Welcome Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 31 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. How are you going? I'm very well, and you? I'm feeling fantastic now that I'm shrugged up and I've got a bit of a cold, so I apologise in advance for my congestion. But the big news this week, Marty, is that last week's episode was our biggest episode ever, right? Yeah, massive. So thank you, everybody, for listening and for providing a lot of feedback. Certainly, it was all really positive, and we certainly didn't have anybody say it was shit. Yeah, I'm not sure why last week's episode was that much bigger than every other episode we've ever done in the first week. But we thank you for our new listeners. And what have we got coming up today, Marty? Go down the list. We've got a lot of things. And so we've got a couple of, well, we've got some code updates. One in particular, just completely out of the blue, but kind of in hindsight, we understand why. There's some news regarding Pinsound, a little bit on Ghostbusters. Josie Jack had their first official stream. And we've got a big interview this week with Charlie Emery from Spooky Pinball. Yes, and with the news of Ben Heck leaving he kind of tells his side of the super controversial story that's been going on He said this, he said that kind of story, isn't it? No, it's not Spoiler alert, it's not A couple of hours after we finished posting up the last podcast I got a total nuclear annihilation delivered to my house so we're going to be talking about that and we'll do Slam the Top 100 and head to the mailbag as well I think because the Charlie interview is longer than we thought it was going to be, we'll leave 10 slides till next week. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay. Start us off, mate. So, let's start off with code. Now, as I said, this, for me, came out of the blue when Stern announced that ACDC has had a code update. The last one happened three and a half years ago. Yeah, no one was expecting it. kind of like the Walking Dead update that came out. Well, especially because Lyman's not meant to be working on anything except Batman. So that's two other things he's worked on since he started working on Batman. I guess that statement can just be thrown out. Well, is it? Or is it that, you know, he basically, he plays the game, he knows what works and what doesn't. He has a laundry list of all the things that need to be changed and says, here's a new programmer that might have joined the team because obviously we know they're putting new people on at Stern. Here's what I want to have changed. You go away and program it. I'll do a bit of testing and then there we go. I don't think so. I don't think Tim Stexton did all of that in one week. Maybe he did. Maybe he's a genius. Maybe he's like the Rayman. Maybe he could be. So what were the changes that they added? I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there, a lot of little things. possibly the biggest one for me is the things and stuff that's kind of like a mystery award that gets awarded in order. So I'm not sure if you know, Marty, but there's like these little devil horn inserts on the easy playfields. I never bothered to read the rules of ACDC and they always kind of did nothing, but I thought I just didn't know what they were doing, but they were building towards something related to a multiball, I don't know. But now they do do something, so if you collect them in order, I think it's the bell shot left, sorry, right orbit, left orbit, and then the right orbit will be lit to collect and basically just award you things in order. Possibly the coolest one is Oi Mania, which I believe is currently broken. I haven't really been playing my ACDC. And it's kind of like the Doe Frenzy on Simpsons and we'll talk about JGP has the RR Frenzy. I think there's a fart frenzy in Family Guy. What other frenzies do you know that just repeats the same word over and over again. Well, my favourite... Yes? The best... Yes? Sopranos. Ah, fuck frenzy. Fuck frenzy. That sounds horrible. It's like a noisy... Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck. How did I forget about that? Wow. I don't know. It's the best frenzy for sure. Okay. Message this in, guys, if you know one that's better. I think my favourite is the Simpsons one, but... Yeah, apparently that's broken, so it doesn't really work. I think it goes into the mode, but you don't hear any sounds. This is a funny one, which I never noticed. When you get a super jackpot in a multiball, it usually does this really long animation, and then it says super jackpot. Apparently, the score wasn't being added to the score. Like, the super jackpot score was never getting added to the total, and that's hilarious. I mean, I'm sure if you go into, like, TIL forums or something, you'd know an issue, but it's not something that people really know about it. Like, you know, people are like, oh, fix Ghostbusters and fix that. But no one was kind of like, you know, fix ACDC, like the super jackpots that work. That's pretty damn important. But it kind of just proves that, like, unless you have a score that's always there, kind of like the JGP one, you have no idea what's going on. When you're in multiball, you can't really keep track of the score when you're hitting... No, that's right. And there's so much animation that's happening and it's flashing between all these different things. how could you possibly keep track of the score? Exactly. Well, I mean, someone figured it out and told Lyman and he fixed it. Another thing is the jam, multiball and tour multiball. You know how you have to hit the ramps a certain amount of times, like six or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've reduced them. They've reduced that, but they've also reduced the amount you have to do it the second time. So before it was plus two, so you hit the ramps six times, the second time you have to hit them eight times. now it's five times the first time and then one more, six times the second time, which is quite funny because a lot of people just do jam multiball all day as a safety measure, especially when you can backhand the left ramp. But I guess now it's super-duper part of the strategy, just being multiball all the time. Yeah. Well, and certainly two or multiball needs to come down as well. Album has stayed the same Originally when you used to start But again it's the same thing where Incremental To do it again is less So it's easier to get back in Yeah some of the modes have been nerfed Some of them are now worth more Well there's a couple of things That I like about the modes So the two in particular are Let There Be Rock And Back in Black So they've actually now got Depending on which one you choose Let There Be Rock or Back in Black they've now got a strobing shot so when you hit the particular target that is lit it then opens up all the white shots as opposed to having to hit multiple targets. Having to hit the entire drop bank down. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I never play... I mean, I always play War Machine and it's not because my spinner just doesn't rip like other spinners rip. It's because I like the song the most. But I think that's been nerfed though. It's also a player's shot, right? Sure, you can backhand the orbit so why not? And you can get a multiball as well. And speaking of that as well, so one thing that, I don't know, it seems a bit lame, but you know when you get into multiball and then you've got a fire, they're going in, and it's this pizzy amount, so they've actually now increased the amount that you'll get via that first cannon shot, which is pretty cool. Ah, okay. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I updated my code, so gosh, I keep on forgetting how long Sam games need to update. It's like an hour, an hour for a 100-meg update. and I played half a game and let Jordan play the rest of it. And, yeah, that's ACDC. I think because of that little bug, I guess we're going to be seeing another update come up. Yeah, probably. To fix that. But as I said, it just completely came out of the blue, but when I was thinking about it later, I thought, well, they've got a Vault Edition out now. You might as well revisit it and put some new code because they're going to get some more income coming through for these. So it's worth their while to do so. Sure. So with that being said, I don't know we've asked this before and I never get a straight answer from you. If they had another Vault edition that could do with a code update, what would it be? Besides Tron. Everyone says Tron. And I think Tron could do with a bit of a rule update as well. No idea. You've caught me out of the blue and I haven't had time to think about it. Come back to it next week. Ride into us and tell us what you think. So, Guardians got a code update as well. They're up to .87 now. We're pretty harsh on Guardians. Yep. And even though... Well, you've played it. I haven't played it yet still. But, you know, just kind of watching the videos and watching it in person, you kind of know where it's at. I was told this week why the code is the shit. And it makes me kind of like more relaxed on it now. I'm like, ah, okay. That kind of makes sense. It can be in this state. But apparently Guardians was meant to be after Iron Maiden and after Deadpool. That's what someone told me that. I just had to rush it out. Well, they had to kind of push it way forward because the art was done and this was done, so the code is that one thing that's kind of suffering through it. So apparently Iron Maiden will be released with a more stable code and possibly around 1.0 kind of code complete in 30 comments. That's kind of what they said about Game of Thrones. They said that that was originally meant to have been released earlier, and it got swapped, and therefore when it came out, it actually had more complete code. Yeah. I mean, with the John Trudeau... Did I say it right? No! Trudeau. You did say it right. Oh, yes. John Trudeau. Worse. The John Trudeau thing, you've got to cut a bit of slack. But, yeah, I mean, that almost excites me. Knowing that, if that's true, excites me more because I'm like, okay, well... It'll get it. It'll get the love that it needs and it looks great. It shoots pretty well. So all that's missing is kind of code and probably better. Well, and actually, if you have a look at the release notes, there is, on this particular update, a crapload of stuff that's been updated. And admittedly, it's, you know, we changed this and we tweaked this and we added an adjustment. I've got to read this out. One of the funniest ones that they did is they removed the spinner from the Mystery Award on the Pro model. Finally. Because the spinner isn't there. There's no spinner. But the other ones that I thought they'll highlight is with Group Multiball. it now says the shots are worth five times if the associated character mission is completed. That's cool. So you want to bring in or have a mission close to completion, I guess, get into multiball and then... Complete. It's like victory laps, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But I think now group multiball has been nerfed so you can only pump in balls a certain amount of times versus an unlimited amount that was there before. Right, okay. And the other thing that they've added, it says that they've added three jackpot levels, followed by a super and double super jackpot. And the double super jackpot is scored. So what will happen is the mouth of Groot will go down and up, a lot like Ted from Roadshow. The mouth will go up and down, and you've got to get the ball into his mouth to get the double super jackpot. So the double super isn't roving. It's just sucker Groot. Yeah, that's interesting. Yep. And then they've added, say, Xander wizard mode, but who knows what that is. Xander's that Earth-style planet, I guess, in the first movie. Anyway, we don't know enough about Guardians to keep on going because there's so many updates in there. Pinsounds released their new board that also supports White Star pinball machines, which is kind of like Lord of the Rings and Team 64 Party. and I think I've said it before that I'm not one to kind of change up all the sounds, but, man, playing Simpsons Timber Party, there's a couple of sounds, you know, if I was to change one sound in the Timber Machine, and I'm not going to buy a couple hundred dollar, you know, board just to change one or two sounds, but the hurry up sound in Simpsons Timber Party is a killer for me. I hate it. I hate that it takes over the modes, right, the mode music just for the hurry up. and the mode completion sounds, it's the same if you drain, if you run out of time, and if you complete it, it's the exact same sound and it kind of sounds like, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, like you didn't complete the mode even if you complete it. So if I could change that one sound, and I said what rules would need updated, you know, not rules, just change those two things and Simpsons is a lot better because of it. Do you have any sounds that you would change, Marty, if you had a pin sound board in one of your machines or a machine that you wish to get? Well, you already mentioned it. I think out of all of the Stern machines that desperately need better sound, that's Lord of the Rings. Okay. Did you watch Carl D'Angelo's pin sound board stream thing? No. Okay, he sat there and he installed it, and it sounds more premium and like you're watching a movie kind of thing, but I've said it before, I really do not like changing the sound. If it sounded shit when it came out, it needs to sound shit when you play it. I know it's horribly distorted and things like that, but I don't know, it's just changing it up. I mean, would you change it up to Star Trek? Like, there's a Star Trek motion picture. They got all the sounds from the first two Star Trek movies. And trust me, you wouldn't like it because you're so used to the sounds that come out of it now. Yeah. I actually, I really like the call-outs on Star Trek. I wouldn't change any of the call-outs. You don't change just the background, just the music? Yeah, I'd probably change the music. It's probably the only thing I really don't dig on Star Trek is the background music. Okay. I've got the answer. I've got the file somewhere I can give it to you you can update your machine but I I almost guarantee you'll change it back after a day okay well might as well do it okay it's going to wipe all your high school that doesn't bother me okay we've got news this week we were bitching before that there's no dialed-ins in Australia except for there's one in Perth Netherworld now has a dialed-in so that's exciting if you're in Queensland go play dialed-in Netherworld yeah we love Netherworld great place and And I would say no surprise that they've got adulting because they tend to get all the great new machines. Yes, and that's pretty much that. We were meant to mention this next news bit a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to add into the show notes. Do you know when you're playing Ghostbusters, if you can, you know, if you can hark back to the last time you did that, when you get the mystery awards, weird kind of like Tobin's book guide pages flash up for a second and there's like a little kind of some characters on there you know DR or AB or something. Someone has pieced them all together and he posted this on Pinsize. I can't remember his username, sorry. And if you stitch them all together, it was like 15 or 16 of them or something, it says this man has no dick. from the movie from the movie yes I think that's hilarious I love little easter eggs like that so we also had this we had Jersey Jack had their stream how'd that go have you watched it I haven't watched it yet I was working okay yeah well I was not working but I just caught the replay of it like you could have done Marty since we're professional podcasters again it was great they had like a test stream and the stream and And my takes from it was the screen animations are totally next level. There's, again, nothing like it. They keep on raising the bar for animations. If you compare it to The Hobbit, it's like that, just one step further. And everything is really well integrated into the screen. For example, if you're playing Tortuga Multiball, which is kind of like a fun little multiball that kind of has no meaning except it's just building up your score, There's like little bottles down the bottom, and you shoot jackpots, and the bottles get smashed on the screen. And then when all the bottles are gone, you go for super jackpots, and you just kind of repeat that over and over again. What else? The other playbook is rocking around way more than before. I noticed something that I kind of didn't think about before. There was a mystery awards during multiball, and a lot of games, Lyman games, Dwight games, When a mystery is lit and you get into multiball, it kind of disables the mystery, doesn't it? Yeah. In Wizard of Oz, I don't think Hobbit has a mystery. It's kind of like hitting the captive ball. But, yeah, you can get mystery during multiball, which I think is cool. Keith's games are kind of like the ultimate stack games. You can do everything at any time. At one point, he was cradling one ball on his left, creating one ball on his right, and he wanted to choose. Basically, you have the pirate lanes, down the inlanes and outlanes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was choosing an award, and because he had both of his hands taken up, he was using his chin. And because he was using his chin and leaning forward, he accidentally let go of one of his balls, and that was a very funny stream moment. There's a cow in the game. Right, of course. Yes, there's always cows. If you collect... Because you know how the map awards, basically, you build up using combos, and you hit map, and you get these big gold nuggets. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I think if you get, like, one with 50 or 25 on it, it's a cow. Okay. Most of the players didn't seem to concentrate on chapters. They kind of mainly got multiples for as many as they can, as many movies as they can, and they just kind of, like, completed chapters that way. So I guess people will develop their own strategy. even though there's so many modes, it doesn't seem to be mode-focused more than get multiple, get your multipliers up and do that. What else did I learn? This is all me, Marty. I didn't watch it, so I have to rely on you. Go Cats got into a wizard mode. I think we talked to Eric, and he said there's only one wizard mode in there, and we got to see that. And basically it was a switch frenzy, but you collect gold. And it wasn't a switch frenzy in the traditional sense that you just kind of rip a spinner or get into the pops and keep on doing that because the upper play field has those two spinners in a looping shot and you can just keep the ball up there and shoot it up again. But basically, if you're well integrated with the movie where you have to return all the Aztec goals... Do you remember the first... You've watched the first movie. Do you remember how... I've watched the first and most of the second movie. Okay, so remember how they really wanted that goal to bloom thing because he spent it all and then he got cursed. Yes, they needed all of them. Yes, so if you collect the gold in a certain area, it'll pop on the screen saying, gold from this area exhausted, so you can't keep on shooting the same thing. You can't keep shooting the spinner or the pops. You have to work your way around the playfields until it kind of replenishes. So that's a cool wizard mode that's been done before. And there's only going to be two Pirates of the Caribbean at Texas, so I'm guessing there'll be a pretty big line to play those. Well, that's great. Hopefully we'll get some updated code in our little test machine that we've got in Australia and we get to play it. For sure. I think they said they're going to continue to stream every week or every two weeks and the next update will finally have those map awards and I'm dying to see how that kind of makes the game more fun because it's one of the selling points of Total Niche Annihilation where you've got the interactivity with your friend. You can steal their locks or they can steal your locks. I guess this is the same thing, except there's a lot more options to steal and plunder and reap awards. Awesome. Well, it sounds like it's coming along really, really well. For sure. I mean, I think it's going to be... I think people will forever say, this game looks too confusing to me, but if you just watch the video, then it's not that hard. I mean, multipliers and stuff are always going to be difficult to people. Greg and Zach from Straight Down the Middle, Pimble, they did that awesome kind of two-hour, what do they call it, exclusive? Not exclusive. Deluxe. Deluxe review. Yes, deluxe. I love that word. They let us know that they're doing a deluxe review on Pirates of the Caribbean. So I think they do a really good job at dumbing it down for the, you know, and explaining things in layman terms. You know, how do you use the action button? How do you light the pirate lanes? How do you do multipliers? So look out for that. That should be ready in the next couple of weeks. Cool. So shall we talk about some big news that shocked the pinball community this week? And that was Ben Heck. Ben Heckendorn, he of Spooky and the Ben Heck Show, announced that he was leaving Spooky. Yep, and he's been there pretty much from the start and kind of helped form the company, and he did all of the board sets, I believe, for almost all their games. He sets Total Naked Annihilation, since that runs on P-Rock. And, yeah, he did a little interview with... Well, not a little interview, it was a pretty big interview with Jeff from The Speaking Pimble, and he kind of gives his reasons why, and well, you can go check out that article. We're not going to go through it because you've got, I guess, the other side of the story because we decided to talk to Charlie Emery of Spooky Pimble and we didn't, just to be clear, we didn't contact him after the Ben Heft News came out. We kind of had this planned for a week and a half before the news broke so he was always going to come on the show regardless. And I think, probably a spoiler alert, but I think everybody was expecting that there was this massive falling out or this massive... And it's just not that. I think that it's just about timing and what Ben wants to do with his life and things weren't happening as he thought they would. So he's just sort of said, I'm out and I'm going to sort of maybe take a break and work out what he's going to do next. Yeah, he kind of mentioned that he might want... He was going to start working on the Bible Adventures Timber Machine, but the news that Deep Root would be doing something similar to that kind of took the wind out of his sails. And I guess that's understandable. Going up against a company who can afford to hire all these, Dennis Norman, Barry Osler, going up against that, I guess, is probably not the smartest business decision, right? Yeah, sure. So anyway, let's go to the interview, shall we, with Charlie Emery. Let's do it. Let's bring him in. Let's go. Here he is. All right, so joining us on the Head to Head Pinball Podcast, we're very excited to have from Spooky Pinball, it's Charlie Emery. How are you, Charlie? Hello. It's good to talk to my friends in Austria. He's a 9th-force impersonation. Everybody get down. Oh, sorry. No, that's the other Austria. I'm sorry, that's the other A country. Yeah, thanks for having me on, guys. It's cool to be on the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. Well, you're officially now in Australia. We're on the other side of the world. And I know a lot of people know the Spooky Story, and you're very well known in the pinball community. I guess the question that I've always wanted to know is, you were doing a podcast for many, many years, a very successful podcast. How do you go from that to becoming a very well-known pinball manufacturer? What went through your mind? And, you know, cut to today, what are the challenges? Well, first off, I want to say that I cannot top the Scott Denisey kangaroo nutsack story. Just get that out of the way. We'll see. So if you're tuning in to hear more kangaroo nutsack stories from Charlie, I can't do that. I don't even have one. Maybe he'll get me one for Christmas. Going from a podcast to a pinball company. I don't recommend it, especially now, because at the time we started Pinball Podcast eight years ago, we were the only ones. Now there'd be like 50 pinball companies if everybody does it. Which I think there is. There's probably 30 now anyway, right? Yeah, that's a lot. So it's a hell of a leap, dudes. How you get from one to the other is kind of accidental. The first thing Ben Heck ever said to me is, we should work together. And that's legitimately what kind of got Spooky rolling. And that literally was like five seconds after I met the man. And I'm sure he regrets it now. I'm still grateful, although we have our days. And, no, I mean, I've been a hardcore pinball nut since I was a kid. I've talked about that many a time. as you know you go through life and you have kids and you start to get to that point where you can afford a game or two here and there I was buying cheap games fixing them up had no idea what the hell I was doing and that's you know you're talking almost 20 years ago and it just slowly kind of progresses into making a custom game which I know you know tons of people have but I was lucky enough to be in an industry where I had access to crazy expensive printing equipment that allowed me to do some stuff that kind of got noticed by industry people. And basically it was George Gomez, Joe Balster, Greg Ferrer, all kind of started talking to me at the same time and wound up dragging my former employer into the pinball industry. And from there, it's not a huge jump. You know, when you're working with a guy like Ben Hack and we're kind of making stuff behind the scenes to go, oh, hey, maybe we could actually make a game. And I'm just lucky enough that my wonderful wife let me quit my job and take that chance. Yeah, it obviously was a big leap. And for those people that haven't seen it, watch Go Bump in the Night, the spooky pinball story, because that really does tell the story. And, you know, obviously the business nearly went under and, you know, you got a lot of help from people around you and obviously the local community in Benton. And since then, because I think that was, you know, getting America's Most Haunted out and Rob Zombie, has it been an easier ride since then? No, it's never, ever, ever, ever easy. It gets harder, I think, every year. And, you know, America's Most Haunted was a pretty good game. Ben did a phenomenal job on the rules, and I think that helped sell the game. mechanically was it the best built thing on the planet? Absolutely not but you know and there were some other false starts with other startups back then which kind of it affected us it genuinely did but we were lucky enough that I mean Ben and I just don't quit working ever and we were able to get enough games out there that people began to see it began to play it gave it a chance and it slowly begins to grow, but yeah, I mean, and people kind of forget, at the time that we did America's Most Haunted, I was also working on Pinball Zombies from Beyond the Grave, which later became Rob Zombie. It didn't take very long into the AMH process for Ben and I both to decide that a license was the way to go, so we kind of scrapped Pinball Zombies. I still have the original one that we made. We have one game that ever got printed with the play field and the plastics and all that, still sitting in the back room. And it became Rob Zombie. That definitely did help promote sales. You know, obviously that game had very mixed reviews as far as people were concerned. The layout was, you know, either you love it or you hate it. I get that. That was a bit of a risk on my part. Was it true that Rob Zombie sold out, like, within you revealing that first promo video? Did the machine sell out straight after that video with all the emails in saying that orders are now open? It was, we intentionally slowed it. It could have sold out in a couple of days. We actually slowed it to about two weeks because we had never been in a situation like that. I mean, my wife was going crazy trying to keep up and keep it all straight. But, yeah, I mean, it honestly was. It sold so fast. And, you know, legitimately, before we were even getting those first games out the door, people were already flipping LEs for $8,000, $9,000. I had seen up to $10,500, which to me is insane. And I think that did help push the sales a bit because people started seeing that immediately and without even playing it. So, you know, the love of all things pinball. Buy a game because you love it, people. Play it. Make your mind up. don't buy it just because it's rare and limited. Just wait until you find out for sure. So, Alaskan Bird Nightmare Council would be your, I guess, your sixth title if you include all of the contract games that you've done. Mm-hmm. Do you always consider yourself a bootleg manufacturer, or do you think, you know, at what stage does that change if it hasn't already changed? I honestly don't know where that line is. we did 433 games last year. So you guys tell me, is that a boutique? Is that still a boutique? No one else releases their numbers. That's why you have no idea, right? Well, I can tell you we're pretty transparent at Spooky Pinball. We made 433 games last year and we're going to be over 500 this year. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there's probably different criteria that people would use to determine whether you're a boutique and it could be either the type of machines that you're making or the number of machines that you're making. Was 433 i n line with what you thought, or was that more or less than what you were hoping to achieve in that year? Basically, when we announced Rob Zombie, we said that the goal was to make all 300 games, which is what the contract was limited to. We wanted to make all 300 in 18 months. We did it in 16, so we actually beat expectations there. and you know having Domino's and Nick Parks from the pinball company step in and offer to basically pay us to produce a game for them was just a huge godsend I mean Rob Zombie the engineering got better I mean it was still only our second game and there's things in there I still cringe when I see and there's you know AMH is even worse but you get a lot of flack sometimes because people don't understand that contract manufacturing gig, it's extremely good for any business. You've got guaranteed work, you've got guaranteed jobs, and you've got guaranteed income, which means you're going to grow. And you might look at Domino's and go, well, it doesn't have 10 bash toys and 15 ramps, and it was never meant for you. It was meant for a pizza company. They were happy, we're happy, everybody's good. But it got the engineering better. At the same time, we were getting the ball troughs up to snuff, So we had a jam opto, and it's just little things that you kind of miss, you know, and if you have an entire team of engineers and buckets of cash, which we never have, you might have enough people to stand back and go, oh, well, this is what everybody else is doing. Maybe we should do that. Or, you know, look at all the little things that you kind of skim over when you're trying to survive. So Domino's and Jetson's definitely gave us a little bit of time to get the engineering up to where it could be. Jetsons had the very first clear plastic ramp that we'd ever done. When you're running games at our level, it's hard to get larger corporations, like the same companies that do all the ramps for CERN and stuff. We know who they are. We'd gone in, we'd gotten quotes, and it was still cost prohibitive. It was not even an option. So what do we do? My buddy Tim buys a three-phase, four-foot-by-four-foot thermal press, and we start making our own ramps. he starts doing all our powder coating and some more printing and CNC work. And, I mean, that's going to be right across the street from our shop here in a matter of weeks. He's building a shop to support our shop. So we got metal lasers in Benton now and we doing all this stuff ourselves So we very very self at this point And you see all that engineering kind of roll into what total nuclear annihilation has become You know, Scott was instrumental in helping us get our scoops better and our ball troughs and all that kind of stuff that we were struggling with. And our ball aprons are all solid metal now and really, really sturdy and good. And I think you're going to see all of that kind of accumulate and land in a game called Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. And I can't wait to get to TPF and let everybody kind of judge for themselves. So just before we do get on to Alice Cooper then, just a question about, you know, Jetsons and dominoes and Tosca's New Annihilation. So, you know, Spooky Pinball, your brand was all about horror things, right? Oh, yeah. You know, your love of anything horror has been well documented. So, obviously, taking on these other brands, if you will, sort of takes away from the whole spooky brand. Do you think that that, in the overall scheme of things, was more beneficial to you to do that? And have you been able to say, well, we do this on the side, but ultimately we're still about horror machines? Yeah, you know, and I don't think, like, Domino's or Jetson's pulls away from the spooky brand. It helps us build the brand to be more stable and more confident. But, yeah, I mean, if you're talking an in-house game design that we're doing ourselves, that's where my heart is. That's what I'm looking to do. You know, if Ben Heck comes up with a game or Scott Denise comes up with a game that isn't necessarily a spooky thing or a spooky theme, I'm fine with that. I have no problem with that, but anything that I'm going to design or that we're going to have our air quote house brand on typically is going to be something fairly spooky. And that's just where I like to be. I hold that banner very high. I love metal. I love horror movies. I love all that kind of weird stuff, and I've been that way since I was a kid, and I don't see that ever changing. Well, so obviously T&A sold really well. Are you happy with the numbers of the units that have shipped for Domino's and Jetsons? Absolutely. I mean, we did 136 Domino's games. I mean, this is a game made for a pizza chain. And I know a good 20-plus are in the hands of just pinball collectors that wanted to support Spooky, and we're thrilled with that. Would I like to see Jetson sell some more? I mean, the contract can run up to 300 games, and at any time Nick could come back. And we do. I haven't really announced this anywhere, so here you go. Here's a head-to-head pinball exclusive. We do have a second programmer working on Jetson's code to kind of get it a little cleaner, a little better, get the audio up to where it needs to be. And, you know, even though it's technically a pinball company product, it was their layout, it was their design. We're still the manufacturer, and I still put a lot of pride in that. And if there's anything we can do to make it better, I'll eat that little bit of profit and, you know, get somebody else on it, which we are doing at this time. So, you know, Jetson's is a fun game. It's very, very simple. It was never intended to be Lord of the Rings. It was never intended to be extremely complicated. It was a simple, family-friendly, fun game that the kids could walk up and play, and nothing was going to shout back at them in an offensive anything and have a good time. And it looks good sitting next to a pool table and a jukebox in the maybe not-so-pinball-obsessed game room. That's where it was intended to go. But, you know, we have sold quite a few to pinball guys too. Talking about yourself, Charlie, is it true, sorry, that you've moved into a new house or you're building a house at the moment? Is that right? The stakes went in the ground this week, so they'll start digging the foundation this week. Okay. So, was that on your previous property? I mean, our question relates about your current pinball collection. and, like, do you have pinballs in your house at the moment, or are they all in storage? That's why we're building a new house. I know we've talked about this on the Spooky Pinball Podcast several times, but our house is, I mean, it's an old house. It was built in the late 1940s right after World War II here in Benton. We hadn't seen a drop of water in the basement. We've lived here 20 years. basement in, oh, boy, probably eight years, and the last time it was like a damp corner. We were in a neighboring town visiting some pinball friends that were staying at a hotel, and they had their kids swimming in the pool, and we were hanging out with them. It was absolutely gully-wash raining here. We came home. I checked the basement at 11 o'clock, and it was perfectly fine. Bug was sitting down there playing video games. An hour later, he came upstairs, and he's like, Dad, I think you need to get downstairs. I stepped on the floor at the bottom of the steps, and the carpet literally waved across the floor like it was on an ocean. Wow. So we scrambled. We called some of the minions and my son, and we grabbed the trailer. We got all the pinball machines out of the basement as fast as we possibly could. We lost our furniture. We had sofas and a little TV room and stuff down there and bookcases holding all our DVDs, and all that stuff got wrecked. And that's why we're building a new house. It's time to sell this one. So if anybody's looking for a great house in Bentley, come here. So we don't have basements here, and it's, well, some people do, but, so the water came after the rain? Like, how does that happen? Does it get kind of, like, built up somewhere and then leaks through, or? The water table can literally get so high at times that it'll push through the floor of the basement. And that's exactly what happened. We have, up here, they're called sump pumps. So if the water table gets close to the bottom of the floor, it basically, the sump pump sits down in a hole. It pumps the water out and away from your house. We have two of them, and they just couldn't keep up. It was raining so ridiculously hard, it just basically overflowed, and it's gotten nowhere else to go. So is your pinball collection now at the office? Is that what's happening? There's a few games here at the house, but everything's kind of getting packed up for the move, and the bulk of my games are sitting in the spooky pinball warehouse. So it's sad. I haven't seen them since last fall. I miss it. Okay, so what is your go-to game at the moment? Wherever you're able to play, are you still jamming on TNA or have you got any new games lately that you've been playing? Well, and obviously we keep several games. I mean, I've got everything in our shop from Swords of Fury to Space Shuttle and Black Knight, my very first game that I ever really fell in love with. You know, we keep a Rob Zombie, and everything we've ever done is in the shop, but even Star Trek LE and Medieval Madness, that's... So I still do have access to some games. We threw a few of them from the basement in the shop so that the minions can play after work, which they do. They love to, especially on Thursdays, they keep beer in the fridge, and, you know, they'll have a couple beers and play the hell out of Star Trek and Total Nuclear Annihilation, but yeah, my go-to game right now, not to sound like a Gary Stern answer, is Total Nuclear Annihilation. It just kicks my ass, and I love it. We've got a question from one of our listeners. Let's see who it's from. Scott Denisey. He wants to know, before you started playing Total Nuclear Annihilation, you didn't like electronic music. Do you now like electronic music or not? I love it when Scott Denise writes it. Just his, just his music. That is a Gary Stain answer. Whenever it's on the line, whenever it's on the line. The music in that game is absolutely awesome. It fits the theme so, so well. and it's fun because I'm not a fantastic player I've been to Reactor 5 a few times but it's weird when you have friends come over and they just start trashing it and they're getting a 789 and you start hearing songs that you haven't heard before and it's pretty cool, I mean I give Scott all the credit in the world, he has changed my opinion a little bit you know I got to know you got Bug hooked on it he gave Bug a cassette and Bug has my old dual cassette deck in his room and yeah you hear the TNA soundtrack and they're just blasting and it's kind of funny, I like it So what's your favourite era of pinball machine and I say that because we often talk about TNA and we say it's got all the great things about the old school 80's solid states but it's modernised so it's kind of a mix of all of that which turned out to be Great. What would you say is your favorite era of machine? Oh, man. I love pinball in general. I love playing Black Knight, like I said, is the game that got me hooked as a kid, and I still love to play it. Of course, I love all those spooky, weird games. I have a Monster Bash. I love Monster Bash. I love Creature. I love both of Ira games are fantastic. My fail-safe is always Adam's Family. I always fall back on that one. It's not my favorite game, but it's one I would never give up in a million years because I might ignore it for a month or two and then just play the daylights out of it for two weeks straight. I love the new stuff, too. I mean, the newest game I own is a Star Trek LE. I had a customer actually trade the last Rob Zombie I had in the box for a Star Trek LE. To me, that's the best shooting game Steve Ritchie has ever done, who Steve is still a hero. I love that game. Well, we both got Star Trek at least, and it will never leave my collection. Same here, man. I love that game. It just shoots so nice. And that's why he's the king of flow, and I'm just Charlie. So T&A just came along, right? So you saw it. Scott and you had a conversation and said, yeah, let's do it. If it didn't come along, what would you have been doing the last couple of months? Well, the intent was we were going to stand on the gas with Alice Cooper, and Ben and I were kind of buttonheads a little bit about if it was going to get to Expo last year or not. I mean, the intent was it was going to come out last fall. And being quite honest, we struggled a tiny bit with the HD system. You know, it's sorted itself out. That's fine. But as Scott and I began to talk more, I mean, it was apparently obvious that TNA was going to get to production quicker than we imagined it could. And a lot of that, the credit goes to Scott Denisey. And, I mean, Ben and I had the conversation, and he's like, yeah, if you can do that, you really should. And we had no idea if it was going to sell 50 or 100. And, you know, we've got this pool at work where everybody wrote their number on a sheet, and I think half of us are already out because it's gone way beyond what we anticipated. which is a great problem to have. But yeah, I mean, it's well past Rob Zombie now, and it's just insane to me that a game, and again, like you guys say, you're talking about different areas of the game. I have a Fathom. I have a Centaur. I love those games. Absolutely love them. But to me, TNA smokes the both of them because it's got that similar style layout, but it's so much faster, and it's so much more brutal, and it's so much more fun to sit there and try to get to that next reactor and just to maximize your multiball and cash in on the jackpots so you're playing it right, so to speak. And the strategy is just amazing. To me, it's like the best 80s game that never existed, but with all the modern bells and whistles. Agreed. Absolutely agreed. So, okay, you mentioned Alice Cooper would have kind of been pushed forward if TNA wasn't out. So does that mean that it would have been kind of shown or released in a bit more of an unfinished state code-wise, or do you think he still would have held it back? How does that work? Because as I said, it's a whole other Timor machine that you're making instead of Alice Cooper. So is Alice Cooper now going to be revealed and then it's ready? Like here it is in the box ready to go at TPF? or does it still have a little bit of a way to go? There's still a little bit more power. It's always a trap with pinball machines. You could work on a game forever and never call it done. I mean, Scott is still, I mean, I thought the code in TNA was done two revisions ago, and he's constantly adding more features and doing cool stuff in the new Adaball and all that. had we had to get Alice to Expo last year or at that time frame anyway it would have been fairly podelight but the game would have been mostly complete but again having TNA come in was a bit of a godsend it gave us time to and we all understand as much as everybody else there's a lot riding on Alice Cooper I've got a lot to prove in this game Spooky as a company I think does And I think TNA definitely is a wonderful step, and it shows what we can do when all the stars align, and we kind of get everything where it needs to be, and I think we're there. But it really, really gave us time to polish Alice Cooper, and Ben took the time, and a bit begrudgingly, just being honest, to really, really help me with the rules and stuff on it. and I know he just did a This Week in Pinball interview where he kind of lays out a bit more what we have done with the room navigation and stuff than we have revealed in the past. But it's phenomenal. I mean, as soon as he showed me what he was up to, I was like, okay, this is good. This is really good. And it's just a bit of a different take on it. And it's not going to be like crazy, crazy deep like Eric at GDP. I love what he's doing with the new Pirates game. And the rules in that sound just insanely out there. It's not going to be nearly that deep. It's going to be fairly easy to understand, but, I mean, it's still a pretty tough egg to crack. There's a lot of stuff going on in this game. So it's a bit of an intermediate rule set, but it's, I don't know, I love what Ben did with it. I think it's absolutely amazing. I know you're sort of feeding us some information and visuals of Alice Cooper. Obviously, without trying to give away too much, if you were to walk up to it for the first time, how would you describe the machine just by looking at it? Start from left and work your way to the right. Yeah, I want to know how many ramps and how many... No, I just... What I guess I'm trying to ask is, all along, we sort of don't know visually. Like, you talked about the rules, and that's great. I'm just wanting to know, visually, when I look at it, how does that fit in my head compared to other machines and other manufacturers and where they're at? I've said on our podcast, when you walk up to this game, I want you to see the castle. Alice Cooper's always got the, he's said this many, many times, on Welcome to My Nightmare. when they did that whole tour. He was like, don't insinuate or, you know, suggest that there's a nice one. Give them the nightmare. Show them the nightmare. This is Alice Cooper's nightmare castle. We are going to show you the castle. It's in the game. And beyond that, I don't want to say too much. Wait for QB. But we really went overboard on this thing. Would you describe it, like when you're playing it, theme-wise, that it's kind of like a tongue-in-cheek horror theme, kind of like AMH was? Or is it more of an actual spooky game? It's a bit more of a spooky game. There is a tiny bit of that tongue-in-cheek humor. When we were writing the script, my direction was to keep it a bit like Tales from the Crypt, where you could have that kind of macabre humor, but nothing more than that. Like, there's not a lot of jokes in this game. And, you know, Alice was very clear the first time we met him that he's got grandkids, and I want my grandkids, and I like what you did with Rob Zombie, and I've seen it and played it, but I want my grandkids to be able to play this, so you need to dial that way back, and we did. But he doesn't mind a little bit of, you know, blood and guts here. It's not over the top. It's not like Walking Dead, you know, that level of gore. But you're handling monsters and stuff, so you have to have weapons, and, you know, it's Alice Cooper. there's going to be strange things happening in the game. But he's very much the mad scientist in control of the castle and the monsters, and you're battling him, and that's what you're going to get. When you battle him, do you battle him with two or three flippers? Or maybe more, who knows? Maybe more, okay. Sorry. How is... I'm trying. How is this thing going to be revealed? So have you confirmed how many there will be at TPF? And will it be like a black robe over and you whip it off and say, this is it, and people come up and play? What's the plan at TPF? We're still working out the details a little bit with Ed, but it sounds like 4 o'clock Saturday afternoon. We're going to do a full unveil of the game at our seminar. So, yeah, it's a blatant ploy to draw people into the seminar and get them excited. And, you know, I thought what JJP did and Eric and Joe Harbour and all those guys at Expo last year with the Pirates game was spot on. It gets everybody excited. It gets them pumped up. You know, the anticipation is there. And that's kind of what we're going for. Now, you may see a bit more than that, you know, because we'll be there. actually Chris from Kingpin Games and I will be driving in a truck 16 hours to the show. We'll be there late Thursday night so Friday morning we'll be setting up. We may reveal the cabinet, the back glass and let you see the display and everything that we've done in that regard Friday and then Saturday the big unveil. We'll have everybody play it and right now the goal is to have two full games functioning at TPF. So everybody should have a chance to play it all afternoon Saturday and Saturday night. They keep the game real open until 12, sometimes 1 o'clock in the morning, I believe, and then you've got all day Sunday. I should get a chance to get at least one game in there. So this is what I was going to say. We've talked about this before on the podcast, in particular with Spooky Games, is that we don't actually really get to play these before they go on sale. And that's obviously going to be distance, it's going to be the number of units. I don't know. Is there a way to tackle that dilemma? That's a really good question. And I try to encourage everybody, please play before you buy. And I think we got a little bit, as nightmarish as it was on AMH, everybody pretty much got a chance to play that game. We took it everywhere we could before it sold out. Rob Zombie moved 300 games fairly quick just on site alone. I think some people kind of regret that. So, like I said, if you're not sure, wait. There's 500 Alice Coopers. This is the most of anything we've ever offered, especially at a launch. I think, honestly, when people see what we've done, it's going to be pretty positive. we've brought in some behind the scenes people some A-level players people that didn't necessarily love Rob Zombie and had them shoot it and critique it and what would you change, what would you not change what would you make better and we've done all that already that's what that extra time bought us and I think it's the best thing we've ever done but again, if it sells out man, that's a hell of a problem to have, isn't it? sure So with that number, 500, did you purposely kind of – did you put it higher than Rob Zombie because that's just the natural growth of the company and you expect it to sell out? Or did you put it higher because you want – like if somebody rings up and wants America's Most Haunted, you can say, okay, we'll scale a second-hand market for it because we can't help you out. Same with Rob Zombie and some, you know, Domino's, et cetera. Are you trying to build a library of games so that you can have three or four games running at a time, or do you prefer the current model that you have where you make a game for a limited amount of time and then you're on to the next? It can work both ways. Now, three or four games at a time, no, we don't ever want to do that. Two games at a time is a bit of a handful. We've done it a couple of times now. Now, honestly, jumping to 500 units is, at the time we, you know, and you're talking, that contract was written a year and a half ago, so we had made 300 games. We didn't know how to do that. We haven't made 500 games before of a particular model. We're in a better position now, obviously, that we can handle it, and we know we can get that done in a fairly quick time frame. You know, again, I would like to say 18 months, we're done for all 500 units, which is faster than we built Rob Zombie. But again, you don't want to make people wait too long. When they put down that initial payment on their game, they're immediately anticipating the arrival. And, you know, thank goodness a lot of people jump in early. And, you know, we try to take care of the spooky customers that have always supported us. They tend to get their games faster. You know, they're at the front of the line. So they get first refusal, so to speak. but we've never sold 500 of anything. So people can speculate. I'm not exaggerating. Yeah, it is. It genuinely is. And I think Alice will probably be the first. TNA may get to 500 eventually. It's slowly chugging that direction. I mean, TNA was very, very fast through the first 100. The second 100 slowed a little bit, and then it went from 200 to 300 like wildfire. As soon as we started getting a fair amount of games out there, it just kept increasing. Yeah, I mean, after we streamed it the other day on Wednesday, my phone rang the next morning, and there was at least, you know, I think it was three people kind of asking, you know, so what do you really think about it? And, you know, because they were interested. And people kind of have that instant buy thing where they get kind of that itch and that scratch, and they're like, what's my next game? Oh, my God. Look at TNA. I had a friend who's played it now. And I guess of what Martin was alluding to before about kind of having possibly like a distributor model like, you know, CERN, for example, the biggest manufacturer. Let's draw comparisons for them. You know, the distributor here holds stock. And say 20 of their Title A gets pre-sold, they might import 40. So when the container comes in, there's 40 of them kind of sitting there. And when someone gets that edge, they make the call, and two days later, they have their product. Obviously, with a smaller operation, you have to build the machines in order. But further down the line, do you ever think it would become more of a distributor model where you have people selling for you versus most of your sales coming direct? quite frankly uh no we we have a few distributors in place obviously we have in australia it's dom and chris from pizza and pinball in newcastle uh they're going to be doing some traveling here so that may be transferring to another party down there we'll be uh we'll announce that when the time is right and uh it's tough it's really really tough because we're not Stern. And I get it. I mean, they are the instant gratification company. When you see their stuff, it's pretty quick from the amount of, you know, the time that you see it to you can have it in your home. And Terry from Pinball and I, Pinball Life and I kind of call it the shiny new thing factor because everybody wants that shiny new toy that's out there. And you've got a bit of a limited window to capitalize on that. With a company our size, we just can't generate the stock to send 50 games to Australia, 50 games to Europe, and pre-sell them and do all that kind of stuff. It's just not possible. Is that a warehousing issue in terms of space or finance? What's the bottleneck? Here's the bottleneck. If you are a company the size of Spooky Pinball, and we have a dozen factory workers where Stern has 200, and again, the Stern workforce kind of ebbs and flows with demand. Ours doesn't. It's people that I have to keep employed. And if we suddenly ramp up and we've got 50 people and we're cranking games out crazy fast, then it becomes a monster that you have to feed constantly. So the next title doesn't need to sell 500 units. It needs to sell 1,000. And as the market becomes more and more saturated, and this is my personal opinion, as the market becomes more and more saturated with more companies coming out and more product coming out, those dollars, there's only so far for them to go. And the last thing I ever want to do is walk into my shop and tell 5, 10, 15 people, you don't have a job today. so if you're asking why our production doesn't move quicker than it does that's exactly it we're kind of comfortable where we're at people know when they buy a game from us it's going to get delivered it might not be as quick as everybody would like, especially new buyers they're not used to this Spooky customers are pretty damn great they trust us they send us checks instead of credit cards to save the fees and they'll pick their games up in person and they'll do all this kind of stuff. And, I mean, we've had people drive down from Canada and up from New Mexico and Colorado just to pick games up and say hello. And, I mean, oh, can we tour the shop? Well, it's a giant 5,000-square-foot storage shed, basically, with a little bit of air conditioning and a lot of loud music. It's just the way our business is, and it's a different model. and, you know, you had mentioned before about limiting numbers and stuff. And Ben had made a hilarious comment about he kind of wishes we'd go back and run America's Most Haunted again because he'd like a new car. A vault edition. Yeah, a vault edition. He wants a new car. We stick by that, man. When we say 150 units, we mean 150 units. We're not going to go back and capitalize because we know the demand is there. same thing with Alice Cooper TNA it's unlimited so that's fantastic we can do that but I think it also keeps buyer confidence high that we mean what we say you know that there's not going to be a vault edition or whatever you want to call it or another run because customers demanded it we got to do another 100 that's not going to happen and when you buy a game it should hold its value fairly well because of that and at least I hope that's my intent. I'm not trying to short people, and I understand people get frustrated if they want a game and it's not available. Okay, let me just play devil's advocate and just rephrase one of the questions. So in the absolutely perfect world, right, where I know you're in Benton and the workforce there, it's not like you're in a major city where you can have contractors. contractors, like you mentioned Stern, kind of they scale up, scale down very easily, depending on what's on the line. In a perfect world, would you prefer that over your situation now where you could fulfill the entire, you know, 300 backlog of T&A orders within, you know, a month, for example? I know that that's an exaggeration of the timeframe, but would you prefer that and then kind of like the contractors go and do other work to get gains out quicker? Or are you happy with the way it is now that it takes as long as it takes and it just keeps everyone moving and you're dealing with, I guess, the same people every day? What are the advantages of the way that you're running it now? The advantages are that when you get people that are doing the same job day in, day out, they tend to get better, faster, more knowledgeable. and just, in my opinion, do a better job. If you're constantly turning over people, you're constantly retraining, and there's always going to be mistakes. And again, you've got to remember that Stern is, and this isn't a secret, and it's not a knock against Stern by any stretch of the imagination. They are the big fish in this pond, and we respect everything that they've accomplished. They're done a bit more like an assembly line process, where one person is driving in six screws, the next person is pulling the wires. And at Spooky Pinball, it's not that way at all. If you're on playfields, you're building a playfield. If you're on cabinets, you're building an entire cabinet. You're not putting one part of the puzzle together and sending it to the next guy. It's a bit compartmentalized, but not nearly to the extent that a bigger manufacturer like CERN or JGP can be. But again, buyer confidence. But if TNA is sitting at stern right now, there's no doubt in my mind it's 1,000 units in. Flat out, it is. But we are also a little bit more apt to leave the bill of materials alone. We're not afraid to spend money if we think that the product is going to benefit from it. Every single thing Scott wanted in TNA is still in TNA. and we're really, really proud of that. So, yeah, it may take you a bit longer to get your game, but at the end of the day, I feel that we're going to give you a better game for your buck. Do you also think that there's also probably an impact on the local community as well? So, again, if everybody, please go and watch the Vimeo movie, Things That Go Bump in the Night, because it talks about how, really, the Benton community really supported your company And it certainly came across to me that they were an instrumental part of your survival. So if you are contracting people up and down, that's not necessarily giving back to the community showing the support that they gave you. Oh, absolutely. And the vast majority of our employees are from Benton. And we're a town of 900 people. And we honestly, it's awesome being in a town this size. And, again, my buddy Tim is opening a shop right across the street, and he's just basically making parts for pinball, doing work for us. And now he's going to be creating a few jobs, and they gave him the same exact deal they gave us. Here's a couple acres of land. Your fee, sir, is a dollar. Anything we can do to help you move. He's in our old spot in the Benton Business Incubator. If you've seen the film, you know we were in there before we moved into our shop. He's in the same spot we were. So his business has grown to the point where he's out of the incubator now, and he's building a shop that's just literally across the road. And, you know, it's an amazing support system. I absolutely can't imagine that in a big city anywhere else, yeah, you're going to have more employees, but you're not going to get more love and help. And people behind you, I mean, if there's a problem, we've got 50 people in town right now that are standing at the door ready to help. It's just incredible. It's small town Wisconsin. I don't know what else to say about that. It really, really is. And, yeah, I understand our business model could be bigger and faster and more efficient, but I don't necessarily think that makes for an end better product. And, you know, it's not perfect, but it's the best that we can do right now. And I don't want to see this get to a point where it's another Stern or another J.J.P. I don't think the industry can support another one of those companies that size. That's my personal opinion. I've said that in the past. We fit well in our little spot in the market. You know, we take good care of everybody that we work with from outside the company, like Scott and Ben, and, you know, everybody gets taken care of very well. I think that answers one of the first questions he asked So you are saying a boutique company forever That your plan Yeah yeah I enjoy it I enjoy it. Like I said, it keeps the game value where it should be, I feel, and it also keeps it manageable without me wanting to jump out a window. And it's a lot of work now. Yeah. So, Charlie, just for all the listeners out there, We planned this kind of interview before this news broke out. So, you know, we saw the information this week that Ben Heck has decided to kind of, I guess, part ways with the company. But he was always a contractor, so I guess he was never a full-time employee or anything. He was an official part-time employee a good portion of the last year anyway. I don't think a lot of people knew that. We never really made an announcement or anything, but we did have Ben on the payroll for quite a while, and we're proud of that. Yeah. So I guess the news this week, yeah, that he's left and he's no longer with you guys. So there's been a threat on Penn's side, and you've already kind of chimed in, and I guess people were looking for a bit more drama, like some people will feed on, but there doesn't seem to be much there. Sorry, everybody. Sorry. Very disappointing. Ben's jumped on this week in pinball and given a kind of interview, as you alluded to before, would you like to tell your story behind it, just, I guess, your summary of what happened and where we are now? First of all, I'd like to apologize to the people of Illinois for Ben's comments. No, I'm just kidding. It's a terrible place. If that isn't the most Ben Heck quote I've ever seen ever, I laughed so hard. I know. It was kind of like, it's a terrible place. Oh, hang on. Sorry. Let me rephrase that. It's really fucking terrible. Ben has his opinions. He's a very strong individual. No. You know, in some ways I do feel disappointed that I, and I'll take personal responsibility for it, getting the license in place and everything that Ben mentioned. It was a much bigger struggle. I mean, the initial license part came together so fast, it was like, oh, this is going to be fantastic. And then it basically boiled down to one person wanting a truckload of money. And it fell apart. We did everything we could, in my opinion, to fight as hard as we could to get it done. When that didn't happen, Ben began to shift gears a bit. and we put him on Alice Cooper, honestly, I mean, just to keep him busy and to keep him around because we love working with the guy. And he's very, very good. But at the same time, Ben is, you get it from when you read that interview, he's a very strong-willed individual. And if he's not 100% into what he's doing, he's going to lose interest fast. And I think that was a big part of his finally just basically saying, okay, we'll go back to the AMH days, and I'm just going to step on my own. And again, we were paying him to design the game that we were going to do as a full-blown spooky game, so we still have all that stuff. But you think I'd honestly put something out without Ben's full involvement, Helmo? I mean, I hope someday he comes back and finishes it, and that'll be when he's ready. He knows that the door's always open for him. But he pulled back a bit, and he was like, yeah, all right, we're going to do it like we did with AMH. And he basically started working on the Bible game that he completely believes in. And as his friend and as a guy that completely respects Ben, I don't have to agree with his theme choice for me to build it. I respect him enough that I would do it regardless. And I know it's controversial and I know it's a little bit out there, but whatever. And, I mean, you watch that whole Bible adventures discussion just break down into people attacking each other. It terrifies me. But it's Ben, and I respect Ben, and he truly believes in that. And I owe him to finish it if he so chooses. But then, of course, you saw the whole Deep Root thing kind of came out, and it just pulled the wind out of Ben's sails, and I get that. And I totally understand that, and I felt bad for him. so the timing got all completely screwed up he's going to run off with our animator David Van Ness, a wonderful Aussie animator he is another full time spooky guy they've got a film project coming up here and Ben's looking forward to that and he's just going to go focus on that for a while and you know privately behind the scenes when Ben was going through AMH I thought it about killed him And, I mean, he was ready to quit several times then. And we would leave him alone for a while, and he'd come back after he kind of, you know, got over it. And he'd start thinking of other ideas, like he made his little mini-pin and stuff for the Ben Heck show. And then he starts getting that itch again. And I'm hoping that's what happens down the road. I mean, we love Ben. You're never going to hear me say a bad word about him other than he emptied my beer fridge. so just one step back there when you said um you know when you're working with ben to get that license so and you said you said the first part was hard but then someone wanted a lot of money so does that mean that you i'm not sure how licenses work does that mean that you you don't have the license at all like no one has the license because of that um that fee that wasn't agreed on or you do have the license that you couldn't get someone to say do call outs or something later on down the track. Right, and I don't want to screw this up because, I mean, there's still always, there's always hope that that could come back around. It was something that was very much in the spooky vein. I was very, very excited about it. Ben was thrilled about it. The whole team was. And the production company slash studio behind it was over the moon to make a deal very, very quickly and it basically boiled down to one person that we all uh how do i put this nicely we all felt was incredibly crucial to the game and we didn't want to do it half-assed let's put it that way and we wanted this person's involvement and it boiled down to more money than uh i knew existed so so in in essence it effectively makes you know you look at the total cost of that additional fee split amongst the games you're probably still saying it now just puts it out into a price point that people won't really go for is that right well it's not necessarily that it's it's just a bit more of a risk on spooky's behalf to be honest i mean if you're laying out that kind of money you know you have to sell so many games to recover it and the theme, in my opinion, was a bit more extreme. I mean, I love it, don't get me wrong. But it's a bit more extreme, like a Rob Zombie. I mean, you know it's going to be pretty out there. And when it's not universal appeal, so to speak, you have to kind of worry how many will it sell to get that cost back. And, you know, I don't want to sell a game at $10,000. I just don't. that's one way to guarantee you get that money back. But at the same time, I mean, that's not the spooky business mold. That's not the model I want to be in. It's not the price range I want to be in. I want to be able to sell you a pretty decent game for mid-$6,000 level to me is about right. And it just became more risk, basically, than we could absorb. And so he said that that's the whitewood that effectively is yours. He's basically saying that it's very easy to turn into another license. Do you agree with that? Yeah, no. I mean, we honestly tried to get him to do it, but, you know, when he laid it out, it was laid out for this title, and in his mind, that's the way Ben's brain works. You know, he sees it as that, and we did try to get him to turn it into a couple other things, but he just wasn't really feeling it, and I respect that. So, yeah, I mean, he basically left everything with us, and we could do something else with it, but I don't know, I respect Ben too much to do that. So I would like to see it eventually come around, and, you know, we'll keep fighting, and maybe someday we can get that negotiation finalized, or find another way around it. I don't know. I don't know what the great answer there is, but, you know, Ben, like I said, he kind of jumped on the Bible thing, and he started laying that out, and he was all about it because he believes in it and that's where Ben needs to be. He needs a project that he's fully behind. Yeah, fair enough. So in the interview, because you know him personally and I guess as a friend, I read this at four o'clock in the morning last night, but this is the bit that kind of struck me when he said, are you excited about Alice Cooper being revealed? No, but I'm never excited about anything. I tell people... Yeah, that's why I'm just thinking before, That's what Jeff said. He laughed and he said, I tell people that and they think it's funny or awful, but what can I say? I just don't have any emotion. What does that mean? Is Ben, you know, does he not get excited because he's like an engineer and that's just part of his personality trait? Or does he just, you know, it almost sounds a bit sad that he doesn't get excited because that's like the best part about life, right? Ben's a robot. we've joked about that before man i mean when we shipped the first america's most haunted i was a train wreck i mean we literally ben's like writing code as the truck driver is standing behind us like what the hell you know get the damn thing on a pallet let me get out of here and i mean and i'm just like begging the guy please i'm sorry this is a big thing and you And we were talking months of just killing ourselves in frustration. We got that thing on a pallet, loaded it in the truck, and it left. And, I mean, I'm standing there watery-eyed and hugged the man, and he's like, don't ever do that again. That's Ben. He doesn't get to work. I mean, he doesn't own an AMH. He doesn't get attached to the stuff he builds. He sold Bill Paxton pinball, you know, the very first thing he ever did. He was like, ah, it's just this thing sitting in the corner. I'm done with it now. And that's just Ben. So what do you think he values then? If it's not the project that he works on, what do you think Ben values then? And I don't know. I'm trying to say I've never talked to him. I don't know him as a person. So help us learn about Ben with that comment. I think Ben is an incredibly loyal friend I think he values a good beer and he definitely is he's just one of those creative tinkerer types that he's always looking for that next project and you know that's just Ben's nature he's a wonderful dude and I really do hope he does come back to Spooky at some point but it's got to be when it's right for him and I get that. And right now he's very, very excited about going to make a film and I get that too. You know, it's something he did in the past in kind of an independent level and just had fun with it. But this was kind of the next step there and I think it's just something that maybe he feels he, it was a bit unfinished in his life. So more power to him. Like I would stop him from wanting to go, you know, go do a dream job. Yeah. Does Scott Denise, I guess, possibly step into his position as an all-round, kind of like a coder, a designer for any future titles, or is he still just concentrating on finishing out Total Nuclear Annihilation before those chats begin? Boy, I wish he was here right now. I don't know that I want to answer that for Scott. I mean, obviously he's going to finish writing code for TNA. What little bit more he can do to it. I don't know what else he can do to make it better. But, yeah, I mean, we've definitely talked. We would love to see Scott do another game, and I think he will see that. Love Scott to death. We're definitely not getting him away, and I don't think Terry wants him to leave pinball life either. So it's kind of a nice position for Scott to be in that he's been in the corporate world. He's done all that kind of stuff, and now he gets to do what he really enjoys. And he's got some stability with a normal day job as far as a job in pinball can be normal. And he also has the ability to design and produce games with us. And, I mean, that's a blessing for us. It's awesome for Scott. He is our leading game designer at this point. You know, he's sold more than I. He's the Steve Ritchie of Spooky Timber, right? He's the Spooky King. Yes. Yeah, right now he's got the title, and he says he wants a trophy. So he's all about those little trinkets. And, yeah, so he'll get the most games sold trophy here. We'll make him one, and then maybe Alice will take it back, and then Scott can go to try to top that. I don't know. But, yeah, I don't think Scott's going anywhere. We like Scott a lot. I think he's just getting started let's put it that way and we need young designers we need guys like him and Eric J.P. and Elwin over at Stern come on, that's exactly what pinball needs I'm going to be 50 this year I shouldn't be a young pinball designer I can just go back a little bit on theme you just talked about the license that you were trying to get that you couldn't have there been other licenses that you've tried to get? And also, how far into the future do you think about when you're trying to secure licenses? That's a really good question. Actually, David Van Ness, our animator extraordinaire from Down Under, he's really pushing me hard, and we're working together to be a bit more proactive in that department because we don't want to get into a situation again like we ran into with Ben. we want to get a couple of licenses under our belt where we're ready to go and yeah right now we're working in that direction it's a lot of hard work man and it's funky because the more that like bands and film companies start to lose those physical media sales the more protective they get and the more expensive it gets on our end and I'm sure Stern and JJP and everybody else is feeling this too. That money's got to come from somewhere. So they start to try to make it out of other product because they're not selling the DVDs, they're not selling the CDs, they're not selling everything that they used to sell. So... Well, so that's the challenge, right? Because if you get the license now, then all of a sudden the meter starts running. I know the licenses can be renewed, but once you've got that, you've then got these milestones that you need to start pushing your product out. And that can then have sort of challenges towards the level of quality that you want because you want to be able to take your time to get the best product. Exactly. And I know we've shaken a little bit of heat for Alice Cooper being, you know, air quote, another music game. But when somebody comes to you that is excited about the project, enthusiastic about the project, and willing to work with you hard, like, we'll give you what you want, we'll give you the speech, we'll give you everything you need to make a great game, and then I pull back and I sit and I think about it and I'm like, all right, love Alice Cooper. He's Rob Zombie's older brother. He's awesome. But how do we make this completely different? And that's where the Nightmare Castle aspect kind of came in. And when we fed that back to Alice, he was absolutely thrilled. So yes, we can do a music game, but be a little bit different. But to answer that question, yeah, yeah, exactly. Licensing is so ridiculously tough and it's going to get harder and harder. And you're starting to see a lot of fringe stuff that would be perfect for spooky pinball, especially in the horror realm. Stuff that is still considered a bit B-movie level by mainstream standards is right in our wheelhouse where we can sell 300 to 500 games pretty decently and it's still very appealing to enough people to make that sustainable. but those companies are in the same boat as the big studios. They've got to get their income from somewhere and they're trying to make the most of it. So it becomes a real battle to get, you know, it used to be you could license a film or a TV show or whatever you're trying to do and you would get the video clips and you can use the audio from the film and all this kind of stuff and more and more it's like each individual actor is pushing to get, if you use my voice at all, even if it's just from the film that already exists, they're going to get paid. And if you're using them on your now HD display, the Screen Actors Guild is going to want a chunk. And it just gets more and more complex. So how much input did Alice Cooper have in his machine? He honestly could have had 100%, but he's such a laid-back, easy dude to work with. I mean, Rob Zombie was very, very hands-on, And everything we did in that game, Rob was right there. And, no, I don't like this. Change this. Move this over here. I mean, he was very much in control of a lot of stuff and a blast to work with. Was it because he was controlling or was it because he loves pinball and he just wanted to have a great pinball machine in his mind? Oh, he definitely enjoys pinball and everything, but as far as, like, the artistic aspects and stuff, he wanted it to look like a Rob Zombie game. And, you know, the play field to me is a little bit darker than we would have liked to see, but that's when Rob Zombie says, I want a giant zombie face from, like, the old days and a tombstone, and that's what you're going to do because he is the boss. And, you know, I think it still came out very classic looking and different. Very, very cool. Alice, on the other hand, completely the other direction. Everything we took in to show Alice, he's like, oh, my God, I love it. That's awesome. and I think he's just he's a bit more of an old school dude and when we walked in with the comic book stylings of what we were trying to do it was just right in his wheelhouse and again everything we showed up the only thing we got any kind of pushback on at all was the script which was 47 pages deep and And I think we got that to 40 before he approved it. That was the only thing. And, I mean, there was just some, there was a bit of, a little bit of silliness in it that I think he might have saw as repetitive. And, you know, he couldn't quite figure out why you might need eight different ways to say extra ball. Stuff like that, you know. And once we explained it, he was very accepting. And, you know, we whittled it down a little bit and just kind of tightened it up. and that's it man. So do approvals go directly from you to Alice or has he got like a management team or somebody that actually really is responsible for his license effectively? Alice has a management team. When I was dealing with Rob Zombie it was literally, hey Rob what do you think? I mean it was that direct. Had his phone number, email, everything and it was just like yeah if you need anything call me here just email it over to me, show me the photos, whatever you need to do. And Alice, it does go through a management team, but Alice, at the end of the day, is the one that says yes or no. So, right. So with that, have you recorded these sounds now, or is that still something that needs to be done? The script, honestly, he's had it for a few weeks and expecting it here early this week. So we know he's working on it right now. Yeah. And when you said you're kind of giving this script, and it's 40 pages long, and there's eight ways to say extra ball, How do you convey that? Like, do you, is this like go for the extra ball, extra ball is lit, or is it literally just, you know, like when you say, you know, when you're playing a game and someone says super jackpot in ten different ways so it doesn't, you know, it doesn't feel repetitive when you're hitting jackpots, how do you convey that in text form when you give it to someone and you're not there while they're recording and directing them? Do you say, please say this in eight different ways, or how does that work? in the entire script if you saw it every segment is basically the tone setting the tone you need to be excited, be angry be and Alice has done enough of that stuff that he's I have no worries with him, with Rob it was super simple, I mean I was like dude do you want me on Skype or something so we can he's like nah I got this if you've heard the speech in the Rob Zombie game, I think from a rock star perspective, it's as good, if not better than everything that has ever been done for a rock game. And I mean, that includes Metallica and everything else out there. And those guys did a great job too, don't get me wrong. But Rob was just into it and so animated. And, you know, Alice, when he's talking to you, he's really Vince. And when you see him on stage and in interviews and a lot of stuff like that, he's Alice, he's in character, and he understands that the whole thing has to be done in character. So we're not going to get those monologues that he did in Wayne's World where he talks about the... Yeah, I know Ben had mentioned it in the This Week in Pinball interview, that he literally walked in, and this was like the second time we had gotten a chance to spend some time with Alice, and he walked in and it was a charity tournament and he's like, all right, all right, let's get this out of the way. If nobody says I'm not worthy, I won't call you pinball wizards. He's a sharp dude and he's really funny and he's super, super nice. That's awesome, Charlie. Well, do you have any more questions, Marnie, or should we play a new Age of Legends, Cracks Ryan's Awesome Puzzle? Let's play. Should we do it? I know crap. and Marty you're not meant to say the actual word Marty we always have do you know what this is Charlie? no should I be terrified? no it's literally just a quiz but it's it's just a bimbo quiz with 10 questions you have to have a buzzer sound so Marty do you want to change your buzzer sound because you've had to go to the wall for a while do you want to change it up or oh I'm happy with that Okay Charlie You get to choose your buzzer sound To buzz in to answer the question And anything you want Any pinball call out Or anything you like to yell out Like you have an unlimited database? Yep So for example mine You'd go for the wall From Roller Games Okay Do you have any from Rob Zombie? Oh no I'm not gonna No It's not gonna be like I'm not going to buzz in for you. You're buzzing down. You're in the hell, mother effer. Yay. That's it. So do you know the answer? That's what you use to buzz in. So you're going to have to say that 10 times, Sally. Oh, God. All right, so I've got to make one up. Let's see here. What should I do? I'll go, do you want fries with that steak? Okay. From Monster Bash? Is it? Sure. Okay. Okay, so as I said before, I'm going to just ask a question. If you think you know the answer, buzz in with that, do you want Pfizer that steak, and then just answer the question. And ten questions, whoever gets the most wins. No pressure, but Marty has lost every single one. Wait, Marty can't see the answers. You guys aren't cheating here, are you? No, no, no, definitely not, definitely not. Okay. Okay, okay. And I apologize in advance for the low effort questions. I just like five minutes. Okay. What is the call out in the shadow when you get a three-way combo? I have no idea. I've hardly played it. I don't know. Yeah, right. I don't own a shadow. Sorry. I can play it, but every time I play it, it's in a noisy pinball show. Let's change it. And how many flippers are there on the shadow? Drop the ball. Marty? Three. Yes. Are you counting that upper, what is it, the, I don't know what it is. It's a flat thing that smacks the ball back at the top of the. Is that a flipper? That's not a flipper. I think that's a paddle. It has a coil, but, yeah. Oh, Charlie's playing dirty. He wasn't trying to do that. Sounds kind of like a flipper. It hits the ball. All right. I'll give you a point for that as well, Charlie. These rules are very loose, Marty, okay? Yeah, it's okay. What time does Rudy go to sleep? Go to the wall. Ah, God. Midnight. Thank you. You forgot your call, actually. I should have gone for an easier one. Can I change my sound? Of course you can. All right. I'm just going to go bleh there we go but I will stick with Monster Bash okay how many souls do you need to collect in Lord of the Rings for return of the King multiball how many souls are you collecting no one go to the wall no idea go for a guess and I'll say a thousand alright Charlie do you want to guess and see who's closer do you want to price prices right in and go at the afternoon one? Um, all of them. That is perfectly correct. It's 5,000. I'm giving none of you guys that. That's horrible. Another game I don't want. Okay. This is going good. What do you spell in Creature from the Black Lagoon to get into multiball? Death of the Wild. Yeah. Ah, Charlie, I think you just got in there. Uh, film. Film. There we go. In Cactus Canyon, who is in peril? Go to the wall. Ah. Yeah, buddy. Polly. Polly in peril. Doesn't she have a last name? I was trying to think of a last name, honestly. It's trying to get you again. It really is. Isn't it like Polly Perlene or something like that? Is that, okay. I don't know. I guess Polly, okay. I guess Polly. I'm going to chuck in a Monster Bash question Charlie, for you How many monster inserts are there in or how many monsters are there in Monster Bash? Double Blip Six You can tell I'm mean business this time, I do not want to lose In Fish Tales how many lit ramp shots I needed to light Monsterfish. Five, six, or seven. Oh, it's multiple choice. Blah. Yes, Charlie? I'll go six. Yes, good job. It was never going to be five, seven, boom. Well, it was a crisscross thing, so the three each sounded like a good idea. For update, Martin from Australia, for Charlie from the USA, three. This is Winter Olympics, right? in Indy 500 who is the commentator talking to when he mentions the ball is locked in the turbo I own that game I own that game for two days yes Marty I'm talking to the driver no it's a name Bobby I was locked in the turbo Bobby alright no it's another one it was Ricky Bobby Thank you, Bobby. That's it. All right, two more questions. How many flippers does Flash Gordon have? Charlie? Four. No. Damn it. I owned that game for like six years, too. I can't remember. It's three. Oh, three. Three. All right, yep. There's only one on the upper plate. I'm sorry. One question left. Marth and five, Charlie's three. The good news, Charlie, is that... Oh, don't do this. I'm going to be the first person to ever lose to Marty on this show. He's going to give him all his points for the last question. The last question's worth three points. All right. I hope this works. I haven't listened to this sound, but I'm going to play an audio clip that is inside a pinball machine. Just tell me what the pinball machine is from. And since it's the last question, you don't need to buzz in. You can just yell it out. Are you ready? Yep. Okay. Oh, God. The most haunted in the service venue. Did anyone answer? I did. I said America's most haunted in the service. Beautiful. Okay. Tell the other winner. Sorry, Maddie. Totally rigged, totally rigged Oh my god Okay, where did you find that little Sound nugget of love? I was like I had America's Most Haunted And I was going through the menu And I was like, ah, you can change the You can change the The multiball sound You can change it to your own There's like SE sounds or something And then one of the options was I think I said Ghost What or something. And I played it, and it was the entire song, and I was just laughing my head off because you just kept on going. And I think my favorite part is when you said, well, you've been playing multiple a really long time. If you have this part of the song, That was Ben Heck. It was like, we need more music in the game. And I was just in a really goofy mood that day. And I'm like, hang on, I got this. And I thought that to him like five minutes later. We joked and laughed about that for so long, and I kind of forgot about it. And then I was in Scott Denise's office here a few weeks ago, and it came out of his computer, and I was like, what the hell? I forgot about it. I've got another question from the listeners out there. This one comes from a Scott Denise. Do you have a passport yet? I do not, but I will have one before spring, I promise you, Scott We've got a road trip to Canada and I should probably start going other places too So you don't fly, is that right? I don't enjoy flying, I have done it We'll give you another exclusive Katie and I are going to the Golden State Pinball Festival here in California it'll be my first time ever in California and we're going to fly out there so yeah I'm not a huge fan of flying I've actually been invited to Australia and I just don't know that I can spend 26 hours in the air well that's so bad I didn't race it's not worth it not a lot of education and or alcohol or both you can you can say dr john's house i'm sure he's the one who invited you in and uh we're opening up his house he's uh he's the official australian kind of uh you know hotel boarding guy and um yeah human rotor in new zealand they seem to be the two dudes that if you're going to be in the area just come on by i'm sure their wives love it yeah it's been a running joke for years still you know and dr john owes me at least dinner at his house because he uh We gave them all our Chinese food in Texas, so... All right, Charlie. Enjoy your day, and we'll catch you soon. Thanks for coming on, Charlie. Yeah. Thanks, Marty and Ray. I appreciate it. Thanks, bud. See ya. So there you go. That was Charlie Emery from Spooky Pinball. Really, really great interview. Really, really good person to talk to. Yeah, he's probably the only kind of owner of a pinball company we can play anal crap with, right? Okay, before we get into the whole spooky Ben Heck thing, one thing that I was kind of pleased to hear was mentioning that 136 Domino's pinball machines have been sold. Yeah, that's pretty good. He didn't mention the number for Jetsons, but that is getting co-polished, and hopefully that'll kind of push more sales. But 136, there's nothing to be sneezed at, right? No not at all I mean how many America Most Wanted were there 150 Right So I mean that was a significant release So to have 136 dominoes out there is pretty good Yeah. I think it was pretty cheap as well. It was like, what, was it $5,000? $1,000 less than, maybe $5,500. I can't remember. But, yeah, it was a great interview, and we should pay ourselves on the back for that. Yeah, absolutely. But, again, sort of what we said before, it is, you know, you can tell that Charlie and Ben, we assume, are still good friends, right? It's just the timing wasn't right and, you know, Ben's now just going to do his own thing. He'll come back to pinball eventually, I think. He just, from what I gather from Charlie, he just, he's a creative mind and he's kind of like doing a certain amount of things and he's not going to put his life on hold and wait around for things to line up, so. And he wanted to release another machine. So for that to sort of be put on hold and to be working on other things, it's not really what he's passionate about, I guess. Yeah. So, there you go. Should we head to this week in pinball? Yes. Let's do this. What's happened with your week? A lot of stuff. Seconds of all, everything picked up. That's good. Thumbs up there. Guys seem to be pretty happy with that. Did you get a good price for it? Yep. I got what I wanted. You know, you chuck in some mirror blades, but since I kind of I've had them lying around. I'm just ignoring that I checked in a whole bunch of sets of movies. What else did I do? I was on the Slamsuit podcast. That was fun. Just during the week, they just decided to give me a call when I was on my computer. And yeah, I think there were 20 minutes into the episode. So check out the Slamsuit podcast. It's hilarious. It's also surreal now for me to listen to you. because obviously I'd heard you on their podcast before, but it's really surreal now to hear you on their podcast knowing that we've got this podcast as well. Yeah, and it's also surreal to talk to Bruce and Ron, even though I guess it was the third time on our show, but it's so secret that they come about. My favourite podcast, I do listen to a lot of them, but they're the guys that make me laugh the most, and we had a fun time ripping off every single podcast out there pretty much. You really did. So, boys, you need to get me on your show now. I think that's really the sum of it for me. Ooh, two weeks in a row. It's the end. Let's see if we can get it done. Let's see what happens. The big news of the week for me, I guess, was, yeah, TNA, Total Nuclear Annihilation, arrived at 7 or so in the morning a day after we recorded the podcast. And I was so out of it. And the guy, it was hilarious. The guy, like, obviously, prowlers aren't around anymore. He talks about him. So, he is delivered by kind of a generic courier guy. And he's like, oh, this is a pinball machine, isn't it? I'm like, yeah, yeah, it is. He's like, oh, I remember delivering one to a guy in, like, this suburb or a Nassau. So, I reckon there's at least around three or four of you guys that like into pinball machines. And, like, there's a lot more for that. Quite a few, thank you, mate. Oh, my gosh. And we couldn't fit into my door. and I was so out of it that I haven't had room for it yet and he was like, I've got to go, so we've got to kind of take it out of the box and I'll help you bring it in, into the house. And man, like, it's such a difference with Prowler. As grumpy as he was, he knew what a pinball machine was and what its worth was, so he's slow and careful, you know, about it. This guy, like, got a box cutter and he was, like, ripping it open and I was like, ah, you know, the staples on there, like, be careful when it's coming out, and... I almost, you know, shit my pants. He got the box cutter, and he walked into the room. The first machine is a sack from Mars, and he just kind of, like, throws his box cutter on the pinball machine, and I'm like, oh, that's, like... Oh, please. Who of all people would do that to? Anyway, yeah, not the smoothest unboxing of a pinball machine that I've ever done. You know, I've unboxed Stern's J.K.P. pinball machines, and this was the first Spooky Pimelol to unbox. And I waited for Nima to rock up. I wanted him to experience the Pimelol Machine unboxing thing and to our surprise, there was no keys. Ah! No keys. So I went crazy looking for them. I messaged like five people like, where were your keys? And is there anywhere else there could be? And I emailed Spooky and they got back to me straight away. And it's like, oh, they should be in this box, but have a look here and have a look there. and I was second-guessing myself, you know, did my kid, was my kid next to me when I opened this box? And no, they were 100% missing. And so we had to drill out the lock, which is quite a funny thing to do on a brand-new pinball machine. And let me just go through all the little things I had to kind of change and stuff because I guess it's not fair if I don't list all the little mistakes, I guess, and things here and there on the machine when I kind of listed them extensively for dialed in. You know, the whole joke, dialed in, not being dialed in. So, yep, there was no key. There was six, I think, faulty LEDs that wouldn't produce the green colour. Luckily, there was like seven replacements and they're all kind of in there and working fine now. The flippers weren't aligned properly, so one flipper was a bit higher than the other. Not by a major amount. It wasn't totally flopped down, but I'm not sure how that one got past QC. NIMA pays for the plastic protectors to be installed, which I guess is a cool thing. You know, you're spending all this money getting a pinball machine and most people these days have to buy the plastic protectors as a separate thing. So because there's so many plastics on the playfield, they had an option to kind of just buy the plastics and get them installed from the factory. Well, whoever did them forgot to wear gloves because there are fingerprints all over that clear part where the Denise lock is. And I was like, no big deal. I'll just wipe it down and it can get rid of it. And then I wiped it down on the other side and it didn't get rid of it. So the fingerprints are actually wedged in between the 2.6 lock to take that whole thing apart. Not a massive deal, but, you know, had to be said. Lockdown bar was a bit loose. We fixed that. That's about it. So I just wanted to get that out of the way, just to say that it wasn't a super-duper smooth unboxing experience. There's still a kind of little issue with some Australian machines where the flipper won't hold up because there's no EOS switch. Apparently it's something called a dual-wound coil where it has like a hold coil kind of inbuilt, and when it gets hit from the scoop because it's so fast, it's kind of forcing the flipper down. I've been working with Scott kind of all week and Scott's been working with all the other Aussies trying different firmwares and we'll get to work pretty soon I think it's yeah as a play it's amazing it's going to be hard to find someone talking crap about TNA because once you every negative thing that people say about it is it's kind of simple and I guess it'll get boring after a while but I don't think these are the people that have been playing it. I do think there's one type of person that won't like it, and that's, I guess, people that don't... I think people that play tournament games are more likely... You know, tournaments, sorry, are more likely to enjoy it because the game wants you to play in a certain way, and if you don't play in that certain way, you're finished, right? And, you know, before I met you, Marty, and started playing some tournaments, I never did that. I just kind of did what I wanted to do, and I guess I was trying to get to Wizard modes and things like that, but every once in a while your brain kind of switches off and you want to flail and it might hit a target bank or a ramp, and you might just hit a ramp over and over again for no reason because it feels good. In TNA you can't do that. You can't muck around when you're playing the pin. It is that intense, and it sucks you in in such a different way than the pinball machine does that it really forces you to play in a certain way. I can see that some people that aren't, you know, maybe that good at pinball or, you know, don't play in tournaments, are going to have an aversion to being forced to play in a certain way. And that's, I guess, how I might have felt the first day when I was playing it. After that, I've just been so absolutely in love with the pinball machine because it's fun, the rules are super tight, and, you know, there's all these little things I kind of didn't know about maxing out the reactor and he can spin it to max it out. It is amazing. It's an amazing game. I'm not sure what else. I'm not sure if I can say that hasn't been said already by other podcasters and other people that have played the game and wrote reviews on Pinsize. I played one other game. I played it for like two or three days straight, and I was playing it a lot. And then I went to another game. I think it was Attack from Mars. And I turned it on, and I love the sound in was like, wow, this is so boring. Like, I couldn't believe how bored I was because it just, a TNA is that, you know, ADD pin. It's just like, it just gives you what you want now. And there's music pumping the entire time. The speaker system is so freaking loud. When we were streaming, I could hear that do the bonus countdown from across the street when I was making the bins out. And it goes down to one. That's like the lowest setting, obviously, for the sounds. One is loud. I told Scott, can you make me a .5? Like, I want to play this at night. I can't play this. When my wife goes to sleep, I can't play this film machine because it's that loud. It is just booming. It's not just loud. The subwoofer in that thing made your entire room vibrate. The entire room. Not just next to the machine. We're talking, you know, about five metres away from that machine. You could still feel the vibration in the floor. Yeah, and the Shaker implementation is really good. if you're thinking about getting a TNA, I would definitely get the Shaker because especially when the reactor's critical and it tries to make you nervous and the siren's going off and all the LEDs are red, the Shaker pretty much just stays on and it just kind of pulses and vibrates in a certain way that kind of really makes you nervous and you have to kind of overcome that and try and get it to multiball or hit the shot. So I love it. I can't see myself getting bored of it for a while and I can't wait for more people to play it, and you came over and played it. Just a word of warning, I guess, and I told you as well, the flippers were pretty weak because we were testing a different hold setting, and it was kind of overheating the coils, so when you played it, when Jordan played it, and we played it on the stream, it was playing a lot slower than it plays now. Right. So I was going to bring up that point. So when I was at Indisc and I played it and came back and you said, what do you think? And I said, well, it's a fantastic game, but it's really fast. In your mind, were you thinking, oh, really fast is really exaggerating. How fast is this thing? Yeah, it's lightning fast, but it's fast, I guess, in a different way. Like a Stern machine can be fast, but you have kind of like those long shots, whereas in TNA, the only long shots are the orbits, and you kind of hope you stick them, and they go into the top reactor or something. But it's lightning fast. you can make it faster by increasing the call strength you can increase it by increasing one kind of like the JGFP pins yeah, it's fast as I said, it's not just that it's fast it's the way that the machine sucks you into the game that you're in there you experience the game as I said, this is all being said before by everyone else but it's different when you actually play it when you play it, you understand oh, okay, I get it, I get why people like this game it is fantastic And as you were saying, if they were long shots, that's fine. And yes, there's obviously the orbit shots, but really what you're trying to do is block the reactor or get the reactor started, and you've got to hit those three stand-up targets right in front of the flippers. So you are in danger the entire time. Yes. The machine is constantly trying to destroy you, so you have to pick your shots well. and one thing that I really love is the super spinner sound. I'm not sure if this, you know, there's super spinner in different games that usually kind of activates when you do a certain amount of other things. Super spinner is activated by hitting the spinner and a certain amount of spins will then activate it and if you give it a really good rip, it might activate in the middle of its whole spinning process. So when that sound changes from the normal spinner to the super spinner, it's just, I don't know, it's just such a good moment I'm not going to pretend to do this I'm now on the air but you know maybe I'll record it and chuck it in but it's I don't know it's an audio and a visual treat yeah it's just senses and so it is everything that people are saying so those people that are looking going oh I doubt it they're full of shit just go and play it it is that good I mean I want someone to say they don't like it and not to be like oh you're a hater this this and that there is someone out there that probably will test this machine. But I want to listen to why they don't like it after they play a decent amount of games on it. If you have one game and after waiting in line for 45 minutes of the show, then sure, you're probably going to be pretty bitter when your entire ball is over in, you know, your three balls are over in 40 seconds. But if they're going to play it properly, I really want to know why they would not like this machine. I know it sounds weird and horrible, but it's fun. Yep. So, on the stream, I think Jordan had the biggest game, and I think it was his second game, he got to react to six, possibly. Yep. Yeah, which was pretty damn good. My record at the moment is five, blowing up five and almost starting six, which would have got me an extra ball. As I said, those games, I still don't know if I'm playing it properly, because I still feel like I should be able to play my own way, but the machine punches you if you do that. If you want to just flail around and say, I want to hit the spinner because it sounds really cool. Well, that's cool, but you're going to lose your ball. Get into multiball and then do it. Well, I'd say the interesting thing as well is that it's almost like the scores that you put up are kind of secondary. Really, your main objective in this is to see how many reactors you can blow up. But that's the video of it, the code now, and this didn't exist in previous firmware. but now there is a way to blow up reactors and maximize your score by one, multiplying your reactor value by having four balls. You can get an edible and get super jackpots. And the other one is, I guess, to max out the reactor value by hitting the one, two, three targets in the reactor or just kind of hitting the spinner or the swing shots in the reactor. The progression of the game, this is how you know it's a good game, The progression of the game directly aligns with scoring opportunities. So every reactor that you're on, your jackpots are worth more, your reactor jackpots are worth more, and then your reactor blob value is worth more as well. Those three things are directly related to which reactor you're on. It gives you a higher base starting point for that. So, you know, someone said, oh, you know, why can't I just shoot jackpots all day long? Try doing it. You'll get $60,000 each, like, triple jackpot or something, and then $75,000 for the super, but if you get that on a reactor 7, you're going to get a huge score. So it's in your best interest to progress through the game. Well, another thing that happened towards the end, we changed the settings of the game in essence to create a new style of playing this game. Yep. so I remember hearing Scott saying that when he he's only ever been to a reactor five or six as well I think so when he plays with his friends he says it's more fun to set the reactor amount to one so once you finish blowing up reactor one spoiler alert the game finishes so and then the amount you get in your second or third ball say if you do it on ball one is your bonus on ball one so we played that game I think it lasted like 12 minutes or something like that for a four-player game, which is just, it was just so much fun because there was a lot of risk-rewards of do you blow it up on your first ball or do you try and max it out and do it on your second ball and go for jackpots? You know, if I have a little bit more meat, if Nimalus people play his game, I would love to kind of have it on normal settings for half a day and then just kind of, you know, do the whole dollar games thing on one reactor and that would be just a good risk-reward game to play with friends. Agreed. It did just, again, it was kind of like a mini-game. It just changed it up and made it a really good party game. Yeah. So there's only eight of them in Australia. I believe they're doing another round for Australians possibly soon if they get enough orders. So if you're interested, contact Spooky Pinball Australia or Spooky Pinball Direct. And, yeah, I'm not sure how much we're going to be talking about it in future episodes because that's the one thing. It is a fairly simple game in that, like, once you kind of explain the rules and whatnot, there isn't much... I guess I'll just be saying, hey, I got to react to 7 today, or hey, I've managed to get to react to this. Jeff Parsons from the Pinball Players podcast did a nice interview with Scott Denise today, and Scott's done a lot of interviews, but this was kind of a different one where he kind of went into detail about the entire process of making the game and kind of explained the background story to Scarlet and what she's out to do and kind of like, you know, the comic-based version of the story behind Teeny. So give that a listen. Please do. What have you got to say, Marty? Well, besides that, besides going over for a stream, I did something very foolish this week. Very foolish indeed. I invited Jordan. We know Jordan Treader. We've spoken about him before. I invited him over to my house. Okay Do you let him play your pinball machines? I This is the foolish part of it I Well I actually let him play Our game Okay Game of Thrones He played Game of Thrones And You know I mean I've played it a bit And I'm trying to Change my My strategy now So I pick Tyrell And use the multiplier And I was sort of chatting with some people upstairs And he came up and he said Oh Hatchguy Did you get a good score? And he goes Yeah I did I said Did you get grand champion? He said, yeah, I did And I said, okay, what score did you get? He says, do you really want to know? And I said, oh, yeah He goes, really, are you sure? I think the grand champion was just over two billion Like 2.2 billion He put up a 14 billion score on that game Probably his first shot as well, knowing Jordan Probably So that's really what happened And so then last night we streamed hoping to get some way to that score and just got nowhere near. I think 2 billion was another score I got. So that was my week in pinball, just being destroyed by Jordan one more time. Yeah. And when we were getting ready for the stream, I made him play my Metallica because, as I've mentioned before on the podcast, my Metallica just kicks my ass. and I'm pretty sure it's my Metallica and not Meeks playing crap at my Metallica. So I made him play just one game. I know that's not really a proper set of statistics to prove that it's hard or not, but he got into Sparky Moldewall and everything and finished up with 20 million points. So I was pretty satisfied that my Metallica is hard if Jordan scores 20 million after Sparky Moldewall. Yeah, it is. I played it as well and you have got it set up pretty tough. But I don't know what it is. My outline's a default. It's just like super sensitive slings. I don't know, why is it harder than every other machine? You can't move it much, that's for a start. Okay. So, it's nice to react. Anyway, there you go. Shall we play Slam the Top 100? Yes, we should. Well, and shall we talk about last week's results again? So this is the second time that we did. Shall we talk about... I haven't looked at them, Marty, did I win? what would the games were between so for those people tuning in for the first time we have used a random number to select a number from 1 to 100 and that brings two machines from the top 100 at pin side, we get one of those machines and then we argue the merits of each machine, we then put it up on Facebook for people to vote who won the argument and that determines who is the overall winner so I admitted last week that I didn't know anything about TX sector. That was pretty obvious as soon as you started talking about it. Yep. I looked it up and I didn't realise it was the theme for Mr. Gold Standard himself, Nate Shivers, the post-Cosplay World Podcast. I use that quite often. And obviously the coolest thing about TX sector is the sound, which I didn't mention at all because I didn't know. I think the giveaway was when I was going TX, TX, TX. Yeah, yeah. And I saw that you knew that you were going to win, so you voted for TX. Just to rub it in, you guys. I saw you do that after like two days. He won't do it straight away, because then he might lose, but you knew you were going to win. So I'll vote for TX, just to show Ryan how confident I am. So yes, I won with 61% of the vote, and you got 39%. So Johnny Mnemonic is a better game than TX Hector. Which one would you buy though? Which one would I buy? Probably Johnny Mimone Apparently, I mean, TX Sector The coolest part of it is the sound But that's pretty much it Like, apparently the rules aren't super fantastic Yeah, I know I do love, I've played TX Sector a lot I love the sound And the game is, you know, it's funky It's great for its era Yeah, but I'd probably still buy Johnny Mimone Just because it's got deeper rules alright let's generate some numbers let's go oh and what were you going to say I was going to say go and get your friend to get us some numbers yeah my beautiful friend she's been so nice to me and I think someone got a little bit upset about that but once again it's her opinion and not mine I realise that when you say 1 to 100 it doesn't generate it will never be able to generate the number 1 because I tried between like I said generating numbers between 1 and 2 and it just kept saying 2, 2, 2 like 20 times in a row. So it's 0 to 100. Okay. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Okay. This is mine, right? Yep. 45. Ooh, 45. Big bang bar, baby. Big bang bar. Okay. I like that one. Sure. 77. Hmm. Frontier. Okay. You're going down, Marty. I really am. Alright. Who's going first? I think it's whoever's got the lower number, isn't it? Okay. Yep. Alright, give me a sec. Okay. Here I go. Big Bang Bar. Beautiful artwork. one of the best side art cabinets you'll ever see in pinball. Glows with neon lights. Three flippers. You've got the sexy tube girl who's a green stripper. Who doesn't like green bitches, right? You've got one ramp in the game that diverts to, like, four different locations, I think. How many machines do that? You've got three different multiballs. You've got Fran Drescher telling what to do. Done. Okay. That was really bad. I'm sick, Marty, okay? You ready? All right, you ready? Set, go. Okay, Frontier by Bally comes from the best era of Bally games. What I love about this is the layout is fantastic. It's got the inline targets. It's fantastic. But you can shoot for a den of Predators and Frontier. So, you know, players can, you know, compete for two bonuses. You can track down the grizzly target. You can conquer the ABC feature for extra balls and specials. You can also ride for the right-flop target bank. Time's up. You're reading a review of this, aren't you? You're cheating. Are you reading a review? There's no way you know this about Frontier. you went to Pinside and you did what I did but I just didn't read the review am I right? am I calling you out properly? no I did not read the review bullshit you know that much about the Timberwolves no I know that four quarter coin handling awards the same bonus as is given for one Susan B. Anthony dollar my gosh we've got to get some more rules to make sure that this doesn't happen again you can look at the layout only no no rules All right. You ready? Yep, go. Frontier. Cruelty to animals. What can I say? You're hunting poor innocent animals for fun. Shame on you. Big Bang Bar. What are you doing? You're getting sex instructions from a green bitch out in space. Which one would you rather do, okay? Be it a cool, crazy bar in space or murdering innocent animals. Only 14 originally was produced, and it was so good that Gene Cunningham went broke. You know, he lost money to redo this, and it's going to get redone again. Bam. I'm out. Okay. I got... Ready? Okay , my two rebuttals. First of all, Big Bang Bar, there are no rules. The rules are shit-ass. There you go. I've said it. as far as Frontier goes, it is known as the pinball players machine of choice. You ask all the top tournament players, they will tell you Frontier is their best game and seven digit scoring with commas is right on target for today's pinball sharp shot. Okay. That's all. Marty, I'm going to front tier now. Front tier. And I'm going to, I think I know what you did. You clicked on it and then you went to ratings and then you looked up the highest ratings. Right. You're mixing Pinside with that. No, I didn't do that at all. I have not gone to Pinside. No. Anyway, so it's now up to everybody to vote. Well, we'll put this up in 24 hours and you can pick a machine that is about green people in a bar, or you can pick a machine that is rugged entertainment from out of the pinball wilderness. Where are you reading this from? Is this the original flyer? Oh my gosh. I guess that's fair, alright? That's pinball with trash. should look up the... What's the tagline for, you know, flies? Ah, there's no flies for Capcom because they never released it. Green bitches in space. That's what it is. Please, guys. I can't believe three times in a row. Shall we head to the mailbag? Let's move this on. Let's do it. Well, we've actually only had one email this week that we're going to read out. We actually had a lot of emails, but it's more conversational, behind-the-scenes stuff. But we did get an email from Eric. He said, I had an experience today that made me think of your previous podcast. I was having a great game during my son's birthday, and my wife called for me to come and help cut the cake. I managed to delay her until my ball drained and left the machine on with the ball in the shooter lane. I closed all the doors and all the kids were upstairs having cake, so what could go wrong? After serving all the kids, I had my own piece, which turned out to be a mistake. One of the kids, probably mine, must have seen the loan machine left on and turned off. Normally a good thing, but this time not so much. Oh well, there's always next time. He said, the longest I've left the machine on was all day while I was at work. I think that game was the GC on the machine for a long time, so it was worth it. I totally agree about losing your groove when you come back, though. All of the points were made in the morning, and when I came back from work and finished the game, I didn't get that much further. So thank you, Eric, from Abbotsford in Canada. BC, Canada. Do you know what BC stands for, Marty? British Columbia. Oh, I think they've got that in California as well. I do. I love it. Don't forget, buddy. Smash me all the songs. God, he's so aggressive. Really? This is not like when you make mistakes about Christy or Canada. No, no, no. Are we done for the week, Marty? We're done for the week. Are you going to sing me out this week? I am. Are you? Yes. I got a request from Michael in South Australia, and he reminded me twice that I really need to sing this for him. And this was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. And don't you dare superimpose the... Actually, no, I might sing in tune. I might sing in tune. I sounded horrible last week because I wasn't singing with the tempo or whatever. Yeah. I know. And we did get feedback, and someone said, Look, no music producer could have fixed that because of the tempo. And I stopped short of saying, was it just the tempo? Keep going. Okay. This study is probably not from your generation, so I don't think you'll know this, but let me know if you do. Okay. You ready? Yep. Earth. Fire. Wind. Water. Heart. Go planet. We're the planeteers. You can be one too Cause saving our planet is the thing to do Looting and polluting is not the way Hear what Captain Planet has to say The power is yours Captain Planet is our hero You know the thing Gonna take pollution down to zero He's our powers magnified And he's fighting on the planet's side That's it Yeah You know what it is, right? Yeah, Captain Planet. Obviously. And, you know, I grew up when superheroes were badass. They weren't recycling. No, they were stopping people that were looting and polluting. Polluting. I'm serious. It's so hilarious. I watched one episode with my kids this week to try and get into Captain Planet. Man, cartoons were different back then. They were like, you know, you watch like Jake and the Neverland Pirates or something these days and everything's so PC and nothing's controversial. It's like, if you throw a six-pack of beers into the bin, it'll kill the birds, and he's just sitting there next to a dead bird in the pool. But the beer tastes delicious. It tasted delicious. My thing with Captain Planet is, why didn't they ever just call him straight away? They never solved anything on their own, and they ended up having to just combine their powers and call Captain Planet. it. So why don't you just do that from the beginning and just stop. They're lame kids, obviously. They're lame kids. They got chosen by Gaia and she chose the wrong set of kids. Oh, there you go. Well, thank you everybody for listening this week. How can people contact us? And they really should contact us. Subscribe to us on iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play or Jeff Teolis and jump on our website, head-to-head pinball dot com. All of our social media accounts are there. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Interact with us on Twitter. Sorry, on Facebook. We like it. And yeah. I'm so tired, mate. You go and have some sleep. I'll just edit this for the next five hours. I can't believe that we're following up our greatest ever episode. At least Charlie came on the show. I was going to say, we had an amazing interview with Charlie. It doesn't matter what we do now. Cool. All right. Thanks, everybody. We will speak again next week. See you. Bye. Hey, Charlie. How are you? I'm doing well, TNA girl. You're looking swell today. I don't have a physical appearance. I'm an AI bot. Look, I heard TNA is breaking sales records. Scott is a talented guy and he likes to do multiple things on the one machine. But in the next firmware update, I would love to replace his sick beats with my own. What do you think about that? Oh, absolutely. Bring it on. Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug. Beep. That's the normal out of reactor music. Oh, I mean, Scott's pretty good, but that's way better than what he came up with. Look, can I be an Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle? I'm sorry, but I have to say no to that one. Am I not worthy? Lol, get it? It's a Wayne's World party time excellent joke. Hilarious. Okay, talk to you soon Charlie. You might be hearing from my lawyer about my payout.