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Episode 180 – Respect The Culture

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 47m·analyzed·Jan 26, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Slam Tilt Episode 180: Tribute to Lyman Sheets, legendary pinball coder who passed away.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast Episode 180 features guest Ryan C. returning after 130 episodes. The episode is dominated by a tribute to legendary pinball code designer Lyman Sheets, who recently passed away at age 55. The hosts discuss Lyman's perfectionism, humility, honesty, and profound impact on pinball game design, sharing personal anecdotes and reflecting on his legacy. The episode also includes tangential conversations about COVID, Australian culture, and pinball machine preferences.

Key Claims

  • Lyman Sheets passed away a couple days ago, found unresponsive

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce reference Penny's (Lyman's girlfriend of 15 years) Facebook post announcing his death; this is the primary news of the episode

  • Lyman was 55 years old at the time of his death

    high confidence · Ryan states: 'he's only 55 years old, I think' near the end of the episode

  • Lyman Sheets re-recorded portions of his Episode 100 interview because he felt he came off as too negative

    high confidence · Ron explains: 'he wasn't happy with some of the parts because he felt he would come off as too negative. So he wanted to re-record certain sections.'

  • The Attack from Mars code update (later release) was done after Williams went out of business, initiated by Lyman contacting Ted Estes

    high confidence · Ron describes: 'Lyman contacted Ted Estes to see if he could get those released. Just because he wasn't happy with his tournament setting'

  • Walking Dead's original code included call-outs from the show that had to be removed due to licensing issues

    high confidence · Bruce states: 'Originally, he thought they had the license. So it was originally coded with call-outs from the show. And it's like, oh, no, we don't have that. He was not pleased. Had to rip all that out and start again.'

  • Spider-Man had a major code upgrade 1-2 years after initial release, adding features like Sandman Beach headlines and other content not in original code

    high confidence · Bruce explains the upgrade: 'That was all added later' including Jameson's headlines that weren't in the original code

  • Lyman Sheets was originally supposed to work on Star Trek but was moved to Metallica instead

    high confidence · Bruce recounts Lyman's statement: 'I was supposed to be on Star Trek, and then I got moved to Metallica. And I was like, what? What? I've never heard that before.'

  • Lyman and Josh Sharp did an interview with Super Awesome Pinball Show in spring (last year from podcast record), where Lyman was 'very, very honest'

Notable Quotes

  • “How many people have you heard say a bad word really about Lyman? How many people have you heard say they bought a game because Lyman was on it? Yes, yes. And Lyman we trust.”

    Ron Hallett @ mid-episode — Captures Lyman's unique status in pinball community where trust in his code transcends typical designer reverence

  • “his artwork is playable. I feel like a portion of his mind lives inside my pinball machines because he has the way that he choreographs games.”

    Ron Hallett @ mid-episode — Poetic articulation of Lyman's lasting creative legacy through his code and game design

  • “He didn't want to push any buttons. He didn't want to be. That's Lyman, I think.”

    Ryan C. @ late-episode — Illustrates Lyman's humility through anecdote of him waiting in line at Expo despite being Stern employee

  • “There's no... Yeah, there's no Lyman equivalent anywhere. Like there ever will be. Like he's a super unique person”

    Bruce Nightingale @ end-episode — Acknowledgment of Lyman's irreplaceable role in pinball design

  • “he will live on forever in pinball machines as playable art. Like, at the core of his essence is he's an artist, and we get to play, we're lucky enough to get a little vision inside his mind every time we start up one of his games.”

    Ryan C. @ closing segment — Poignant summary of Lyman's legacy as an artist whose creations outlive him

  • “I'm sorry you didn't tell Seth, but it's not true. It's like it's still a box of life. It's got a lot of good. It was a box of life, but he made it great.”

    Lyman Sheets (recounted by Ryan C.) @ mid-episode — Demonstrates Lyman's humility and deflection of credit; context of Batman playfield being incomplete at Expo but then perfected

Entities

Lyman SheetspersonRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonRyan C.personPennypersonSlam Tilt PodcastorganizationSpider-Mangame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Uncertainty about future pinball code quality and game design without Lyman; no equivalent talent identified in industry

    high · Ryan concludes: 'There's no Lyman equivalent anywhere. Like there ever will be. Like he's a super unique person'

  • ?

    event_signal: Death of legendary pinball code designer Lyman Sheets at age 55; major loss to pinball community

    high · Penny's Facebook post announcing his death; widespread community discussion; episode dedicated to tribute

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Universal positive sentiment about Lyman's character; no negative comments about him in community discourse

    high · Hosts repeatedly note no one says bad things about Lyman; people trusted his code implicitly; warmth from Stern employees and industry figures in tributes

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Lyman's perfectionism and willingness to rework code post-release to improve games; spent significant time on code refinement

    high · Walking Dead licensing rework; Spider-Man major upgrade 1-2 years post-release; Attack from Mars tournament ROM release years after original; games took longer to release due to his standards

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Walking Dead licensing restrictions required Lyman to remove show-specific call-outs from code

    high · Bruce explains: 'Originally, he thought they had the license...Had to rip all that out and start again'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.324

0:00
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Hello. Hello, Bruce. Hi. And this is episode 180.
0:15
Yeah. We'll get this started right off. We have a guest. Who do we have, Bruce? We have Mr. Ryan C., number 50, our 50th episode guy.
0:30
That was 130 episodes ago. What? That was 130 episodes ago. Wow. Oh, man. That's a lot of episodes. A lot of editing, Ron. That's a lot of editing in that time. We miss you so much. I miss you guys, too. I still haven't met you, Bruce. It's been five years. I know. It's one of those weird things that podcast people talk about all the time, that you feel like you've met someone, and you have to really sit there and think. I'm like, have I met Bruce? No. Have I met Kate Martin and Mr. and Mrs. Tin? No, I haven't met any of them. Have I met Colin McAlbert? This fucking COVID shit is getting old. I don't want to hang out and meet with people. It was nice seeing people yesterday, but that's later on in the podcast. Have you guys had it yet? Had what? COVID? No. I get tested every week, too. I'm tested every week also at work, so we'll see. I mean, I think it's only a matter of time. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I thought I was one of those invincible people And then I went to a place called Byron Bay in Australia Which is pretty much one of the most hippie kind of places around Where they just don't kind of believe in that coronavirus exists in masks And they just want to live their life I was about to ask what the US equivalent is But I think Florida is for retirees Texas?
1:55
No, Texas is kind of like the Pee-ow, pee-ow, guns, bullets, guns. What's the hippie capital of the U.S.? Oh, that's California. That's totally opposite. Yeah, it's totally opposite. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. They want to save the world with EVs and, you know. Yeah, like I'm going to Indisc in California. Like, I have to have my vaccination card and be masked at all times. They don't screw around. But are there, like, pockets of California that kind of, like, want to break away from Northern California. Way northern. Probably upstate. Upstate? No, that term is only used for New York. I know, but it is upstate California.

medium confidence · Ryan mentions: 'he did an interview, him and Josh Sharp did an interview with the Super Awesome Pinball Show...he was very, very honest in the interview'

Walking Dead
game
Batman (1966)game
Metallicagame
Attack from Marsgame
Steve Ritchieperson
Steve Bowdenperson
Ted Estesperson
Chicago Expoevent
Greg Pavarelliperson
Josh Sharpperson
Alan (NYC collector)person
Stern Pinballcompany
Head to Head Pinballorganization

community_signal: Lyman Sheets' extreme humility and reluctance to self-promote; avoided social media due to tendency to be too honest

high · Anecdote of waiting in line at Expo despite being Stern employee; deleted Facebook post about Walking Dead delays; limited interview appearances (only 4-5 ever); re-recorded podcast segments due to concern about seeming negative

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Lyman Sheets' irreplaceable role in pinball code design and game quality; no equivalent replacement exists in industry

    high · Multiple hosts emphasize his unique contributions; games discussed include Spider-Man, Walking Dead, Metallica, Batman; trust in his code transcended typical designer reverence

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Lyman Sheets was reassigned from Star Trek project to Metallica project during his career at Stern

    high · Bruce recounts Lyman's statement: 'I was supposed to be on Star Trek, and then I got moved to Metallica'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Status of Cactus Canyon uncertain following Lyman's death; question raised about whether unfinished game will be completed or preserved as Lyman's work

    medium · Final question of episode: 'What's going to happen with Cactus Canyon now? Depends on how far he was into it.' Concern about whether game would remain authentically Lyman's if others completed it

  • ?

    rumor_hype: At 2016 Chicago Expo, rumors about Batman being incomplete and Lyman working 'burning midnight oil' to complete it; Lyman denied rumor but later perfected the code

    medium · Ryan recounts hearing rumor at Expo; Lyman's response; reference to Batman being 'box of lights' but him making it 'great'

    • 2:39
    How can you describe upper or north? You just did it before. Okay. Anyway, I got it. I survived. It was pretty harsh. Yeah.
    2:51
    Were you vaccinated? Yeah, double vax i didn't need the booster yet because i only got the second vax we're pretty we're pretty behind here in australia so like i was two and a half months in but it it does hit pretty hard and i'm i'm pretty fit ish i'm not sure what strain i got but yeah it's real just in case oh i know it's real it's just i'm just getting sick of it like i'm just afraid there's gonna be another round another round and it's just like there'll be a constant around so the question is Ryan, is your hair intact?
    3:23
    My hair, I haven't cut my hair still. It's been a year and a half, so it's growing. I don't know what the end goal is, but it's still growing. Okay. That's good. As long as the hair is intact. I'll send some to Bruce soon when I've got it. I need it too. You send some to me.
    3:41
    Mine's a closer color. My hair was black when I had it, so it'll work better. Bruce has a red head, so it doesn't work for him. Before I forget, I love when you guys talk about being Italian. Hey, what the fuck you talking about? What the fuck? We make a pinball machine. We toss the salad in it. Toss the salad?
    4:02
    What the hell are you saying? Toss the salad, hey. You know how we toss the salad around here in Italy. For those at home, I'm actually Italian. Bruce is just offending Italians.
    4:15
    That's the thing, because I grew up around all these really hardcore Italians. And then so when you say, Bruce, you and Jeff Teola say you're Italian, it's this weird thing where I'm like, ah, you don't seem super Italian. No, Ron's mom was true blue. Oh, yeah. My grandparents were from Italy. So can you understand it? No. Did you? Actually, my great-grandparents were from Italy. My grandmother, her name was Carmelo Teresa Labello. Oh, but she could kind of understand some Italian, but not much, which I could not understand because her parents only spoke Italian. So how does that even work? I'm still confused about that. You have to say three Hail Marys after you said her name.
    5:02
    I think she was the youngest daughter, so she probably just used the older brothers and sisters as translators, I'm guessing. Maybe. I don't know how that works. And you haven't got your passport yet, Ron. Yes, I do. I have a passport. You do. I got a passport expressly for the purpose of someday visiting Australia. Me too. I'm ready to go. And then COVID happened. Yeah, COVID. I guess I'm not visiting Australia anytime soon. So you would go to Australia before Motherland, Italy. Is that right? Australia seems way cooler.
    5:36
    You've got more things to kill you there. It's so big. That's the only thing about Australia. It's like the United States. But you guys have There's so many people, I mean this is ten times the amount of people So you have towns along The way and like if you Want to see interesting-ish Stuff, well not interesting stuff, if you want to Travel to capital cities, they're all Nine hours drive away from each other But some of us hate people So what better Place? Well there's Some states with very few people If you want to travel to the northern territory Which I don't know if we've discussed before on the podcast I don't think we have but tourism in Australia is pretty the marketing people are pretty good and tourism in the Northern Territories is pretty low they've got Ayers Rock they've got a lot of cultural stuff there so the mastermind behind PR and marketing for that state decided to this is official, this is not some like you know, rogue PR person, this is the official government, the tagline was see you in the NT, as in, like, see you later. It was see you in the NT. You can look it up. Google it now, and there's official ads on TV, and you can buy a jumper. See you in the NT, which is, you know, I don't know if we should explain it to the people that have to do it. I don't want to be in the see you in the NT sometimes.
    7:09
    Okay. That's the Australian government Did you guys look it up? I have it up right now You and the NCA are waiting Yep You can literally buy official Space masks There's t-shirts, car stickers, everything That basically says I'm going to say it wrong, you can beep it out It says cunt in giant letters But in the small letters it's like in the In the Down under and see you in the end, T. If it's good enough for a final round, then I don't have to bleep it out because they didn't bleep it out last time. No, they did not. We're good. See, we have to respect other cultures, and we're all into that here. On the Slam Tilt Podcast in Australia, that word just is a totally different type meaning. It's just used like, you know, hey, asshole. It's just the same thing, but it's that word. Yeah, it's very versatile. It's a term of endearment. It's very versatile, yep. term of endearment. I mean, yeah. We need to respect other cultures.
    8:17
    That is freaking fucking funny. Holy shit. I'm just reading, I'm looking at all the images and all the advertisements they did and just like, oh my God, the shirts are even funnier.
    8:29
    Like how the kangaroo... I was going to say, does it have a kangaroo? It's a kangaroo in public. Kangaroos, crocodiles.
    8:37
    Kangaroo or stork, almost like. A stork? Yeah. It's an emu. An emu, okay. Emu, emu. Emu. Respect our culture. Respect the culture, Bruce. I love it. I think we have the title, Respect the Culture. I've got to write that one down. Well, we have to get into it a couple of minutes. Wait, why can't the title be See You in the NT?
    9:06
    I would love that. Yeah. No. Oh, that's perfect. I love that one. So, why did you get rid of Star Trek, Ron? Oh, God. You start this again every time. I keep my Gmail and voice mail for people.
    9:24
    It has no soul. Unlike Spider-Man, which has a soul. Spider-Man has a very small amount of soul. It doesn't have that much soul. I think you're saying it just has soul because of the woohoo combos and the what's the guy's name Jameson I don't know it just it feels like I'm not just shooting shots on that one as opposed to Star Trek where it feels like I'm just shooting shots which I mean you're always just shooting shots but I've seen so many people flail their way into a great score on Spider-Man like you get multiple everything just keeps on happening it locks you out of a mode but you get a multi-ball, you get the other multi-ball, you get all the Green Goblin going on, you get Venom, you get Sandman in the middle. The sounds are what get it. Honestly, the sounds is what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man. When you hear William Dafoe go, can Spider-Man come out and play? That's like, oh, cool. I will give him that. Not some guy going, oh, jump off the ridge! Jump off! The power of the sun Where are the skies on my head? In the palm of my hand We're just going to keep on bullying you until you swap it back Swap it back? No, it's long gone Well the good thing is I still have my Star Trek Ron still has his So we both bought them at the same time each game so we each have still a part of the package A part of the package?
    10:57
    What would it take for you to rebuy Star Trek, what if Raymond Davidson and Tim Sexton, who you created, Tim Sexton, I believe. We created him, yes.
    11:09
    Ron had a love child. Who else did you guys create again? Yeah, who did we create, Bruce? Who did you say we created? Was it just Timmy, or did we create more people? No, we did Timmy, we did Raymond, we did Steve Bowden, we did all these guys. They were nothing before they were on the podcast. They were just pinball players. Colin McAlpine, did you create him as well? I don't think so. We didn't have him on until like after Pinberg. Yes, I agree. He was on after Pinberg, but he didn't get a job until after us. Oh, clearly not all the other podcasts he was on. It was just ours. Okay.
    11:46
    And who's next? Is it Zach? Oh, I'd love to see Zach. I'd love to see that too. I don't know if Zach would move. No, I don't think he would move. It'd have to be a remote thing. Yeah. And then he wouldn't be on the podcast, so it's like a double-edged sword.
    12:04
    I don't know about that. He loves to talk. Come on. I know. You just hear it. You've got to drag it out of him sometimes. So did Timmy. So did Tim Bowles. We've had him on afterwards, but not as much, of course. Well, no. Yeah, we have him on when he has a game out and he talks about the game. Yes. But we've had him on. Mm-hmm.
    12:24
    You know who we also had on? Yeah. Lyman Sheets. Lyman. And that is the big news that occurred. Yeah, that sucked. We really don't have anything in the mailbag. We really have no news except that. And that's not very good news. No, no, no. He was found, unfortunately, unresponsive. And he passed away a couple days ago. And it was just a big shock to everyone seeing Penny's post on Facebook. Penny is his longtime girlfriend.
    12:59
    They've been together 15 years. It's been a while. Yeah, I think it's almost 15 years. I saw them as they were always to me like the Kurt Russell, Cody Juan couple pinball. You know, they've been together forever, but they're not married. Yeah, but, you know, seeing them two together, it always made me smile. Because I've known Penny longer than I knew Lyman. Yes, I actually knew Penny. The only time I think I talked to Lyman was on episode 100. No, I talked to him a couple times afterwards. And, you know, he always, honestly, he was so, he was very modest. He wasn't trying to, like, be outspoken. He was happy when people came up to him and said, he was actually kind of like a little surprised sometimes. He's like, hi, Lyman, how you doing? You know, I really like this. And he's like, you almost see him, like, you almost, like, be bashful. Like, thank you. You know, he didn't know how to handle it, but he did. He was a great ambassador for pinball. Think about it. How many people have you heard say a bad word really about Lyman? How many people have you heard say they bought a game because Lyman was on it? Yes, yes. And Lyman we trust. Normally coders kind of don't get that accolade. No. It's usually a designer. I buy Sea Breezy Games, but people trust in what Lyman was doing. And, yeah, it's a really weird thing where I often thought, and I don't know why I thought about it, but I kind of thought about the day that Lyman was going to retire or for some reason not be involved in pinball anymore. And I used to kind of get sad and I'm like, well, this is a long time away, so it doesn't really matter. But I kind of thought about when someone dies and on Facebook and Pinside, people talk about what they did in the hobby. And on Pinside, it might just be some local restorer or something. And I kind of find it sad sometimes that people don't talk about this stuff as much. I mean, people did celebrate Lyman a lot, but they didn't talk about it as much when the person is around. We did.
    14:58
    I haven't said it by this. Yeah. Well, I still don't think I've kind of fully comprehended it. And I didn't really know the guy, but he's in my living room. Like, his artwork is playable. I feel like a portion of his mind lives inside my pinball machines because he has the way that he choreographs games. You have a bit of OCD, Ron, and you like certain things in pinball, and for some reason Lyman, to me, shares the same kind of OCD. When I think about it, I'll make a good rule, and it's there. I've never really played a Lyman Sheets game, that I dedicated Lime and Sheets games that I was like, it would be good if this was better or this was more balanced out. You just sit there and you enjoy it. So yeah, very sad time. It wasn't just programming. I think we mentioned this before, but when we had him on episode 100, he was actually on twice. We did an initial recording and he wasn't happy with some of the parts because he felt he would come off as too negative. So he wanted to re-record certain sections. So we re-recorded that without Bruce. I challenge anyone to be able to pick that out, too, in the edit. That was my editing masterpiece on that one because Bruce was not there. Yep. And he was so hard on himself.
    16:24
    That's what one of his good traits was. He wanted to make the best product he could. In a way, I always thought his legend was bigger because he didn't do a lot of interviews. Yes. You know what I mean? it's just like, it's different. There's only four or five. A zillion shows, like when we had him on episode 100, it was the first podcast he'd done in over 10 years. TopCast was the previous one. That was such a huge deal for us. We were ecstatic. Of course, then you guys got him immediately after on Head to Head. I don't think it was immediately. I mean, when I first got into podcasting, I was like, well, here's my list of all the people that I want to interview, and Lyman Sheets was the top of the list in like people that were important to me but I wanted to do pretty much last I didn't want to do it with with kind of any experience and I don't think I got that much better at interviewing people but after I did Lime and Sheets I was like I kind of was like well there really isn't anyone else that I want to interview like that that's it it's Lime and Sheets like inside the mind of Lime and Sheets and and the same kind of you know you said Ron that he wanted to re-record certain bits I think there were several parts of of the conversation that he had with me and Marty on head-to-head that he would kind of pause and say, like, does that sound okay?
    17:40
    I'm not sure if he used, like, you know, is this being too negative, but you could see he was always trying to not correct himself, but I guess people learn how to do, like, PR speak, and they kind of, I'm not sure what the term is, but they, you know, they learn not to answer a question really truthfully, and they can stop themselves before they say it and say something else. whereas I feel like Lyman most of the time like when you ask him something depends on what context I guess you really get the honest response and then it's almost like after he says the sentence he's just like oh shit like you know was I am I going to get in trouble for that like because he's like a genuine person that similar experience when we had him on and the thing is the original idea having him on was we were going to talk about his day to East Williams career yeah we weren't going to go into because we didn't want It's like, we don't want you to get in trouble. And the first thing he says is like, no, that's fine.
    18:36
    So he literally went through his entire career up to, what was it? Batman. Yeah, it was Batman 66. And it was just like, damn. And he said things like, oh, yeah, I was supposed to be on Star Trek, and then I got moved to Metallica. And I was like, what? What? I've never heard that before. Okay. And he told, you know, he straightened out IPDB. Like, I didn't work in this game, and I don't know. You know, it was just, like, amazing how he was very straightforward, very honest with us. And we told him, like, we're not going to dump this for two weeks, so if you have any problems, if you feel like you want to take anything out, we gave him, like, we do all of our people when we go for the Stern employees or anybody else's employees. You have carte blanche. You know, if you don't want something said or strike it later on, tell us. We're not here to ruin somebody's career or ruin their job. you know, we're here for entertainment.
    19:28
    Yeah. I mean, I didn't know Lyman personally, but he seemed like a perfectionist and someone who really wanted to always kind of improve something to a certain point. And, you know, I don't have many friends that are artists, but I've seen interviews from artists and people who create content like, for example, you know, the guys that create South Park and the way they do it is they start and they release an episode in a week because they're like, if we sit there and we do it any other way, we'll just keep on trying to improve it and improve it and improve it and improve it, and it just never gets done. And I feel like Lyman, more than anyone in the pinball industry, like his games took the longest to come out. Like when, you know, Walking Dead came out and when Batman came out, people were just like, what is this? Like this is just, you know, like it's not great, the layout. And it kind of like peels the curtain back, and you realize that like a great layout without software, isn't a great pinball machine. You really do need both those things together when you have all the sounds and the shaker motor and the lights and whatever it is, like the magic that coders such as Lightman Sheets create, that's when a pinball machine is alive. And sometimes with early Lightman games, that wasn't kind of apparent. But, you know, when you let him finish the machine off, you get the greatest games of all time. For example, the AFM, Attack from Mars code that I'm running on, that was done way after the fact.
    20:59
    And that was done, they were, that was basically, if I remember, Williams went out of business and Lyman contacted Ted Estes to see if he could get those released. Just because he wasn't happy with his tournament setting, where it was like, what was it, the stroke of a call is just $50 million for like every award. He wanted to change that. to what is the newer tournament, Rom. I mean, this is, what is it, 1995? That's like four years after the fact. Looking at it with Iron Man. Iron Man, ACDC.
    21:32
    Spider-Man. Spider-Man came out with one. Spider-Man had several. Spider-Man was a dicey one because he did the initial game. He got kind of taken off it to work on other stuff, which he was not happy with, and he just kept working on it on his own time. Then like a year or two later, there was a major upgrade. That's where they added all the, when Jameson's saying, you know, the headlines read Sandman Beach and all that. That was not in the original code. That was all added later.
    21:59
    Did Walking Dead. Originally, he thought they had the license. So it was originally coded with call-outs from the show. And it's like, oh, no, we don't have that. He was not pleased. Had to rip all that out and start again. Do you guys remember that post on Facebook? When, I think it was actually Steve Bowden. And this is when I was first starting to get involved in pinball. I think Steve Bowden, you know, he used to write his kind of reviews or, you know, hey, I went and played this new pinball machine. This is what I thought. And Steve wrote something about how he really wants to like The Walking Dead, but he doesn't like it that much. And, you know, as a negative reviewer, someone like Steve Bowden, who's like the most positive guy in pinball, can give. But, you know, like reading between the lines. And Lyman Sheets came on and wrote this thing about how he's really sorry that he feels that way. He really wanted to spend more time on it, but he wasn't allowed to. was dragged off to work on the Spike system. And that kind of was deleted from Facebook. And then I guess he did get time to do it. There was a reason Lyman wasn't on Facebook, because the brief times he was on Facebook, he would be very honest about something, and then it'd be like, I've got to stay off of here, because he would come right out and say that. Yeah, I can't imagine it was easy to... Well, I don't know how people work with artists full stop, because they seem to be like a slightly different breed of human that just their brain works differently. than other people who are running the company. And creative people, they just wire differently. And, yeah, I mean, working with Lyman Sheets, I'm sure, you know, you can see people that kind of hinted at it when he passed away and people were posting on Facebook, like, you know, we battled hard and we fought over stuff. But they still have, obviously, you know, the highest respect for Lyman. Hey, this is Steve Ritchie. Here's a funny Lyman story. I'm taking the Stern Factory tour at Expo, and Steve Ritchie is giving the tour. So, you know, he's being Steve Ritchie as he is, you know. He's calling Lucasfilm, Lucasfilm. Don't tell anyone I said that, but, yeah, they're a pain in the ass to work with, you know, because this is Star Wars. And we get to the one part of the tour, and Lyman's just kind of walking by. And Lyman's there, oh, look, it's the legendary Steve Ritchie. I just thought that was hilarious.
    24:10
    Yeah, no, he was. we walked into the actually our interview with him because we were playing with him at a tournament I beat Ron it was a pintastic yes it was a pintastic Bruce you beat me yes yes hey boy that was nice no but we were playing and I was playing against him after that we were just talking between and we were just talking I'm like hey you know we do a podcast one of these days I'd love to have you on he's like don't contact me. So I waited like, I think we waited like six months, and I messaged him on Facebook, and I put Penny in the message also, like, hey, you know, because I knew Penny was better than this, you know. And he came like a couple days later, like, I would, you know, he was kind of a little leering. We said, hey, we gave him our rules, what we do with every other of the people, and after that, I think he felt a lot more relaxed. And then I think... Well, he had Greg, too. Greg Pavarelli came on with him. And I think he was pleased. And he had promised us to come on for the future. And of course, unknowing to anybody, you know, things happen. And the weird, not weird thing, he did an interview, him and Josh Sharp did an interview with the Super Awesome Pinball Show.
    25:26
    And from what I've heard a lot of, like, he was very, very honest in the interview. Because they were asking him, what's been going on? And he told them what's been going on. so I'm just wondering if that'll ever see the light of day yeah you know what I mean I don't know if that would be considered bad to release that now or not I don't even know how I would deal with that yeah I think probably just let it lie for a few seconds it was recorded in the spring last year it's been a while one lime and sheet story which I think I've told before on head to head which I guess is a snippet of his personality and how he was during the 2016 Chicago Expo when they released Batman. Well, not released Batman. They announced Batman. And they're like, if you order the LE or the Super LE, you get to meet Adam West. And I wanted to go to the US and I wanted to kind of get out of Australia. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to order this machine without seeing it like an idiot, spend the amount of, like, $2,000 more. All that jazz. And I'm going to go meet Adam West. Even though, I mean, I'm not really an Adam West fan. I'm too young to... Anyway, it was a reason to go to the US. So I go there, and then I'm in... They give you a certain allocated time to meet Adam West, because they want to crowd the room, obviously. There was I guess 240 people worldwide plus the 80 civilians But not everyone was there Anyway we in line There was a magician there keeping everyone kind of entertained And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Lyman rocks up, and he starts lining up. And I look at him. I'm like, hey, Lyman Chee. I met him earlier, you know, at the factory tour. I'm like, what are you doing lining up? Like, you're a Stern employee. You kind of peer into the room, and all the Stern employees are there, like, you know, Jarvis and Gary Stern and Joe Kamikow, and everyone's just there, like, having fun. And I'm like, Lyman, you're part of the crew. Like, what are you doing in line like a pleb? You know, like, you're Lyman Sheets. But you didn't want to cut. You didn't want to do anything. No, he didn't want to cut. He was just like, I'm happy to line up. And I, like an idiot, was, like, egging him on. I was like, come on, like, just go in. Go hang out with your friends. And he's like, all right. So he walks up, and there's a security guard there, and he's about to walk in. The security guard puts his hand on Lyman's chest and was just like, sorry, you can't come in. You have to line up. And all he needed to say is, I'm a stern employee, and wave to one of his friends. But he just went back to the line. And I'm like, oh, my God. I feel like a horrible human being. He was happy to do it and got knocked down by the security guards. But that's Lyman, I think. He didn't want to push any buttons. He didn't want to be. Then Ryan made it worse. He asked them, can you tell me that story about when you had to get alcohol for Slash when they were working on Guns N' Roses?
    28:29
    Well, I mean, I guess the silver lining for, you know, that whole situation was that he was now in the line with me. And you guys know what it's like at Expo. People start talking about rumors, you know, like, oh, I heard this happened and that happened. Like, the rumors at a pinball event are so much more amplified than, you know, online on a forum because people just, you can just chat to people. And I think some, like, I remember hearing about Pulp Fiction at that expo, and now those rumors are really ramping up. I remember Mark Ritchie walking through Pimble Expo, and someone, like, he walked past and was like, oh, Mark Ritchie's going to do Pulp Fiction. And I'm like, all right. And that was, what, five and a half years ago. Anyway, I was like, hey, Lyman, I heard that, you know, Batman's a box of lights at the moment, but you've been burning midnight oil and working your ass off, and, like, on the last day, it's going to be shown. And he just laughed. He was like, I'm sorry you didn't tell Seth, but it's not true.
    29:24
    It's like it's still a box of life. It's got a lot of good. It was a box of life, but he made it great. Yeah. I just feel bad for Penny. That's the thing I'm worried about the most. Him and his family, you know, and everything like that. But Penny has been, you know, they were together so long. It's like they, it's so hard. I cannot imagine what she's going through. And, of course, we all wish her the best. And we will always say, you know, if you need anything, Penny, please, the pinball community is here for you.
    29:57
    It sucks. Yeah, I mean, he's only 55 years old, I think. See you guys. I've been very morbid. Honestly, for the past three or four months, I've been very morbid. Like, boy, you know, I cheated death once already. and then I see all these people that surround us passing away and I'm like, oh my God. January, very bad, very bad. Start to the year. Month, yeah. We had Alan from New York City who was a big collector around here. He passed away and... Oh, that picture. There's a picture of Alciak, Lyman Sheets, Penny, and Steve Epstein on the same picture. And it's just from a few years ago. Now they're all gone except one. Yep. It's sad.
    30:47
    But yeah, it was a shitty day. There's no... Yeah, there's no Lyman equivalent anywhere. Like there ever will be. Like he's a super unique person and yeah. He strives to make everyone happy and to make a game as best as he could. I don't think you'll see ever again. I hope we do, but I don't think we will. Yeah. As they say, he will live on forever in pinball machines as playable art. Like, at the core of his essence is he's an artist, and we get to play, we're lucky enough to get a little vision inside his mind every time we start up one of his games. What's going to happen with Cactus Canyon now?
    31:35
    Depends on how far he was into it. I know, I know, you know. but it's weird like Lyman wouldn't let anyone touch his code in other games so is it a Lyman game if it's just his you know he could write down a rule set there's probably like an excel sheet or somewhere all these notes but you can't just get notes and I'm not sure if you guys saw the post I put on Facebook of when he was talking to me about Iron Man and I was like oh maybe this and maybe that and he just scribbles it in this you know doctor style writing that you can hardly read And then from that somehow goes and weaves his magic. So, yeah, I guess it depends on Josh and if Josh wants to carry that on, if someone else can code it. Yeah, I know from talking to other industry people, when you talk about programmers, I say, like, you know, the head programmer always gets all the credit, but there's, you know, a lot of support programmers and all that. And then I would say, you know, like, Lyman doesn't do all that stuff by himself. and he'd be like, he's a little different. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah. I would hope, what I said, and I brought it up to a couple people already, and I'm going to say it out loud now to everyone, hopefully, who's listening. I think the next board set, instead of being a Sam board set or a Spike board set, should be an LFS board set or a Lyman board set, because he did so much for Stern board sets. Yeah, he did Sam, which they named after Sam Stern, and he did Spike. so why not have the next one called Lyman yes I think that would be a tribute a great one why did they call it Spike that I don't know I think there is actually one I thought when they put out the documents about Spike it actually said why it had nothing to do with the gremlins like wasn't he the main bad guy it was foreshadowing for the Spike protein and coronavirus But if you want to honor him, you get a high score, put an L on that shit.
    33:45
    Maybe because it's spiked because it has no fuses. No, it would be spark if it was. Yes. The spark system.
    33:55
    I still don't understand that part of it. But, yeah, if you have a lineman story, if you want us to read it on the air, please email us. We'd love to. And this week in pinball, they posted a bunch of lineman stories. Including one of ours. And we were mentioned as one of the people who actually had an interview with him, which, to me, it means the most. We had Keith on. That was very special, too, for us. Those are the two, the top two. Ryan, sorry, you're 57 on that list.
    34:30
    There's only one that would be higher to me. Yeah. Which would be? Which would be Gary Stern. Of course. My dream is to have a Gary Stern, and all we talk about is old Stern. Old Stern. He doesn't like talking about that, though, right? Yeah, we'd have to get him slightly inebriated, and then maybe he could just go off. I'm like, you know, let me tell you about Steve Kerr. Yeah. We'll have to send a case of vodka to Chicago. We're on our way. You've got his phone number, haven't you? We've told everyone our phone number.
    35:03
    I can piss off people. I really try. Yes, you can. Thank you. I don't see us ever getting Dwight Sullivan on the show.
    35:14
    Great segue off of that, Bruce. Yes, I don't think he's ever coming on the show. It wasn't me, Dwight. I love Star Wars. It's awesome. Dog shit. Bruce, when you were over, you played an awful lot of Star Wars. Yeah, because I thought I was going to have to play it in our next segue.
    35:34
    Now, here we go. This weekend, we had the New York State Unofficial Championships at Ron's house. Well, yeah. I hate the unofficial. It literally was the top whatever. How many of them wanted to come all the way down to, what, 50 and 60 we had to go to try to make this as most legitimate, you know, four out of seven, same exact format as they actually use, all that stuff. What does the winner get? We each paid $25, so it was broken down, and the winner won $300 and a trophy. What does the winner usually get? They get a piece of the $1 fee thing. And they get invited to nationals in whatever location that's going to be in. Yes. This is for 2021. Yes. To review, IPA turned back up in, what, August? So their thing was, like, we're not going to do one for 2021. We're just going to do it another year. So it'll be like a year and a half worth of stats, and that's when we're going to start doing it again. But there was a ton of states that were like, no, we want to have one, damn it. We haven't had one of these in years. We want to have a state final. So I know Wisconsin, I think Minnesota, Georgia.
    36:53
    There's like multiple states that did it. Even Canada had a couple. We had the Alberta. Yeah, eh? Eh? Take off, eh? Take off! So we had this. It was all decided. Eric Russell ran it. And it was decided to be at the Level Zero Complex, which is Ron's own arcade. And Ron was, where did you start? Sixth, I think you were? I got a bye. You got a bye. Because I'm so awesome. And I was 12th, I started at. Mm-hmm. And the first round, I got paired up with Chuck Webster. The bastard. And I beat him 4-1. That was a hard battle. So what does my luck go to then? Ron, who did you play in your first round? I played Dave Peller. New York City Mainstay. Yep, very good player. Can I look this up on Match Play? What's the... Shalong. Shalong.com slash NYS 2021.
    38:01
    You can also check out the stream. Yes, the golden stream. That's the Slamtail Podcast stream, and it was uploaded to YouTube last night. So it's on our YouTube channel also. I cut out all the long dinner breaks and shit, too, so you can actually just see all the games. So you see it on Challenge now? Yeah, I can see it. Okay, so what did you do against Dave? 4-0. Sweep. You guys, so sweep is what you guys call it. Do you ever call, I'm not sure if it's an Aussie thing, when you pants someone, you pants them? Oh, is that what it's called? Cool, I want to use that term. Well, the reason why it's called pantsing is because you make a bet, like if you play billiards or pull against someone, you say, if I beat you without you pocketing a ball, you have to pull your pants down and run around the table. And everyone takes the bet because you're like, well, I'm going to get at least one bowling. So if you beat someone without them putting a score on the board, you pants them because they have to pull their pants down and run around. God, I love Australia. It just keeps getting better. How are you guys this awesome? I don't understand.
    39:12
    Olavau and his sisters were criminals. Yeah. Fuck yeah. So my second round match was against a known person on the Slamtail podcast. Yeah, our own Zach. And I lost to Zach 4-3. During this match, we played a game of whodunit. I chose the game. It was the second game. Oh, you chose it. Fail. I chose it. I got smoked. 11 billion, Ryan, to 1 billion. And he did not, he lost points betting in roulette.
    39:48
    So he would have had more points. He got the GC, though. He did get the GC, 11 billion points. So now LFS is the forever GC on that game, because I do not have a skill level to get 11 billion on whodunit. Fuck, holy shit. I was watching and I was like, holy shit. His bonus was 2 billion. You ever play any whodunit, Ryan, or did you not have those in Australia? No, my friend had it. I used to play it all the time, but this was really early on to pinball, and now it's just one of those things where it comes up in a comp once a year, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. Also, you don't know what the thing is then? The dagger to get pop-pumper hits to then get into some ball. The revolver. The revolver, sorry. When you get the revolver, you start throwing your ball up to the left orbit, into the pop bumpers and it just increases. He maxes jackpot out at 500 million. I think I knew that. There are some strategies that knowing them can make you a worse player of the game unless you have a lot of practice on the game because you're like, okay, I've heard about this strategy. All you do is execute this thing. But if you can't execute it, then you're better off just hitting the shots you know and starting them on multi-ball. Yeah, so I got smoked. That was my second game against him. And the third game, we had the – it's on video. It's the first because they actually transferred off Ron. No, it wasn't on me.
    41:14
    Who was the second round you started with? First round was me and Chuck. Yeah. Who was the second round? You'd have to look at the screen. I'll have to look. But they jumped over because we were taking so long, me and Zach, because of that. No, I think it was Mitch and versus Pete. Okay. Yeah, so they went 4-1. So they were done. So we're kind of sitting around there like we don't want to have a dead air. But I'm running. Let's put it on Bruce and Zach. So we get over there, and we played our first game on video, which is the most embarrassing game of the whole night. We had Alien Star. I beat Zach on Alien Star, 60,000 to 150,000.
    41:54
    None of us could hit the spinner. You couldn't hit much of anything by that score. No, it was terrible. And then we went to, I can't remember that one, But then we went to the fifth game was Black Rose. He smoked me on that. Sixth game, we took the fist.
    42:11
    So I'm thinking seventh game, he's going to pick Star Wars, this asshole. This asshole's going to pick Star Wars. I expected him to pick Star Wars. He didn't. He picked Johnny Mnemonic and blew it up with $5.5 billion. Which, it's his former Johnny Mnemonic that he sold to me. Exactly. So not that big a surprise. Then he complained that the kick out from Crazy Bob's was, yeah, just straight down the middle, which it wasn't. Not coming where it was and all this stuff, which it does occasionally feed a little differently, because I guess the welds were broken and he had to re-weld it and all that. So after he complained, when it was over, I just went up, hit the hole. We still have the rig on it. So I hit the hole, comes down, drop catch. Hit it again, comes down, drop catch. Like three times, worked fine. Yep, of course. Done. Here's the question, Ron. So you love lubing up your spinners. That one's not lubed. What do you... That one's not lubed. That one's not lubed? That's the only one that's not lubed.
    43:11
    That's the only time I need an exception. It's pretty bad. When I hit last night, I hit Quicksilver. When I was playing Quicksilver privately, I got over 100 spins on Quicksilver. Yep. It's fucking awesome. Isn't that awesome? It is. There was someone in chat that's like, Ron's spins are so overpowered that they hurt the game. It's like, yep, they are. I don't care. So then, Ron, you then played? I played Sean Ford. I think it was also another New York City guy. Yep. And he liked the older games.
    43:42
    So I deferred again, and that was 4-1. Sean Ford, the Storm guy? No, that's Sean Grant. Zach lost to Knitson. Yep. 4-3 in. Who done it? It had a huge comeback. Yeah, he came back. He was at, like, 1.2 billion and came all the way back.
    44:08
    And then, Ron, who did you play next? I played Sanjay. Sanjay Shaw. New Jersey legend. And that was on video, if I remember correctly. Yep, we – or was that on video? Did we have that on video originally? No. We came into you guys. Yeah, we came – oh, my. It was Eric Russell, CNY. Eric Russell got smoked 4-0, unfortunately. Yeah, he got smoked 4-0, so they were kind of like, we've got to film something. So they went over to our group. I had a big comeback on Getaway. That was a nice one. Yeah. Sober jackpot.
    44:47
    Player two. And, again, these were head-to-head matches, four out of seven. Probably should have said that first. But, yeah, he was ahead of me enough that I kind of needed to get Redline Media and get a super. And I did. So that was cool. Done. And then you played Nitson for the finals. Yeah, and I went ahead 3-0. Yep. You came back on one game. And then we played ACDC. Yep. And we both sucked. But I was pissed. And you lost. So you chose Jemmo, man. See, because I'm up while I'm there. Let me get into the psychology of it first, Bruce, here. Okay, here we go. I'm up 3-0. So I'm starting to get it in my head. I'm actually getting nervous now that I'm up 3-0. Yeah, because you're thinking I'm going to blow it. Because it's like, oh, I can't blow this. I can't be the 2004 Yankees, I'm thinking in my head. As I'm wearing the Yankee shirt. Yes. Which is the irony of that. And then I have this absolute shit game of ACDC. And it's like I need to get really angry. And as soon as I – you saw that. I grabbed the rig, and I just bring it right over to Devilman. Boom. I'm like, oh, we're playing Devilman. And I turn around like, you want second, right? Like, okay. Boom. I start, and I just start playing. And I miss everything for like two minutes, but don't drain. And then I finally started hitting things. And then I played for a while. Yeah, he played for almost 15 minutes. And we heard a lot of, ah! Over a billion. And then the second ball, I did shit. And the third ball, what about I got to, what's the one? in wizard mode.
    46:19
    What, did you complete all the claw awards? Yeah, he got to demo time. Demo time. And then I had a legit chance to get to the final multi-ball. Yep, you were almost there. Yeah, almost there. Stand-ups and he would have had it. I ended up with two billion. Which rums do you have on there? The one that you can choose the claw awards and you can't choose the same ones? Yes, the correct one. And he has the swear rums on there too. Oh yeah, your swear version of that.
    46:45
    Pulk-ass motherfucker. That's if you tell it. What does he say? Puckass. Oh, Puckass. Okay.
    46:53
    What's it called in Australia? Is it a different term? No, I thought you said something else. I didn't hear properly. I thought you said C with an E in T. No.
    47:03
    But we got to see a lot of great people. And Ron won. And I got to put the initials up, so I put LFS at the end. LFS at the last initials of the night. It was a good punctuation. And, I mean, it ran smooth. Nothing went wrong with the stream. We were done. Two breakdowns only during the whole night? Yeah, one was a burning smell that I just probably should swap out the rectifier board. The other one is the EM, so I'm frightened. I'm going to have to figure out. And Zach was even stumped by it. Well, he said it would require more investigation, so that meant I don't want to do it. Like, have fun. Yeah. Yeah, we were done early, which that is always the ultimate. Brian should know that. That's like the ultimate. You can actually get done early. So all the New York City people were like, oh, cool. Boom, so they were out. They were back to New York City. And that was the other thing. The finals was kind of like New York City versus Upstate. And we took it, baby. So I had the whole pressure of Upstate on my shoulders and came through. What's it like winning a tournament at your house? Oh, he's done it before, so this is nothing new for him. Damn it, I thought Bruce was going to bring up that line.
    48:09
    Because that's the first thing I think of is like, oh, God. It's like, oh, wow. Wow, you won a tournament at your house. Me and Zach were commenting. saying, we were commenting and commentating the whole time. And I said, we're never going to hear the end of this. He's like, oh, you're never going to let them hear the end of this. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're my games. There was a reason, like, the first round I just deferred every single pick. It's like, you're not going to pick anything I don't like, because if I did like it, I wouldn't have it. A similar thing happened recently here with the Australian pinball, sorry, the Victorian pinball state champs. And it was an unofficial state champs who created their own league with her own Wopper system. And it was time to run the finals, and we kind of didn't really have anywhere in public to do it. I asked a couple of people, and no one really wanted to open up their house for it. And I kind of had this feeling, like this thinking, feeling like I'm fucking going to have to beat my house again. I'd just gotten Mandalorian, and I'm like, I'm probably going to have to include the Mandalorian in the finals because I don't have enough machines. And no one's played it. So I had the LE there, and I put maybe like 10 games on it, and then just left it there because I'm like, I don't want an unfair advantage. And then luckily at the last minute, I had enough machines. I didn't need to include it. And I came third, and I was really happy with that. The second time I've run the state championships at my house, the second time I've come third, I'm like, this is a good position, second or third, I'm happy with. Not that I was trying to stand back. I would have happily won. But I don't know if it's an awkward feeling winning at your house. Does it put an asterisk on your name? Oh, it does always. We're going to definitely say an asterisk. Hey, I wasn't the tournament director. No, you weren't. No, I agree with you. Did you move around the machines? I feel like if you move around the machines and someone changes the settings, you know, the tournament settings, then that's kind of acceptable because the only advantage you have with your own machines is knowing the software and knowing the real sense. And the feel. Yeah, the feel. Yeah. If you move a game around, even like a foot to the left or the right, like in my house anyway because the floor is so, you know, on level, it's a completely different game.
    50:16
    As long as you move stuff around, it's fine. No, it went really smooth. I will say it was nice to see everyone. Kate was the first time she's ever been in a New York State championship. We had a lot of new faces. I was very happy how it all went. Eric did a great job. Even I was happy, and I'm never happy. What does that mean? Never. It was to get 31 games ready. Ryan, how long do you think it takes to get 31 games ready? To actually just go through and just give them a little cleaning, wax. Over a month. A long time. Depends on what base you're starting at. Yeah. Took me four full days to do 30 games.
    51:02
    Not really. It sucked. I don't want to have to do that again. You won't have to for years now. Well, I was supposed to have another event in a month, and they still should be good. I mean, it's not like they're played a ton anyway, but I kind of wanted to put the best foot forward. That Stu asshole guy comes over. He fucking fucks them up. Stu. Where the hell is Stu? See, Stu doesn't win shit like I do, so screw him. He can't win the IFPA. Well, that's true. He's banned from IFPA, and that's true. I've got a competition coming up at my place this weekend, this Sunday. this year there's a couple of less kind of public locations. So we're going to try and get the ball rolling for maybe once a month or once every two months to a doubleheader at somebody's house. So a tournament in the morning slash afternoon, lunch, and then one at night. And it just happens to coincide with someone's 50th birthday, Richard Rhodes, who's like a former Australian champion. So we've got two tournaments. One's the Richard Rhodes 50th birthday ball, named after one of the best people in machines of all time by Spunning's birthday ball. and then the Thunder Turds Invitational.
    52:10
    I don't know if there's like, you know, when Adam Becker and Josh Sharp are approving tournament names, like I kind of want to push a little bit to see like what I can get away with. Can I do a see you in the NT, you know? In the NT. I don't know. Is there something? Yeah. I mean, when Bowen Kierens came, I think the tournament name was a one-night stand with Bowen Kierens because he was only here for one day. So that got approved. So, yeah, what can you get away with? Email slamtiltpodcast at slamtiltpodcast.com and let us know if you've ever snuck in some kind of like hidden meaning into it. No, yeah, yeah. I'd say, yeah, write to us at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com with what you think would be really cool tournament names. Cool? Like Thunder Turds. Like that is a cool name. Thunder Turds is a part. Hey, we're going to have our first Flip Frenzy in a couple weeks, Ryan. Any suggestions as a, you've done these before for us. Is this this one Flip Frenzy or is this the one we're doing like? Two. We're doing two in a day. For how long? How many hours? Two and a half each one. And then with finals, like the top four play finals afterwards? Yes. It's the top four. Yeah, okay. No, just people need to pee, and people don't mind a bit of a break. Watch out for people that don't put their results in immediately, because if you have a really small queue, sometimes people can kind of like hang back and not put their results in as a method of like not playing up against someone if they see someone game ending and they know that oh this is the best player in the room they hang back So if you tell people both people have to come up at the same time and put the results in, then there's less fuckery. You know, like, the person who loses or whatever, one person doesn't care, whereas one person might be looking around and trying to get an advantage by avoiding playing good players the entire time, you know, for a slight advantage. make sure you hide the results when you're setting up the tournament. Don't show the standings at any time. And that just makes it so much more fun. And challenging that you don't know where you're at. You don't know where you're at. There's people that, you know, have only lost a couple of games and they think they're like in the middle of the road, but they're actually first and they get this amazing surprise. So it's a really good, fun thing where you read the results at the end. So you still don't publish the results. The person who's running the tournament clicks into it and everyone gathers around. and I think the most fun part of the foot frenzy is the reading of the results. You know, who came last, who played a game the most amount of times.
    54:57
    Okay. And having... That's nice. I like that. That's great. I didn't know that. That's a great thing. It's not fair to... If you have, like, a decent-sized queue, it's not fair to let people skip the queue because it's a format where... It's kind of unfair because some people can get matched up on shorter playing games and play a lot more games than other people and have a higher score, whereas someone at one of my foot frenzies only lost one game and he didn't make the top four because he just played long playing games the entire time. And maybe he should have, you know, there's such thing as kind of skillfully, like, you know, you're in ball two and you've got a billion points. Like, well, I'm pretty sure I'm going to beat this person, so I'm wasting time here by trying to get, you know, the GC. So there's a lot of strategy that kind of goes on, but the main point is that you get to run it with an allocated time slot, and it doesn't matter what happens. One more tip. If you pause the timer for whatever reason, because there is a pause timer button, make sure you pause it.
    56:03
    There's been a couple of tournaments where I pause the timer for a stuck, or something happens, and I keep on going for 30 minutes, and then there is no way to subtract time. You can add time, but you can never take off time. So just, yeah, be wary of that. Gotcha. There you go.
    56:23
    So I know somebody who is getting a – I know three people that are getting a fathom. You're number 69, aren't you, sir?
    56:36
    I'm number 104. And I'm the other person that I don't know his number. So are you excited that production has now started out on screen? You have pinball machines out kind of in different places, Bruce. Ron, you've got pretty much all of yours at home. So you kind of know how many pinball machines you have, and you walk down to the basement and they're all there. I have my pinball machines in some different locations that I feel like I don't have many pinball machines, and then all of a sudden, like, in a week, five pinball machines come back. so I'm in this really weird spot where like I don't even know where I'm going to put fat in my house so I'm like take as long as you want guys like you know no you're getting the first one because the Australians are going to get them first you know that well the people who bought the five the series pass I think crazy bastards I don't even know how many people did that I don't know I mean, even if it's 10 people, it's still 10 crazy motherfuckers who are just like, I want every machine. I don't know what machine it is, but I'm going to fucking get them all. But, hey, man, if people want to do that, then take their money. Yes, okay, so maybe 5 to 10 people did that. Okay, after that, it's going to be the Australians next with the 2.0 version. I am excited about the possibilities of what this new software is. Yes, hearing Marty talk about it sometimes a little bit on the final round is pretty cool to hear. Yeah, and I really hope that it's amazing. So then I sort of turn to Marty and be like, eh, do you know what I mean? But, I mean, me and Marty have really differing opinions on – I think Marty understands what players want, but we also have different brains when it comes to what we enjoy in Kimball. So it will be interesting. I think me and Ron, if I could be matched up with anyone in the pinball world with really similar interests, I'm sure there's someone that has it more, but they don't have a podcast for 180 episodes. I feel like if you like a game, Ron, there's a very good chance, not guaranteed, there's a very good chance I'm going to like the game too. So you love Star Wars?
    58:48
    That's where I'm disappointed. I'm just like... Well, how about Godzilla? Godzilla rocks. Yes, I have my alley here, and I fucking love it. It is so much fun. There you go. Only playing in Japanese.
    59:04
    So do you avoid the bad New York City accent guy then, or does he still pop up occasionally? Are we talking about the guy that's in Jurassic Park? No, no, no, no. We're talking about the guy in Godzilla. Shoot the wamps.
    59:19
    So there's the guy that exists also in Jurassic Park. I don't know how he got the second gig. I don't know if he's like Keith Allen's mate. He's like, here, I'll give you $100. You know, do these shitty fucking voices. I'm sorry if you're a pinball person and you're listening. I don't like your voice.
    59:38
    He's still in there. If you change it to Japanese, I'm not sure if this is because it's on .85 firmware, but it doesn't eliminate every single English call out, including the Tilbob one. So you're playing in Japanese and you're really kind of getting immersed in this thing. And I can understand a bit of Japanese, especially when Japanese people say English words, you know, like double jackpot, double jackpot. Like it's pretty much an English word just in Japanese characters where they definitely join two in one. Anyway, and then you're about to save the ball and you tilt the machine a little bit. And then you hear that guy and he's like, stop jostling with the pinball, with the tilt bob, mate. I'll punch you. And he says something so weird. You're just like, shut up, dude. You're one step away from being Storm. Oh, man. Wow.
    60:27
    Yeah, I mean, that's my only piece with some of the Ellen games are the voice choices. And it's not even like Iron Maiden. Except Iron Maiden. We have two voices. We have two voices, and they're both awesome, and everything's great. Then you have Jurassic Park, and it's got so many voices. But it's got the guy that's really good. Yo, welcome to Jurassic Park. DNA combo. That guy, just have him in the whole game. But then you have other ones, like the guy that's the control room guy, then a random woman, then the guy, you know, we've lost a truck. There's only two trucks left. And then the guy that is, what, New Zealand or whatever he's supposed to be. The paddock. I think he's like an Australian trying to do a South African accent or the other way around. it's old enough. It's just like, uh, uh. And then Godzilla, it's like, you know. Avengers. You forgot about Avengers. I try and forget about Avengers. Yeah. I'm Iron Man. No, you're not. You're not Iron Man. You're not Iron Man at all. Get off this. Get off. You don't look like Robert Downey to me. Witness the form of shit call outs. Yeah, it's terrible. Wasn't Space Wasn't Bad. Thanos.
    61:47
    But you just get generic, really deep voice, you know, and it's like, okay, we got that right. Yes, but there are others.
    61:53
    Godzilla? I mean, if I was to write, like, the narrator guy's awesome. Good golly, Miss Molly. Jackpot. I don't believe it. A giant robot. You know, I could listen to that all day. And there's new call-outs. There's beta code out there. Carl D'Angelo, IU Pinball was streaming it last night, and they added a countdown for the disruption jackpot. Oh, nice. It's even better now. It's just like, you know, total destruction. And it's an aerator guy. Destruction in three, two, one, and right at zero releases the ball. So you've got no excuse. It's got the Exilion guy, Exilion guy, whatever. He's awesome. You know, we have taken over. Y'all made just it. Oh, I love him. Fight. Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. Yeah, I love that guy. Yeah, Titanosaurus.
    62:41
    But then you have the guy, shoot the wamps. Do it in like, no, no. Oh, you're taking me out of it, man. Yeah, I agree. And they're ranting more of him. It's like, no, no, no. That's why, yeah, he just changes to Japanese and just hopes they filter every English one out. It's kind of like Sopranos if you take it off the swearing mode. Or no, it's kind of like when you're on swearing mode, but you occasionally get bleeped out stuff. Yeah, it's terrible. You know, instead of Sopranos, that was always weird. Like, wait a minute, I'm in the non-centric mode. What the hell? I literally dropped off. I've got Sopranos. It's a really good rental because it's like the only European pinball machine. And there's a lot of Europeans in my state. And, you know, they might not connect with all the dad rock things. They're like a Soprano, like a market pinball machine. Like, fucking, I'll take that for a couple of months. And obviously I make sure it's on the swearing settings. I ask them first, do you have any young kids in the house? Are you aware that this is just going to swear nonstop? And then, yeah, I set it up. and then they play a demo game while I'm kind of cleaning up and leaving. And then, yeah, you hear a beep every once in a while. I'm like, oh, shit, did the person before this change his settings? And I go in and I check and it is on the swear word. I'm like, why is it censoring a swear word now? But then there's a whole mode where all they say is fuck. Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck, fuck, fuck. Yeah, that's my favorite mode. It's like it's dough mode from Simpsons Finball Party, but just with F-bombs. What a great idea. I mean, a switch frenzy mode's kind of, they're not making their way out of pinball, but you don't see them as often as before. I feel like in the first decade, like, you know, 2000, 2010, it was like every pinball machine had to have a switch frenzy mode. Did you hear that, Stern? Bring it back. Yes. Isn't there one on Stranger Things where he says something?
    64:35
    I think, yeah, I think you're correct. But what could you, like, how could you add a Switch frenzy to certain games? What would be the Switch frenzy in Rush? Like, A-mode? Just take Canadian stuff? A, yeah, A. A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A. What are you going to do there? Like, Godzilla, what's your Switch frenzy? Uh.
    65:00
    Exactly. I don't know. It's like, uh. Do people take photos of? No. I mean, there's three spinners on that game. Oh my gosh. And they're so juicy. And there's a spinner mode. I mean, it's the only mode I know the rules for yet because I haven't played that much. I'm just kind of floating around enjoying it without looking at the rules. But there's a mode where you get into it. You're fighting the guy that starts with an E. What's his name? Eberra. Yeah, that guy. And you basically have to shoot the left spinner and the right spinner 15 spins and the center spinner 40 times. And then you hit the pop-up to finish. And it sounds really simple, but it's so much fun to smash every spinner and then hit a pump-up and cash it out. It's fun. We've all been complaining about spinners not being implemented in pinball machines for ages, and now they're, like, really just some amazing rules. Yeah, it's an Elwin thing. Yeah, it is. Totally. I feel like, I mean, maybe he implements other coders as well, but I feel like other pinball machines also have it. Like, Deadpool has really good spinner rules. But he has three spinners. I love that you have the mode where you have to go around. Mothra. Not Mothra. What's the one that you have to get three spinners, and then you have to hit the pop bumper? We just said it. It's Ebra. What's the name of the mode? What do you mean the mode? It's Ebra. Okay. It's called Godzilla versus Ebra. That's exactly what it should be. And, you know. But the other one is good with, I like the one where you hit the ramps all the time. That's Godzilla versus. Godzilla versus Gigan. Yeah, Gigan. The other two, it seems like you can't follow where the shots are always. What are the other ones? Godzilla versus Megalon. Yeah. But you can't follow where the shots are going. Like, you know, like, where am I going? I don't know. I care less on that game because I just love the theme so much. It's just like, it's Godzilla. I do, too. He's destroying buildings. There's monsters fighting. This is what it's all about. It's funny because when you play a game that you don't know much, You're like, oh, I'm going to start in mode and then start multiple, and then good things will happen. But in that error mode that you have to hit the spinners, as soon as you get into multiple, it turns the – on the Alley in Premium, it turns the turntable around and blocks the right spinner until you hit all the targets, which then lights the spinner for the addable. So that kind of actually hinders you from finishing that mode, which is interesting. But the other important thing in Godzilla, with a premium in Alley, two of the three spinners are the correct spinners. The full-size spinners. That's another thing. Making a comeback. Easy.
    67:44
    Hey, have you ever seen a kid cry when playing a pinball machine? Not from like, something happened.
    67:53
    Ron. Oh, me? You saw me cry as a kid? No, no. A couple of weeks ago, I think it was. What? What are you talking about? He doesn't fucking win. You can go with it. Do you see, Ryan, what I got to do with? I'll go with it. I'll go with it if it doesn't confuse the fuck out of me and make sense. That's the problem. I'm easily confused or you're easily confusing. No, Sean Grant is definitely the one I've seen where I thought he was going to lose at one time with that Black Knight 2000. What does that have to do with kids crying? But that's what I almost saw, like him. Dude. He was almost crying. Dude, you just. What? He almost lost it. Ryan C. Did he not? Yeah. Ever seen a kid cry at pinball and then Bruce like, oh. No, he was acting like a kid. That's my consideration. That's it.
    68:40
    Okay. Yeah. Okay. So my kid is 10 years old and, you know, when kids are 10 years old, they start to be like, oh, I want to be like a teenager and watch, I want to watch Squid Games. I'm like, no, you're fucking not. You know, I don't want to deal with your nightmares. Anyway, so my kid's been like harping on Squid Games for ages. She's not going to watch it. But I just got Stranger Things, and I was just like, if you want, and she'd mentioned before kind of what Stranger Things, I'm like, fuck no. But I'm like, if you want, you can play the pinball machine. And I wanted her to kind of just get like the spooky vibe, like even the music, and then she was just like, okay, this is a bit spooky for me. I want to go back to watching Rainbows and Unicorns. So I let her play Stranger Things, and she's flailing about, and have you guys seen the modes, which I've never seen before on Stranger Things. There's so many kind of modes in the game, Mind your own game.
    69:30
    Find Barb. Now. Barb. Barbara. Barb. Anyway, it's a mode that you start, and I think it lights maybe like all the shots, and one of the shots is finding Barb, who dies. So she starts the mode. She's got the screen, and the animation is kind of like Barb going into a closet or something and getting taken by a demigorgon. She's like, ooh, that's a bit creepy. I'm like, ah, it's fine. and then she just flails around, hits the one, like the first shot she hits is finding Barb. It stages the ball. She looks up at the screen and Barb has like, I don't know if you can Google this, just like Barb, Stranger Things, dead. It's fucking terrifying. It's like this woman's face that has like holes through it. It's like glazed over and like a demigorgon or a cockroach or something comes out of her mouth. My kid, let go of the flippers, turns around and starts bawling her eyes out. She's like, I just saw a dead person. It took me half an hour to calm her down. I've never seen a pinball machine make someone cry. So, yeah, luckily it was in the middle of the day, and I had the entire rest of the day to turn it around. If that was at night, she wouldn't have slept.
    70:46
    Oh, it's Barb. I thought it was Bob. I thought it was a dude. I'm looking at it right now. Barb's death scene in HD. Well, I don't know if it's her actually dying that you see. It's just her face with her... Damn it, it doesn't show a damn thing. Oh, there's a sex scene in this one as well. Yes, that's what I'm... Like, what the hell? Did she die before or after that? Ron's just watching porn. Yes, he is. That's what he always does when we're watching one of those stuff.
    71:13
    All right, wait, wait. Since you're going to edit this, Ron, because you love editing, I'm just going to copy and paste it into chat.
    71:22
    Ugh. Okay. Yeah, I gotcha. That's pretty scary for a kid, right? Yeah, that's pretty scary. Anyway, Lonnie D. Ruff, you made my kid cry. Thank you. That was pretty cool. She's not going to watch horrible movies anymore for a while. I think anybody who plays the Ronnie Ruff game cries.
    71:42
    Plays what? Ronnie what? He said Ronnie Ruff. That ain't his name. Good Lord. Ronnie Ruff, whatever you want to call him.
    71:51
    He's terrible. I will give... He's like, hold on. Here we go. I'm going to compliment Dwight. He's one step up. They all have their place in the hobby, Bruce. Dwight is the master of earnings on location. And flasher burn. I burn. Lonnie. You made me say Ronnie. Fucking hell. Lonnie is the master of making games for the noob slash intermediate player. I don't think there's anyone else. He makes great light shows. Iron Man is awesome. or Bruce are you going to say just like all the awesome things that Iron Man weren't him they weren't him I don't believe we're having this conversation move on Ryan yes Ryan what you were saying I was just thanking third employees for making my kid cry I don't know if there's an alternative firmware for stranger things you know how people go into pinball browser and fool around with stuff but I'm pretty sure it is because there's something about like I bought this second hand obviously and And I asked the guy, I'm like, have you upgraded the speakers on this? And he's like, nope. I'm like, did you upgrade the code? He's like, maybe. I don't know. I can't remember. But it's the first time I've played Stranger Things properly with the volume full blast in a room on my own, dark. And yeah, it's an experience, man. There's nothing that comes with the UV kit. You're just like, ah, do the thing again. Do the Denigorgon thing. I don't care if it drains. I just want to get you. Premium UV kit, dark room, loud volume. Yeah. All that is required to get the full experience. And I've never watched the show. I hate that for the first year and a half that my experience with the machine was playing it in a comp on location with a horribly, horribly, horribly set up machine. Like the worst Stranger Things I've ever played was the one that I played for the first year and a half. And I just, I hated the machine. Like who fucking designed this shit? It still is clunky. It still is like compared to his other games. They're like AFM, you know, that's my question. Yeah, compared to Brian and his other games, they're all masterpieces in terms of just, you know, old games, and no matter what shitty condition they're in, they still play good. Maybe you can't hit the right ramp on Minimal Madness, that's the worst it can get, but yeah, Stranger Things is still quite clunky, but it's not amazing like this is the greatest game of all time, but just a misunderstood game when it came out, I guess. All the issues with the premium, all the bulletins, all the extra kits you had to buy to actually make it work right, but then they never did another run of premiums after that, you know, that had all these fixes in there from the factory. That's for the magnet stuff? Yeah, like the magnet, the ramp. There was, like, another – you can get another ramp. You could get – there was multiple bulletins, different kits you could buy to fix the issues.
    74:37
    The Demi-Gorgon itself, I think they made the hole bigger in later runs, but they never did another run of premiums with all the fixes in it. What was the issue in the end with the bull lock at the back? Like, was it a magnet issue?
    74:53
    What was that, Bruce? They had another ramp you could get. Yes. Yeah. Another ramp you had to actually get from your distributor. And I don't think they made many of them. They might still have them.
    75:07
    Who knows? Well, the kids are getting older, so I think they committed to making Season 4 and Season 5, and then that's it. Stranger Things is gone forever. You can't have a childhood kid movie and they're all 25 years old. Yeah. Oh, no, you do. It's called Karate Kid. Or Cobra Kai, I mean. Cobra Kai.
    75:28
    Ron's like, what do you mean, Cobra Kai? What the hell are you talking about? I know what that show is. Oh, yeah, right. You just heard about it on the internet. I love the main character. He's just the funniest guy. Who, Johnny? Yeah. I love Johnny. Every time he goes to use technology, it's just the best. When he's tweeting, when he was drunk tweeting. You know this is on the internet?
    75:54
    You saw that Cobra Kai? Yes. See, to me, it's just like, it's Rob Macchio, the blonde kid from Cobra Kai, who was also in Back to School, and I don't know what his actual name in the movie or his real name is. So I'm right, though, right? See, so I'm right about Cobra Kai. Are you saying, Ron, that you've seen Karate Kid 1 and 2? I've seen 1 and 2. Okay. Is there a 3? There was a 3 where it was like the Karate Kid was the girl, right? Oh. No. I think. There's a third. Oh, no, it was Will Smith's son. Oh, no, that was a remake. That was a remake. I believe there was a 1, a 2, and a 3. In the 3, it was a girl, it was a Karate Kid. And then there was the Karate Kid remake where I think Jackie Chan is the Miyagi role and Will Smith's kid is the Rahmachio role. Isn't it confusing?
    76:47
    I have to look this up now. Yeah, Karate Kid. I like how Will Smith's kid isn't famous enough to not be Will Smith's kid. No. Oh, I think it's Jaden. He was in that other horrible movie. Him and his father. Yes. Oh, my God. That was a train wreck. after Earth. After Earth. Oh, my God. It's almost as bad. Why do you watch that, Ron? Like, why do you give the time to that piece of shit that you won't watch other famous movies that people like? These are good movies. I've never seen it. I've only seen reviews of it that are hilarious, where I'm like, wow, this looks horrible. Okay, now, hold on. We're going to go into a piece of this weekend's history. This weekend's history. Oh, and I have heard about Squid Game, by the way. I actually know what that is. I've never watched it either, so I'll be with you on that one. Okay. Ron has not seen some of the movies that we've talked about in the past, Ron. What have you not seen? You've not seen... Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings? Correct. Okay. You've not seen... You've seen all the Star Wars. Oh, the first three. You've never seen the last three? I've seen the prequels. I've seen the correct trilogy. And I've seen the first of the new trilogy. Okay, so you haven't seen the last two? No. But ask Ron about the movie we watched this weekend.
    78:09
    Oh, which one? What movie did you watch? Do you mean the movie or short? We watched the movie, remember? It was into the, what is it, Visiting Balloon Land or what was it? No, that's a short. Believe me or not, that's a short. That's literally three minutes. It's a movie. Yeah, kind of. Fun in Balloon Land. We watched Riff Trax. For those who don't know, Riff Trax is the three guys from Mystery Science Theater, or three of the guys, and they just watch really bad shit and make fun of it. Which we could do easily. This would be my favorite gig of all time. Balloon Land is other level bad, even without insulting.
    78:47
    It's balloons, and then there's a parade, so you know it's bad. But the parade, there's a woman who does a voiceover, and she sounds so wasted, and it was hilarious. That's the loudest I've heard Bruce laugh in a while. Bruce should watch he should get some more riff tracks I'm recommending other yes riff tracks definitely I'm going to be starting to watch this because it's funnier than hell but oh my god but he'll watch that movie he'll watch two of me yeah I'll watch that how about this how about we compile a list of the most famous movies that Ron hasn't seen and then we put it up for a Facebook vote and then people and then you write them in the comments and whoever gets the most likes Ron has to watch okay I'll agree under one condition, it has to be a single movie. You can't say Lord of the Rings trilogy where I had to sit there for nine hours of Lord of the Rings. No. All you need to do is watch the first one and you're like, I want to find out what happened. No.
    79:46
    Sure, as long as Bruce puts it up on Facebook, I'll do that. The greatest thing about Lord of the Rings, after playing the machine a lot is that you start to quote things from the movie without even knowing. I know this entire scene and you just start, you know. This road is beyond any of you. Run! Yeah, yes.
    80:08
    So what do we got? Lord of the Rings trilogy, I haven't watched any of them. Marvel. Harry Potter, I haven't watched any of them. Matrix, that was the first one. First one? Yeah. Okay. There's no Matrix Timber Machine. It has to be Timber Machine. Oh, Timber Machine. Okay. Star Trek. How about the new Star Trek? Have you watched all the new Star Trek? Yeah, I saw the first two that the game is based on, So, yes. Okay. Avengers? No. Well, that's a comic book, but I haven't watched it. The only Marvel movies I've seen are Iron Man. The original Avengers pinball machine from 2013. I feel like because Avengers exists, it can be any Marvel movie. Now, wait a second. Did you see one and two Just one Okay So we got them on two Whiplash He didn even know who Whiplash is Oh what else is there I saw Guardians Okay Guardians you did see One and two or just one? Just one. Two is really good. Not that, you know, not. It's just there. I didn't think one was that great, so sorry.
    81:12
    What else we got here for a move? Let's go back. You've seen Willy Wonka? Yes. The shock effect? Okay. There's one I can't believe you haven't mentioned yet. Which one's that? I'm going back on the same website. Well, you haven't watched Stranger Things, which is not a movie. No, it's not a movie. Ah, Mandalorian. Have you watched The Mandalorian? Yes. Rick and Morty? Yes. Okay, see? Halloween?
    81:36
    Yes. Jurassic Park? No. Oh. You haven't watched the original Jurassic Park? Correct. Ooh. I wonder what it's like watching that now. Like a movie from 1993? Yeah, which is weird. I mean, that's Spielberg. I would have thought I would have watched it. I would have thought I would have watched it, but I did. Have you seen Deadpool?
    82:00
    Yes. And Deadpool 2. Okay, good. Okay. Have you seen Star Wars? Well, he said that he didn't see the last two. The original trilogy, yes. The one, the correct trilogy that the game is based on. Yes. The Munsters. Have you seen the Munsters? Yes. Ghostbusters. Yes. I haven't seen Ghostbusters 2.
    82:23
    Scolari Brothers are the only thing that's in it. Scolari Brothers are in that. That's Ghostbusters 2. Scolari Brothers is literally like a throwaway scene from the start of the movie. Like, it's not even a storyline. It really isn't, but they are in there. Let's see what else. Have you seen WWF? The American Dream, baby. That's right, babe. I've seen the American Dream. Actually, he was more NWA and WCW than WWF, baby. He was. That's for my resident friends out there. Otherwise, they would correct me, baby. Have you seen Tron? The original.
    82:56
    I'm the new one. I haven't seen the new one, which I know I would like that one guy, the crazy British guy. He is good.
    83:04
    He's the kind of character I would be like, yeah. Well, he's also good in, what's it called, the vampire movies also. I have not seen Avatar.
    83:12
    Can you do Ninja Turtles? There's been a bunch of them. I know. Do you mean the original Jim Henson done one?
    83:20
    No. Not really done. You probably watched, of course. Just a tiny little segue. What do you think about Avatar makes it an average game? Because, like, the software. Have you seen Avatar? Yeah. Yeah, I know what I don't like about it. Ron, you have you. I already said no. Are you paying attention? I didn't hear you. You didn't hear me with your headset on. Yes, not at all.
    83:45
    Is there anything I can put up with? See what I got to put on the list. Game of Thrones, have you watched? No. And Shrek, no. Wow. The good, like the Batman. Good one. I've seen, well, I've seen the old show. I've seen the Christopher Nolan ones. Well, except the last one. I didn't see the Bane one.
    84:05
    How about Walking Dead? Have you watched any of Walking Dead? No. Oh. 24. Uh, no. Transformer movies. No.
    84:16
    Wow. Pirates of the Caribbean. We're going back pretty far. Yes. I saw the first two. You ever watch CSI, the TV show? Yes. Have you ever listened to Elvis Presley music? I have Elvis Presley music and Indiana Jones, the original trilogy, yes. Okay.
    84:38
    Sopranos. What am I saying? I actually did see the fourth one, unfortunately. I wish I could. Sopranos, no. Terminator 3 Rise of the Machine No I've never seen Terminator 3 Have you ever watched the NASCAR race? Uh yes Here's an important question Ron Do you have any Playboy magazines with pages stuck together?
    85:01
    No Boston Powers Uh the first two Have you ever played a game of Monopoly? Yes Okay Have you ever been to a casino and been a high roller? I've been to a casino. I have not played anything. X-Men.
    85:22
    Ah, yes. I saw one of them. I think the first one. Yeah, the first one. Where Wolverine's, like, fighting people in an underground fight club or something. It's the first time you see him. Is it that first movie?
    85:35
    We're so old. Anyway. Because there's so many of them. We have a lot of fodder I have to go through. Yeah. Which movie will make Ron watch first from the voting? And he will have to watch it, everyone.
    85:48
    We should actually videotape him watching it with the reactions. You should live stream it. You could also do Congo, Johnny Monick. I haven't seen those. How about Shadow?
    86:02
    Nope. Oopsie, Shadow. Dracula, yes. Have you watched the Flintstones? No. Now, that's a rubbish movie. That is bloody. That would be painful. Don't make me watch that. Oh, that is definitely everyone's vote. I can see it coming. I can see everyone voting. I like Rick Moranis, but, I mean, no. Addams Family?
    86:25
    Yes, I saw that. Well, wait a minute. Hmm. No. Not the TV show, but the movie. No, I never saw that. Wow.
    86:33
    What the fuck, Ron? You have the Timber Machine. But you watch crap movies. What's the other movie we saw with the karate guy that was the first one, the one who hung himself? Oh, yeah. Well, Riff Track says the whole series of, like, Future Cop or something. It's David Carradine did this series of movies where they're supposed to be in the future, even though they're obviously just in L.A. in modern times. So it's just so utterly ridiculous they're supposed to be in the future, and that was really bad. But he watched them all. I watched the Riff Track versions, yes. Yeah, see? There you go.
    87:10
    Have you watched all of the movies that... What was Medieval Madness meant to... Monty Python. Yes, I've seen all the Monty Python movies. An Attack from Mars, maybe. Have you watched Mars Attacks? I've never watched Mars Attacks.
    87:25
    Maverick? Yes, I've actually watched Maverick. Okay. How about Lebowski? The Big Lebowski. I've never watched The Big Lebowski. Wow, we have a ton of fucking fodder. I think we're going to have to. So we need to, we're going to have first, we're going to have, which movie would you have first have Ron suffer through? No, no, no, this is a one and done. One and done. I'm not sitting here watching most of these movies. We are going to. No, I don't watch a lot of movies. You have a five-hour plane flight coming up. We should just do Lord of the Rings. He's going to end this. He's going across country. He has plenty of time to watch movies. Oh, no Lord of the Rings, please, no. No, no, I think it should be Flintstones. And then we get a book report from him.
    88:15
    Ron's reviews. This movie sucks. I'd rather play the game. The most painful one, I think, would be The Hobbit, because The Hobbit is a tiny-ass book compared to Lord of the Rings, and it was only meant to go for one movie, and they're like, look, Lord of the Rings went really well. Let's stretch this out into three movies. There's like a 20-minute lunch scene where they're all just talking shit and it's the worst conversation. No, the worst is the barrel. The barrel chase. The barrel chase? The barrel chase. It's so unneeded. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So did you guys watch all three? Yes. Yeah. After the first one, you had to kind of know it sucked.
    88:59
    Yes, but I was stuck with my wife, so I'm married. It doesn't suck. It's... I'm married. I got to listen to this. It's like after that first... That Star Wars one. What is it? The Force Awakens or whatever? I knew. It's like, okay, I have no interest in watching it anymore. What's the series after Harry Potter? The one with the interesting or like the weird... The series for more money? Well, it's sort of like that one. It's really a prequel to Hogwarts or something like that. Fantastic Beasts and Wicked Beasts. Yeah, Fantastic Beasts. I fell asleep during it. You do fall asleep easily, though. No, no. This isn't a movie theater for a lot of people. Do you, Thor? Oh, cool.
    89:44
    I kind of respect Ron. You love Star Wars. I mean, even The Pimple Machine somehow. But you're still like, I'm giving my time towards these other ones. Compared to someone like Jeff Teolis and Jeff Parsons and all the other Jeffs in the world that love Star Wars. They're just like, I watched this when I was a kid, so I just want to. I did. And it was great, and it should die. And they should come up with new ideas, new worlds, new stuff, and not just keep. It's called The Mandalorian. It's called Boba Fett. Yeah, because he's fucking new.
    90:22
    Hello. Hey, we're Disney. We have to build this. Exactly. You said it all right there. It's fucking Disney. Fuck them. I hate Disney. Ooh, Ron, you got a sponsorship deal. You were so close. I hate Disney.
    90:40
    That's like saying you hate a religion. I'm so off to Disney. Oh, God. That's like evil and eviler. I mean, that's... What is it? No, they're equally evil. Wow, equal. You got to remember, I was never into the whole... Like, when I went to Disney World and you go, like, on a ride and everything has to be the story, like the, what's the thing, the Tower of Terror where they drop you? But, of course, it's Disney, so it has to have a whole storyline. You're in an old hotel from, like, 1920s and all this crap. It's like, just put me in a chair and drop me. I don't want all this other stupid story bullshit. I don't care. So, okay, guys, I have the perfect thing. We're going to bring Ron to Florida, and we're going to make him go to the Hollywood Studios Park, where he has to ride every Star Wars ride and get the full experience. I went to Universal. I was on, what was it, the Spider-Man ride? That was actually pretty good. Yeah, Spider-Man. That was pretty good. But I'm saying, no, you're going to have to go. You're going to have to fly the Millennium Falcon or be the Navigator or be the Engine Person. Move on. Move on, folks. Move on to something new.
    91:58
    All right. So you have a segment. Yeah, we do. Bruce, it's up to you. I'll have to listen to it again once you post it. But I think Flintstones is definitely the winner. Wow, you really are pushing Flintstones. Hey, people, Jurassic Park, because I actually wouldn't mind watching that. So, yeah, if you want to do that one. My life is slowly. Meet the Flintstones. No, not Ward of the Red. That's not you, Todd.
    92:22
    John Goodman. I would always do it. I would always have my segment. when I played a pinball machine that I hadn't watched a movie I would play it for a bit and I'm like alright I'm going to watch Congo and I'm like ah this is kind of like it makes everything makes more sense it makes more sense but it's terrible but no I think Congo is so easy Congo yeah within the first three minutes like there's this hilarious thing like okay I know what I'm in for whereas Flintstones I got angry after like 15 minutes like I can't do this. It's so fucking bad. I switched it off. I've never done that. Tim Curry is in Congo and he's Romanian. Just that's awesome. But wait, he's in the shadow and he's okay. I'm in. And Stan Winston did the special effects for the gorillas and shit, so you know that's going to look good. Ew, that's terrible. That is the worst part of that movie. Is that what I'm watching in Congo? I'm going to try for the shadow. Flintstones or the shadow? The shadow's a good cheesy fun, too. It is cheesy. It's so cheesy, you're going to appreciate it, Ron. Don't you wonder when you're playing the shadow, and you have to kind of hit Farley. You're like, what's going on here? What's the reference? Don't you want to know? The ice is slippery, but the something is something. What the hell does that mean? I don't get it. Yeah.
    93:44
    Like, I'm not scared of you, but I am. Ooh, okay. Great. My wife loves the shadow, the movie. Oh my God, she's addicted to it. Anytime it's on TV, stop. She'll watch the whole thing. Eric Bowen.
    94:01
    South Park reference. What are you doing? That's Team America, which is South Park, basically. But yeah, Eric Bowen. Oh my God. God, I love that movie. That is right up there with my favorite comedies ever. Team America. I wanted Team America then. When Thunderbirds came out, everyone was just like, just rethink it. You know, Team America.
    94:24
    That's right, Gary. Okay, now, Ron, if they rethemed Thunderbirds into Team America, would you have purchased it? Even with a shitty play field. What are you spelling? Team America instead of Thunderbirds. That's not it. No, no, no. It's International Rescue. You need to start really long. Team America versus Kim Jong-il.
    94:47
    Would you have bought that, Ron? No. because the play feels too bad. Even with the sound, if you got all the sound quotes, all the video, everything. I'd rather see a better game re-themed to that. Do you guys know for my Thunderbirds, Thunder Turds Invitational Competition, I'm giving away, I just had this idea and I still haven't properly figured it out, but I'm going to give away half a grand, 500 bucks. Wow. That's just brilliant. So that's like $3,795, right? Fuck it up. I'm an asshole.
    95:19
    to anyone who can spell international rescue now, a Thunderbirds pinball machine is not allowed on my premises, so it's not going to be like hitting a ramp. But there's going to be a way, and I'm not going to tell people how to do it until halfway through the comp. Whoever collects letters by performing certain tasks will win half a grand to get a spell international rescue.
    95:43
    I still haven't figured it out properly, but it's going to be a thing. America. Fuck yeah.
    95:52
    I'll have sex with you if you promise never to die. I promise I will never die. Fuck yeah. I don't think I've ever laughed more in a interview. Oh, God. It was so unexpected. I'm like, what the fuck? It was funny. Ron was just like, I'd go to his house. We'd sit down. All of a sudden, plop, pops it on. There I am fucking watching Team America again. and laughing my ass off. Team, he proved himself. 100% devoted to the team. He proved it last night by sucking my... Oh, I won't say it, but, you know.
    96:26
    It's just like, oh, my God. I will only trust you, and only you, if you will perform R.O. Sticks on me. What?
    96:36
    Or we just vomit continuously for, like, five minutes. He's a good pimple. That's a switch frenzy mode right there. Oh, God, the vomit. Yes, he keeps vomiting. I agree. Make it happen. Isn't there a mode like that on Family Guy? Yep. That's the EpiCat. Yep. Love it. From an episode. Yeah, that was good.
    96:59
    Oh, now I'm depressed because I know there will never be a Team America World Police pinball machine. I think we'll see. Hey, there's like 10 pinball manufacturers out there, Ron. Like, I think... Wait a minute. I know how this can happen. is the American Dream Contest from American Pinball, baby. You make a whole brew of Team America, World Police, and if they like it enough, baby, they can make it happen. Zach, you have a new question for the next 12 months. Yes, Zach. You need to make the Team America, World Police pinball machine. What choice would be in that?
    97:30
    The Eiffel Tower. Yeah, the tower falls down. You have, like, the Mount Rushmore in the back, which opens up, and they come out. Yep. See? You already got it. Pretty much the same as Thunderbirds. Maybe Zach can copy and improve the Thunderbirds layout. I think a monkey with two friends would probably do that.
    97:55
    Anyway, good times. It was good times. It's been good times. We do miss you, Ryan. Ryan, I have one more question for you. Have you guys gotten any spooky Halloweens or Ultramans down there yet? No, the way it works is they bundle them all up together and then they send them down in one container to New South Wales and then it gets kind of distributed from there. Not from a distributor, from kind of a community. They just get one invoice. But what that means is even if you got in really early or you got in really late, either you're getting bumped down the queue or you're skipping the queue. So are you getting one? No. No, God, no. Wait, wait. Not because of the game, because I don't like scary horror genres. So you would love to have an Ultraman? Well, I feel like Godzilla. Who are those alien people in Godzilla? Zillions. Yeah. From Planet X.
    98:54
    I look at the artwork, and I'm kind of like, this kind of looks like Ultraman. Well, there's a reason. The guy who did all the suitmation, supervised all the suitmation special effects from the Godzilla movies, he did Ultraman. So that's why. There was an episode of Ultraman where they used one of the leftover Godzilla costumes, put, like, thin things on it, and it's, like, the monster in that episode.
    99:18
    Before we move on from Godzilla, I feel like I need to say something, and it's really immature, but I feel like it's the only. You're in the right place. Yeah. You're in the totally fucking right place. So, I don't know. When I got my Godzilla and I'm looking at the artwork, I'm going to post it in chat now.
    99:38
    Oh, my God. Put some clothes on. Is this your Tinder profile? Ryan, you look very chunky. Man, Junk-a-rama. Okay, now he sent the right picture. Okay. So, what's the red guy called in the background? This is my Godzilla knowledge. It's Diatentosaurus. Can you see it, Bruce? I did. I saw it. Doesn't it look like he's licking an invisible dick? Yes, he is. You didn't know that? That's what happens in all these Godzilla movies. That's why Ron loves them so much.
    100:11
    I'm going to hear it now. There goes the edit for that one. I know Keith Allen puts googly eyes on his pinball machines. It's kind of funny. I feel like I need to do a cardboard cutout of a dick and put it there because it looks like he's holding a dick and he just... Fondling the ball edge at the same time.
    100:33
    Anyway, you said you're going to keep it. You said this is the podcast to do it, Ron, so you've got to keep it in, I'm sorry.
    100:40
    Titanosaurus. Fucking dickus. What are you doing? My God, I don't believe it. It's not the whole thing. When you hear him scream, like the monster, you know, that's not really.
    101:00
    That's him blowing his loads. All right. Good job. My work here is done. I've ruined another podcast. Upward and upward. Okay. On that note.
    101:15
    So, Ryan, what have you been up to? I was like we're just going in no no Bruce I'm trying to finish it up here no I do too but I have to eat dinner at some point oh you got him mighty and you gotta wake up in the morning he's already woken up he was barely awake when we got him on yeah his voice is cleared up nice it is it was pretty funny I went away for a couple of days and I haven't woken up early enough to watch the sunset in, like, I can't even remember, maybe a decade. And I was in this beautiful place and could have watched a beautiful sunset and I was like, no, I can't do it. And then Bruce was like, when are we going to record? And I'm like, 6 a.m. And I woke up and I saw the sun. Sorry, the sunrise, not the sunset. Sorry, what I'm talking about. I woke up and I, you know, I was awake for that. So the beautiful nature can't make me wake up, but talking to Ron and Bruce can. We do miss you, brother. And I cannot wait to finally meet you. It's so weird, Bruce. I feel like I have met you so many times. I know. It might be really awkward. Oh, it's going to be. No, it won't. Ask Marty the first time I saw him. The first time ever I saw your face. I saw him walking when we were at Pinberg, and it was just before the beginning of Pinberg tournaments. There was like 1,000 people, and I have a very loud voice. And I scream out, Marty! And he's looking around like, huh? And then he saw me and he's like, holy shit. And it just started from there. I remember the one time Marty was walking around, I was like, he's in Steve Ritchie mode. He had like all black on. Yes. To remind me of Steve Ritchie. I agree. He was really cool. Well, Ryan, thank you for coming on. As I said, you know, this was a, we've had this planned for weeks, but, you know, I'm glad you were on with the lineman part, you know, because it was really, you know, this was a shitty week. It is. It's a really sad time in pinball, but as I said, he'll live on. We're not going to ever stop talking about Lyman Sheets. No. And we're talking about we've had a couple of people bring up on our private chat about the cluster of luck possibly for this, and I think that will happen. Sorry, Ron. Mm-hmm.
    103:37
    We're going to make Ron suffer. Editing a cluster of luck about Lyman, which will be incredible. watching either Flintstones or The Shadow. No, you have all the other choices. Are you literally after all those games, all those movies, you're just going to rate those fucking two? No, no, no. You watch how many emails will come in for this. Oh, okay. Watch. Email us. Where would they email us, Ron? Good. Great segue. Hi. We're the Slam Tilt Podcast. We can be reached at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com. Our website is slamtiltpodcast.com. check out all our links in the upper right hand corner check out our awesome website courtesy of Ryan C I don't know, too many people know that we organized that at was it after TPF? I think it was when we were hanging out at TPF I was just like hey Ron, I have unlimited hosting and you guys are always complaining about was it podcast garden? podcast garden, they sucked and I was like, I'll host everything for you just like you do the domain and I'll host everything and you're like, ah, let me think about it. You're a brother, don't you? Yeah, to be honest. Yep. That one I knew, that's why. But it's funny because I think you were like, ah, let me think about it. And then it was literally like a day later, I think I was hanging out in New York, and I think I was on the subway like at 1 in the morning, and you messaged me and you're like, podcast got in his damn fucking, like, I know you're still on holiday, but let's fucking do it. Let's do it. And that's how I got to find out what the C stands for through that. And you're like, don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody. Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me. I have an official document.
    105:21
    Yes, again, our website in the upper right-hand corner. You can see our streaming links, your YouTube link where you can watch the aforementioned unofficial New York State Finals that occurred just yesterday. We had 62 people watching at one point. We had 62 people. Even Timmy himself, Tim Balls. Yes, Tim Balls. Steve Compton. Raymond Davidson. Probably just see the New York City guys. But still, you got to see me when. So thanks, Tim. Raymond Davidson was there. It was a whole party. Steve Danielson. You mean Steve Daniels, but yes. Daniels, sorry. You can edit that. That's perfect. Steve Danielson. No editing. It's unedited. Ooh. I might watch the stream just to hear what you guys are commentating. Although, to be fair, in the basement where we have the commentary table, we don't have room for a commentary area, so it's kind of like just right in the middle. So I can hear them commentating on me as I'm playing, so that's nice. It felt like Pinberg. Thanks to Ryan C. Thank you, Ryan C. Hi, Zach. Hi, Steve Bowden. I'm a bonus. Hi, everyone in our chat that we usually have. Ryan is part of our chat. What does that tell you? We are world famous. Is that the thread? the thread chat, whatever we call it. Oh, I called it thread once, and I was corrected that that's not a thread, so I don't even call it anything anymore.
    106:40
    Group chat. Okay. Are we done? We're done. We're done? Okay. I think we are. Thanks, everybody. Go out and play a lineman game today. I recommend AFM and get the... Yeah, what do you recommend? What do we recommend? Spider-Man. What do you recommend, Bruce? Iron Man. I actually recommend The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is really good. The weirdest one out with the best software. Yeah. Every Lime and Game. I love my Batman 66, you know, so what does that tell you?
    107:16
    I'm going to be ecstatic when I go play it again. So get that one billion hurry up and hear that Oh, yes! call out. And you'll be happy. So until next time, see you guys later. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Lime and Cheats.
    107:31
    Oh, dude, don't drain. Don't drain. I hope his monster is as deadly as you, Doctor. Uh-oh, look out.