The episode you are about to hear contains explicit words. The opinions within are those of the hosts and in no way imply that anyone listening to this podcast agrees with anything we say. Please send complaints to the podcast at jr.com. We're stopping and then saying the same thing twice. Sounds good to me. We're so professional. We are, man. It's like we've been doing this for a decade or decade almost. That's wild. All right, man. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You are tuned into this flipping podcast. Tommy Skinner, Taylor James Rees, we bring you the occasional pinball news and updates and shenanigans of our pinball lives. Let's talk to you briefly before Pinball Expo. I think we knew at that point X-Men was coming. We didn't really want to talk about it because we both wanted to play it before we did. I have absolutely played it by this point in time. Mine's been on location for about a full month, I believe, a little over a month now. How about you? You got a chance to play one? I played one at my friend Dan's location, Center of the Universe Brewery in Ashland, Virginia. I played it this past weekend. He got a premium, didn't he? C rating up to a premium I can't I thought I thought I talked to him about that at some point I think it's I think I played a premium did the C sentinel head rise out of the play field yes that's a premium so he so he C had a pro he originally got a pro he C did do a he did do a launch party but I C can't I wasn't able to make it I can't C remember if he had the pro or the C premium then but when I played it yes he had he D gotten a premium and like The hand would come up and stop the ball. The center or whatever would come up from the playfield. So I did play it. So yeah, we could talk about that. You want to get into X-Men? You want to start there? Let's do it. Let's just dive in because it's the latest and the greatest. Designer, Mr. Jack Danger, his second full release following the release of Foo Fighters. Kevin, former member of my pinball league here in Lafayette, is the mechanical engineer on the game. Oh wow, nice. Which was really cool. He came down to our launch party and won it. Oh, that's good. Defeating me in the finals. Wait a second. Yeah, he had some inside knowledge. Yeah, that's kind of bullshit. Yeah, it's alright. It was great to see him there. Alright, whatever. Pretty cool. First game he worked on was Venom, which I think Venom actually has really cool rules and I enjoyed it, I got to say, yeah, we enjoyed it, but obviously not the biggest hit for Stern, so I was happy to see him get put on something like this that has a little bit more of fanfare going for it at launch at least. Yeah. And it's pretty unique and cool. My memories of X-Men, I did watch some of the cartoon growing up, but I was never a big comics guy. Yeah. And like my experience with X-Men was the four player arcade game. Yes. Um, that was like at the, one of my family's favorite restaurants to visit up in Michigan near our lake house as a kid. They had that and they had the Simpsons. And I remember begging for quarters to play those as a kid. And eventually I ended up owning one of the giant six player versions of that X-Men arcade machine at one point. That's great. In my old house. I took up like my entire garage. So, um, I've also had the X-Men release from John Bullrug that came out in like 2012 or 2013. It's over a decade old, which is wild. That was actually one of the first modern Sterns that I got a while ago because they were really cheap at one point. So back in my early days, that was something I had done. So it's cool to see them update this more modern layout and rules. The rules, I think, is the biggest separation on these newer games that are coming out. And I cannot lie to you, I don't know shit about the rules on this game yet. I don't I don't either I'm trying to think I probably put 10 games I probably put 10 games on it but yeah artwork by Zombie Yeti should mention yeah I did the rules I think I didn't I don't know I didn't really grasp the rules a lot I mean a lot of it was like you know figure out how to start a mode shots light up shoot shots shoot enough shots and you finish a mode it seems like when you're Every freaking day with respect to the MOD MiniTek, косmos, iPhone, iPhone 5 3d , Adobeفي, CloudsSoft or Wi Filess software ones market like phones or macs crushing black dots 오� . That's okay I ocho You know the So, as casual players walk up, they have a choice. I'm like, maybe I should avoid these. Or maybe I do want to challenge myself. So, the first time I qualified a mode, I will say I wasn't really sure. That popped up and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. Because, obviously, you're selecting a mode, but I assume that it's similar to Avengers where you've got a grid. This is the way I'm rating it. Like, you have a grid up there, and if you complete a line, a row of modes, then there might be some sort of bonus activated from that, right? I, my brain didn't even remotely think of that, but you put a lot more time on Avengers than me, I think, so that makes sense. And I think that's a great idea, it could be, because you would get, like, Super Disc then, or Super Spinner and stuff like that on Avengers, and that would be cool. Like Star Trek did that, right? With the triangle down at the bottom. Like if you got three in a row, it would give you whatever it's a, you know, qualify something. That's kind of what it seemed like to me. So to qualify something, you're going to have to play one of the more advanced ones. I don't know if like, I don't know. I don't know where the code is and I didn't get deep enough into it. I don't know like, hey, if you go up and you play just advanced modes, like if you can complete, multiòng Yeah. The Deadpool. Yeah, Deadpool. Yeah, so it seemed more like it was, yeah, like you're completing a story. I mean, you're just, you're completing shots, right? I, you know, honestly, like, other than that, I didn't get super deep into it other than I know that you, I think if you hit the Sentinel enough times, it will rise up and then you bash it. And that's how you start a multiball. Yeah, there's definitely a Sentinel multiball. And then there's something to do with the Professor Xavier thing, Cerebral. Is it Cerebral? Cerebro, I think is what it is called. And that's another multiball. That little mech on that wire form is just cool. It really holds the ball there, makes it look like it's being held magnetically, but it's just a little metal arm that rotates. And there's a multiball over there for sure too. Those are the two I know. I mean, you bash the Sentinel to bash Joy, and then the three roll one. It tells you you're counting them down to like, to me, my X-Men multiball, I believe it's called. Yeah, I did. I started, I know I started two multiballs at some point, and I'm not exactly sure what the other one was. There was Sentinel and then another one. But I don't know how I qualified it. I'm not 100%. Fuck, I'm even hopeless. You're doing absolutely fine,ffs. I'm just not that good of a player to where I have control like that, you know? I've gotten to that point with the Sterns now that they are so... To Stern's credit, because there was a point where if you remember, there was the where's my... Where's the code movement? Yeah. Stern now releases these code updates so regularly for games that I've lost my incentive to learn I love the early rulesets because they do seem to change pretty drastically through the evolution of the game, which I love. I love knowing that they're working to this really polished final product. But I just, now that I have the kid, I don't have the time to learn like iterations of the code. I just kind of like play it occasionally to learn the shots. And then I worry about the code like when they're telling me it's about 1.0 or so. So the one thing I'll say about that, I agree with you. I think being fortunate to have owned new in box games in my hobbying, I think that, uh, In your basement where you put 10,000 plays on them. Yeah, I say, I think, I mean, I will say it's like, it's, I've enjoyed getting games early just to watch the code development because I, I think seeing the polish happen is pretty cool. Um, now, you know, like I had a wizard of Oz, I think wizard of Oz was one of the games where I, I really learned to appreciate the work that went into code because real time Keith P. Johnson was like working on the game. I mean I remember I was beta testing Wizard of Oz and like streaming it and Keith would come on the stream and like look and see what was going on. It was like that's not supposed to happen or maybe even explain something. But there were, you know, and I played changes to the game where I was just like holy shit, like I hate this or I love this. But it was, um, but I had it so, I mean, I had it early, early. Um, so that's the one. I remember, Greg, did you trade a, trade a whitewater to get that back in the day? I had, yeah, I traded a whitewater. I did a, but it was a, I mean. You're fully restored. Yeah. I remember. I remember. Fully restored. Fully restored. Making sure I remembered that accurately. Yeah. Fully restored. I mean, it was, uh, I, you know, you miss like all the games you, you, you move on, but that's a game like that. I really, it was such a beautiful game. Like it was a stunning game. I think we've talked about this. Maybe not because this could have been from our downtime as a show. But you know I inherited Whitewater last year, right? I did not know that. So we unfortunately, again, we haven't done a ton of this, but we had a league member, tournament player, friend of ours who unfortunately passed away. Oh man, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was shocking. I'm talking he's not a whole lot older than me, just a great all-around dude and had a really, really cool collection. Yeah. And he comes from a pretty well-off family. Yeah. And they didn't necessarily need the money nor desire to own the games themselves. So after a few months passed, they got in touch with some of his pinball friends and reached out to other places around the state, essentially where they knew he went and visited We've been playing pinball and asked if they could donate games in his memory to those locations and they donated white water to us. So we've got a plaque on it. We use some of the earnings from that machine to donate to a charity back in the county where he lived that helped provide meals for families because he was big on cooking. But that's why I just was curious. I couldn't remember if we'd ever brought that up on the show or not. I'm a friend Brandon and I'm really cool of his family to do that and also just made me think of like how much fun my players talk about so much how much they appreciate these sounds of whitewater and like hearing groups of people yeah do like yeah it's great nights yeah really fun and I'm sure your Wizard of Oz with all of its lights flashing at once is a blast but I think you should try to trade that back for whitewater I I think, yeah, I don't, I don't know, man. I really like Wizard of Oz. I would like... I know, you and there's like three other people. Keith Kahn. Now look, so, so, but this is the thing, right? Like owning Whitewater, I like, I loved it. I mean, it was, it was a beautiful game. I did a full restoration. I bought it. I don't think, I don't think prior to restoring it, it ever worked. I don't think it worked. God, where did I get that from? Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, that was a crazy story because somebody, somebody posted, oh, um, You had to go across a bunch of states, didn't you? No, no, no, no. But no, it was, it was posted by this guy in Hagerstown, Maryland, um, who's a really well-known, like, um, I can't, god, I can't remember his name, but, um, he's in Hagerstown, Maryland. If you're in the Mid-Atlantic, you know the guy out of Hagerstown, Maryland who always, Cornelip Warehouse, so. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I follow up their Facebook posts. Totally forgot, but Quinnop Warehouse, he had posted it and I saw it and he would post games on Facebook and they would go super fast. I mean like super fast. And this is before, this is before, I mean, this is, I don't know what whitewater values are now, but the whitewater value back then was really pretty low. So he posted it for 1500 bucks and I was like, I reached out to him and I was like, dude, I want it. I can get up there. Like I was like, I can get up there. I was there in two days because I just could not, I couldn't drive up to Hagerstown in the next day while he was open. And so he sold it. So he was like, oh yeah, okay, sure, great. And then he sold it to this other guy. And he sold it to a guy in, he sold it to a guy up in Northern Virginia. And I was like, oh shit. I reached out to this guy because I bought a Star Trek Next Generation from him that my second pin I ever owned. Yeah, I think it was Star Trek Next Generation. And so I bought a Star Trek from him. So I reached out to him. I'm like, hey, man, I know you bought this. I knew he bought it just to flip it because he was a flipper. And I was like, look, I really want this game. I was like, I really want this game. I talked to the guy at Coin Up Warehouse, Lloyd. I talked to Lloyd at Coin Up Warehouse and he was going to hold it for me, but he sold it, blah, blah, blah, blah. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. The second, literally the second person I met in the hobby, because he was good friends with the guy that I bought my first game from, Adam's family. But, so I knew this guy, so I was like, dude, because I knew he was buying it to Flip, and I was like, man, can you sell, would you sell it? It's like a three-way Flip going on here. So he was like, I was like, dude, would you sell me that game? I was, he was like, sure. And so basically I ended up, I think I got, I think I paid $1,700 for it. This guy made a hundred bucks along the way. I made a playfield so you had to get it restored. And so, you know, the boulders were always trashed, too. Well, I think I think Illinois Pinball had made replicas. OK, now it was one of those things where like they made a run of replica parts and then they were either really hard to find or some of them were just messed up. That was like everything from Gene back in the day. Yeah, man, I would love to see a documentary. Like I know there's a really cool polygon article about Big Bang Bar. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but like I want the documentary because like people don't realize that Gene was doing all sorts of stuff. Yeah, and he was doing like some of the earliest reproductions. I know he did creature playfields. I know he did a ball deluxe playfields. I know he did the Whitewater Boulder sets. Yeah. Oh, he was doing like pinball. It would be a really cool documentary. It would be really cool. I mean, they were giant nerds like us. They were doing stuff like I mean, there were different people who were doing it as well, but there were they were doing screen decals like cabinet decals, like Like really nice. They weren't digitally printed or anything like that. They were screened. And the white water decals I got were not from him, but they were screened. Like they were really, really pretty and they were really durable. But yeah, so I got, yeah, it was just a really cool game. I mean, it was, dude, it was so pretty. It was pretty. And I didn't like mod it out with like crazy blue lights. I did LEDs in the whirlpool just because it was a pain in the ass to get to. But it wasn't like... Oh yeah, you don't want to have to do that again. Yeah. Like you see a lot of... I mean, I've seen a lot of whitewaters where like a lot of the lamps are blown out with blues like they blue... They do the blue LED thing. There was that phase like when we first got into the hobby and everybody was putting color LEDs and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Because we were like, oh, we've got color bulbs for the first time. Let's just throw them everywhere. Well, look. So my first, my Addams Family, I put colored incandescents in them. And it was awful. Like I still have a bunch of them. I still have a bunch of like the old like incandescent colored lights, which were awful because they were just like put off so little light. But I had them in my Addams Family. Yeah, like I had them in my Addams Family, like, but I had them like, I added some spotlights and stuff like that. So I had them in there. I made this like swamp piece. Um, I don't know, but yeah, so I had that, but yeah, the blues, so it wasn't like that. It like, it was really nice. Like I took the big foot apart and like, um, oh, I got some, um, I got ramp flaps made by some pinball company, pin bits. You remember pin bits? Do. Like, this is like, I mean, this is a thing, I think, I mean, I feel like we're doing like a throwback episode of like all the pinball, uh, I think it's a down time of pinball and it's now like been erased but they were really keeping things going there for a while. Pin rescue was a good one. Pin rescue was great. I got my stapler from them. I got my tumbler from them. He had a lot of like just really good stuff. I think what's, you know, I've been thinking about it recently because I've been thinking about like, you know, I have a lot of like pinball ephemera and shit like that. I'm not really sure what to do with it and my game room is kind of maxed out. And so I'm, you know, I'm looking at the stuff that I've collected over the years. I've been in the hobby for a little bit and I don't know, I'm just thinking like it's like I have old, like I have slingshots and I have promo key fobs and stuff like that. And I have like some old art. I collect pinball art. I think I've talked about that before, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Larry K. Sheats Jr., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. All of these things are now part of the... Well, it was endangered on the verge of extinction, and now it's like active viability. But you have people who have created jobs out of making pinball fan art, right? Oh, yeah. Fine, Alan. Or like Brad Brad Albright? Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean, he's an artist and he's he's entered into the pinball world. But you you look at like what he's doing. Yeah, like it's a zombie yeti man, like zombie yeti director of Ulster now. And that came from working on that magic girl, I think, and Alice in Wonderland with Jay Pop back in the day. Pretty wild segue to Alice in Wonderland getting released. Oh, yeah, I was at Expo. So what do you think? By the way, we started with X-Men. Overall, X-Men layout, we're bad at this. X-Men layout, super cool, Jack. Awesome. Oh, dude. I don't think it's the easiest shooter, but it's doing very well for me on location currently. My players seem to really be enjoying it. And that to me is the bottom line on pinball machines now that, again, I don't look at it from necessarily the earning standpoint. Yeah. But as the operator, like, are my players enjoying it? Do, like, they say positive things when I'm down there about it? Well, do I see them wanting to play more of it? I am currently seeing that with Xmen. So to me, that is a win. As for how I play, well, as you can see, I take the time to actually learn the rules and stuff, but as far as the layout goes, it's super unique and cool. I think the geometry of the layout is really cool. Like really cool. Like the wire forms I like wire forms I like the speed of wire forms It one of the reasons why I love Avengers still Yeah the wire forms it like you hit a shot and you like oh my gosh it coming Like you'll see it on the left and it's feeding to the right, but it's almost like the way the wire forms, it's like... They move extra fast on this game. They move extra fast. They all have a drop in the wire or something that speeds it up to your flipper. It's unique and cool. It's almost like it takes you like an extra second to figure out which flipper the ball is feeding to, right? So it's just like I don't know. It's it's interesting. Maybe that's just part of because I was new to the game But there were definitely some shots. I think that right ramp has the diverter cue so it can send it to either one I'm pretty sure maybe that's what it was. Maybe I just didn't realize I was triggering it But yeah, I was just like we're I don't know where the ball is going I did find the shots when I first stepped up. I think probably the first four or five games I found like the, yeah, I found the shots pretty difficult and then I started to find the shots because it's, a lot of the shots seem like they're kind of far back or... They're not at the traditional spot on the flipper you expect them to be. That's how I feel. Like they're not that hard, but they're not, they're not where they're at on a lot of other games. And there's some punishing, like if you don't make the shot, like to the sense that like on flanking that, is there, can you hear the waterfall? The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I appreciate the fact that I'm getting punished for not making a shot. I definitely appreciate that. I've had to pick that up on that one. It's like, oh, if it doesn't go around, get ready to nudge. It's coming down the exit. But there's enough makeable shots that you can advance. I don't know how to explain that, but I felt by the end of it, I wasn't frustrated with finding the shots, if that makes sense. Yeah, I would say my experience was similar. I'm a fan of X-Men. I've seen the X-Men. It's very similar. Especially I think of the far left ramp. Yes. That shot is just not where I think it's going to be on the flipper. And it takes me a bit to adjust. But what you find there. There's the far left shot of that that is like this crazy loop-to-loop shot that is so cool to hit. I don't know that I was ever able to... Maybe I hit it, but maybe I don't know if I meant to. I don't know. The ball, the travel paths for the ball on X-Men are some of the most unique I'm a fan of the game. I've seen it in the machine. It's cool, man. It just sends it all over the place. And I know some people have talked about the music. I think it's cool. It's, I don't know. I enjoy the sound effects so far. I don't remember that being memorable, but I look forward to playing it more as the code continues to develop. That's where I'm at on the game. One thing I want to say is the art. So going into it after seeing pictures like online, I felt like the artwork on the playfield was just like too much. Like it just seemed like there was just a lot going on. Stepping up and like actually standing in front of the pinball machine, like I didn't feel that at all. And I know that and I mean this is kind of silly but I know I mentioned that to some people just that I know. So, yeah, like my first impression was like, oh man, it's so busy. But once I was actually standing in front of the game, it didn't, like, I don't know, it just, I didn't get that feeling. Like I didn't feel like I was losing the ball in the art or anything like that. No, I think it looks good. Yeah. It does have the multicolored GI that changes based on some modes and stuff. Yeah. I personally am just not a fan of that. It's kind of back to the colored light conversation. We're just having I it's not that I can't see the ball I just I don't particularly love it it doesn't it doesn't give me enough of like oh I'm so engaged in this mode it's altered um it's different I don't know I just I'd like my general illumination to remain the same call me an old grouch but are you talking about are you talking about like ambient like GI lighting or are you talking like if you look at the GI there's different colors and I know when you travel back in time in the game yeah I'm not a huge fan of that. I know a game I had that I didn't care for it. Though on which game? I was trying to think. I can't think of what it is off the top of my head. But it's definitely a Stern game that has that with the color GI changing on. So Elvira does that. Could be that one. I so Elvira Elvira Elvira does it and I really like I I'm I'm with you in the fact that I generally don't like it but in Elvira I did not mind it I and I don't know I just thought that it worked really well like there was enough of it where it wasn't like over the top it's like a mood you know it like changes the mood of the game I don't know I didn't I didn't mind it that much but and again the usage of it could change over time with x-men and it could get to a place where I I do I'm a fan of the game. I like it. Or at least less upsetting. But right now when it changes, I mean, I'm like, God damn it. I just want to get out of this mode so the colors, I go back to white GI and I can see shit. Well, what about like a game like Godzilla, like when you're in the Tesla mode, like where it gets darker and stuff? Because it gets... I don't mind the changes in the... Yeah. And Iron Maiden has the... What is it? Dark, something with the darkness mode. I don't remember what it is. Yeah. That one where it starts out dark and it gets brighter as you hit stuff. Like that doesn't bother me. I'm not going to do that. I do not have the time. And again, it is whatever you feel about X-Men. It is really cool to see the evolution of Jack Danger of pinball fan, pinball streamer randomly, dedicated streamer, designing a home version of Jurassic Park to Foo Fighters and now this, and definitely bringing some creative mechanical and geometrical design to his playfield and shots. It's just cool to see new people designing games. So his whole little evolution within the hobby has been really cool to see too. I think, and I also think that the people who are design, I mean, like I'm going to sound like it's a Stern fanboy, but I feel like the designers at Stern compliment each other to where there's some difference in the style. I don't, I don't know. Like it's, it's really interesting. I think they have design, from this point it seems like to me, they have design teams. And I think those teams very much have identifiers that make their game unique from the other designers while still maintaining this overall product image of Stern. And it's honestly, they deliver a high quality product. For whatever people want to bitch about, yeah, nothing's perfect, guys. These are really complex machines. Stern does a pretty damn good job of quality control. And if something is wrong, they seem to take good care of the customer. I know I've had positive experiences. I've had really, I've had great experiences. And I'm not an operator. I'm a homeowner and I get people to call me back. I get people will follow up with me. Email change, just like trying to figure stuff out. It's like I had an early Iron Maiden and it was missing a plastic on the left and I couldn't figure out why I kept getting these ball traps. And finally, like we, we talked through it and we determined that I had a, I had a really early domestic game and the games that were sent international early were, did not have this plastic. And then they discovered this stuck ball area. So they ended up making a retro fit kit for the, uh, exports. Um, and as soon as we figured it out, which was kind of interesting, like trying to what's going on, um, they, yeah, they sent me everything I needed. Connor Karl DeAngelo However, as technology grows, Antonio Cruz flights, will be the best. Yucca soitanee Dar heatshearted Yeah, I thought it was really fun. The Richmond Pinball Collective locally has a pro right now, so I'm going to get in. They're closer to me than the other location, but I'm going to get in and play that because I want to see what the difference is because I've actually heard the pro is not missing too much. I got to play in LE actually. I was up in near Detroit for work a couple weeks ago and I went to Marvelous Marvin's Mechanical Museum. And they had an LE and I Disliked some of the premium features. They were cool. Yeah, they were very cool Like just to see how they were designed and the way they interact with the ball. But it wasn't the... It slowed the game down a lot. Yeah, I think that's I think that that's like just part of the deal though. Yeah They all worked. I didn't have any issues with them. They did what they were supposed to do. I I just kind of liked the speed of the pro and Looking at it from the operating standpoint. I'm like, oh, that's that's cool until I have to fix it Yeah, so my brain does do that automatically. Yeah It wasn't like I was like, oh, this is this game is shit I would only play a pro. Like if I see a premium or an LE on location, I'm gonna play it again. But it wasn't anything drastically different that made me be like, okay, I need to upgrade this. Whereas like Godzilla, I did feel that the feature differences were improvements and enhanced the gameplay over the pro. I didn't feel that based on my quick interactions. I probably I played like five games on the LE that day when I was up there. I did play Jaws Premium and I did like some of the stuff, but I didn't like how much that upper playfield blocked some of the view of the shots on the left. Yeah. But I thought it'd play well too, so I don't know. Do you have a Jaws Pro? I do have a Jaws Pro, yes. I've played both, but I think I've played the Premium more. Tim Tim Kitzrow was the president of Upton Academy Theater inpage�'retea4 상황 filed by R It's weird, weird jaws input. My favorite shot on that game is from the upper right mini flipper through that little gate on the side. Oh yeah. It gives you like the opportunity at the quick shot. Like I'm addicted to that shot. Oh, it's awesome. I know I'm putting the ball horizontal on the playfield and endangering myself, but I cannot resist taking that shot. And the fact that I can also hit the upper left spinner from that flipper, like, I really enjoy those shots on that game. I love... They're weirdly addictive. So one of my favorite things on Jaws, I don't know if it's on the Pro and the Premium, but when you can, if you're a multiball and you can trap the ball in the upper right flipper between the... Yeah, with the flip block. Dude, I love that. I mean, like... I forget to use it so often and then occasionally I was having a game and I oh yeah that's there yeah and I like it it's great and I like when you say you know you've got you get two balls up there and then you you know you like quickly release one ball and then trap back up and then you lock it into place so you can like shoot yeah it's it's yeah it's great that's it's a very well designed and used mini flipper in a cool spot unique ways I think I have jaws of those games I'm a big fan of the game. I've played it a good amount when it came out. And as the updates have come, I've been like, I'm getting more and more into this. And like I learned where the shots are. Do you understand the rules as far as like the gear and stuff like that? Not that we need to get into that. I know how to do all the modes. I don't know what the gear means at all. And I just keep playing and keep hitting shots. I'm sure I'm missing out on capitalizing on stuff. There's a lot of stuff. I know they are quite useful. I do kind of try to get them, but I don't know what I'm achieving by getting them. But I think that's how a lot of people are with Alien and the weapons. Like, I know what the weapons do and I'm trying to get them and I know there's very efficient ways to use them in Alien. I think like three of them can potentially be used as ball saves, which is obviously incredibly important anytime you're playing a game. So I assume JAWS has a similar style of integration of those gear items. But yeah, I have not taken the time to learn that. I also have no idea where the code is technically at on JAWS. I don't know. It's like point whatever at this point. Because now that they automatically update, I don't pay as much attention. I'm just like, yeah, new code, and I post it, and I don't really do much else with it. Oh, yeah, interesting. Before I used to go in and download it, and then I'd read it while it was downloading, and now it's just like, oh, it's there. The internet connectivity of the Stern games is spectacular. Do you get a lot of internet? Do you do IC and all that stuff? I have it on all the machines down there. At one point we were running high scoreboards every month. And we had a television that had them displayed in there. And people really did enjoy it. As location players, they love seeing their names up there and stuff. And then something happened one month where we couldn't set up the TV that it was on. I don't remember what was going on and we just got kind of lazy about it and forgot to do it. I probably hadn't had them up in six months and I just put them back up this month and we still don't have the TV up, but I at least like set them up online and I posted the link so players can look at it. Yeah. But without it being on display in the bar, it's not as useful. So I do need to get a dedicated TV back into the bar to display those because people liked it. My players absolutely liked it. So I don't use IC almost at all. I just I have it. I don't log in and play with it. I don't. Yes, I don't. Like, I'll do it. So like my brother was in town this weekend. And so I showed it. I was like, oh, look, you can do this because he'll play on location sometimes. And but I usually don't do it. But I will say so when I went to play X-Men Center of the Universe Brewery in Ashland, Virginia, they so Dan has it set up and he does monthlies and he's got a little TV there. And it was cool. Like, I, you know, I I logged into X-Men, played, I made the leaderboard so I was like top 10 or whatever for the month. And it was cool. It was cool to see it happen like that. I think it's very gratifying for players who put their time in there and especially newer players who are like not like struggling at a particular machine but just struggling to learn pinball or they're practicing to get better at pinball. They may not crack those top four scores when you got some really good players in your location. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., Robotics, Pinball Machine, Kevin Altman, Tip Service collectively Yeah, and that's a that's I think probably a good efficient way to use that we did that for like one month and then a lot of it just comes down to operator error as in me being too lazy to remember to organize that. Too busy, too busy, not too lazy. This is the start of week four of wrestling season for me. We had our first JV tournament Saturday. And we've got our first varsity match next Wednesday. By the way, it's Monday, November 25th, as we're recording this. Thanksgiving's coming up. Hey, happy Thanksgiving. We had a traditional pinsgiving at my league location last week, which was fabulous. Nice. Everyone does it. We do a little Thanksgiving sort of potluck dinner, and everyone brings in food, and we eat too much and then try to play pinball. It does impact your performance, it turns out. If you smash like three pieces of pumpkin pie, or not pumpkin pie, apple pie, I only I only had one piece of the pumpkin pie and eat a half pound of mashed potatoes and a pound of turkey. That will definitely slow you down. It did. The reaction time was not there last Thursday, but I had a lot of fun and it was very good to see everyone. I love sharing meals with people, so it was... I love that our league has that little tradition going. And I am appreciative of my pinball league, not just because they put money in the machines and allow us to continue to bring games in for them, I'm a fan of them, but like, I genuinely love the community aspect that our league has found for our players. Like, we do stuff together outside of league. We've kind of gotten to know each other's kids, and whatever those jobs are and hobbies. And if people aren't there, people ask, like, hey, where's so-and-so? Why aren't they here this week? And they check on each other. It's, it's, I love it. It's, it's been very, very cool to have that. I think that leagues, I completely and 100% agree with you how amazing it is the relationships you develop by playing in a pinball league. I think that, you know, I think looking at the growth of pinball from when I started to where I am, where like our local community is now, like I just feel like leagues were like the driving force. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, Ballywin, Straight Down the Middle, Ballywin, We're in tomorrow night, we have our sixth night of our 23rd or 22nd season of our league. And, yeah, it's cool, man. It's just like, yeah, you see people have had kids, people have gotten married. People who are hosting tomorrow night got married during this season, so they missed a couple nights of league and they host tomorrow. Yeah, it's cool, man. It's just, I think it's, um, yeah, I think like if you have the ability to start a home league or a league on a location, I think it's just a great way to develop a community. Or like, if you're like, Hey, how, how do I find the community around pinball? If you're into it, find a league, find a local league. Like you can go on a high IFPA and they list leagues by area. So I think it's very much as silly as this will sound, it's very much a field of dreams. Like, if you put it there, people show up. Like, pinball is, it's one of those things that if people aren't exposed to it, they don't know it exists, they don't know what it is. If you put a machine out there or you find a location where there are machines already and you try to form a, some sort of a formal gathering of people to enjoy it together, like they show up and it ends up being fun. Oh yeah. It's, it's, it is by far the best thing I've taken from this hobby is the sense of community that ends up developing from it. And you know, even before we had my location, I was playing at Main Streets League. And even before I started playing in that league, I had the pin side aspect where I was learning and gathering information and people were teaching and sharing knowledge. And this is like completely big circle picture of what we talked about earlier. We said like how much effort you put into restoring that whitewater and how difficult it was at the time because the lack of availability of parts. And I think in turn, it's like this full cycle thing. There was only a few people out there doing these restorations at one point. And as they shared their knowledge and how it could be done, like more and more people are like, oh, I can probably do that if I have the parts. And then someone started making the parts. So more people started restoring games and like you said like pinball's in this really healthy place where it seems more permanent and I think you know outside of the fact that there's so many more companies manufacturing games I think a lot of it has to do with like the people that were making these parts to restore these older machines into new and restored order so that they continue to exist and they can continue to show that part of the pinball history too and the fact that we got the remakes going you know like that all kind of ties in together it's like man So many people are buying these playfields to restore these games from the 90s. Why don't we just remake the damn machine? Yeah. And you know, it's become like full cycle and like you said, it's permanent again. But also, and then going along with that, like if you look at, so I think one of the things that's really interesting is like with where Stern is now versus where they were. Like one of the things that I think is really important about Stern is a pinball company. And like, I've definitely had my gripes about them. I've been banned from Facebook, whatever, you know, I've given him shit. We've had issues, but the fact that Stern never shut their doors meant that those parts were always being made. So, even though it's like pop bumper skirts and all this stuff that you just don't really think about that are so essential to a pinball machine, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. John Popadiuk Bob Betor Keith Elwin Laser Los Bowen Kerins Lyman F Sheats that they were able to just get parts or if I mean or you go back to like who was the guy who did the medieval madness scratch build wall wall John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. For Banzai Run, which I've never owned, I've always enjoyed playing it when I see it, there's some sort of completely unique part on that elevator magnet thing that takes the ball up. And I remember for a while, it was just non-existent. I think Swinx 3D print designed it, and that game now has like a permanent existence in life. It's no longer going to be broken beyond repair, because somebody took the time to 3D print and design this little missing component that didn't exist in any other machine. So the companies don't have a lot of incentive to reproduce this part. No, none. None whatsoever. But hobbyists absolutely do. And like you said, man, we're getting to live through this really cool period of pinball without a doubt. Yeah. So Chicago Expo. Yeah. Expo was... I picked up my X-Men Pro on the way to Expo. I got a new company car this month. I got a Kia Carnival Hybrid. So I've got like a new... They call it an MPV, multi-purpose vehicle, but it's basically a minivan. And it fits an entire machine in there in the box. I still have room for a car seat with Conrad. And anyway, it had to do with weird shipping times and whatnot. It just became easier for me to pick that game up on my way to Expo that week. And then I went to Expo and I enjoyed it. I am still a believer that for a visitor to Expo, if you're not doing the tournaments, you only need one day. It's not that big of a show. It was very easy for me to see everything I needed to see in four to five hours. The homebrews that I got to play that I did want to make sure I at least give a shout out to was the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Very cool design and integration of code on that machine. It did shoot like a homebrew, like the shots were not perfectly dialed in and that they were coming from someone who was new to designing a pinball machine, which I'm not knocking them. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, I grew up playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater. You were like near retirement when that came out, I think, or something, right? Dude, shut the fuck up. I still play it. I still play it, dude. I have an Xbox and that's the one game I'll put my headphones on and I'll sit down and I'll play it. I actually, I played it because they did like the remastered version a year ago. I downloaded that, played the shit out of it for like two weeks straight. I was like, oh man, this game is just the stall of it. Oh, it's so good. I think that would sell really well. Obviously, it's incorporated great into how you do shot design on the machine. That was cool. I didn't wait in line to play a lot of the other home brews that were there. I wanted to play the Friday the 13th one. That and Tony Hawk were right next to each other. And the lines for those were very long because they were both very well done and very polished. And they both held up the entire expo, whereas a lot of the other stuff in the home brew corner didn't hold up the whole weekend. And again, not a knock. I understand these people are building these things in their garage. They're not super play tested. It is what it is. It's awesome that they have a place to display their progress and So those were cool. I got to play Berrios Barbecue or American Pinball, which was perfectly fine. I have no desire to own it or operate it or anything, but it's a decent game. And then the coolest thing I got to play, and maybe these have been here in past years and somehow I missed them. I don't think so. They had a whole row of the Hankin games from Australia. I got to play a Hankin Shark, which I looked for for like, like I was pretty dedicated to trying to find one of those like willing to import it from Australia back in the day. Yeah. And I could not just find one anywhere. And that was there and I got to play it. I actually played like two or three games on it because I was so excited to see it. And Hankin, the shark and the Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars one they have, they're both sort of like modified, um, They had a lot of these Bally Space Invaders layouts to a certain extent, as far as flipper layout goes, and the shots were a little different. They had little placards on them, which I don't think were from the factory, but I think were added on later. They both said they were one of 200, which I would believe because I know Hankin did very low production runs of those games. I had played an Empire Strikes Back somewhere previously, but I played it again because when the hell are you going to see one of those? But man, I was so stoked to play Shark. It has just this really cool artwork on that game. I took a bunch of pictures of it because I wanted to get a tattoo inspired by it at some point because I've gotten to the point where I'm just tattooing like whatever on my body at that time. And why not add a Hank and Shark tattoo? That's how I looked at it. But that was really cool. And then I went with my friend Lindsey who runs the Lafayette Bells and Chimes. And we as operators, or at least as I'm an operator, she's as a tournament director for the Bells and Chimes events in our area, were invited to the Stern private party that was taking place at like some brewery. And there was like some snafu last year with the denim coats they were supposed to send to Stern Army members. So if there was any issues with yours last year, they were going to replace it here at this party. So we had both signed up to get our coats at that. And we got to this party and like, you know, I mean, I want to say like I felt kind of special getting this invite, but it's like, oh, Stern operator, Stern Army member, you get invited. It's like, cool. How many of us can there be? Turns out there's a fuck ton of us. Because this party, like we got there and there was a, we waited over an hour in line just to get to the check-in door where they gave you your coat. Shut up. And like you could not, you, oh, it was over an hour, like for sure. I think it was an hour and 15. We timed it. You stood in line? Luke S luxurious together with Leon, men penguins, jocast chamkins tour, Spanish Pinball, Buff be fazer KJo, rensek fancied away, Art niplap, syu. BC Live, Aaser Luke Yeah, but it was it was cool. There was a lot of people there. Like, I mean, they had all the designers there. It was very cool Stern to do that. The drink tab was on Stern. They had a food truck outside doing these really good looking pizzas. We decided that we did not want to deal with any of that and we just hit up Portello's on the way home. There you go. And it was it was fun. But again, really cool Stern to do that. And as much as I was like, oh, we're like, you know, kind of exclusive going to this party. It was really cool to see how many people who are operators Kim Smith, Keith Elwin, Such a fun host. And then my fourth comment, which was like a thing I think regardless of whether it's cannabis or governo, it's still really cool people are going to enjoy agencies and didn't go to business. So my final comment is, I think a lot of the investment that's needed to honour gonna Diese So while hanging out in a giant, really crowded brewery is not my thing, it was cool to see that it was there as an option for some people. And again, really nice of Stern to host that party, provide the operators and army members with these cool denim jackets and make right what they did last year where they were made and they didn't fit or they didn't send the right ones to people. So it was really, really nice of them to do. Did you get invited to the influencer party, the podcaster? No, no, no. They didn't put out like two episodes a year. We didn't qualify. Dude, see, when we used to put out a hundred episodes a year, three hours, three hours long, we also didn't get invited. Now... Well, that stuff didn't exist, I think. Exactly. Now all these people riding our coattails are just, you know, enjoying our, enjoying our wake and... Let them have a good time, man. You know, not everyone can be a trendsetter. Whatever, man, whatever. Yeah, no, but that was cool. I saw if you look back at like the amount of hours of podcast stuff that we put out. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. Jesus Christ. We should be experts. We should be experts at this. We still can't even record, right? No, no, no. Oh, update from last episode, right? We should do some updates. Okay. I actually just got some pictures today. My buddy John's working on the big game prototype right now. Nice. Somebody asked me about that recently. And yeah, I had some people at Expo who ran into me and were like, dude, I heard the show. I can't find the pictures. Like, show me the pictures. And I showed them. It was cool to see the people had listened still. He is tearing it down right now. Nice. And he did discover underneath the star post, even though there is that like plexiglass on the playfield, you can see like there's damage to the ink underneath the plexiglass, like where there was the pressure from the star post essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I was just moving some stuff around my garage. I was like, hey, look, there is a backglass in here because that's how I operate. I think I found that and a Sea Witch backglass in there, I'm pretty sure. What? You just have a Sea Witch backglass in there? Why, it's not in good shape. Yeah, it's in there. I probably replaced it. I've owned a Sea Witch like three or four times now. I probably replaced one of them and that one's just still sitting there. So what was your feeling on the Alice in Wonderland? Did you get to play it? Get to flip it? So I am a firm believer in what I call the J-pop stink. Yes. Anything that that man has touched or influenced in any way, I just don't want anything to do with it because I think he's a scumbag piece of shit and the day he dies, I will not care. This is Tommy. This is Tommy. Tommy is the nice one. Tommy is the nice one on the podcast. Yeah, I'm the nice guy. He's just fucked over so many people in this hobby. So many people. So much. And I feel like he has this false sense of grandiose because he was a part of some cool Tim Tim Kitzrow, Head of Constry sexualourих 19.1rus Sytopropov, Icon Gardener, Bern Nous Psalmi. The Scythe Acabium 2. This I don't get it. Why would... Why use that? That's what I didn't understand. What I didn't understand is they were basically like, oh, he had nothing to do with it. But I don't understand. You're gonna use a design... That's the fucking foam core layout that he showed, like for sure. Right. But how do you... They made changes to it. You have to. Because I guarantee his didn't work. But I would have just completely... It's Alice in Wonderland. You can essentially do fucking anything. That story is wild. Yeah, you could do anything. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's been a problem for, uh, because this is technically through Dutch pinball, right? But the reason they use, the reason they use J-Pops is because it does have the history of J-Pop. Because whether or not... Yeah, which is weird. Yeah. I... Because that's the only reason you could have used, you could have gotten a designer. There's enough people who wanted to design pinball machines that you could come out with the layout. There was probably like 25 games in that homebrew section. Knapp Arcade, Redis.deadface, Dev 31,Sen pans, Ledger 7, escreos 2015, Playfield 157, agreed!!!!!!!!!! leadership michael light triggered Crash game light I know it's really expensive. I didn't even pay attention to that stuff. I will say, cosmetically, looking at it there, the quality looked nice. The sculptures were nice. The playfield had a good clear coat on it from what I could see. It also wasn't powered on or being played. And I was like, wow, it looks like a J-pop game. Perfect. Yeah. The box, man. It's a well-designed looking box. There was a magic girl there that didn't work. And it was really funny because I was showing it to Lindsey and she's newer to pinball and I was kind of like trying to explain the fucked up history that is that game and J-pop in general. Yeah. And the guy, one of the guys, he's like one of the volunteer staff there, very nice, came over and he's like, would you like me to turn it on so you can take a picture with it with the lights on? He's like, it doesn't work, but the lights go on. And I was like, yeah, I was explaining that to her. Like these essentially were made, but they're not even playable. Um, like it's such a weird thing. It's I don't understand that. That being said, um, speaking of J-pop games, the complete flipper bracket on my World Cup soccer had snapped on location like a week ago. Yeah. So I just thankfully again, as we were talking about parts availability, Pinball Life sells completely assembled new flipper mechs. And I just said, fuck it. Like if the right one broke, the left one's probably not far behind. I'm just going to replace them both. And I put those on World Cup soccer and it's like, man, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi, Tim Tim Kitzrow Robert A. C Entwickler editing matters. Tim Tim Kitzrow Mark Witteț Parkland. I'm gonna tell you I never got yelled at I always had I always had good conversations talk to that dude's knowledge is amazing so I was working on and it I was working I don't remember what game I was where I was working on a Bram Stoker's Dracula I was so here's a story so I So I was working on a Bram Stoker's Dracula and I was working out of town. So I was basically living out of a hotel. So when I went up to this job, I started restoring a Bram Stoker's Dracula. So I took all the mechs with me to rebuild them in my hotel room. So you basically looked like the bomb parts from Back to the Future were coming in this bag into a hotel room. Exactly. And so, but I did not, I always like kept the like occupied thing on the door so nobody came in. I was weird about like housekeeping coming in my room. But so I would order parts from PBR, but I didn't have like, I didn't have a checkbook or anything like that. It wasn't like, I don't think he does credit cards. So I would, I would get my- He literally sends you an invoice with your parts still. Yeah. In 2024, he sends you an invoice and just expects you to pay and people do, which is wild. But I would just send him, I would send him cash because I had my per diem from my job. I would just like put cash in an envelope and send it to him. It was great. So I like while I was on this job, I basically like rebuild all the mechs for my game on a on an ironing board in my hotel room. That's so I got a good PBR story, too. So like he invoices you. That's amazing that you just did this in a hotel room. I love it. He sends me an invoice, right? And I don't often order from him because I hate learning from him because it's just so it's different. It's our case. It's different. Yeah. And he sends me the invoice and of course like I lose it like I do whatever with the parts and I lose the invoice. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then eventually like I get a notice and I feel so bad that like they're not even charging you like a late fee or anything. No. He says, we still haven't received this. Yeah, yeah. So I sent like, again, not like a massive check but I want to say my parts order was like $48 and I sent like a check for $250. Like I felt so guilty and so bad and I was like I just want to have like some money because they give you like an account number once you start ordering from them. Yes. Put some money in my account. This is years ago, yeah. So I just like, I want to be flush with you guys. I apologize. Like I don't want to owe people money who have given me this great service, right? I forgot about this for years. And then like last year I had to order a sound ROM chip from them for Gottlieb Chicago Cubs triple play. And he tells me like the guy who I'm emailing with, I think it's Jim maybe. I can't remember. It's not Steve. But he tells me John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Did they ever update their website? No, it's exactly the same. It still looks like it was built in 1995. I think it was. So it looks accurate. Do they send you like the part of the like the catalog? Like the printed catalog? No, they used to have a printed catalog. Well, no, but it's like just it's not it's not it's like a eight and a half by 11 sheet that's folded a couple of times, but it's got like their specials and stuff. No, no, I don't think I've ever gotten any specials. Well, no, not, well, I think they call them specials, but it's just like the parts they have. It's all special. Dude, that's, man, I just, again, I know we're, we're, we're rare, not rare, but we're like, we're pretty nerdy into this pinball stuff. But like, I would love to know what the negotiations were like when he decided to buy up all the Gottlieb stuff and how that all went down. Oh, I don't know. I remember this was like, this is like five to eight years ago now. And my whole life is a blur just currently. And pretty much since I've had Conrad, to be honest, it's just all a blur. But at some point they had a ton of new old stock Gottlieb playfields. They were selling, and it's like, they were not expensive and they were selling. That's another good indicator to me of where this hobby has gone because they had these playfields for... There's a Gottlieb game and it's a system 80 wide body. It's a soccer theme and it's got double flippers on the bottom. I don't even, it might just be called soccer or goal or something along that, but they have like a couple of these playfields and it's kind of rare game and they were up there for like three or 400 bucks and they just weren't selling for years. Now I look at that and it's like, dude, I knew where this hobby was going back then. It's like, I want to keep that off those playfields and they're just like, there's such a cool, again, I know I've nerded out about this before, but I just freaking love playfields. Ryan Heybrook, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Red Bull Marketing, $75 on a new old stock playfield and I'm like, I regret that so much. I remember I saw I met him at like an Allentown show and he used to set up like a pretty big booth and he would have playfields and stuff like that. And I yeah, I was I was just like, holy shit. But I feel like he had a he had a punk is Gottlieb punk. Oh, yeah. He had punk. He had a punk playfield. Those are the ones that like started to go because he had like punk and he had some TX sectors. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Holy shit, dude. It was like these games that are now going for thousands of dollars. I remember there was a Genesis one and that was when like Genesis always had the reputation of like, oh, this is a weird game, but it's actually kind of fun. Yeah, it still wasn't expensive. And then the other ones got really expensive. I still love Genesis. But so, you know, Marco, Marco Pinball used to have a ton of NOS, Bally Williams Playfields. Oh yeah. And I remember, um, I had an early show that I went to, oh shit, I can't remember what it was, but I remember like they had like Doctor Who, like they just, they would bring like a bunch of NOS playfields and then like they, yeah, they had a Doctor Who cause the mini playfield was not cut out. So it was part of, it was all routed. So it was, yeah. And then like you had to go in and cut it out. Yeah, it was like connect with each other. Yeah. It was, man, I wish, shit, man, I wish I had. This was since Conrad was born. So within the last two years, Ron Kruseman, who is the best playfield clear coat guy there is out there, he's out of Michigan. Ron's a friend of mine, so I am biased in my judgment, but playfields are amazing. I've installed a few of them now. I mean, they're a work of art. They sure are. Yeah, I've seen them. Yeah, they're beautiful. He's booked 53 weeks out right now. He literally plans to do one playfield a week, and he's got 53-week backlog at this time. That's pretty fast, man. That's like... Oh, no, no, he doesn't do it in a week. Oh, he just... That's how many he can like finish out. Gotcha. His process is months long for a playfield. But if he's taking... but if he does one... yeah, I get it. What if he gets them spaced out properly, he should be able to ship out one a week. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, his process takes months, especially because a lot of the playfields that come to him are just these new reproductions that aren't even cured yet and they need to settle and what the wood's gonna I'm not sure if you're familiar with the name of the company, but I'm sure you do. But at some point within the last few years, he was contacted by a former employee from Bally Williams, and I think they had 24 new old stock playfields. Some of them were test prints. One of them was a Star Trek Next Generation prototype, which had the extra large saucer hole. There was a Twilight Zone prototype, I remember. Again, Ron is like a historian of these playfields to an extent, and just really cool shit that He got he came across a bunch of Gottlieb Pink Panther and James Bond playfields too I think he had like three of each Um he Company Subsidiary of Walter Kidde Co Inc Mirco Playfields Tim Tim Kitzrow Because James Bond did so poor back in the 80s, and if you haven't seen it, it's like this pink, yellow, and orange playfield that essentially is black hole without the lower playfield. Oh, okay. So it's like, it's on the drop through that tube to the lower playfield, it's just a saucer that kicks it back out up there, but that's the layout and the artwork's just completely different. Um, he had one of those there and I've only seen that in person like once somewhere. Uh, but you, did you see it in a game or you saw it just to play? I've seen the machine. I've played the machine somewhere. This is the first time I've seen one outside of this book. And I know... Oh, man, I'm going to mess your name up, and I'm sorry because I talk to you pretty frequently. I think it's Steven Pruza over in Cleveland. He's been doing a bunch of scratch builds and doing some really cool stuff. And he got one of those Playfields not long ago. So he's just scratch building a Gottlieb Eclipse. Oh, that's cool as shit. Which is wild. Yeah, that's... Sorry. My dog just joined me in my recording studio room and he's looking at me all excited, which means he probably peed on the floor somewhere. Oh, little buddy, don't do that. Don't do that. It's raining out here and they hate it when it rains. So they're like, oh, I went out, but they don't pee in this camp before. What are you going to do? So Thanksgiving is coming up. So happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Yeah, absolutely. I, um, I, yeah. So when's your daughter home yet or is she coming soon? My college freshman is home. She came home on Friday. So we're recording on Monday. She came home Friday. She's here for a week. He had a class today, but she zoomed it. Yeah, so that's nice to have my family all under the same roof. My, uh, yeah, I've got a, I, Pentech Ella is a high school freshman. It's crazy. That is wild. Yeah, it's wild. And yeah, so, uh, yeah, so it's nice to have the kids home. And then, like I said, my brother was in town. My brother and I, we, we like are, he's my older brother and we've always just been like super competitive. Um, but yeah, it was cool. We were both into pinball when we were younger. I remember sitting down and having a conversation with him and his wife. We were all talking about pinball. We were like, oh, if we could have a game, what game would we have? John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Larry Kizrow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I didn't know how to fix it at the time because I was a total noob and my brother like played it for hours, did not care that it didn't have sound. Like it drove me nuts. It drove me nuts just because I was like, oh, it doesn't work. I feel so bad. You're just hearing coils fire and pinball hit metal pedals. But yeah, he just played for hours. So yeah, so he was in town and we, yeah, we camped out on Medieval Madness because that's probably his favorite game. And that's so this again, I know we're like wrapping up here because we're going to be shorter episodes, but you got in on the Medieval Madness remake basically when it launched. Has that held up really well for you? I've had, oh man, so. It's probably eight years now. It's probably 10 years almost, isn't it? Oh, maybe. I got it after my, I've got my Wizard of Oz in 2013. I got it, I guess I got it after that, but it might be 10 years. I'm going to play a game for somebody else, so it's been close to 10 years. Yeah, no, yeah, maybe. So, My Medieval Madness, I got a, it's a LE black powder coat armor. It's held up really well. I can't, I haven't had, I haven't had, I hadn't, I don't know if they've corrected or if, I don't know if they've changed the playfield, But my playfield had kind of like the inserts seem more clear than the originals. So like there's a cloudiness where you don't see the lights or whatever underneath. So I do have, I haven't installed it, but they sent me like these filters to go over, to go under, to go between the LEDs and the inserts. Yeah, I haven't done those. But other than that, it's held up really well. I haven't had any issues. I haven't had any issues with the Castle Max, Troll Max. I haven't done almost anything. And it's probably got, what, like 20,000 plays on it? It's got a number of plays. It's got a lot of plays on it. I was curious because it's crazy how long ago that was now and how big of a deal that was when that first was announced. And I initially ordered one and backed out, and I strongly regret that. Strong rumors they're getting ready to do another run of those coming up next month. So they are saying they're saying they've been posting some they've been posting some pictures lately of stuff that they're making. I think like pictures of Pulp Fiction and stuff like that, just of the factory. And they did mention somebody asked them about Medieval and they said they were going to do another run. I think I think it's told her by some distributor saying it's coming. So it's kind of like, do I sell something and get it this time or not? This is a production of WGBH. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Now I'm going to tell you, you did an excellent job, Vaughn. I would still undo the white, the white water for Wizard of Oz. Yeah, I, you know, I know you love it though. So the only thing I'll say about Wizard of Oz, the only thing I'll say about white water is that I had dialed in that game. Like I, and this is no shit, like I got to vacation jackpot on one ball. No extra balls, just got on, played one ball and got to the vacation jackpot, which is basically getting to the wizard. There's no wizard mode per se, but it's basically like beating the game and resetting it. The wizard mode for me is like 5x, multiball, cashing all three of the tops, max value. And like, I live for like that and creature. They just suck me in with the repetitive. Like, can you do the multiplier at the right time? Straßeniso- Speaker 3 Speaker 2 Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Speaker 1 All right. Speaker 2 Speaker 23 It's what we call the trade cents. Speaker 2 Speaker 2 Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Speaker 2 Speaker 1 Speaker 18 Speaker 2 Speaker 21 Speaker 22 Speaker 21 Speaker 23 Speaker 24 Speaker 24 Speaker 25 Speaker 26 Speaker 27 His scores are bonkers. Like, I'm just like, dude, I can't, I'm not even like, I'm, you know, 400 billion or something like that. Like, I'm not touching that. But like, I feel like, like, I've gotten to rule the universe on one ball. I've ruled the universe where I'm like doing the inserts left or right, like stuff like that, where you just feel like, Twilight Zone, I think I got to lost in the zone on one ball, you know, like, it's just like, those games, like, I'm playing Iron Man, I've been playing Iron Man. And yeah, we're trying to wrap up whatever. I'm a fan of Iron Maiden. I've been playing a lot of Iron Maiden recently because I cannot beat this game. I've gotten to... Are you trying to get to run for the hills? No, no, no. I'm not even trying to do that. I'm trying to battle the... I've gotten to battle the beast, but I have not defeated the beast. I've come within... I think I came within one shot one time. Download iTunes for free, go tokurilsplays.com for more and get your free copy! John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Yeah, I don't know. But medieval, medieval's held up. So yeah, if you can, if you can grab a medieval from this next run, I would do it. I know, I know a lot of people that want to do it because I have friends who are like, dude, I'll sell, I'll trade you, I'll trade you for your medieval. And I'm like, no, I'm not. That's it. That was... Nailed to the floor. It's weird to look back at that time with that being like the first remake and for what those were selling for. Yeah. well, grab a pen undos it all Buffalo down in it was like gonna be clever man I'm not in read to see I. I'm arming us with love this time and right now, we're curved with love like a red-pair pay me on the way now bombeptor, fator. yeah, in every virile dad I'm gonna be 팀 time and double the power that something burned me I got him beauty, creep calcium, Mike Jesse Recently, aspirers are feeling the owder more rapidly abroad than ever before. Another run at Medieval. I think they would still sell more Attack from Mars if they made them. Monster Bash, maybe less so. Cactus Canyons have dropped since they did them. Because I think everyone realized, like, oh, this game was so cool because of the rarity. Like, it's a fun game, but the death wasn't there compared to the others, and it's a pretty easy shooter. I think Medieval and AFM are still probably the favorite games in my lineup by most people other than myself. I mean, AFM might be my favorite game of all time. I own a creature, but if they did a remake with the bigger screen and some like built in mods and lighting and anything updated, I'd be all over a creature. Like creature's my thing. I just semi shopped out my creature. I redid the flipper max and I've got some cracked ramps and stuff and I went through and took everything off. That game is a bitch to shop to get to all those rubbers underneath those intertwining ramps. But yeah, I did that late night last week and it's playing really good right now. And shout out to Kuz. I finally installed my custom mirrored Creature from the Black Lagoon backglass and it looks really nice in that game. So yeah, I've been stoked. I've got it in my basement and it was broken for a while. So I kept telling Conrad, he's gotten like super obsessed with Creature from the Black Lagoon. Nice. Because he saw it was like folded up here for a little bit because I didn't have time to work on it. And I was telling him it was broken. And I told him it was a movie and he's like, watch Creature. Okay. And I'm thinking like, there's no way this kid's going to watch this movie from the 1950s. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, enjoying this showtrip Dis gehe KPロEFI? I'm skilled as Ryan Le cerebral PR tv PRO PR TV Sche adoption Layman E Watch A Sechea When At 4 3 2 1 Go TV 3 Storage Internet Studio Alexa Sound D girl VR Yo Really Son He Happy Bird Tomorrow Spookey I'm going to go ahead and start with the first game. I'm going to go ahead and start with the first game. That was the first new in box game I ever ordered. Yup. And one popped up really cheap in Chicago right after Expo and I got it. And the little skill shot, like as you start your ball, you can choose between three skill shots, but whichever one you're choosing there on the animation screen, there's a little ghost that hovers back and forth over it. And he thinks it's like hilarious and he walks back and forth sideways. He's like, I'm a ghost. I'm a ghost. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's pretty cool to get to see him like starting to get into it a little bit, but he's also into wrestling practice and it's cool man seeing these kids grow up and whatnot. He went running with the team last Saturday. We do an indoor run on Saturdays and I was pushing him around the track in the stroller and he's like, Daddy, get down. And he started running with the kids. I was like, all right, man. That's awesome, dude. He only lasted like a lap and then he was like, pick up, pick up. A lap is pretty good. Oh, for a two year old. It was really impressive, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, I was shocked. A two year old running around a track. He was legit running. I was stunned. He kept up with the guys and they all were like, we love having him there. They were like, come on, Conrad, come get us. What's his weight class? Did he have baby weight? Did he have little kid weight class? He's about 35 pounds now. No, I don't let him do any of the wrestling before anyone freaks out. He's only two. They don't really start competitive wrestling until five, but he is big for two. He's like, according to whatever their prediction charts and stuff, he should end up around John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, I don't know how to coach a six foot wrestler. That doesn't happen. They go out for basketball teams. So we'll see. You just got to hit them at the right time. You just like get them in there. You stunt his growth somehow. I'm going to start giving him a little sip of my coffee. Cigarettes. Cigarettes. Yeah, coffee and cigarettes and elementary school. He'll be fine. Be like, uh... Quit feeding him so much, you know? Yeah, that's awesome though. That's, yeah, that's good, good times. And then they grow up and they go to college and then... I'm going to go to college. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to go to college. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I'm not going to talk politics. Totally. Should definitely keep that nowadays. You know, discuss, uh, yeah. The impending doom? Is that what we're going with? No, I'm not. I wasn't going to go there. I wasn't going to go there because I'm trying to be positive. PMI, positive, no, PMA, positive mental attitude. Oh, my bad. Keep it up, Ted Taylor. I'll be realistic for the people while you do the positive mental attitude. We've changed. We've flipped. Now you're like, dude, what the fuck? And I'm like, oh, man. No, I honestly just I was having a conversation with my daughter about everything. I was just like, I think my hope is just that it doesn't serve our country great, but it's almost like if somebody's so incompetent, then or and they surround themselves with incompetence, it's like you really can't do that much harm because you just don't understand the rules. I sure hope that's correct. Oh, I mean, I'm blowing smoke up my own ass by saying that. But, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I don't know. Old age might get him. Uh, hey, man, I, you know, I don't know. Let's let's be okay. Pinball will survive. We did so well for 90 minutes. We did. I'm sorry. I took it down a dark path. You did. I got to keep it. I enjoy talking pinball with you, man. I am on the spirit of Thanksgiving. I'm glad all those years ago you and I were such nerds that we signed up for the one and done. That's right. And we just couldn't quit doing the one and done. So eventually we just teamed up. And then people gave us shit. And it's weird to think about that, you know, we've only met a handful of times in person, but I've probably spent as many hours talking to you over the last decade as I have a lot of other people that I see on a regular basis. They're almost all good and positive conversations. Yeah. And I appreciate, I know I texted you this the other day, public credit too. You have been an excellent example of a father and inspired me as I am raising a son. So thank you for that. I am thankful for that. And I'm going to have a good Thanksgiving. I want to make all the food and eat too much of it. And I'm going to be miserable. But I did I did schedule an optional practice for the wrestling team that morning. So if any of them are concerned about their weight, we will do a workout so they can eat a little bit extra. They do not have to come. It's actually a real optional thing. It's not one of those ones where it's optional but your ass better be there. I told them, I was like, literally, if you don't want to come, don't come. I'm coming in for one hour so we can work out a bit. And then I won't feel as bad about how much turkey I eat later. Well, thank you very much for saying that. I really appreciate it. I, um, I, I'm like, I, it's really cool to see so many of my friends who are now parents and it's really cool to see how excited they are about their kids. And yeah, so, and yeah, it's exciting to see you and Conrad running around and, um, yeah, seeing the pics that you and your dad share. It's yeah, it's really cool. I, yeah, it's, it's great. I, you know, I think, um, yeah, I enjoy it. I appreciate you saying and reaching out and saying that because that I've really tried to be like a good supportive father to my my girls and support them and you know being a being human being so yeah it's it's uh yeah I'm happy they're home it's like makes Thanksgiving a little more special when you're like yeah really thankful to have my kids at my house and we can sit around and And, you know, not just eat, but talk and, you know, yeah, it's good. So that, that keeps me positive. So good thing to be positive about. Yeah. For those of you listen, find your positivity, whatever it needs to be. And if it's our show, I would be shocked, but if that's what it is, here's your Thanksgiving episode. Hey, happy Thanksgiving, everybody. And, yeah, and Tommy, I'll talk to you soon, man. Later, buddy. All right, later. Bye. Punk ain't no religious cult. Punk means thinking for yourself. You ain't hardcore when you spike your hair. When a jock still lives in there. Nazi punks, Nazi punks, Nazi punks, fuck off. Nazi punks, Nazi punks, Nazi punks, fuck off. Nazi punks, Nazi punks, Nazi punks, fuck off. If you came to fight, get out of here. You ain't no better than the bouncers. We ain't trying to be the police. When you hit the cops, it ain't anarchy. Nazi punks, Nazi punks, Nazi punks, fuck off. Ten guys jump on, what a man. You fight each other, the police state wins. Stab our back when you trash our halls. And go trash a bank if you got balls. You steal things swastika's, you're cool, the real Nazis run your schools. Coaches, businessmen, and cops, and real forks, right could be the first thing you stop. Nazi puns, Nazi puns, Nazi puns, fuck off! We're the first to go, first to go, first to go, first to go, first to go, unless you think... And those who want eject your pin like a rocket Nice day!!