Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? We got some work to do now. Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? We need some help from you now. It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Seals. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter and Instagram at pinballprofile. You can email pinballprofile at gmail.com. And if you'd like to show your support, it would be much appreciated. go to patreon.com slash pinball profile. Thanks to recent supporters, including Lua W. A busy week last week for yours truly. Two of the last three Pinball Profile Played in America Tour events. The first one happened at Bang Back Pinball Lounge in Columbia, South Carolina. What a week they had. The day before I arrived, they had two screenings of Pinball, The Man Who Saved the Game, and also Roger Sharp, Austin, and Meredith Bragg, the writers and directors of the movie were there for a Q&A. It was definitely pinball week in Columbia, and so many people did both that event on the Tuesday, then came to Bang Back Again on Wednesday for my little tour. Almost 40 players, Shannon Stafford from Florida, came up for the event. It was a wise trip as he edged out Nate Grant and Todd Reynolds. Go to our Facebook page because Will King took incredible photos. So if you were there, you're probably in some of Will's photos. But equally as I thank you for showing up to that event, I'd like to thank the staff of Bang Back Pinball Lounge, Fred Richardson and crew. My goodness, what a wonderful facility, and I'm not surprised that so many people flock to Bang Back. Earlier in the day, I got to check out Marco Pinball. Emoto gave us a big tour. Marco Pinball has been a big sponsor of this tour, and we gave away some Hobbit back glasses. Very cool. That was on the Wednesday night. Then the next night, Thursday, a little bit of a road trip, well worth it, to Nashville, Tennessee. Went to Patrick McKinnon's Game Terminal. Patrick is a distributor there with Music City Pinball. But this Game Terminal, it had everything you can imagine. You like video games? They got them. You like karaoke? No problem. Food, a bar, oh yeah, and a ton of incredible pinball machines. So on a Thursday night, we had over 30 people play, win all kinds of great prizes. I appreciate the people that have shared the photos and even videos too on Instagram and had a lot of fun there. Congrats to Justin Fitzgerald, who beat Bradford Oren in the finals. So I make this long drive with three of my good friends here in Canada, down to South Carolina, then go west to Nashville. Now we've got to head home, but there's something in between the drive home. Look at that. Only a few hours away, Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, and look, they have the Louisville Arcade Expo. I've been there before. It's been a few years, at least five. Well, why don't we do it? When in Rome, so they say. Wayne Rouse had a nice pop-a-card tournament going on, so that means you had to play six games and all six counted. You couldn't play one over and over and over again. No, no, no, no. Whatever you put on that game, that goes on your card. Go to the next game, same thing. So thanks to Wayne for running that fun tournament. There was even a tournament the night before, so this tournament was kind of a Friday to Saturday. Well, Friday night at a place called Wreck Bar, at 10 o'clock at night, they had a three-strikes tournament. Oh, that won't take long, will it? Well, when over 75 people show up and great players at that, that might have went until, oh, 5.30 in the morning. And well worth it. Such a great place if you ever get a chance to check out Rec Bar in Louisville, Kentucky. So I got to see a lot of great games. The free play area was huge. The vendors were a lot of fun. And a few new games were on site that I never had a chance to play, including three Scooby-Doo machines. And it just so happened that some of the creators were there as well. A big hit for many of the people participating at Louisville Arcade Expo, the Spooky Booth, because we get to play Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? And we've got Spooky Luke and Spooky Bug here. Hi, guys. How are you doing? Hey, good. How are you, man? We're doing great. Having a good time at Louisville. It's our first time at the show, so it's been great for us. Well, I'm glad you came. You brought three machines, and they're being played nonstop. In fact, it was the first place I came to to see this. first of all congratulations beautiful machine luke great job yeah we're pretty happy i mean i don't think on one of our titles we've ever had this overwhelming of a positive response just at a show like people are seeing their cross room eyes lighting up running over you know what i mean they're just they're excited it's cool to see absolutely yeah it's been really great it's the first show that we've brought scooby-doo to uh that rhymed man i'm just on point tonight aren't i well done bugs yeah it's the very first show we brought scooby-doo too so it was really exciting for us to get it over here. We got TPF coming up in just a couple weeks, so got to break them in and test them out first and see how they do at the show. So it's held up really great. We're really excited. Yeah, they have held up very nice and a fun shooting game. You know, I watched earlier this week, not knowing it was going to be here. I watched Carl D'Python Anghelo and IE Pinball and I was like, oh, that does look like a lot of fun. Great assets. And it is a perfect theme for Spooky. Yeah, I think it was definitely a dream theme for all of us when we signed it. And honestly, going in, it was almost one of those things where we were suspicious of signing the title because when we found out it was available, it was almost like, why hasn't anyone done this and what's the catch? You know what I mean? Why has nobody touched that? There's got to be something going on here. One thing I like about Spooky is it's always a surprise. You know, when Halloween and Ultraman came out, I was like, I didn't know that was coming. I thought maybe someday, hopefully I was talking to Charlie and Chuck, I said, hey, you know, maybe this would be a good theme someday. But that was years and years ago. Right, yeah. We've had some really crazy luck about our licenses not getting leaked somehow. And I'm sure after saying this on this episode right now, our next one's going to be leaked within a week. But, yeah, no, so far we've always had really good luck at nothing getting leaked too early. It kind of comes as a surprise to a lot of people. So, yeah, like I said, we've always had good luck there. And tell me about the new place because I know you've really expanded there in Wisconsin. Yeah, so basically right now we're going to be moving all of our assembly. So the assembly of wiring, pinball stuff, that's going to be going up to its own building. And then the equipment that we have is going to stay at the current building that we're in now, which will be really nice because we be able to separate the mess of the equipment and manufacturing on that side of things from the raw materials from the actual pinball assembly you know cleaner and It just break things up a lot better So and really what it is is Luke and I we spend too much time together and to save our marriage We needed to split the buildings into two I get one he gets one and it just keeps the relationship healthy No, it's great. It's gonna keep you busy for some time What is the estimate you think for these machines to get in all your owners? So we always give the build time of 18 months. We've beaten that time every single game we've ever done. I don't anticipate Scooby-Doo being any different. We're very likely going to beat that again. Is that because of the expansion, you think? I wouldn't even say so much the expansion. Just we were able to, over the last year, really get ahead as far as purchasing. We're in a really, really good spot purchasing and then also having our own capabilities to make some of the parts. It just makes us, I guess, partially immune to a lot of the supply issues that other manufacturers are having. Can I ask a dumb question? Those are my favorite. Okay. Is the first 100 machines harder to make than the last 100? Oh, my gosh, yes. I thought so. We can make the last 100 in our sleep practically. The first 100, it's way harder than the first 100. You've got to really want it on the first 100. You're learning a lot of new things about yourself in the game than the first 100. What is some of the different maybe quality control you see in the first 100 versus the last 100? It's really not on quality control. You don't see a difference in quality control. I mean, everything's in check. It's just familiarity, I guess, with the employees and the assembly. I mean, just doing it blindfolded almost. Yeah, like we don't think about driving, but we just do it naturally. Same thing? When they get started, the thing about pinball is every year you're essentially tearing down and starting with a new product. And I get that it's the same pinball machine. It's a pinball machine either way, but they're so different. And a lot of our machines have so many custom parts in them. It's just totally different stuff. So I guess the employees are learning right away in assembly. It's just not familiar to them, a lot of this stuff. I mean, they have the experience going in from making previous games, but then those same things that might really trip them up are common mistakes at the beginning. By the end of it, they're doing that behind their back, blindfolded perfectly every time. So it's just an experience. Anything you do 1,000 times, you're going to get good at. I guess that makes sense. Although I've played 1,000 pinball machines, that's not necessarily true. You and me both. 1,000 different pinball machines, that's the thing. If you played one game a thousand times, you'd be an absolute expert. Well, I'm sure a lot of Scooby-Doo owners will be playing this a thousand and then some more because it's a lot of fun. Last question, Bug. When do you officially run for the mayor of Benton, Wisconsin? We were trying to convince my dad to do it. You should. Benton has had the same mayor for a long time. He's like 90 years old. He's actually. Well, your dad's close to that, too. Yeah. Sorry, Chuck. Yeah, he's been the mayor for like 50 plus years. absolutely a wonderful guy but he's stepping down soon we were trying to convince dad to do that so hard like dude you just get to hang around the gas station with the old timers drinking coffee every day like hanging out talking to all the locals like it's it's perfect for you it's absolutely perfect charlie i know i live in canada but you've got my vote you've got my support chuck emery for for the mayor hey luke bug thanks very much and everybody at spooky yeah thank you Thank you very much, sir. Tony Thomas is a staple in the Louisville area with Rec Bar. Not just one, but two. And I got a chance to see one on the Friday night. And when I say night, I really mean Saturday morning. It started at 10 and went until 5 in the morning. 5.30 a.m. But it was great. I mean, I know I'm nuts for pinball. I can't believe there were almost 80 of us playing in the wee hours. But when you go to Rec Bar, you can see why. It was so fun. Yeah, I think that was one of the biggest tournaments. I think we had 78, but we have 70 pinball machines in the room, so there's plenty of room for everyone to play. And a great mix of games, too. This tournament was so fun, so you'd sign up for it. It was a three-strikes tournament, and when you signed up, you get to pick the game you want. What game do you want in the tournament? And that was cool. Yeah, because most people, a lot of the good people locally, just will kill you on a new stern or something. So it's cool to throw a game in, an older Solid State or EM, or I put Orbiter in. Yeah, I saw you do that. My friend Donna Way, she said, oh, I don't care. And you said, oh, let's try Orbiter One. And then we both got it. Yeah, I didn't get to play on it, but I've actually learned how to play on it. You need to learn. Drop targets. Well, and then not to try to shoot the ball until it comes back around because everyone tries to hit it. So it's a cool game. It's one that everyone should play. It's very weird. It's fun. Yeah, it's unique. But, I mean, you had like Alice Cooper's Nightmare there. You had Legends of Alhalla. You had just, as you mentioned, all the new Sterns. You had all the Jersey Jack games. Toy Story was there and Guns N' Roses. The Primus was there. And I can imagine with all these new titles that have come out in March, we'll probably see a few of those. It's crazy. With us having so many pinball machines at both locations, it's almost like we have to buy it. Everyone expects it, you know. So we try. We've struck out on some. We bought a game called Cosmic Carnival. Oh, no. Yeah, we were the second machine to be off the line. And it worked for about a month. So it's at the warehouse. Yeah, and I know there's more in the warehouse too, but what that just shows is that you're obviously supporting all the pinball companies and the players really appreciate it. Yeah, we want pinball to grow. And not that, you know, we have a place in town called Z-Bar and they have pinball, my wide new wave burritos have pinball. But when we start doing the pinball leagues, that's really when, you know, people start bouncing back and forth from Z-Bar to rec bar because we do the league every Sunday. We have about 35 to 40 people every Sunday. With Wayne Rose, right? Yeah, Wayne's awesome. Corey Stupp started it, and he owns the Expo, Louisville Arcade Expo. Wayne started taking it over. Jeremy and Matt Flights used to own the Expo. They might have originally started it and started helping us run it. The community's just awesome. Everyone helps out, and it's just been great. It is a great community, but it takes places like Rec Bar and these other ones you mentioned to promote pinball, have these leagues, have fun tournaments. I like what you're saying, too. You know, it's, yeah, we've got these locations, but we support the other ones, too. When everyone does well, when you can support all the different places, that's a good thing for pinball. Yeah, the more pinball we have in the city, the more interest it's going to have. So you know when you go to a place and they have new machines you tell each other about them Oh this place got a couple over here and it just it really help I hope a lot more people get into it so It is a great scene By the way, I also like your booth, too, being here in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm a big Muhammad Ali fan. I saw your shirt. I've been to the museum, and I bought an action figure from you, too, so thanks very much for that. I've now got a topper for my Ali machine. Oh, you got Ali? We have a... I played yours last night. Yeah, we have three of them, so we, our go... It's a must in Louisville. Yeah, our go is we have one in New Albany. We have one at the warehouse that our next location, no matter where it's at, Ali's going there, and our go is as many rec bars as we open, there will be an Ali at every one of them. The greatest of all time right here in Louisville, for sure. Thanks very much. Appreciate you coming on, Tony. Thank you. Appreciate it. One of the people here at Louisville Arcade Expo as we're in a quiet zone because it's quite loud and so many things going on, but Jeremy Smith from Evansville, Indiana is here. How are you doing, bud? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I guess I should say not that well after that tournament performance, but had fun. The game was Ripley's, believe it or not. No, you can believe it. It was a tough game, very tough. Very bad, very bad. But it's nice. This is, what, how far? A couple hours? Yeah, about an hour and a half, two hours, depending on if you're pulling a trailer or not. And did you? I did. I did pull a trailer. I'm a new distributor for American Pinball. Just began that venture in early February and making that little journey. So, yeah, we brought over Hot Wheels Deluxe, Oktoberfest Deluxe, and a Legends of Valhalla Deluxe Limited. So, nice little selection. Oh, good. Turn the sound off on that Valhalla. I've heard complaints. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. No. Oh, it's because you're on it, right? Exactly. It's all my friends who tell me that. But, hey, that's good. And, of course, Galactic Tank Force just announced. I saw some pictures. This is Saturday of, what is it, the 11th of March. So, we're just kind of seeing the first look at it. Kind of unique. It is very unique. It kind of has the feel of something more along the lines of arcade, I guess. That's the way I see it anyways. I'm anxious to see the play field, and hopefully it's a good title for them. I like it. I like fun and pinball and things that are kind of goofy, and having played it, maybe. It is a lot of fun. But, Jeremy, you also do something else, too. You've got Flawless Creations and Amusements. What is that? I know it's the distributor, but we were talking about some mods and stuff. Yeah, it's kind of ballooned, and it's a general umbrella for everything that we do now. The business started out as me powder coating and specializing in pinball powder coating. Still do that. We do a little commercial printing. I'm a route operator, so around Evansville, if you've played any pinball around there, you've probably played some of my games. So just a little bit of everything. As we were in line, you were talking about your Holy Grail game, and I heard you say it was Stranger Things Premium. It is a lot of fun. And the more you play it and, you know, the UV kit and everything else, I can agree with you. That is a great game. It's got a great rule set. They implemented the IP fantastically. I'm a huge fan of the show. So it kind of brings all that together. And it's my grail. Definitely not going to go anywhere. I've owned several iterations of it. And this one's going to stay. I've got it powder-coated. I've got some mods from Medicinal Mods that just came in. There's been a huge wait list on that. but I was actually an early adopter of that. Great, great mod there. Spinning arcade sign and all kinds of different stuff. Makes it really, really unique. So if people want to get a hold of you, whether it's for powder coating, whether it's for American pinball mods or whatever, where do they get in touch? So you can go to my website. It's flawlesscreationsandamusements.com. You can also email me at jksmith1024 at gmail.com. All my contact information is on the website, So if you prefer to give me a call or a text, that's acceptable, too. Just look me up on my website. Well, thanks for reaching out to me, and it's great to meet you. Yeah, you as well, sir. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm here at Louisville Arcade Expo in front of the huge Flip N Out Pinball location, and I'm with Nicole Menning. Hi, Nicole. How are you? Good. How are you? Well, I wanted to thank you very much because you've been such a big part of the Pinball Profile Played in America Tour. The prizes that Flip N Out Pinball has given, we've had a shaker motor in South Carolina. We've had incredible banners. Flip N Out Pinball has been wonderful. Thank you very much for that. We've been excited to be a part of it. I appreciate it. And I've got to tell you, I hear nothing but great things about the service that you do, and that's a really important thing for a distributor. You know, it's one thing to have the availability, to have the machines, but what I hear the most from people when they talk about Flip N Out Pinball is we're not done when the sale's done. The service is always there for you. Yeah, we really try to make everybody happy as much as we can. And sometimes it might take us a little bit, but we'll definitely try to get everyone happy and everything good. You've been busy this whole weekend. And I've just been standing by, and I've been hearing some of those compliments. So, again, well done to you. And I guess Zach had something to do with it, too. Who knows? I know where the brains are. But I also want to congratulate you because you've done two things. One, you made me very happy for something that you won an award for. You won the award for Best Modern because you brought James Bond, the 60th LE, and it has been so busy. Thanks for bringing that. Yeah, I cannot believe it. It's been played the entire weekend. It's never been empty. And it's so fun. You've got Stern Insider connected, so people are having fun. That's just one machine. You brought a whole bunch of James Bond and other things, too, so it's a lot of work at shows, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I think we brought, like, over 20-something machines. So, yeah, it's a lot of work to get them all here and set up. Well, I know you're busy. Keep up the great work at Flip N Out Pinball. And, Nicole, it's great to talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much. The show has come to a close. This man is still standing. He put on a wonderful show at the Louisville Arcade Expo, Corey Stoop. And I hope I said your last name close enough. Yeah, Stoop. Stoop, okay. First of all, we'll get to your stuff with Stern. But a successful show. I know it's been kind of tough over the last few years prior to this with COVID and stuff. But it was packed. We were glad to come back. There was some iffy years there. We weren't quite sure. Some shows closed. We were really, really blessed to be able to return to the scene and have such a successful show this year, for sure. Have you outgrown this location? The reason I say that is all these spare rooms were being used for gaming, and there was all kinds of pinball machines. It looked packed It looked great We could fill easily another double the size of this with all the stuff that people want to bring all of our consoles all of our arcades all of our pinballs It wouldn be too difficult Now could I actually pull that off of moving everything I don know but well done, Corey. And it was nice to play a lot of machines I had never played before. It's nice to see Spooky here and I got to play some Bond LE. And of course, the great tournament that Wayne Rouse ran was spectacular. First time doing a card format. So you kind of pack a lot of stuff in here. Yeah, we try to have a wide variety of things that everybody can play and sort of experience. Some people really, really, really like tournaments. Other people haven't even ever tried that before. So being able to have sort of a non-over-intensive tournament format where it's simple, just best card, try your luck, and there's no shame in it. You just give it a try, and that brings some new pinball tournament players into the fold. It was good. And of course, let's not forget the other tournaments that were going on. There were so many, and a lot for kids too. The The video games, I saw some great cosplay. It was a fun weekend. Yeah, we added this year. We try to mix it up every single year. We added this year was a new Virtual Boy tournament of playing Street Fighter II on twin Virtual Boys with link cables. One of them had a VGA out. Everybody at the stage could watch the two players play. And, of course, their eyes may bleed after they're playing with those red screens. But that was a blast. We had a really, really good time showing that. We had some nice special guests. Tim Kittsrow was here calling out some of these things. even calling Super Smash Brothers, which doesn't usually happen, having Boomshakalaka during Super Smash 64. No, it was good for sure, and I know you're busy, probably back at it, doing what you do. With Stern, you were very successful with this little game. Some people may or may not know, but it's called Godzilla. I was one of the programmers on the Godzilla team, and we're very proud of how that game turned out. I've gotten blessed by being on some good, successful titles. I was on Star Wars and Turtles and Mandalorian and some of the good Stern games. Well, the most recent one you were on with Godzilla, you certainly packed a lot of things in there. I mean, I don't know if – L1 comes up with the rules and stuff, and then he goes back to your programmers and says, here's what I'd like. And you go, oh, boy. Yeah, the lead, Rick Nagel, comes up with – him and Keith come up with a design and sort of divvy out the different pieces, multiballs, modes. Tesla, you've got the tanks. So we all take different pieces, and it was real fun. I did battle modes. I did some of the multiballs. It's fun to work on the devices. I did on Jurassic Park. I did some of the work on the T-Rex head. It's fun to get to do some of the interesting mechs that Stern comes up with, with us and the mechanical engineers solving those problems. The accelerator in Star Wars, I spent two months of my life on that. But it's still a lot of fun. Corey, I appreciate you doing this right now because this is the end of the show. You must have had zero sleep, and it was kind of you to come and speak to me today. I appreciate it. I don't know how many hours I've slept. My voice is gone, but we had a good show in 2023. We're looking forward to coming back in 2024. Thanks, Corey. Thank you so much. So that was last weekend. A lot of fun, a lot of pinball, but it's just go, go, go, especially this weekend. This weekend in Chicago, it is the Women's World Championship. The event takes place in Schaumburg, Illinois, yes, the home of Pinball Expo, this time at Antarium. At the Women's World Championship, 32 of the best competitors you will find anywhere. The format is very similar to the IFPA World Pinball Championship, a little bit modified. This includes eight sessions of match play, after which the top half of the field will move to a best-of-seven single elimination bracket. Again, this begins Saturday, March 18th. You can catch the finals on the 19th. It will all be on stream. Go to twitch.tv slash hotnudge. There is a lot up for grabs, including a spot at the IFPA World Championships this May in Germany. But prizes too, big ones, and thanks to a lot of sponsors. Certainly want to shout out to the Philz Pinball, to Wizards World in Indiana, and Stern Pinball, American Pinball, Tilt Cycle, Marco, Jersey Jack, and Pinball Degenerates also contributed. So $11,000 in prizes at this big event. The winner will receive a new in-box Stern game plus trophy plus cash prizes for the top 16. Again, check out twitch.tv slash hotnudge. And then, of course, there's next week. Oh, this little thing known as Texas Pinball Festival. My goodness, is this going to be maybe the best TPF of all time. All those new games. The show was already great, but now you've got all these new releases, plus all the collectors and the vendors, some wonderful tournaments as well, pretty cool seminars, and a special event. I hope you can join us Friday night starting at 7 o'clock. You'll get to see a good chunk of the movie that Emoto Harney has been working on with Todd Tuckey. They're the hosts of the Twippies on Saturday night, but on Friday night, you'll get to see a lot of their new movie with a little Q&A. I'm curious to see the clip and help out with that seminar. And then immediately after, at 8 o'clock, a screening of Pinball, the man who saved the game. Yes, it is available now on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Google Play in North America. But why is this special on Friday night at 8 o'clock? because Roger Sharp will be there answering questions after the movie when I, along with Martin Robbins, my partner from Final Round Pinball Podcast, we will host that Q&A and we look forward to seeing you. It's going to be a wonderful weekend next weekend at Texas Pinball Festival. Until we speak again, this has been your pinball profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. Past episodes, subscriptions, and find out about The Beast, the big tournament at Pocketeer Billiards coming up August 4th to 6th. We're on Twitter and Instagram at pinball profile. You can email pinball profile at gmail.com and it would be much appreciated if you could show your support at patrion.com slash pinball profile. Don't worry. This show will always be free until next time. I'm Jeff Teolas. There's a place not too far away from here. Half a million cows and a lone star beer where the living and loving is quite all right with me. Yeah, Chuck. They call it Texas. It's a modified place to be. The Rush Texark, Canada, El Paso, Oklahoma, and Old Mexico. There's Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. People in Texas, you do make me feel at home.