thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 167 i am josh roop with me my co-captain scott larson and scott we got a really cool episode today i'm excited to talk about some homebrew some of these awesome projects are winning twippies and doing amazing things they're in my opinion might be doing some better than some of the manufacturers out there we'll get to that in a second if you want those new games where are you getting your game from scott and contact zach and nicole flipping out pinball um the godzilla topper for the 70th edition for my friend just came so they hooked me up with that um if you want pinball if you want new if you want used and if you want accessories they can hook you up with anything zach and nicole flipping out pinball they've always been good to us they'll be good to you exactly we have two people that are doing amazing things in the pinball world right now and i don't know if i can do the justice with titles right now but we got brian sores who owns game room pinball if i understand correctly and is doing insane things with custom pinball making homebrews that look like games that came out of a manufacturing place and we got reby hardy the legend the wwe wrestler she's also in modeling and she has her own hardy pinball so i want to thank both of you for coming on and to talk about the hangover trilogy this game looks amazing you guys have knocked it out of the park It's insane. So thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. So tell me where this came from. Tell me like why why the hangover and what made you decide to take on this project? That's all Brian, because I would never choose this title. That's usually what happens. Antithesis of anything that I would ever choose. I get asked all the time, like, oh, my God, can you do this title next? Can you do this theme next? So I'm like, I wish I could choose them, honestly. But it's all Brian that chooses them, and I just kind of go with it. So let's hear it. Yeah, so I'll try to keep the story short. So I have a good friend, Robert Mooney, who has a big pinball collection. I've made about, I don't know, I guess this was a third game for him over the years. We were talking after last year's Pintastic show. I was telling him how we had an insane line for Happy Gilmore, the whole show. Everybody wanted to play it. And Revy and I kind of hang around the room. We listen to the stories and people saying the lines and kind of singing along with the music. And it was just a good time. So anyways, I was talking with Robert and said, you know, I think really what the key is for these games is it's got to really cross a lot of demographics. you know just things people get into you know and so we started talking movies and you know movies his family liked my family liked and you know said something about the hangover being really funny and he's like oh yeah my family likes that and you know one thing led to another I think three days later I really started digging in on on the hangover and then you it was just a done deal at that point right yeah for me you know a lot of times it ends up being, you know, it's like, okay, I could do the hangover and, you know, do I want to do, you know, each movie or do all three? In this case, I thought, you know, like I know my kids, my kids are old at a college age now, you know, we, we kind of laugh at, you know, there's a lot of lines from, from all three movies. So I thought to get the best game, it would be to use, use all three. Now, this seems to be definitely the ultimate dude pinball machine. Okay. Right. I I mean, if you're looking at demographics, I can totally see. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I, Revy, I'm curious, what would you, and obviously Brian chose the theme, but you know, you're part of it too. So what is your connection to the theme and maybe which ones, which other themes would speak more to you? You know, I really have no connection to the movie, but negative experiences with it. Honestly, it's really terrible. But I got into it and it's funny because everything that we've done, I haven't previously seen what the theme was about. Like I hadn't seen Ferris Bueller. I hadn't seen Happy Gilmore. So I kind of watch these movies on like 3X speed over and over and over while I'm like thinking of playfield designs and stuff. And it just comes to me that way. But I think what's cool about the theme for me is that as a woman, I feel like I could get away with being maybe a little cheekier, maybe a little bit more, for lack of a better word, objectifying to some of the sexy girls in the film. I feel like a guy would get a lot of flack for that. And I was able to kind of put some things in like the stripper flipper. Like I feel like if a guy in 2025 was like, let's put a naked girl on a flipper and call it a stripper flipper, like he'd probably get a lot of backlash for that. But, you know, it was fun doing the more cheeky, sexy, girly things. I had a lot of fun with that. Maybe not so much like the drug and alcohol references for me, but the whole game is really funny. And the whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek. And like you said, it's a very dude-bro game. And I think that is like intersecting with a lot of the major demographic of pinball. So it was really cool to just be in the room with it when it was at Pintastic. and the line of people and hearing everybody's responses. Sometimes I'll just like melt into the wall and like, you know, be in a corner just to kind of eavesdrop on what people are saying and how they're enjoying it. And everyone was very much in with the vibe of it. Well, you are taking a little bit of a page out of really the Elvira handbook where, you know, there are certain things that if a guy put in an Elvira pinball machine, they may get a side eye. But since Elvira is putting it out, then, you know, she's in on the joke. You can, you know, if you look at it from mass appeal, people will give you more grace if you want to be a little more risque than if a dude does it. I think, for sure. So I really pushed the boundaries on it with that one. So I'm glad that I did. I had a lot of fun with that. So tell me, what is both of your specific roles when you go into making a pinball machine and designing it and whatnot? I kind of choose the game, the title, and then I start looking through all the different machines that we could possibly use. And then once I come up with a machine, I look at the rule set, try to kind of write the story to all these games. A lot of times when I'm making regular rethemes of old valleys and stuff, there's only one mode. Well, when you're re-theming a Mustang, there's eight modes. When you're re-theming Family Guy, I think there's five. Basically, there's six modes in that plus multiple multivolves. So you kind of have to put the whole story together and then start thinking through all that type of thing. And then it's taking the game apart, kind of re-engineering all the code, all the audio, doing the animations. like she said all the hard stuff she gets the easy stuff so when you're doing the hold up let me stop you right there if it was easy you'd see a lot more of these games floating around notice how most of the homebrew looks like a piece of plank wood with some marker on it all right it ain't easy so when you're re-theming these do you use the original boards or do you use like a fast board or something like that everything's original awesome so you're like rewriting chips and stuff like that for these games well um let me see how it's it's i'll try to simplify it but it's no so i so tell me like i'm five yeah well yeah i said she's drive her crazy when i did her you know her husband's game basically you know like when i'm using a stern sam there's some software that allows you to look at the code and I think when it initially came out I think the intent the way I understood it was that someone had ACDC or Metallica and they wanted to change the songs and people could upload new music but I think I've kind of taken it to the extreme where maybe somebody changes a couple pictures a couple texts but I'll painstakingly go through the entire thing and create an Excel spreadsheet with 1,000 lines of whatever, and it'll say, all right, at request one, this is what it says, this is how long it is, and figure out basically where all the text goes, where all the audio goes. And then on top of that, you have to do all the animation. It might be 2,000 screens of animation. So I think this is why you don't really see anybody do it. I've done four of these Stern games now, and I haven't seen anybody else do any. And I think really the reason is it's just a pain in the ass. Like it's one of those things, like from the – I'm an engineer. I've been a mechanical engineer for 30 years, and I just – I like the challenge of trying to figure things out. So for me, this whole thing is just a giant engineering project for me, really. you know and then I got you know I I do it's on some graphic art from other games but she's much better than me and it just you know we formed a partnership when we worked on uh the first game Matt Hardy's Expedition of Gold and um you know we just kind of hit it off and um so we just it's kind of where we're at now now no so Revy after Brian does his part what do you what are you bringing like what's your part so pretty much what goes where artwork wise um i'll kind of like lay out like what what targets will be what and then it's up to me to put any corresponding arrows and lanes and artwork and toys and stuff any extra like what should the plunger be like what's a cute little gimmick like we have the actual camera from the movie that was gutted with like a little lcd that's showing pictures from the movie so just just random things like that there was a project where i did like the rotating led fan as a topper years and years ago and i wish i had a patent it because someone else came and patented it like it was their idea like pinball fan led and i'm like wow that could have been me um but just you know just random things that i always thought, hey, this would be cool to have in a game that have never been in there and find a way to make it work. Yeah. So just to, sorry, just to cut you off, but just to add on. So that's, I think my favorite part about her is that she completely thinks outside the box, you know, like in the engineering field, you know, there's like idea guys, you know, and that's what I think of Revy as, you know, she'll come up with some crazy stuff sometimes and you know i always tell everybody usually i tell her no i can't do that and then a couple days later i figure it out but because she just thinks outside the box she doesn't necessarily and and this i mean this in a good way she may not think about how to actually do it but she'll come up with the idea and then i try to figure out how to incorporate it you know into the game make it make it work that that's what i like best about her so what i'm hearing is she's the mad genius and you're her Igor to make it happen, right? I like that. Yeah. Something like that. So who's making the toys and stuff too? Because like the Mr. Chow toy is really cool. Like is this a custom sculpt? Like how do you guys make the toys for these? So it's a combination of things. I mean in that case, that was actually when we started on the project. sometimes I'll go on eBay or whatever or Amazon or I'll do a search on Google I'll try to find toys and I'll buy up a whole bunch of different things I might not use them but I want them for inspiration and I didn't know for the longest time I knew I wanted Chow to be there and I wasn't sure how I was going to do it but that was actually a bobblehead they made a small run I guess of hangover bobbleheads and Mr. Chow was one of them and And so I basically bought a few of them, cut it up on a Dremel, popped the head off. So basically that was just a bobblehead when it started, but I kind of MacGyvered it to work for what we're doing with it. A lot of the other tools, so say like the other toys in that game. So there's like a finger, supposed to be Teddy's finger. I have a Hollywood prop master that made that he makes a lot of those types of things so I bought that from him I wanted the Stanford University ring I try to make these things all as authentic as possible so watching the movie Teddy, the year he was graduating from Stanford he's in the medical field so I had a real college class ring made and put that on the finger she kind of told you about the camera idea. We find the exact camera that they used in the movie, like the model by Canon. I find a broken one on, well, one of them was broken. One of them, I guess, was new or working on eBay. Just buy it, take the thing apart, and then figure out how to mount the LCD screen inside and run video to it. So it's a series of things. Sometimes I'll design things on CAD. um i could buy uh buy models and i have a prototype shop locally that makes a lot of things airbrushes them for me so multitude of different different places i guess i get that toys made that's an insane amount of detail like just talking about the ring and the finger that is so cool like you guys are taking it to the next level it's it's so cool yeah yeah thanks so tell me about selecting the game because i that seems to be one of the more challenging things because one you have to go for game availability you also have to go with does the layout fit with your theme and also you know do you mainly stick with like dmd era sterns would you consider doing other games too so uh i won't get into all the details of how i i fully select the game i mean because it gets it gets kind of complicated um i basically i i mean i'll I have a spreadsheet that I list every Stern DMD era game. I have a bunch of criteria that I fill out on this spreadsheet and the ones that i think will work best for me is is what i end up moving ahead with um the thing that i think a lot of people get confused about um and this happens all the time with when i used to make like a lot of sports themed games out of ems like i don't really care what the donor game started life as you know um you know like i've i used to use um sky jump a lot from the old got lady ems once i got it down and it just becomes a a blank game so it's a new canvas you know revvy comes in and and she can put whatever we want for the artwork um you know like this one with with say family guy um and make it into hangover well i know there's five modes so i kind of pick like all right what's important to me so it's like one i call it vegas baby and you know they're going to las vegas there's um i kind of had to had to keep i wanted to keep the fight with the chicken but i modified the animation so i do have instead of a chicken versus um peter it's uh there's two chickens and in hangover three i think you find out that that chow was uh had some rooster we called them rooster birds and he was cockfighting and he kills one of the black chickens at the end his name's wallace he said we had a lot of good fights wallace so anyways i made wallace the other chicken that the white chicken fights against um you know i had him going to bangkok and that one i kind of chose because i like i love the music when they're on the boat it's a song by uh i think it's by love train by wolf mother or something it's kind of catchy i don't know so i I like that. But I basically just have to fit the entire – whatever the layout is and however many modes there are, I just kind of get creative with that type of thing. I want to rewind just a couple of seconds, maybe a couple of minutes. So you said that you met when Reby contacted you to do the Hardee's Gold, the run of Gold, right? Oh, Exhibition of Gold. Exhibition of Gold. was so tell me Reby how did you find Brian and like where did you come up with this idea of making a pinball machine for your husband um so I was on pin side just looking for mods for my data east royal rumble and was looking for some video thing and I guess he had found me in there and he reached out and was like hey I do custom games if you ever want a custom game and I was like, you know what, actually, that's a great idea. And then pretty soon after we started working together, I kind of took over everything. And he was like, okay, just you do it then. So then I did all the design and stuff. And he, you know, kind of like we're doing now, and it ended up working really well. And that turned into a partnership because we were like, hey, this actually turned out to be a pretty kick ass thing. We make a good team. So it was really just like, you know, sliding in the DMs on pin side over here looking for video mods for a royal rumble pin that's awesome now and ever since you talk you hear about people like they build a house together and they never want to talk to each other again it's like you guys built a pinball machine together you're like this is amazing let's just keep this going yeah yeah no it's it's great i think we're like such opposites that it bounces out really well like he's like mr studious engineer brain and i'm like wild and crazy out there and like it's it's a good balance of stuff. I think what's really cool, going back to what he was saying about how he changes every mode and everything is so different and code by code. There has been so many people who have come up to the machines even like serious pinheads and they have to second guess like, wait, what is this? And that's always the coolest feeling when someone goes up to a game that we've done and they can't even... They have zero way of telling what the game was previously. No idea what the donor game is because it really is just that gutted, that completely revamped like every single centimeter of it is completely new and different so i love that part of it i've got to ask though because you're like a social media powerhouse you've got your wwe tna wrestling stuff you're doing so much on everywhere how are you finding time to help make custom pinball machines well so it's funny because it usually takes me like six months to a year honestly every machine that we've done it's gotten like progressively shorter in the amount of time that it takes me but with this one it's the fastest game or really like art project I feel like I've ever done in my life I got the entire play field done and translate in two weeks like between travel between kids and I homeschool and we were filming for TNA wrestling and it was just like so like just concentrated marathon sessions of pinball design and that was the fastest that I was ever able to do it. But usually it is kind of spaced out in between a few things. There's like certain things that need to be done first because they take a lot longer. Like we always start with the cabinet first and then he kind of does whatever he has to do with that and then takes it all apart and then we'll move on to the play field. But this was really just like jam packed in between brand deals and commercials and wrestling and putting people through tables in my living room and kids. And, you know, it was, it's been a whirlwind 2025 so far for sure. Sounds like, I will have to say, it sounds like you won at life. And right now you're just doing the side quests because you're like, I beat life. This is definitely a random side quest. That's what everybody says because the main focus of my social media isn't gaming or pinball. So whenever I do post about this as my day job, my big girl job, people are like, wait, what? People think I'm making it up. It doesn't even make sense. But it's real. We're fitting in there. now have you always been involved in like interested in pinball like or i'm just wondering because it's less common i would say more common for dudes of middle you know middle age like my demographic that get really into pinball so you you're a little bit of an outlier so what is your pinball story so my dad was a superintendent of our apartment building in new york 17 floors is always busy when people would die and have no next of kin they would just leave the apartments abandoned and a lot of times that would be like the furniture for our house and he would like go and take whatever was left and put it in his shop in the basement or in our little apartment and one of those things was a pinball machine and it was really my only access to pinball because you know I was like a little girl and we didn't really have money like that so um that that's what sparked my interest in it at first and I've always been a gamer and into arcades and stuff so it really started though with my dad somebody dying and my dad taking over their pinball machine what what pinball machine was it it drives me crazy I can't can't remember and it killed me I was so little I remember it was yellow and that's all I remember about it and I wish that I remembered because it's such a good story but I'm like I truly I don't remember do you remember if it was an old mechanical you know it was old school yeah old and yellow okay i i do remember we we explored someone's house that was i don't know it was vacant i can't remember exactly what it was but we sneaked into this house that was going to be that was sold kind of vacant and there was a pinball machine in there and i don't know i had to have been like 10 or something like that yeah yeah so this would have been like like 1984 84 85 and i i truly have no idea what machine it was but it seemed like it had like some space thing but i know it wasn't an em so i i still would love to figure out exactly what type of game it was but it probably was like space shuttle or space station or something like that because i do remember wire forms but that's about it oh man that's so cool you're the only other person i've heard this ever said that yeah no but it's a random machine when you're a little kid yeah yeah it was cool but we we couldn't play it because i mean you know there was no power in the house and everything but i just thought what in the world there's a pinball machine someone's house that's awesome oh yeah so brian in a recent interview i was reading with kineticist that you guys talking about this you say that you make about 10 games a year through your game room pinball um how long does it take or are they as all as extensive what you're doing here at hangover or is it more just general rethemes like walk me through that yeah it's most of the time it's a it's a retheme i mean i yeah it's it's pretty much always just a regular retheme of like an old bally or williams type game um you know for many years it was always the um like the gottlieb ems and early on it was mainly like sports themes. Being up in the Boston area, there's a big following of the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, Patriots. So everybody kind of knew me as the sports pinball guy for a long time. Then I started doing a few of the early solid state games. and then uh you know the one for revi's husband matt that was the first time i ever got involved in a in a stern and that was not the plan going in like when she says she took over she took over i tried to i tried to sell her you know like a nice eldorado modified and then maybe a cactus jacks if she wanted something a little sexier and she's like no no no it's got to be a stern i'm like how the hell am i gonna do a stern and then i you know that's where the first one took uh what would it take us it wasn't quite two years a little little into maybe 20 months or something to the first one because i was you know doing these other games and trying to out yeah yeah trying to trying to learn how to do it you know and because the the theming part is the same to me on every game it doesn't matter it's on on the stern style you know dmd games it's just I don't want to say it's a nightmare, but it's kind of a nightmare. Especially if you have to re-engineer everything, come up with a story. It just takes hours and hours getting audio bites, creating animations. In the last two, Happy Gilmore and now Family Guy, I've handled all the animations myself. I kind of did it on hers, but I didn't know what I was doing. and I was using images and I don't know. It came out pretty good, but I think the last two animations came out really good. They're looking pretty awesome. Yeah, thanks. So when you're doing just a general re-theme, how many hours versus when you're doing one of these? I don't count. No, I know it sounds funny. That used to be the first question everyone used to ask, and I'd say 200 hours. I really – I don't know. It's kind of changed because, see, I used to always do the graphic design on those games. But the majority of my customers are not pinball people. Like I deal with people, honestly, all over the world. Like last year, I did three for the president of Indonesia, random. but you know and in a lot or it could be uh you know like owens corning i worked with uh pacific obere um and a lot of times with the corporate ones they have their own uh internal graphic design teams that they like to have like full control over that so you know we'll enter an agreement and then i i work through that kind of stuff with their with their designers so So the design time, I can appreciate how long it takes her when she does the graphics because I know how long it used to take me, and hers are much more detailed than mine were. So yeah, it used to be a lot of the time. And then I also used to do every bit of the modification and painting. And in order to get a much higher-end product, there's a company I partner with locally that does a lot of prototyping. And these guys, like right now, I'm working with the guys from – I can't show you the design yet, but the show on Netflix called Cobra Kai. I'm working with the creators of that show to do a couple games. and so like I have this local shop that you know the guys used to restore antique cars so they do a beautiful job fixing the cabinet um you know priming painting with automotive paint we decal it and um heavy clear coat so it's like a really high-end looking uh kind of like a piece of art at the end of the day so I kind of outsource some of that stuff nowadays can you tell us what the machine is like what the re-theme is going to be uh well it's cobra kai right but for what's the what's the base game that you're oh the donor cactus jacks okay that's a favorite of mine okay i'll tell you why the reason you know i i always like the game so even when i you know prior to me going crazy on re-themes um you know it's always been kind of a goofy game and that game got more action in in our basement with all the kids and you know nephews and stuff that would come over um i like it because um you know it's a simple game to play it's got you know it's easy to get multiball you get the three guys in the back that dance around so you know i've used that for the the tampa bay lightning when they've won a stanley cup st louis blues when they won a stanley cup um someone that uh what was it the cincinnati reds i've done a goonies it's just a for me it's a it's a it's a cool game so i i like that one you know it's got it's got the depth so you can put toys in there versus like the the bally you know the early ballys and williams that aren't as deep so another question is so when revy contacted you about you know doing a matt hardy one and There are two wrestle games. Like, I love that you chose a Mustang because it feels a little bit out of the box. But why did you go that direction as opposed to, you know, WrestleMania or WWE? I hate WrestleMania. That's why. Yeah. Well, that's what, like I said, I can't fully get into the, I don't really want to get into all the details. But when I examine the software I say it like that there certain games for me that meet all this criteria for me to be able to change the code And edit the code, I don't know, I hope I don't offend any programmers. I forget what the correct terminology is. But there's got to be enough space left because when you add images to the animation screen, It removes memory. There's a whole laundry list of things that go into it. So, yeah, Mustang, I don't know. I'm not a Ford guy, so I didn't mind. I don't know. Like, with a wrestling, it just seemed too obvious. I don't really like that game. And it's already an uphill battle against people who are like, eh, you just change a couple things and you call it a new game. Like, that would have been hitting too close to home. So I just wanted something totally different. well it also had space for the different belts that matt's won right yeah and all the little toys and stuff that i wanted like i wanted a little ladder i wanted every aspect of his career represented and um his uh what do you call it andre the giant trophy and things like that so we did need space so that little upper play field really would have done nothing for me yeah well and if i remember correctly you were having a game made for yourself like Right, right. Reby, did that ever come to fruition? No, what I was doing, and this was just kind of like another side quest of the side quest, is I had taken a Stern Playboy. Is it? No, was it? Is it a Stern? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I was re-theming it myself to be all of my Playboys. It was just a vanity project. So I was just switching out all the pop-ups in the magazines and all the curtains that open and stuff to my actual Playboy pictures. uh and then i was gonna get started on the translate in the play field but me and brian ended up working a lot more together on like commission projects so that never came to be so half of that playboy is is my stuff from playboy and the rest is just like shot game gotcha okay yeah i didn't know if that was one that you were trying to do more like like the hardy's expedition for gold or no no no that was just that was just me being dumb honestly you gotta get your hands dirty somewhere right yeah so what's been your favorite one so far I mean you've made four together so far which one was just like are they just getting better and better or is there one that spoke to you more than the others for me I think it was Happy Gilmore not because I had any like specific affinity for the theme but just the little mods and all the crazy ideas that I had with it I don't know it just seemed like a fun no pun intended like happy game to play like cool subject matter pretty chill uh bright and colorful i do like that and i was able to go really bright with that one um especially the green cabinet and the rails and stuff so that that's my personal favorite probably the subway the subway launcher too yeah actually the that is is all brian i would have never done that i told him that was very phallic i did not like that at all she did play it a lot though i thought that was funny but no i did not like that one um but yeah i liked it but that being said i feel like the hangover is a more polished game overall and it does have like more interactive things and and additions to it and and more customizations than all the other ones so as as a whole as a game that's probably the quote unquote best one, but my favorite is probably Happy Gilmore. Which one had the biggest challenge, the unanticipated challenge to overcome? Matt Hardy's because it was the first one. Oh, honestly, because I honestly got into it. He won another one actually when you were doing it, right? Yes, mid design. And I had to change the color of one of the belts on the translight because I was like, God damn. Like I was trying to incorporate every single title that he's won. That's the point of the game. And like right at the end, he goes and he wins another title. I was like, mother freak. Oh yeah. But what made it so difficult, Brian? What, what made Harvey's, Harvey's exhibition? Well, it was really just the, the software part, you know, editing all that. Like I, I knew nothing. Like I said, changing that, the artwork on the cabinet or the play field, the translate to me, all that stuff was, you know I've done it so many times like that stuff was no big deal it was trying to understand um you know how the software worked that I was going to use to change the actual code in the game you know she was very helpful you know picking out all the titles and and the music like I mean obviously like I I know about wrestling um but I didn't I didn't know everything about him so from that standpoint she was you know very involved and and we could choose i'd say like look we need you know these titles for the main the main part and then you got the mini wizard mode and the wizard mode um but it was you know trying to figure out how to you know do the animation stuff and um yeah it was really just the whole code thing uh you know after we did that one You know, we, which she kind of brings up early on in this call, you know, we got a lot of, I don't know, negative feedback, I guess. You know, oh, they're always using Mustang. Well, if you knew how many hours I spent painstakingly reengineering, you know, where everything goes, you know what I mean? Like, I wanted to get kind of get some, you know, use it again and make it better. So by the time Ferris was better, I think, than Matt, I think Happy Gilmore was better than that. And she drew the line. She said she wasn't going to work with me again if I used Mustang. So I had to come up with something different for the hangover. But everything that we did on the first three games, I think that's why I think overall hangover is the most polished out of all of them. well i like that you're taking games that aren't necessarily like critically acclaimed sterns yeah and i mean you're giving you almost you're giving you're giving them life you're like raising the bar for these games because seriously to see a mustang rethemed as ferris bueller or whatever i actually want to play it now like i'm not a ford guy either so it's not like i don't get excited when i walk into a room with a mustang don't know you're on it's an enjoyable game but just one of those things where it's like there's something else i could be playing yeah and it's the call it's the call outs like i said earlier i was talking about you know what people like old things it's the it's the call outs and the music that i think really get everybody into it because the first time she came up to the pentastic show and we brought um uh ferris bueller i mean there was there was quite a few people right i mean and she she live streamed i think one one day at all times it's open like 24 hours there's people at three o'clock in the morning and playing it with a line. I mean, I've never seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. You know, so just everybody knowing the lines from the movie and, you know, catchy songs and stuff. And it was carried over again with Happy Gilmore and then Hangover. So I think that kind of took a, you know, kind of a crappy game and I think made it a little more exciting to play, you know. So is there a short list that you have now of games that you're going to use as donors that you'd be willing to share? No. Try secret. Try secret. I get you. I get you. I'm digging way too deep. I better – I got to keep it. Yeah, we're going to cut this off. We're going to cut this off. Oh, it's over. It's over. Knock on your door, bro. Okay. However, we work with designers and we've talked to them before. A lot of times they don't have one project going. They usually have a few that are cooking. Do you have things that are in the pipeline that you are working on? I have – at all times, I have multiple games. I mean, like, I have four games right now that I'm at different phases on, but they're all for clients. There's nothing I'll say for next year's Pintastic as of today. I mean, I'll just say that Reby and I have already talked about, you know, she's pushing me. The only thing I will say is that she's been pushing me for a couple of years about a newer style stern with an LCD screen. Let's go. That'd be amazing. See, for her, it's easy. Yeah, for her. She says, oh, let's go. It's not that easy. So I pick it up. If you're kicking your ass the whole time, then none of this is going to happen, period. See how that works? See, she just yells at me all the time. so sometimes I need to go away for a couple weeks and think about it so like I solved I solved one of the problems I haven't told her yet she's going to find out now I'm partially solved one of the other problems that I'm having so I'm getting I'm edging closer but I can't commit to anything yet I'm just I'm so overwhelmed with the other work that I'm doing that I have to get these other clients their projects done. But when I need a break, sometimes I pick away at stuff like our next big one. So in the interview you did with Kineticis, you did talk about you have call-outs coming out for a new game for the creators of South Park. Oh, that's where that came from. I was wondering. Yeah. So the only thing I can say on that, I, one, I really thought it was going to be out by now. I can't, you know, I'm under NDA. So I, I would have guessed. We don't want to get you in trouble. We don't want your door. No, I know. I, I, I really thought stuff would have been out in like January or February at the latest and now I'm in May. And so, yeah, so I did, it's one game, but I made five of these games for them. I think it's, I think it's pretty impressive, I think, when you see it in person. The other thing I can say is I guess in this case I started with, I'll just say it's like Pabst and Wormelli. So they needed a vintage-style game, but for where it's going, they needed something that was going to get a lot of plays. So I kind of – the stuff that I've learned from the last big four that her and I have worked on together, these run on a spike system. So yeah, I guess I can just say that it looks vintage, but it's a modern-style game on the insides. But it's pretty freaking cool. It took me a little while to get into it because I didn't understand the stuff that they were doing, but it was cool. I worked with their design team, the graphic design team, and their audio team on it. So it came out pretty darn cool. So one question. Oh, go ahead, Scott. I'm just actually surprised that there hasn't been a new South Park manufactured game, considering how old that was and how many seasons they've had since then, that I would be excited to see a new South Park game because there's just so much more that they could put in there. Yeah. This one, I'll just say it's from the creators of South Park. So it's those two main guys, but it's not actually South Park. That's the only thing I can say, I guess. Bring on the basketball. Oh, see, I was thinking of the Book of Mormon. I can't. I was thinking of the Book of Mormon musical. I did talk to those guys about that, just in general. I had no idea they did that. Yeah, they've been involved in a lot of different things. They've been really busy, absolutely. Yeah, so it's something cool that they're doing. And yeah, I can't wait to see it. I look every day on Instagram, like, did they tag me or did they post it yet? But nothing yet. So one question I have swimming around my mind, and I don't know if you can talk to this because it might involve NDAs or whatever. but have you had a pinball company approach you guys about contracting out and building these games there's like too many hurdles and loopholes with that yeah you know i i keep hoping like when her and i did ferris bueller that was the one i really thought you know we were going to get some attention i mean because people like seem to go crazy over that fantastic and i was like oh maybe And then we did Happy Gilmore, and that one was like – that was a rock star even compared to Ferris Bueller. I mean it really was at the show. And like I – her and I sat with – what's his name? Jack Guarini from Jersey Jack. We had like an autograph session, and he stayed for like an hour and just talked to us about like the pinball business. It was like the nicest – I thought it was like the nicest thing ever. He's such a nice guy. He's kind of giving us advice about different things. And then he came down, he played the game with us, and then she filmed for a video. She might be able to talk about it. I'm not sure if she can or not, but with his Elton John. So it's like we seem like we get a lot of interest, but I don't know. Maybe it's because they don't want to make a Sam-style game or maybe there's licensing. I don't know. But I don't really understand everything that goes into that. But I would have hoped something like that would happen. I think that would be our ultimate goal. There is an interest in retro-style games. I mean, you look at Pulp Fiction, and Pulp Fiction actually does very well on location. So I wouldn't be surprised if they start dipping their toes into that. Right now, DMV is kind of that semi-vintage. It's not quite old enough, but it's kind of like when I was growing up, you saw someone with an 8-track and you're like, hey, what's that? Yeah. Yeah. No, I can see that. So I don't know if I dare ask this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Reby last week you posted a video about some of the haters I want you to explain because it was like 20 seconds long I sorry No you good No, seriously, like you guys put a lot of work into these games, and there should be a – I think you should respond at least and say, hey, like this is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. Because like seriously, you guys are doing so much for these homebrews. And like you said earlier, like some homebrews are just like the codes there and stuff, but they're not putting the attention to detail with the white wood and stuff like that. It's markers on the wood. I just didn't know if there was something you wanted to address. Nobody is doing it the way we are in terms of building fully fledged, top to bottom, completely customizable, customized machines. Aesthetically pleasing. If you look at it, you wouldn't automatically say, oh, yeah, somebody made that in their basement. Oh, yeah, that's a homebrew. And for people who have no idea what actually goes into the process of it, you know, we've just been talking about it for the last 40 minutes and we haven't even scratched the surface of it to say, oh, yeah, I should slap another sticker over a play field and I could make a homebrew. I mean, so then do it literally then do it. And you'll very quickly see that it's not that easy. It takes a lot of foresight, a lot of like artistic direction that you have to have. Like me and Brian do the job of I feel like an entire team of like normally 10 people, a whole production line. It's just us, you know. So it's really frustrating when people think that it's just very surface level modifications. I mean, like when I say that people cannot identify donor games when we're at shows. I mean, it is not just me blowing smoke up our own asses. it is like truly a labor of love and you can tell in the finished product and no I don't think anybody could do it like we could and for those that say oh you know no big deal it's just a re-theme try your hand at it honestly and you'd probably give up in the first week or so yeah it's very annoying and I think part of that also goes into like the fact that I'm not like a traditional pinball presenting person. You know what I mean? So it's even more of a reason for people to kind of diminish the work that I do and my involvement in the projects. But it really is a ton of work. And if you don't think it is, then let's see your bills and let's compare. You whip yours out and I'll whip mine out and we can have a contest. Love it. I told you, don't get her fired up. I love it. And she restrains, trust me. It's okay. We got the measuring tape. When you have a WWE slash TNA wrestler on your podcast, you know they can throw down, so you at least got to let them do their thing. I was expecting the flash bombs and the smoke grenades and the laser light entrance. yeah but there is some truth to it and and it's refreshing to have people like rebby in the community and in this industry because it like brian said multiple times you it's attacked from different angles if we have that perspective in we can push different boundaries right and so it's awesome for sure where where can they play the games like where where are you going to be next that someone can come and play the game? Usually just in my basement. Okay, and your address is? We're going to be everywhere this year, whether he likes it or not. I'm going to drag him out of his comfort zone. I'm going to drag him out to the shows, and you're going to be able to play everywhere. And if you have any doubts on the quality or the skill of the craftsmen, then you can come and you can see for yourself. Really? Honestly, I think you guys, it should be you guys and the SAW team next to each other going head to head because i think i think that you two are the only ones yeah you two are the only two that are yeah yeah uh and don't get me wrong we have plenty of friends in the homebrew company uh in homebrew and they're doing fantastic things but like you guys seriously are you've got like a off the line quality machine that you could confuse someone with like did a pinball company really make this like is this being produced where can i buy one whereas where some of the other homebrewers you're definitely not like it's it's a it's a project um so yeah i think i think we should if you're willing to come to expo we should we should set it up with rob burke and do like a head-to-head let's go his is really his is really nice i look i'm gonna admit from from the engineering standpoint i love his game it's it's really awesome you know i i don't know did he i think is his game though all new code though i think it is i think there's even kusta animation they might actually have an lcd in theirs as well yeah but i mean but did they did he does he use like fast pinball though or something yeah yep they do that's that's the thing so like um and i can really appreciate all of his work because like that's the next thing that i want to be able to do like i'm i think i'm really good at modifying like like what people don't understand when they see our game it's like no open it up this whole thing is just like it came out of stern it's not it's not there's not an extra system there's not anything else so that's one thing i think it's hard to compare like i mean i have my limitations i'm a mechanical engineer i'm not a i'm not a electrical engineer i'm not a software engineer so i'm modifying what is right there um where i think someone that knows how to do you know fast it's i don't want to say it's it's not really apples to apples kind of apples to oranges really you know what i mean if you if you have a whole different system but um so i yeah i hate i i kind of hate you know when they do twippies and all stuff and they compare them i mean his it's just different but i i absolutely love the look of that game i love all the mechs on it um yeah they do a fabulous job yeah yeah i I will say I'm totally impressed that you are able to code at all because my major was mechanical engineering. So that was my major. And I took one computer class, and I knew this was not my wheelhouse. I was not any good at it. I had no idea what I was doing. And so the fact that you're actually programming this blows me away because it was – if anybody does mechanical engineering, you know how to make things move. and in stress points and being able to do that kind of stuff. Being able to do coding is a completely different skill set. Well, I'm going to stop you there, though, because I know my coder friends from up here in Massachusetts, I had a discussion with, do you know Lynn? He does a lot of the custom, like Haunted Antonio Cruz and Frozen. Okay, yeah. So, yeah, he lives like 15, 20 minutes away. And I asked him at Pentastic this year, you know, what I should call it, because I think I do a disservice to the software guys. I call it coding. It's not – I wish I remembered the word now he used. It's not really coding, but it's because I use a different software that looks at the code, and I work in that software package to make my changes. So there's some terminology that real software people would use to say what I do. So I just want to make sure that I don't want people to think that I'm actually coding in the software. You know what I mean? I just don't want to upset anybody. Well, you're modifying the code, which is still a flex. Right. By me saying that you are incorporating new code into the system, however that is done, that is still an impressive feat. And I don't want you to downplay your involvement in it because that's a skill set I don't have even on that level. Yeah. No, thanks. Yeah. And again, as a mechanical guy, I totally understand. I mean, I freaked out. I went to Northeastern University. I remember taking my first coding class, and I was like, oh, my God, this is terrible. But yeah, but this stuff that I use, it's like pinball browser software. That's how I edit it. And so it's, it's still, it's a, it's a boatload of work. Um, but, uh, but yeah, it just, it's not like a true code, like people do and faster or whatever. Gotcha. You're still, you're still making magic. I, I'm still happy with it. It's just, yeah. You both are magicians to me. Cause I don't understand how it works. And you're just like, bam, there's a machine. So if we made one, it would be like the sticker books that you got in like seventh grade. and put Luke Skywalker somewhere. That would be pretty much it. Don't joke about that because I saw someone take a fun house and they literally just printed off stickers of Fortnite and then just lapped it all over the play field. And they're like, it's Fortnite. Honestly, that's what I think some people think. That's why I'm like, you need to just see it. If you don't get it, you need to just see it so that you can get it. Yeah, definitely. It's tough when we hear that. And, you know, I think I keep it all in. I get upset when I read about that. You know, I used to see it on, you know, years ago I saw it back in, if you guys were around long enough, on the Google rec groups. Yeah. I don't know if you were part of that years ago. But, you know, I think some of my first ones I did and people were commenting there. And then, you know, then you get some stuff on Pinside. And then, you know, lately it's been like on Facebook and different groups. People will say things. And it's hard sometimes to turn away from it. I started engaging at one point, and I'm like, I can't. I mean, because like she said, until people really try to do it, I don't think they understand what's involved. It's not just a new sticker or a new paint on a game. Well, let's be honest, too. It's a flex, right? Like when you watch professional sports and they're so good at their job and you think, oh, I could do that because they're so good. They make it look easy. You guys are doing so good. You're making it look easy. So people are just like, I could I could do that. And it's not till like wasn't there a heckler at a women's tennis tournament where they the women end up pulling him out of the crowd. They made him put the skirt on and then they wailed on him. And he's like, yeah, I'm not ever doing that ever again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If anybody knows or has tried to do any of these projects, they know how crazy difficult they are. And so the fact that someone is willing to throw lightning your way even though they've never tried to do it, it just shows their complete, utter, like, incomprehension of what you guys are actually accomplishing because they've never tried to do it themselves. Yeah. Is there anything else you guys – is there something we missed? I mean, you guys, like you said, we barely scratched the surface. Is there something that you just feel like we should talk about this before we wrap it up? I don't know. I mean, well, so I guess the only thing I can say, I mean, you know, everybody sees the – we've done, you know, four – I call these major games when I do stuff like this. But I think her and I, we've done maybe seven or eight altogether. But, you know, the other ones are more like, you know, corporate-themed games. We actually have one, you know, people can play. I thought she was going to hate the artwork on it. It wasn't as good as what she did initially. it's at at the LaGuardia airport in New York yeah you remember that we did that for American Express or uh no JP sorry JP Chase Morgan in the in the Sapphire Lounge so they did a retro lounge and um you know I they said you know do you know anybody from that area you know someone that could do graphic design I said yeah I got a woman I work with you know grew up in in that part of New York. So, you know, she did a, an incredible, uh, artwork package and then they pulled the rug out from under us. Right. And then, yeah, but it's still cool and it's there. Yeah. Yeah. It's still, it's still, it's a cool game. Um, but you know, it's a retro, I was just thinking of something that's in the wild that we've worked on. Um, you know, it's in the, in the lounge there. That's cool. That's way cool. I didn't know that even existed. Next time I'm in New York, you've got to stop by the LaGuardia. You said the Chase Morgan? It's the J.P. Chase Sapphire Lounge or something. I think you have to have the credit card or something to get in. I will say Half the World 2 is coming out on Netflix too, so you might want to keep an eye out for any possible cross-promotion there. That's all I'll say. What did you say? I missed it. I'm going to have to text you. you'll have to let us know when it drops so we can uh we can promote it as well yes hell yeah that is awesome well cool we really appreciate i know you both are very busy we really appreciate we've been trying to work this out for about a month now and then yeah you know everyone else decided to release their games it's just been april and it's been chaos just absolute chaos but i really appreciate both of your guys's time and coming on the show uh scott you got any Any questions before we head off? I just want to let them know that we always try to hook guests up with merch. So hats, shirts, shoes. We'll definitely reach out to you, and we'll figure out what we can get you. So we appreciate you for coming on the show. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Definitely. If you want someone to get a hold of you, how do they get a hold of you, Brian or Reby? So for me, my website is custompinballmachines.com. and on Instagram it's at Game Room Pinball awesome and Reby you can just go to my website it's RebyHardy.com and all my links are there perfect and if you want to get a hold of us we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com we're on all the socials at Loser Kid Pinball check us out on YouTube hit us like subscribe all that jazz yada yada if you want some swag like Scott's been talking about I've got my 8-bit Loser Kid shirt on. He's got the hat on. Nice. SilverBallSwag.com slash Loser Kid. I just followed you guys. Yes. Hold on. Nice. SilverBallSwag. Did you have – was it you guys that just did those new sneakers? Yeah, that's us. Our losers, yes. All right, don't say anything to Red. Oh, my God. I'll talk to you afterwards then. I thought I saw it. That is funny. so yeah Scott give us our last words you know what definitely go to go to one of these shows and definitely check out all of their games especially their latest one The Hangover I can't wait to try it