Welcome to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. This is Josh Rupp here with my guest host. Scott Larson. And with us today, Scott, who do we have? We have the famous Jeff Rivera from the Pinball Podcast. You know it, or also known as Generous Jeff. How are you doing today, Jeff? I'm doing great. I spent the majority of the day in the backseat of a car between someone larger than me and a baby seat. So I'm really happy to be sitting alone in a chair talking with you guys. I don't blame you. That does not sound like fun. What were you doing? Um, I was going down to Beaver to town here in Utah. Yes. They named it Beaver. Um, so bad to, yeah, to, uh, wish happy birthday to a friend's mom. She is turning 71 and we surprised her. So, yeah. You know what's the funny part about Beaver, Utah? And I am not making this up. The second that you drive into that town, from the south end of that town, there's a giant sign that says, eat beaver tacos. You can look it up on the internet. It's crazy. I saw it. I did see it. Yeah. Well, I was at the Cub Scouts the other day, and they were going on and on about how many silver beavers we had in the ward. and I just kept rocking back and forth thinking, can they just change it to Buffalo or Silverback or something? Yeah. Yeah, no. Those beavers are hard workers. Wow. So it's nice to be out of the car. Well, you're a good man for going down there. It was fun. I had a good time. Of course, you always have to slow down below 10 miles below the speed limit because that's how they raise funds down there. Well, yeah, that and it was snowing the whole time down and back. The snow's been ridiculous. Some of those passes were pretty gnarly. Yeah, it was. Anyway. So what else? What has been up with you guys in pinball? You want to go first, Jeff? Sure. Like, SES wasn't too long ago. And obviously, being the state rep for the IFPA, I hosted that. And that went really well. That was a really fun tournament. Kind of go along with the SES. We had some media coverage with that. So we got featured in the City Weekly newspaper, and that was pretty cool. I don't know if you guys saw that. Did some on-air interviews as well for the local news. So a little bit of pinball media tour, I guess. We got Pinball League starting up at the end of the month. Hasn't started yet, but just that's kind of on the horizon. And beyond that, I've been trying to play as much as I can just on location locally. You know, we've got some newer games out there, like the Munsters, and I just kind of got my own podcast going. But it's been good. It's been a good month of pinball lately. So coming off being sick with the flu and things like that, it's been nice to be back up on my feet and playing some pinball. So, Jeff, where is your favorite place to go? We're all based out of Utah, and so we're kind of around the Salt Lake City area. Where is your top three places to go for pinball? okay well hmm it's been shifting around a little bit because I really like Keto's that's Keto's Brewery that's got a pretty decent mix of games there I like Campfire Lounge a lot not a lot of games but it's just a cool vibe I also like Nickelmania down on State Street. The condition of games can vary wildly. Sometimes it'll go and every single thing seems to play perfect, and then other times it can just be kind of rough. But it's kind of hard to complain when games are only 15 cents a play, sometimes 10 cents a play. I like those, and then Quarters is a lot of fun as well. They have a lot of newer games, got some older games, and it's fun to take people there who aren't big-time pinball fans they'll play a game or two but if they're not into the pinball they'll find plenty to do while you hammer away at the games they'll hang out so it's in good places what's your favorite game right now? oh that's tough I probably still probably still Total Nuclear Annihilation it's been it's not my all time favorite but it's my current favorite Like if I had to just go play one game of pinball, I'd probably do that. I know it's going to be real short, but I was going to flip one on. Probably that or actually kind of this is weird. Spider-Man, like Stern Spider-Man. I took the center post out of mine and made it steep, waxed it up, made it kind of brutal. And that's been something I've been addicted to lately. Awesome. I've been listening to a lot of Muse lately. I listen to Muse and I think, man, they should do a soundtrack for a pinball machine because that would be very similar to Total Nuclear Annihilation or that. Yeah. Yep, for sure. That would be way cool. Well, you know that Muse is the reason that Twilight exists, right? I know it's a random side tangent, but she was addicted to, oh, not Knights of Sedona, the one right before it. but yeah she listened to that album and she envisioned the whole twilight saga i guess from that so well okay so that that's that took muse down a few notches for me well it's not their fault that they inspired someone else but yeah it's cool that they were able to inspire someone else to a point of a mega blockbuster hit movie and book franchise so okay now i just can't listen amuse without thinking of them with diamond shimmery skin well that that was josh's fault i didn't do that too i just sorry i broke the glass so what brought you how long you been in the hobby now jeff um i've been playing for a long time i my dad used to drag me to the arcade and like most kids in the 90s i would sneak off to play Street Fighter and those types of like the JAMA games, you know, go sink a bunch of quarters into like X-Men and The Simpsons and stuff like that. And I'd circle back and he'd still be playing pinball in the back of the arcade. But it was fascinating to me at that point. And I'd play a little bit of it too. But as far as collecting goes, that's been about about 11 years now. Maybe a little bit longer, 12, probably 12. So yeah, actively collecting. It's been a while, I guess. I've seen a lot change. Well, and that's another question that comes to my mind. What are some of the differences you see from when you first got in 12 years ago to now? So the most obvious thing is obviously price, is pricing. Like just you could buy four games for the cost of one now. Like brand new off the line or what? Oh, I mean, in one single day, I bought World Cup Soccer, Attack from Mars, and Spider-Man. Like there's no way I could buy those three games in a single day now. And I wasn't making, you know, I didn't have as good of a job then as I did now. It's just the hobby was way different. I couldn't afford my own collection now. There's no way if I didn't build it back then. It's just different. But yeah, even games off the line back then were way, way cheaper than they are now. So I remember when games were under $4,000 and hitting that $4,000 mark was kind of crazy. And now the base price is $6,000. Or five for a Stern Pro. I think their most recent Stern Pro is like 55. I don't know. The demand is just there now. People are going to pay it. And 5,000 feels like a good deal for a lot of people, especially when my dialed in was $9,000. The price has just changed. but there's just different um there's just different attitude in the hobby now and that's that's actually pricing is the most obvious change but i think the biggest change is just the attitude in the hobby people have changed their outlook it felt like pinball was dying for a long time um and it felt like we were just holding on and keeping it alive and making it work and it was almost like this club aspect but now it's a community and now it is it feels like a real industry again and it feels like it's legitimately growing and you know pinball is just it's it's on the rise it's not people want to talk about bubbles and all that but it's it is growing i think there's no denying that there's more people in it now than there has been for quite some time. So why, why do you think that is like, like what, why, like what draws people? See, I'm actually a relative newcomer to it, but I just, I'm kind of random that I, how I got into pinball, but what is the mass appeal for people when there's so many options out there for entertainment? I think that's actually the, so the word there you use entertainment. I think that's actually what it is, is people are starting to find the entertainment outside the house again. I think we went through our fascination of the in-home entertainment. I mean, we still have it. We all have Netflix and we still have the game consoles and stuff. But I think they've become so common now that it's a little bit more exciting to kind of get out and get together again. It's not so exciting to play online. Like for a while, that was super cool. Like if you remember the early days of Xbox Live or playing games online with a headset and friends, especially some of the early Call of Duty games or things like that, it was the coolest thing in the world to be able to do that. It's now just common. And now it feels cool again to meet up and play some games together. And pinball lends itself so well to that. the rise of all the leagues get people out even more. You can just look at the IFPA numbers and the amount of people that are in it just to see it's bringing people out. So I think the social aspect and just the fact that people are once again looking for entertainment outside the home is really fueling that rise of barcades and just pinball in general. So it's been nice to see. Do you think it's also fueled by being a digital age now that we want something more tangible to play with? Yeah, I think so. I think when we play, we want to play differently than we live. And so that's probably a pretty good observation. You know, we want our games not to feel like the rest of our day. So a physical game, I mean, board games have even made a comeback too. So they're getting pretty complex and pretty crazy. So that probably is a part of it as well. I think what you said was really insightful in saying that we want to play differently than we work. I'm actually old enough that I remember getting our first computer in the 80s. And it cost like $5,000 back then, which is still kind of a crazy amount when you think about it. But getting on the computer was a novelty. and getting on, you know, it was completely different. But you're right. So many of us are so tapped into computers and tapped into technology that it's really healthier for us to step back from that. I never considered that as a possible rise to this. Right. Well, do you remember like being blown away by some of the early adventure games like King's Quest or Space Quest or something? And they were so exciting. And if you show that to a kid now, they don't have that excitement. They might enjoy it and they might think it's fun to figure out the puzzles and what to type in and click on or whatever. But they just don't get wrapped up into it because it's so common and they want something different now. It's interesting. Well, when I was a kid, so I grew up in the 80s. So I was born in 74, grew up in the 80s. That was the heyday of arcades with actual games that came out. And when you saw Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, you'd never seen that before. Interacting with something on the screen was something you never saw. And so it was such a novelty. And when these games came out, you didn't have the access of, I'm stuck on this level. I need to go into Google it because Google didn't exist. And so you basically had to ask your friends, hey, how did you get past this? and that was kind of a community there to say, hey, what did you do? How do you win? Now I would say the majority of people just buy a game and get a walkthrough. They just Google a walkthrough, and so they're just following someone else's footsteps, but you can't really do that with pinball. No, you have to figure it out. Well, and the other thing I want to rewind back to what you were saying earlier is at one point it felt like the hobby was dead and you guys were just trying to keep it alive. I think we can see that to this day. And the reason I say this is when I got in the hobby about five years ago, the first pinball machine that came into my life, I didn't necessarily own it, was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I love the theme. That's like one of my dream themes. And I started playing it and I kind of got let down because it's fun to shoot. But once you've collected the four turtles and start the multiball, there's not really much more to it. All right. So I started to do a lot more research before I bought my first pinball machine. And I ran into videos from from you, Jeff, about how to like wax your taxi. Yeah. And one of the other guys I watched a lot of was Chris Bucci. I don't know if you know this guy. Yeah, it's like Spider. His name is like Spider or something, but I know he does that Bucci's arcade videos. And it's got like the cheesy like 90s like intro music. I love it. but yeah he does all this yeah he did a full in-depth on like big bang bar and all that jazz and so they're good videos and those videos are all from like 10 11 years ago and so i think where you guys were trying to keep it alive it helped jump start this new generation as well because then we had content to go back to yeah for sure there there's an older podcast that it It wasn't a pinball podcast. It was actually a video game podcast, but it's called A Life Well Wasted. And if you listen to the Steve Ritchie interview on that, it's after he's left Stern. And most of it talks about how he's going deaf and how he sounds super depressed and pinball's dying and it's going to be dead. And it's amazing to hear how different his tone is then to what it is now. Steve Ritchie loves pinball again, and he loves doing what he's doing. It's a life well wasted. Just find the episode of Steve Ritchie. It's amazing to hear the shift in tone. I still remember listening to that episode, putting Christmas lights on my house, thinking, yeah, pinball's probably going to fade out as far as new games go. So it's just going to happen, but it's okay. We'll keep it alive. It's just I don't worry about that anymore. Which is really funny because you look at it now and how many titles do we have coming out a year from multiple companies that didn't exist more than five years ago? It's just insane to see where the hobby has come from since then. Yeah, it's incredible. If you look at exactly what you're talking about, when I got into pinball, I actually watched two documentaries. And so I got into pinball three, four years ago. And one documentary I watched was it called The Way of the Puck which is actually it these guys trying to keep air hockey alive like competitive air hockey And on the whole of it you look at their passion and it pretty amazing but it pretty sad that their world doesn exist anymore And then, of course, I found Special One Lit. And you look at that, and it looks like the apocalypse. It starts with a whole bunch of dead pinball machines in a field somewhere, and then it ends with a whole bunch of dead pinball machines in a field. And I started thinking, wow, okay, so I'm getting into a hobby that is dead. Maybe I'll just start listening to some podcasts and so I can figure out what was good about it. And then I found your podcast. And so it was just interesting to see that that was a snapshot of an era when it was probably the nadir of pinball. and the popularity. And since then, we're in the new golden age of pinball. And I would argue what we've seen in the last eight years of pinball, it rivals what they had in the 90s. And we're on the ups slide as opposed to the down slide. Yeah, I mean, there's stuff that is happening now that just, it points to so much healthier of an ecosystem for the companies and for the players. It's just much, much better now. Well, and I think the interesting part about pinball as well is the fact that it's been around almost 100 years now in the mechanical form that we see now. I think it just goes to prove, yes, as technology advances, pinball is still going to come back around. And I don't know if it's because you have these generations that grow up with it and then it kind of dies off. And then those generations go, well, where did it go? And so they start to bring it back and it is cultivated within their kids and it comes back. I mean, we see the dying off and the coming back. I mean, they said that pinball was going to die back in the early 80s when our first arcade machines were coming out and they were fighting just to stay relevant. It basically did die. Like with the rise of arcades, I remember going to the arcade at the local mall and they had a flash in the corner. I never put one quarter in it because I thought, oh, I'm going to lose my quarter in about three seconds. However, I'd put it in Donkey Kong and die in three seconds. We wouldn't really consider that a loss. But it really was. It was a hibernation from 83 to about 89. Well, then you had a giant leap forward then. I mean, look at Adam's family in 92 selling the most units any pinball machine had sold at that point in time. And before that, it was Spirit of 76 with like 12,000 pinball machines, and that was from 1976. And then we died off again towards the end of the 90s through the 2000s. And now you get to 2010, and it starts building steam again. And I think we'll see these roller coaster waves with the hobby regardless of what happens. I know that you said that we felt like it was dying off, but I don't think it will ever get to that point. And I could be wrong. Yeah, I don't know. Everything's cyclical. Pinball's a hobby, and hobbies enjoy their times of fascinations and getting ignored to some degree. But I think the hardcore base has expanded enough that it's just going to be in a better spot for longer periods of time when it finds those good spots. But, yeah, it's always going to have a little bit of an ebb and flow. effect to it. I just don't worry about it dying like I used to, at least. The interesting part with this spike versus any other spike of pinball history, and I know that you've discussed this before with Jessica on your podcast, but it's now in a home market. I know Steve Kirk was saying back in the day, one day we'll see pinball machines as a home piece instead of just an arcade piece. I think that's another thing that really helps, too. Once it's gotten into the home, it will grow better roots, so to speak. Right, right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's a good callback to that. He was very smart to see that way back then. So, Jeff, what don't you like about the current environment of pinball that has changed since you got into it? Not necessarily don't like, but what is your least favorite aspect of it? Uh, that's hard to say. Cause like, I'm pretty happy with most stuff. Like I've really liked, you know what, actually, um, I, I, the Whopper fascination, uh, the, the points fascination kind of bums me out a little bit. Cause I see people lose sight of what they're actually playing for. And that's fun. Um, when they're playing to just, you know, juice their world ranking. It's weird to me because your ranking might be higher, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're any better. And there's sometimes just shenanigans that go on with that. People treating each other poorly in tournaments or tournament situations. I love competitive pinball, but yeah, there's just some things around it that people get a little odd about that I'm not super happy about. I do worry about sometimes the build quality of product. I've had some issues with some machines. I understand that that's part of inflation is you can either cut quality or you can raise costs, but I feel like we get it on both ends a little bit. Um, so I do worry about that some, that doesn't affect my enjoyment of playing pinball so much. So I don't want to talk too much about that. Um, the other thing, and this isn't a super widespread problem, but, uh, I think a lot of people want to use pinball as a ability to, um, um yeah i don't know how to put this in words but like be someone different than they really are and that's not unique to pinball it's just i don't know i feel like people are like using pinball to try and popularize themselves in some weird way do you know what i'm saying i don't know explain that that that's weird i like they're trying to look cool in forums they're trying to be cool at events and stuff. I can see that. I can kind of see what you're talking about there. Yeah. It just kind of bums me out. Like, let's just get together. Let's just play. And I think, seriously, the number one rule of pinball is to just, like, be cool. Like, just be cool. Like, treat each other right, and most stuff will take care of itself from there. And there's just a few people that haven't figured out how to do that. Well, it's funny that you mention that with, like, the personalities and stuff like that. I think it made me chuckle like was a month or two ago when Jack Danger did the stuff with Jeffree Star and to us Christopher Franchi's like a really big icon right now in the pinball hobby because of the artwork he's been doing and how fantastic it looks and Chris had posted that he was in the bar with them but he could not even get close and Jack had seen that and said come on over Christopher Franchi and then like all the jeffrey star people that were in chat watching the stream as they played pinball was like who the crap's christopher franchi like why should we care about this right and so i think it brings to a point that yes like christopher is an awesome dude and we all respect him and whatnot and what the art that he does but once you bring boil it down to to to the base no one knows who he is outside of pinball and that's just the cold hard facts right i mean you could even i doubt if you walked up to anyone on the street said hey do you know who roger sharp is like roger sharp's probably the most iconic name in pinball i i don't know if you get much of a response so i agree with you that we need to kind of like settle down So we just need to be like, chill out because we just need to get along because it's kind of crazy that we're using our status to make different. Big fish in a small pond. Exactly. Sure, but that's not unique to pinball either. So you get people who – No, no, no. It's not a pinball problem. It's just a – they find a – video games will do the same thing. They'll get an avatar and they'll be a bully or an aggressive person online. Yeah. Yeah. All I'm saying is I'm just seeing that rise a little bit more. And I think over time that will moderate. I think people will shout that down. It just happens in a growing hobby. There's just more space to act out a little bit. Well, that's what the nice part about our hobby. It's so small that you can shout it down, so to speak. You know, it kind of fixes itself over time if it's becoming out of control. So, well, they move on. Eventually people tire of it, of their drama and they move on. Correct. While we're speaking about longevity of pinball, and that's kind of our theme for this episode, I want to know, Jeff, what certain titles make you feel like they never grow old that give you that longevity for your collection? What it is about them or specific titles? I missed what you were asking. What about the games? You can use specific titles, examples, but I feel maybe layouts and themes and stuff. What lends to that? You know what I'm saying? sure sure um so yeah like it's it's it's hard because the there's so many layouts that are similar um especially when you're dealing with like fan layouts that it's funny how one game will feel like a dog and one game will feel amazing like lord of the rings and sopranos are very, very similar layouts. If you overlay them, it's scary how similar they are. But Sopranos is fun to play on a location once in a while, but Lord of the Rings is a game people hunt down and have a hard time letting go of. And so the layouts, one thing, but there is a feeling of, I think, satisfaction that comes from not just the rules, because there's games that have great rules that maybe have a crummy layout, and you don't want to play them. Like, for me, I don't like Batman 66 at all. I think the layout sucks, but it has fantastic rule set. So it's the marriage of those two that come together just right. And when that happens, I just don't get bored. I don't get bored of the game chasing high scores when that combo is right. Like I mentioned that I've been addicted to Spider-Man lately. That's a game with a very basic layout. It's got a lot to shoot for, but it's basically Steve Ritchie's take on Attack from Mars with a cross shot. And so it's not anything fancy, but the rules are deceptively deep on that, not overly complex, but they're deceptively deep. And I just keep coming back. You can play it on a very simple base level or it's like, oh, I'm just going to hammer away at the villains. Or you can go through the modes. And having those options just lets me approach it how I want to that day. And then when the shots are enjoyable, I just keep coming back to it. I've had that game since it was new, and I love it. And I've had other games that have come and gone that probably had objectively better layouts or, you know, probably considered better rule sets, but they just weren't married together as well. Rules and layouts as that game, they're just in perfect harmony with each other. Yeah, I think you're right. I actually have two games next to each other. one of them is Tron and the other one is X-Men LE. And they are, it's exactly the same. Actually, X-Men, you would argue, has more to it. But that didn't capture the imagination of everybody like Tron does. And really, if you look at X-Men, aside from the sound, which is arguably one of the worst productions Stern has done, aside from Wolverine trying to get it on with the game, but it just doesn't have that same vibe and I think it's that perfect nexus of theme, music and layout and rules and also everything together, kind of coming together imagine having Total Nuclear Annihilation without the soundtrack it would not be the same yeah well I think that also is what lends to longevity and pinball at least in my collection uh some of the games that i have are games that i feel like i can somewhat attain the uh final mode not consistently but it's something that still challenges me and i can go out there and do it like my favorite is attack for mars i love the humor i love the the artwork except for the the lady's hand down between the flippers but i'm not going to go off on that right now but everything about that machine is like just perfect in my eyes it gives me a challenge and even though you're it it's kind of doing the same thing over and over it still feels different every time you have a different way to approach it and um there's just something about the missions in the bottom middle to the six missions that you've got to complete on top of it to rule the universe and i don't know i think i think theme lends to it but it doesn't necessarily hinder it because like a game like the shadow that i really enjoy i would love to have them in my collection um but the theme doesn't really speak to me because i've never seen the shadow and i've heard it's a total turd i i can't really attest to that but i don't watch it it's actually better playing it without it kind of like my johnny mnemonic it was a lot better to play it than to watch it just pretends the matrix okay yeah so attack from mars so if you're going to ask me what my favorite pinball machine of all time is i'll probably say twilight zone but if you're gonna ask what i think the best pinball machine all time is i'll probably say attack from mars why is that because it's the two different from that um twilight zone i just like playing the most i it's one of the first games i really lusted after and went and got by the way it was 1700 shipped in from california it was just a trip of time man anyway and it just has the sound the music it's big it's got shots all over the place now playing in a tournament setting it's pretty bland you're just going to go after your multiball or whatever and you're not really going to play the modes out but if you're playing the game the way that Lawler designed it it just has so much going on it's just crazy I just think it's I just love it. Like I can, I've never got sick of shooting that thing. He used every inch perfectly. But, um, I find attack from ours is like the most pure pinball experience in the modern era. All the shots are perfectly dialed in. Um, like nothing feels off or wrong on that. Every shot flows just magically. The rules are great. There's fun little hidden things to find in there. And it's plenty of challenge to get to the end of it, but it's straightforward as well. So it's hard to criticize it. And there's not things in the game that punish you for playing well. A lot of pinball machines do that to eat your quarters. Attack from Mars is just if you miss your shots, you'll get punished, but it won't punish you for playing well. And so it's just – I think it's perfect. Oh, yeah. I totally agree. So that kind of moves into the next topic is you I know when you first got into the topic you were turning over games for fairly regularly but how do you mix having um the all great games that you want to hold on to and also keeping your collection fresh and interesting uh yeah so for me i i mean i have the the greats that are great to me um like i have attack from mars and twilight zone and um you know those are a couple that people would always point to uh if you were building like a cookie cutter collection of the great pinball machines but you know i've had all of the a-list games over time like the indiana jones and adam's family and you can you can go down the list but um i i was having probably one or two games coming a week and going a week for for quite of time. I've had well over a hundred games come and go. And really what it was is I wasn't keeping anything for what it was, what the game was itself. Um, I just kept what I liked and, um, what I noticed just got the most play. Um, so something like Indiana Jones, um, I worked hard to get one and it surprised me a little bit when I sold it, but it just wasn't getting played. Um, and so I let it go. Um, and then, you know, when I got, uh, like ACDC, for example, I got it brand new in box. I thought, you know, I played it at a show and I fell in love with it at the show. So I bought it. I thought maybe it would stick around a year and I still have it and I don't think it's going anywhere. So I don't always know what's going to be that long-term stay but as soon as i have no desire to turn it on as i walk past it um it starts creeping towards the trade block or seller's block whatever and i have some weird ones that have been around for a long time i've had bride of pinbot for like eight or nine years now like that's probably a long stay for that game for most people but i still like it it's a fun game I like the gimmick games, the novelty games where it's, you don't have to overthink it. You're just having fun. Yeah. Yeah. And I've made it like really hard, but yeah. Well, I know what you mean too, because they're like one of the big games I won when I first started in the hobby was fishtails. I don't know what it was about that game, but it really spoke to me. I got it. I played it for about a month and then it was just like, I don't hate the game, but it definitely is. for a small collection it's not one you should have in a small collection in my personal opinion because it's really just left ramp right ramp right up the middle and so a game that i was like thought would be something in my collection for quite some time because of the theme and because of the play of it ended up only being around for like three months if that and my son killed me for it he's like i can't believe you're getting rid of that i mean he loves fishing that was like his thing but it just if i don't have enough space just to hold on to pinball machines at this point and so it just wasn't going to stay so i get i get where you're coming from on that yeah when i got fishtails i thought that was going to be staying around and it didn't ever make it out of the garage after the shop job down to the collection it moved on so same deal here and i had that i know the there's a lot of rant and rave right now about congo i own that one um and i kind of was the same thing for me once i all shopped out and started playing it it was enjoyable but i just felt like there was better games out there to own in my collection and like i said it's one of those conundrums of if you have the space for 15 machines then it's not that big of a deal to have a congo but if you only have space for four or five machines that's one extra space that's being taken up especially if you're walking by and going i'd rather play my other three games than Congo at this point. I think also you can look at your games and this is kind of where I'm living right now is thinking, okay, if I didn't have that game, even if I had to bring some money to the table, could I leverage that value into something else? And when you look at it and say, well, the game that I bought kind of sight unseen and really have never really bonded with is Shrek. It's a fun game. It's interesting. It's different than the other ones but in the back of my mind i think i could just dump a few more thousand dollars into that and get something i really want um and so if something's just being a placeholder then i i say you're right just move it on it i it used to be harder to move i mean i'm sorry i think it's a little bit harder to move games these days though because there's more anxiety that you won't be able to get it back one because pricing has gone crazy um i could i could think of a ton of games that i sold that to buy it back now would just be crazy i'd pay double to get it back what i sold it for or just that the demand is so much higher than the supply um it's a long time before it comes around again back when you know you could hop on to classifieds and just take your pick it was super easy to flip a game that you just weren't having that much fun anymore or if you just wanted to shake something up you could sell your favorite game and you could buy it back at six months it wasn't a big deal it's just not that luxury is gone now well that's what's crazy to me being in this hobby when I started five years ago I remember kind of trying to go through what I wanted and the first one I set my sights on was World Cup Soccer and when I bought that it was pretty hammered but I got it for 600 bucks I was pretty proud of myself and it worked. I could turn it on, but I had to go through it. Um, and at that point in time, like you said, you could kind of have your pick. I saw a Jurassic park for 1500 on KSL and I thought that's ridiculously priced. Like my wife, that was one, that's still one of her dream themes and we still have never owned it, but she wanted that. And I was like, I fought with myself for a month and it sat there for a while. And then I finally just decided against it. And I wish I would have bought it because they're like $2,500 and you still have to have them shipped in at least in Utah, you don't see them very often here it's weird but yeah that's one of my games I actually regret selling is my Jurassic Park, I sold it for double what I paid for it but now to buy it it's still quite a bit more than I even sold it for then I think that wraps it up for our interview questions that we had, did you have any others for Jeff Scott? No, I think that's good let's move on to the news from American Pinball, or at least the themes that they're working on. Yeah, so it was officially confirmed that American Pinball had secured the licenses for Valkyrie, Robin Hood, Poker Run, and Sherlock Holmes. And my personal opinion when I saw this was they were pulling a Disney. And when I say that is they're trying to buy licenses that have some familiarity to them that don't necessarily come with the licensing costs. that's what I thought it's a free brand is what it is the funny thing is I'm looking at all these four and I think Valkyrie could be interesting depending on who actually does it if you think about either the concept art for Alice in Wonderland or Magic Girl or something like that if they did something like Valkyrie that could be something interesting in the right hands Robin Hood they try to reboot this thing every five years and I'm sorry unless you're going to have Kevin Kostner on there with his bald mullet then I think we're there's no chance that thing's going to fly poker run no one really cares about poker pinball machine it's it just doesn't work anymore and Sherlock Holmes really it seems kind of like a a dead option unless you're going to get Benedict Cumberbatch on there. Right. Even at that, some of those themes like Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes have been done so many ways that it's really hard to find an identity with them. I mean, you can go to the $2 DVD bargain bins and you can see animated Sherlock Holmes where it's like, there's some mice that are Sherlock Holmes animated series. It's like some weird, you know, crazy take on Sherlock Holmes. And then next to it, you have some weird Chinese-made animated Robin Hood that's just cheap, you know, 3D animation. And it just happens because, again, they're free licenses, as you were saying. but that license is just so hard to differentiate unless like scott was saying you can get benedict cumberbatch to do it but even then that feels like it's kind of a little bit beyond its peak um it's fast it's like releasing a fire this game right exactly uh those aren't just it feels like a generic license even though it's i mean there is a little bit of weight to robin hood it's just i don't know who cares anymore it's just been beat it's just been done so much and in so many ways well i'm going to play devil's advocate just for a minute or two um two of the best pinball machines considerably the best pinball machines in all of pinball history are attack from mars and medieval madness if you could take i mean i've heard people say that american is the new bally williams i i can't say yes or no to that but i've heard some of that thrown around do you think that they could take robin hood like they've taken attack from mars with all the cheesy bb uh alien movies or sherlock holmes with everything because sherlock holmes is uh you don't have to know all the background history of benedict cumberbatch or robert downey jr and all that jazz you could easily do because everyone knows like that's elementary watson like you could easily do kind of like the humor meshed with the pinball machine just like an attack for mars i think it could play out really well in that aspect as long as they don't take it too seriously but they don't go too silly they'll go too silly either you know i'm saying well i i'm going to push back a little bit on attack from mars that was really a a lazy rip off of a movie that was coming out at the time which was mars attacks and uh i think people just associated that and thought oh this is a big budget movie oh this is a pinball machine it's got to be related somehow. And if you look at medieval madness, well, medieval madness is really Monty Python and Holy Grail. And so they really are, they're borderline licenses without being that. I don't really see that. The same thing with American Pinball. And if you look at the reason why Stern has, Stern has found the formula. It's like writing a Bon Jovi song. It's the same song, but some reason people buy it. And so if you look at the reason why they're pushing bands and it's either a band or a movie or something like that that is tied to a theme, it's because it is successful. It sells because even if you look at the Beatles, which is arguably the most expensive license of all time. Okay, so here's the map on it. Let's just say that it's a million-dollar license, which is, you know, he said it was what the first seven-figure license. So let's just pretend it's a million dollars. If they sell 960 or 1965 of them, that breaks down to five hundred eight dollars a machine. And so if you can make a machine that actually has some sort of license that is good and do it for 300 bucks a game, why would you not take that and immediately get that brand? because they've already spent a billion dollars on marketing that brand as opposed to trying to plow your own turf. Dialed in is great, but I think everybody still kind of looks at it and says, well, the theme's not really my bag. And there's a reason why Lord of the Rings still holds up all these years later is because it is Lord of the Rings and not like Doodle Jump or something. Oh, Doodle Jump. Ooh. I got eliminated on a tournament on that game. You had to say that. Oh, for some odd reason, I thought it was the mobile game that everyone was obsessed with like eight years ago. Oh, it's Doodle Bug that I got eliminated on. Doodle Jump was too close. No, that's fine. I don't know. I look at Stern right now, and don't get me wrong, I appreciate what Stern's doing. I really think that they are presenting a good product. but I feel like they've become stagnant in their layouts and stuff like that. I mean, honestly, everything they're putting out is good right now, but the last great hit they've had, ACDC, I mean, everyone can argue right now. You could say it's Batman 66. You could say it's Guardians of the Galaxy or whatever it may be. Walking Dead. Walking Dead, yeah, Walking Dead. but when I look at a Borg layout I see a lot of similarities between each one of his games I don't feel like there's a massive difference between each game to realize that we're heading in a different direction every time we see a pinball machine and that's not a knock on Borg, that's just the fact that family outs are all pretty, they have to be laid out a certain way because of the shots that you have to take and so you can't take too much risk without it feeling clunky and whatnot but i don't know i just i don't think i don't think theme necessarily is what maker breaks a pinball machine at this point right i mean it's a big part of it for uh for some people like that that are like their initial draw to it but as far as like your enjoyment over the long term yeah i understand it's well are you going to have a lord of the rings downstairs or are you going to have a wheel of fortune i i let's just let's just assume that wheel of fortune has this amazing rule set you're still going to want to look at something nice true but like i said i keep kicking it back to like giant mnemonic and the shadow and i guess the other thing that plays into that too is price do you want a giant mnemonic a shadow and possibly something else for the price of the lure of the rings or do you want to lure the rings so i i think most people would rather have one great machine as opposed to three mediocre ones but that that's my take yes and no i think it comes back to space and availability at that point too so yeah it goes in flux i think your um chain your taste will change over time um what what you want like i've lately been fading back to the older games like i've loved solid state and em games um a lot lately i think that's why tna has been really scratching my itch um like one of the games i really want to chase down is a skateball i tried just missed one today But I don't know, like as your taste changes, I think your opinions on theme or the price tags of what comes with those things, it just gets shifted around a little bit. And it might be a little bit cyclical. Like after a while, I might be ready for some of those really fast, more modern take games again. And like, yeah, give me these games, just crank it up to 10 on speed and more modern themes and are bright and flashy. We'll see. I'm kind of right there with you too, Jeff. I guess my first game was Amazing Spider-Man by Gottlieb. And I actually liked the shots on it because I felt like I was just shooting different shots. And for being new to the hobby, I wasn't looking for the depth. I wasn't looking for, I mean, really the only complaint I had at that point was it didn't have multiball. and I enjoyed the shots and whatnot, but it makes me curious. I would like to get my hands on a Beatles. I really think Beatles would help, kind of like a TNA, scratch that itch and feel that kind of that not floatiness but it I don know there something that appealing to one of those classic games that they short but they still fun see i would be interested in the beatles as a rethink because i know it's a re-theme already but the 1964 beatles does nothing for me however maybe in 1967 or 1969 but i looked at the song selection on that and i I am a Beatles fan, and I looked at that and thought, I'm not interested in any of these songs. Well, maybe Beatles is the new Wonelli. I don't know if they have to keep paying Dennis Nordman now that he's gone. I don't know if he owns the rights to that layout or whatever. But maybe they'll just say, hey, we're going to start re-theming Beatles for everything else who got out the door. And maybe they won't just because at this point, I mean, Beatles is kind of a high-priced tag and all that jazz. And it was the limited run of it and everything. If you remade it and made as many as you wanted, then it kind of knocks Beatles down a peg besides the theme, I guess. Yeah, but sure. How many games are they really selling over 2,000 of them? Although they said it's limited to 1964, that's probably pretty close to their run on most games. Now it's 1965. After poor Chris Franchise got washed out and destroyed, they're building him a brand new one. So I don't know if that technically still counts as 1964, but... It's the CF edition. Yeah. It's the under the... That's for Christopher Franchi anyway, by the way. Yeah. CFLE. Yeah. I was thinking the yellow submarine one, but... So moving on, just wanted to do a quick shout-out to Dennis Creasel from the Eclectic Gamers Pinball Podcast. His house got broken into this last couple of days, and there was a bunch of stuff stolen. The pinball machine seemed safe. And I don't know how he's doing, but it looked like he got a brand new pinball machine put into his home during all this mess. I think he ended up getting a total nuclear annihilation, if I remember correctly. I could be wrong. He did. He did. Yeah. Okay. And so I guess, I don't know. My heart goes out to him. I live in a small town, so I don't have to worry. Well, we do get break-ins every once in a while, but it's funny when a break-in happens, it becomes like a citywide thing here. and everyone kind of like catches the bad guy. I don't know how else to put it. And so out there, I don't know how it is out there, but it reminds me of that episode of Big Bang Theory where the guys get their stuff broken in and Sheldon never feels safe, like he's shoving the dresser against the front wall and stuff like that or the front door. I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is my heart goes out to Dennis. That's got to suck. Yeah, you just feel violated. It's horrible. Sorry, Dennis. you're a good dude I know you we've played pinball together I crushed you wow that was very sincere sorry dude I still ruled you I still destroyed it oh my goodness you gotta have fun with Dennis Dennis can talk a big game so you gotta let him have it back I think that's the only way I'll beat you at pinball Jeff is to trash talk you into oblivion I don't know about that speaking of trying to beat you at pinball Scott sent us, me and Jeff throughout the week as we were kind of discussing show notes and what not cowboy pinball if you haven't seen this I'm going to try to link you in the show notes but I bet I could beat you at cowboy pinball you want to try this out Jeff? there's no chance, this is the ultimate dude hold my beer I work at a hospital and that's the standard joke, the two things that are said right before someone comes to the er is y'all check this out hold my beer and for some reason they got 20 rednecks to go and stand in the middle of a rodeo and have a bull come chasing at them and they're supposed to not move yeah it's you never want to be the pop bumper for a bull yeah no they there's not enough depends in the world to outfit enough cowboys to go out there but you get a hundred bucks if you grab it the hundred dollar bill off its giblets its flank i don't know what they called it that is a special kind of stupid your deductible is way more than that you gotta understand though these people i don't know where this was filmed a camera was in texas or whatnot these small towns this is what fun is uh sorry my father he one of their favorite games was is they would get drunk and then they would find a paddle and they would find a bull out in the middle of the field and they'd run up to the bull slap the bull on the nuts with the paddle and then run off and try not to get ran over i mean this is like this is like tommy boy it is what it is and so i don't know maybe that's why i enjoy pinball more because i don't have to worry about getting stabbed to death by a bull horn i don't know yeah so i i just run i don't need 100 bucks no i wouldn't even get in the rink like there's no way yeah not even for 100 bucks i mean you'd have to you'd have to dial that up a lot yeah it'll it'd have to be at least 200 yeah yeah i don't think this is going to be a long-lived sport actually i think i think that's actually been done at a lot of rodeos i hear about cowboy pinball but now what if they put a stern new pinball machine on the line you know maybe get that wwe that you've always been looking for maybe yeah wwe they have a few le's left you get on that and we'll go from there how about that scott yeah i think i'm good all right well moving on let's get talking about the uh pinball betting that's starting to pop up everyone's trying to uh bet on the circuit finals all right either one of you in on this I'm not a better. No, I'm not going to bet on pinball. It's just pinball is too cruel. Like the ball bounces the wrong way in basketball and screws you on bets all the time. It's sure to do it in pinball. Well, and I want to – Bo and Karen's actually posted this on his Facebook page, and I kind of agreed with what he says. I'm going to quote it really quick. This is from his girlfriend, Kristen. It just seems best for all involved if independence is absolutely clear, Putting aside the fact that sports betting is still illegal in most states, Illinois is included, in most sports betting, your players aren't also the referees. They aren't the ones deciding which bats are legal or making sure what the lines are painted correctly on the court, etc. So it seems if we as a community are going to endorse betting on pinball, which I'm personally not for, it seems like we'd be better get... It seems like we'd better get a lot more serious on the independence of those involved with setting up tournaments and those who compete. and it goes on a little bit more than that but i i never really thought of it until they had said that and i was like oh yeah that's kind of true you could it would be easily rigged which i'm not saying we're going to do that i'm not saying anyone would be willing to do that but yeah well i think you have to in a sport that has betting the athletes have to be compensated well well above what they could possibly get by fixing something. Sure. But one thing is with betting is there has to be 100% integrity in the sport to make the bet, I don't know, legit, valid. I don't know how to say it. But one thing that happens a lot, and I've seen it happen in pinball, and I've had been offered to do it too, is sometimes when players get to the finals, they just agree to split the pot, and they're not necessarily playing their hardest for the first, second, third, and fourth finish. They just kind of casually play out that. And maybe someone or another will play a little bit harder because they do want the first place trophy. But yeah, I've seen it where it's just not that big of a deal for them. I don't know if... And there's no way to enforce it, right? You can't tell how hard someone's actually playing. So pinball is a little bit different. And there's a really good point being made about the rulings. Boy, if there's money being placed, it's crazy to think. Could you imagine if one of the players in the NBA finals was also a ref? That's crazy. That is crazy. Well, and people are willing to sandbag for whopper points. I mean, I think someone would be more willing to sandbag for money at that point. Sure. so yeah i just uh legitimately i just don't see it being a huge issue but i i'm not a gambler so i don't really understand why you really want to yeah well that pretty much wraps it up for the news i don't know if you guys have anything else you wanted to talk about me personally actually i want to talk about one thing before we get going uh i came out last friday because my wife for valentine's day wanted to see wicked and we'd never seen that play before and she allowed me 20 minutes to play pinball and i was pretty excited i that sounds terrible should not allow me it wasn't like yeah anyhow i didn't have to ask permission or anything like that but i just told her i'm like hey we got 20 minutes to kill to find if he'll play pinball i haven't been down to keto's yet i went and checked that place out got my hands on the monsters yeah that game is entirely too dark for its own good i don't know it's so dark yeah like i was trying to see what was going on and it's it's fun don't get me wrong but like i wasn't super impressed um but i only played three games on it um but it was still enjoyable like yeah i would like to get more time on it yeah i i'm not okay like so on my last episode of my podcast i just kind of said i'm a little bit meh on it i'm now to the point where i think it's just kind of a dumb game it's not unfixable but rule wise it's just kind of dumb you can get into the wizard mode of that thing so fast I don't know it's just it needs some work well there's some fun stuff to do there my first time playing that I would not put myself in the top 100 players of the world I was 4 modes in and not even paying attention and i'm going to legitimate legitimize our podcast right now by officially announcing lee i was playing with lee because he's always at keto's for some odd reason he said he said we're not legit till we say his name so i ran to him there and we were playing together and he's like dude what were you doing i'm like i don't know and he's like you were one mode away from starting up the wizard mode or the mini wizard mode i was like oh i didn't even notice like i was just hitting the ball around because i wanted to see what you know you know how it is when you get on a pinball machine for the first time you just want to see what happens shooting flashing lights exactly forget that forget the guidelines but i don't know it was enjoyable don't get me wrong but i was actually enjoying deadpool more than i was enjoying monsters so but no i it was pretty fun and then i actually hit nickel mania and they got indiana jones in there but not the good one oh the one that you can play for an hour and 45 minutes that was my first impression of it i was playing and I was playing and 15 minutes goes by my wife's like are you gonna move on to a new machine and it gets to that point where like do I just drain and walk away do I keep going like it's like 65 million and I finally decided just to drain out because well that's the thing it just gives you extra balls too I was like where am I getting extra balls from extra balls and multi balls man oh my goodness it's never a good feeling when you can't wait for your ball to drain yeah yeah so that's one of those games that if I see it sometimes like yeah I'll go put some initials up on it because i just know i can i can play it until i'll go check my high scores like okay that's what i'm shooting for okay got it see i think that's why they never have that version of indiana jones at disneyland and they have the williams version because if they had that version there would be one dude playing all day yep yep yep well that's why i also threw me for a loop that day my first game on indiana jones and i got to put my name up on this the scoreboard i was like what what the crap so and i was all excited i took the picture and put on pindigo and I'm like four out of the other four people that have played. I'm like, how am I at the bottom? And I realized if I was draining out at $65 million, someone definitely went higher than that. Yeah. It's crazy. The first time I played it, I just thought, there's not much I like about this. It just didn't feel like I want to come back and put another quarter in. No, it's not good. It's neat when it dumps a bunch of balls out of the arc, but that novelty wears off. You could buy Aerosmith and do that. Yeah. Well, and you know what's funny though? My wife is not an avid pinball player at all. She looked at me and she's like, wow, they finally got rid of Shrek. That one is a turd. I was like, if my wife doesn't, her favorite pinball machine right now is Worldwind because it blows you in the face when you start the topper. I like that. It's a good game, don't get me wrong. But like what I'm saying is, is if something about pinball is your favorite and it's actually not really technically pinball, it's a fan that's timed. Sure. You know what I'm saying? And you're claiming Shrek's a turd. There must be a problem with Shrek, but I don't know. That could just be me. It's not really a turd. It's just, the reason why I haven't sold it is because the two games, well, the three games I have that are so different than the others, I have Shrek, I have Black Rose, and I have Wizard of Oz. And if you look at those three compared to all the others, they are – well, I guess you could put Simpsons Pinball Party in there. But all the other ones I have are very similar in like a fan layout or something. They're great games. But I have a hard time selling something that is – that fills a unique niche in my grouping. Yeah. Yeah, I understand that. well let's wrap this up we've been going over for a little more over an hour Jeff where can we find you pinball related just everywhere I know you've got your other thing too and it's fantastic I've been listening to have we met yet or have we met that's great if you haven't checked that out I would recommend checking that out yeah that's coming back so yeah for pinball it's just thepinballpodcast.com the most pretentious named pinball podcast out there. So yeah, the pinball podcast. Yeah, the thing you mentioned, Have We Met, it's my other podcast, just havewemet.net. New episodes coming soon on that. And if you don't know me and you want to come on that show, fill out a form on the site. That'd be fun. I don't have much else going on. I'm just trying to get a little bit more active again back into pinball. I kind of took a little bit of a break, but I'm coming back. So, yeah, that's most of my stuff. Jar155 pretty much everywhere if you want to, like, find me, like, on Instagram or social media or whatever. Awesome. And you guys know where to find us. We are at the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at SoundCloud. You can find us on iTunes. You can find us on Android, wherever your podcast dreams are taken. I don't know. and if you want to reach out to us, uh, Facebook's probably the best way I've got Scott hooked up on there now. So you will not only get ahold of me, but you can also get ahold of Scott through the loser kid pinball podcast at Facebook and, uh, loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com. So, uh, great conversations. I've been kind of shocked at the warm reception we've been receiving. I did not expect this kind of, uh, uh, people reaching out to us when we started this. I did this as a goof off. Hey, you guys get shout outs all over the place. mad I've been really shocked at all of it I really have been so no it made sense to me I I expected it so you guys are doing great we appreciate it so yeah well thanks Jeff thanks guys catch you later you