people, even if you can get your money back on the back end. But from the operator perspective, we are in our area, I've already seen the operators bring up the, we don't know if we can commit to every Stern in 2022. Because the cash outlay alone is so significant. And the pressure to not go above a dollar a game is very strong. We already have area players that come, the prices since the pandemic started, average gameplay in Kansas City have gone up 25 cents a game. Doesn't sound like much, does it? people are already picking venues that are 75 cents versus a dollar because over their hour period they're like i can get x more games played if i go to the cheaper place and they're making decisions based off of that and that's hurting operators pockets if they get better then their games will last yes yes yes but the you know the point being that i like two years ago i could go on location and i could with a ten dollar roll of quarters i know i could play an hour and now with a $10 roll of quarters, I can maybe play 45 minutes. And what's going to happen is they have to raise the prices up. I'm going to get 30 minutes. What's my other entertainment? Would I rather just go to the movies? They'd inject their prices up. Yeah. So that's the issue. It's multifold. It's not just, I know with all of these, all y'all, because you're one of them, Joel, all y'all podcasters are obsessed with only the home market, but there's more than just that. And it's not like the home market is 90% of it either. And I think it's very dismissive about how the rest of the hobby is being treated during all of this. And it's all really short-sighted. And I think people are going to really get burned here in the next couple of years. But we'll see. I may be wrong. I mean, again, and I think it's good that the distributors at a certain point did stop taking deposits. I think that's smart. Otherwise, there would be a huge problem. You know, so that was good that everyone basically just kind of threw their hands up and said, well, we're going to a list system and fuck the rest. You know, and when this, you know, when things start to flow again and when there's some predictability to it, then maybe we'll get back into a depositing system. So now it's like, I get that. If I'm going to put my name on a list and our distributor said the same thing up here in Canada, they said, well, because what I said, I'm like, all right, put me down. And they're like, so what are we talking about here? And he's like, well, today, if I could get you one, it would be this. But I don't know. So I'll let you know when I can get one. Yeah. Right? And now in the past, when freight wasn't free, now all of a sudden, or was free, now all of a sudden, freight may be involved as well. Right? Because he's like, well, before, I used to make a milk run. And I used to be able to fill up a truck with all the games that were coming out. Now it's like, I'll get a call from Stern, and they got three games for me. So I got to send in a truck, same cost, probably even a little bit more. And anyway, it is what it is. It's the time we live in. And the good news is you can take it or leave it. So the new way, you get your name on a list, distributor calls, and, hey, good news, I got a game for you. And you're like, okay, what's it going to cost me? And they're like, well, guess what? The price went up another $300. And you're like, nah, you know what, I'm going to wait. And then they go to the next one. It's like, okay, see you later. So I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that system. And in fact, you know, I think it's not a bad, it wouldn't be a bad thing going forward if they said to everybody, and that's the way they kind of rolled and just left deposits right out of it and said, okay, I got a game, you won it. Now you got to give me your money. Like, I want a deposit today. And then I'm going to have that game for you in three days and I need the balance before I'm going to hand it over to you. and then you're done. I don't know. I've talked too long about this. No, no, no, you're good. I mean, we talk about this all the time, and it's just a crazy dynamic, and it's a crazy thing that, you know, we're talking about Rush. Rush is already coming out, but the reality is anybody that's going to see a Rush pinball machine in the next four months probably already has to have their name on a list, right? I mean, it's just what's going on. Unless, I mean, I bet Rush LEs are already all sold out. Game hasn't even been officially announced. No pictures, no gameplay, no nothing. And that's kind of crazy. That's, like, true for all LEs now, except, like, joke LEs where it's 5,000 units. Yeah, well, that's LEs. Joke LEs, we call those. But even pros and premiums, because what, like, the last run they did, they did a small, tiny, location-only run of pros, right, of Godzilla. Then they did all the LEs, and then they did a few pros, a few premiums. Yeah. And then that's it, right, for Godzilla? I mean, it's just – Well, and again, I think that's supply chain stuff. Though I wouldn't be too surprised if they stick with that, like do a few pros to get people a taste to generate future sales. That's the location strategy. And then try and make the LE buy. I always thought it used to be really weird when they ran the LEs. like it seemed almost like you were punished for buying the LEs because all these pros came out. You got to have their game first. You usually think that your biggest spenders would be the ones that get rewarded. Yeah, no, I mean, again, it's the nature of that choke that they have in terms of being able to produce enough of this stuff that is causing a lot of that. Now, part of the reason why I think some of this will, you know, pressure alleviate eventually is as people do more and more, as people learn to live in the world, you know, kind of a post-COVID world, though it will be with COVID, obviously, is that people that have been staying home are going to start doing other stuff. And this demand, there's a big chunk, I believe, a big chunk of buyers right now. They are not pinheads. They are not going to go and buy every pinball machine. Maybe they've decided, hey, I have nothing else to do. I'm going to build a home arcade. That arcade is going to get full. They're not going to constantly rotate through the churn. Some of them will sell it off. Now, a chunk of those people, I think, are going to become location players, though. And they're going to be like, no, I want to start doing cruises and stuff again and buffets with food poisoning. But I do like pinball. And then they're going to be like, oh, wait, there are locations. I can just play for a couple bucks a game and do that. And that will be an avenue where they might still engage with the hobby but not be this huge lodestone, in a way, on all of us real pin people that are like, you're buying all the games, you guys. You don't belong here. Go back. Trash. Get out of the way. Zach's heading out. I've got to run, guys. I legit have to go deliver a Hot Wheels. Thanks, Jack. Nice. He sold the Hot Wheels. Yeah. Congrats. I thought, yeah, he listed that on the site earlier. When I saw it, the Hot Wheels was already sold. He said he had, like, a premium Hot Wheels ready to go, and then he actually has a few Mandos in stock, which is kind of crazy. Wow. Ooh. I actually thought that Jordan was going to buy that from Flip N Out Pinball, was going to buy that Hot Wheels. I just had that feeling. Didn't he already have one? He had one and sold it when he was downsizing. But then he bought a Halloween, and then he sold that too, so I thought, well, maybe he's got room for Hot Wheels. But he never took possession of the Halloween. No, he sold his spot. Dan Gossett, do I still play pinball? Yes, I have. I was saying my basement is literally drywall's done, painting's done, baseboards, I did that. I laid vinyl flooring the other day. I was filling nail holes on the trim before this. Carpet goes on Tuesday. So I will have Tuesday night. There will be pinball machines that were set up, ready to play again. You can only put in the carpet between the time Autumn's in bed and his son's in bed. So there's like rules. There are weird rules. Why don't you have your kids put the carpet in? That's a good point. I'll work on that. I'm not seeing the Mando Pro. I don't see. He did not put it on his website. But he said he had Mando Pros in stock. He might just not have updated the site. He struggles with that website. Do you remember when there was all the merch and you had to scroll down 20 pages to get past all the underwear to the stuff people really wanted? Yep. What a mistake. Yep. So Mando's right here, inventory update. We have been able to secure the following new unbox. So he has, if anybody's on and wants to buy a CERN Pro machine right now, you could do it. Be delivered by Christmas. Probably. Apparently Zach's delivering a, oh, right here. So we have one. In the lower 49 states. Wow. This is actually not a bad deal. Shaker, knocker, magic glass, and upgraded rails for $68.99. That's not, isn't the original one like $64? That's not a bad gig. Yeah, I thought it was good. Are you saying it's a deal of the week? Bye, bye, bye. Yeah. Yeah, what do we got? I heard every story, not just you. I know Jerry. Oh, they're talking about, okay, got it. Yeah, our distributor up here. Yeah. Sorry about you Canadians. Yeah. I do know Mervin did something crazy with Zach, and they did like a meet at the border swap kind of thing. And not Zach himself, but they like shipped it to a location at the border. Mm-hmm. And then drove it. That's a plot to one of the scenes from The Untouchables. Mervin Methadone can back it up. He can tell me, but he did something and saved a few hundred bucks doing it. Yeah, I don't doubt you could save a few hundred bucks if you knew what you're doing. It's a pain in the ass, in my opinion. Yeah, for sure. People keep asking where Craig is in Canada. I'm pretty sure you call him territory. I'm down in Chicago. Yeah. In the Stern boardroom. You are the mahogany table. All right. Well, we are approaching the two-hour mark. Is there anything in chat, anything else random that we should discuss or talk about? Every time I glance at it, it's entirely random. Hey, all I can say is I love it. The fact that Chad is active means that people are enjoying themselves and having a good time. So it's not just the three of us talking to each other. Maybe they're active because they don't like what they're hearing and they're bored and they're entertaining themselves. There's 27 other people. We'll talk amongst ourselves while these three idiots talk about prices again. Mervin said he uses a border storage company. Nice. Yeah, nice. All right. Um, there's a lot of them down there in Buffalo and, oh yeah, they're guys talking about E2, not just, yeah, always two sides. Yeah. Uh, how do I feel about River? Wow. Riverboats. Um, Dennis, what's the deal of the week for a watch? Do you have a watch deal to recommend? Uh, no, I do not. All the watch talk over the last week was Patek Philippe's announcement of a Tiffany-themed, with the Tiffany Jewelry Company, 5711 Nautilus, which is a discontinued watch, or they've been in the process of discontinuing it throughout the year. They made 170 of them, and the number one watch was put up for a charity auction and went for $6.5 million. How do you get on a list to get that watch? I don't know. Ask Jay-Z. He's the only one I know who has one. So they're talking about doing it again, but Tiffany branded. No, this was the one they did again because they did a limited edition green dial variant at the start of the year after they announced they were discontinuing the blue dial variant because, if you want a comparison to Stern, Patek said there was a 10-year wait list for that watch. They refused to increase production, and they said, we don't want to be a one-watch company. We're discontinuing it. Wow. And they're doing these last hurrahs, and so here you go. So they canceled all the orders, 10-year orders, 10 years' worth of orders. They said nope, and they made a new version instead. Yep, they changed the color of the dial. And sold it for more, and they sold those retail for about $33,000, those green ones. But you couldn't get them retail. They were all instantly sold. And then these Tiffany tie-ins, because Tiffany was the first jewelry company in the U.S. to sell the Tech Philippe, was announced here like two weeks ago, 170 of them because it's a 170-year relationship. And those were officially $50,000. This is a steel three-handed watch with a date function. That's all it is. And they auctioned the first one off. And so all in, 6.5. I think the actual auction gavel price was like $5.5 million. But there were a lot of fees. For a watch. Yes. There was a lot of fees. A steel watch, no precious metal in it. It was a steel watch. So realistically, Dennis, do you feel like watch collectors – who's crazier, watch collectors or pinball collectors? You know, the crazy is about the same, I would say. The crazy is about the same? Well, yeah, because the way I would describe it is it's – think of it as a sliding scale. I'm like, this is the sliding scale for pinball, and this is the sliding scale for watches. If you want to get into watch collecting, you can do it on the cheap. You can get in-house movements with actual history in them for under $100. Okay. So true, interesting pieces that have compelling stories that go back decades, if not over a century. And then if you want to do this other game, the Flex game, you can spend millions on a non- I mean, imagine that. Imagine if you wanted a custom pinball machine. How much would you pay? It wouldn't even be $100,000, would it? Yeah. Like, for $50,000, you could get CERN to build you a custom game. With a watch manufacturer, $50,000 gets you something off the rack. They're not going to waste their time giving you a custom for $50,000. So pinball's, you know, and nowadays in pinball, because of the way the hobby is right now, you can't get a working game for under a grand except maybe a C-tier EM. Yeah. But you cap out basically at $30,000. It doesn't go beyond that, really. So that's the difference in the hobbies. Though I guess because having feet in both, what's interesting to me is the people who flex with the toppers and the powder coat and the chrome and pinball. It's just like that's all a joke to the watch people. That's one watch, and it's not even a good one. And that's a cheap watch, yeah. It's a cheap watch. And so it's just different. It's just different. There's real money in watches. There is not real money in pinball. There might be, but they don't show it in. Yeah, unless you're the guy that has the 100-pin collection. Right, you buy 100. So what you do is you buy 100 games, but you need a ton of space. So, you know, watch people. They just like, they don't have to add a, they don't have to put carpet in their mansion, Joel, to show off their stuff. They just buy another watch box and another safe. Well, that's what, I mean, I understand some of these football players, these quarterbacks, wide receivers that make, you know, millions and millions of dollars. It's like, well, once you have that ridiculous home, what do you spend your money on? And it's like, yeah, they go drop $50,000 on a chain, you know, because whatever, why not? Sure. But, you know, some of the problems we were talking about here with CERN, we see that in watches, too. Their supply chain, they're not having semiconductor issues, but they're having supply chain issues and production issues and difficulty. For them, it was the watchmakers and the close proximities. So, like, a lot of them lost a quarter of a year's worth of production last year. So a lot of stuff shot up secondhand in price. So you get on these wait lists, or you go in, you can't buy anything. You can't go and buy a Rolex. and so you have to go second hand and buy a Rolex and they sell for maybe 40% more or 50% more than they should it's crazy it's funny how similar they are but yet how different alright well it is midnight I think it's time to wrap it up you got more carpet pinion to do I think I'm going to do some caulking on some trim and then call it a night probably go to bed about 1 it'll be great But, Craig, like always, appreciate you, man. Thanks for, if you haven't heard the pinball show, he did the pinball show this week with Zach Minney. Feel free to listen to that. So, Craig, appreciate you. Thank you for being on here, like always. Dennis Creasel did the pinball show last week. I'm assuming he'll do it again this week with Zach Minney. Yeah, well, I'm supposed to. Then a Collected Gamers podcast, so feel free to listen to that. That was enjoyable as well. And then, yeah, I just released Triple Drain came out two days ago. So feel free to listen to that, me, Tom Graff, and Travis Meary. But everybody, Steve, top tier, Saul in Sandy Falls. Oh, my. I mean, everybody that's been active. Bob, everybody that's been really active. Thanks, Chad. Thanks a ton for being here. Thanks for listening. And if you showed up late and you want to see the beginning of it, this will probably be uploaded to YouTube tomorrow. Everybody have a great – I don't – next time we'll do this chat will probably be after Christmas. but have a great Christmas. Aren't you dropping the chats? Aren't you going full playback? I will definitely be streaming next week on my channel. I don't know. I will. I don't know if we'll do a chat. Will we have to wait and see? I'm not going to say it. That's a Craig Bobby line right there. Mervin, thank you, buddy. But we shall wait and see. Yeah. Well, everybody, have a great night. Let's find somebody real quick to, we need to raid somebody. Yeah. Raid someone playing Turtles. Ooh, Turtles. I thought George was in bed. George starts in a minute and four. See, he always does these countdowns. Why? I don't know. It's like just to build anticipation. We'll raid him anyways. Let's see what's. Let's raid into nothing. Where's he at? Because we can raid right at that beginning. If we can. Welcome to the flipping out stream where we'll send you straight into the void. That's right. Raid. Raid. Don't panic. flip great chatter guys thank you appreciate you mervin thanks for being here uh let's see where he's at because if we can time it right at the it says live and he hasn't started because he's doing his timer his timer's live oh he just started now so he did his countdown and then now he's doing the intro video which is a five minute let's see him short that won him the the golden bear award back in 2017. Yeah. I mean, it's a good, it's like a stranger things kind of knockoff thing, but my new what's going on. Yeah. Let's let's him go to pee if he needs to. Ah, I got it that whole time. Yeah. Yep. You're first. And here, okay. We're going to raid. Uh, we're going to go ahead and send the rate, but, uh, like always appreciate you guys. Appreciate your chat. Hopefully, uh, we'll see you again, uh, soon. I'll be streaming on, uh, the pinball show in two weeks. Otherwise just another pinball stream next Wednesday. um yeah have a great night see you guys send the rate over and stop in the stream there's