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Ep 148: Attack From Mars Topper from The Electric Playground!

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 6m·analyzed·Oct 9, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Electric Playground unveils licensed Attack from Mars topper with interactive lighting and movement at $1,279, limited to 300 units.

Summary

The Loser Kid Pinball Podcast interviews Rob and Alec from The Electric Playground about their new Attack from Mars topper, which features interactive lighting integration, articulating alien and spaceship mechanics, and official licensing from Planetary Pinball. The topper is priced at $1,279 with a limited run of 300 units, launching October 9th with 50 units available to ship within 2-4 weeks. The conversation covers technical implementation using light sensors, design philosophy centered on games the creators love, and detailed Attack from Mars gameplay mechanics.

Key Claims

  • Attack from Mars topper uses 6 light sensors to detect game state and trigger 8 different light shows on the topper without soldering or cutting into the game

    high confidence · Rob explains the sensor-based integration system that connects via Cat5 cable to a node board, processing light combinations to determine game modes

  • The Electric Playground has 50 Attack from Mars toppers ready to ship within 2-4 weeks of order, with remaining 300 units to be fulfilled by end of 2025

    high confidence · Alec states '50 available to ship within two to four weeks' and then fulfillment of remaining 300 'within nine to 12 months'

  • The Godzilla topper has shipped approximately 10 units since release about a month prior and features four 3.2-inch LCD screens with five interactive modes

    high confidence · Rob describes Godzilla Conqueror upgrade with 'four 3.2-inch LCD screens' and states 'we've shipped about 10 of them so far'

  • Rick from Planetary Pinball provided official licensing for the Attack from Mars topper, allowing use of audio clips and intellectual property in the product

    high confidence · Rob explains licensing negotiations and notes they 'always wanted to do stuff that was officially licensed' with Attack being their first official licensed topper

  • The Electric Playground expanded to a new workspace approximately 3 times larger than their previous location to support production scaling

    high confidence · Alec mentions 'we actually just moved into a new space. So this is a new space—like, three times as big as where we were'

  • Brad Albright created the artwork for the Attack from Mars topper

    high confidence · Rob and Alec confirm Brad Albright as the artist, with Scott noting he also worked on their GOAT shirt and shoe montage

  • The Godzilla topper won 'Best Mod of the Show' at Expo

    high confidence · Rob states 'we ended up getting Best Mod of the Show, which was cool to just get an award for the topper'

  • The Big Lebowski topper had a limited run of 100 units that sold in 2-3 days

Notable Quotes

  • “Attack is one of those games I cannot walk by and not put 50 cents in. It's impossible.”

    Rob @ ~3:45 — Establishes personal passion for the game driving the topper design decision

  • “We want to make sure that they're getting paid what they're worth. We both come from creative backgrounds. We've been on the other side of this.”

    Alec @ ~13:30 — Reveals business philosophy prioritizing fair artist compensation in the aftermarket mod industry

  • “Attack from Mars is like the game I grew up on. It's the first game I played that made me love pinball. My dad used to put me down on a bar stool when he was playing his band gigs, and that was the game I got to play.”

    Rob @ ~28:15 — Personal origin story connecting to Attack from Mars' cultural significance in pinball history

  • “We didn't have that convenience. There are some ways that you can kind of tap into the Cat5 cable—they call it like a serial sniffer—where you can kind of try to infer what's going on.”

    Rob @ ~22:00 — Technical explanation of workaround for integrating toppers with legacy games lacking modern data access

  • “We're not doing this as like a flash in the pan. We really want to give the artists the credit where it's due. We want to make sure that they're getting paid what they're worth.”

    Alec @ ~13:45 — Demonstrates Electric Playground's long-term business commitment and ethical approach to artist partnerships

  • “With Godzilla, you have a raising thing. With Attack, you've got movement. We didn't have movement in The Big Lebowski, but we also wanted to make that kind of an art piece.”

    Rob @ ~31:00 — Shows iterative design philosophy evolving movement and interactivity across product line

  • “I downloaded the ROM, and I extracted it, and like got all the audio there. There's a ton of stuff in there that I don't think ever made it into the game. But there is one where the alien goes, 'Five billion!'”

    Rob @ ~51:30 — Reveals deep ROM analysis discovering unused game content, indicating attention to original game design details

Entities

The Electric PlaygroundcompanyRobpersonAlecpersonAttack from MarsgameGodzillagamePlanetary Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Electric Playground expanding operational capacity (3x larger workspace) to support production scaling of Attack topper and future product lines

    high · Alec states 'we actually just moved into a new space—like, three times as big as where we were' to ensure Attack launch 'doesn't take us 18 months' and to build inventory efficiently.

  • ?

    community_signal: Electric Playground prioritizing community accessibility through production scaling, fair artist compensation, and design thoughtfulness (adjustable height, sensor-based integration avoiding modifications)

    high · Alec emphasizes wanting to 'create toppers at a lesser price point to make them accessible to all people.' Rob notes avoiding soldering/cutting. Height adjustment built into design for ceiling limitations.

  • ?

    community_signal: Dutch Pinball opening topper integration capabilities for modmakers, reducing reliance on legacy reverse-engineering methods for newer games

    medium · Rob mentions Dutch Pinball's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as recent example of manufacturer opening direct connection options for modmakers, contrasting with legacy games requiring light sensor workarounds.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Electric Playground securing first official Planetary Pinball license for topper production, expanding beyond previous unlicensed products (Godzilla, Twilight Zone, Big Lebowski)

    high · Rob explains licensing negotiation strategy and notes Attack is their 'first official licensed topper.' Rick from Planetary provided access to audio clips and IP usage.

  • $

    market_signal: Limited edition strategy proving effective: Big Lebowski limited to 100 units sold in 2-3 days; Attack from Mars limited to 300 units with 50 pre-built inventory ready for October 9th launch

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.199

0:00
thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast i am josh roop with me my co-captain scott larson and scott we have a special episode today i'm excited for this this is something new and interesting we've never done before right but before we dive into that let's let's talk about our sponsor just for a split second okay we have a zach and nicole mini flipping out pinball So they've always been really good to me. My friend just got his Godzilla 70.
0:32
So, you know, I was able to set that up through them. I also was able to help facilitate two people buying the CE Avatar through them. So they've always been really friendly, really good to work with. And if you're not looking for the new game, they actually have a pretty interesting back catalog of used games that people trade in. And so just whatever you're looking for. I'm sure they can help you out. Zach and Nicole and Minnie flipping out pinball. Yes. And we're going to move on to our guest right now.
1:02
This is a duo that is making some waves in the hobby. I've been setting up a nose seeing ever since they did the Godzilla topper. And it was insanely cool. And it was like, well, what's they're going to do to match this? Because this was pretty out of bounds. This was insanely cool. If you haven't heard of the Electric Playground, you need to check them out because they are doing some amazing things. Speaking of which, one thing we're going to talk about today is the new Attack from Mars topper. Before we dive into that, I want to welcome our guests, Alec and Rob. Thank you for coming on.
1:32
Yeah, thanks for having us. Appreciate it. Great to be here. Definitely. Okay, first off, Attack from Mars, the topper on that has been heralded as one of the best ever made, right? Mm-hmm. It's pretty good. What made you guys, what convinced you to be like, you know what? Challenge accepted. We're going to one-up this. I think you'll sense a theme in a lot of how we choose the toppers we want to work on is just games we love and Attack is one of those games I cannot walk by and not put 50 cents in, it's impossible no doubt CGC made an amazing topper we love it ourselves but we love to make something really unique and put our own spin on it I think the thing that makes ours a little bit different is the interactivity that comes along with it but we can get all into that when we get into the specifics definitely yeah i mean definitely definitely love making toppers for games that we love i mean you had it it was one of your early games i remember playing at your house we also get asked for it a ton i mean like yeah they made an amazing topper but everybody that still wants it can't get it that's a good point it's not always available that's part of the issue is supply and demand right i mean and i have i have the cgc one because they came with my le but definitely there is a limit of sometimes what you want is mainly not available and so you have to look for alternatives and uh and actually sometimes the alternative can be a different slice so for example on my medieval madness back back glass um i looks like you guys are working with brian allen right so uh not not officially yeah this one was with brad albright uh okay sorry yeah go ahead and cut that josh we love the word brian bring it yeah but I have some alternative back classes in some of my games, and it does mix it up. It shows different things. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, people have customized their back class, like with Brian Allen, and there's maybe some different things that they're looking for in it. So I think that, like Alex said, the interactivity on this is definitely above and beyond what CGC did. So we're hoping if we're not converting people, We're definitely getting those who wanted the topper originally back excited about their game with our topper. Yeah. I mean, the reality is I don't know that we're going to get many people like you, Scott, to take off that awesome topper and put ours on. But our topper works with both the original and the remake. So there's a lot of people with that original that have wanted to put something on top maybe, and they haven't been able to. And I think ours is kind of like that perfect cherry. I wonder if you haven't checked these toppers out yet Behind you two You've got the big Lebowski You've got the new Attack from Mars You've got Godzilla and you did a Twilight Zone Which you were showing off at Expo last year Which was insane These are some really cool toppers And if I'm not mistaken, I'm looking at the Godzilla topper You've got some screens in that now? What's going on with that? So we debuted the Godzilla topper At Expo last year This will be our second Expo And it was awesome to get the feedback We ended up getting Best Mod of the Show, which was cool to just get an award for the topper. Clearly, it's very different than the Godzilla topper. But when we announced it, we said our ultimate vision was to basically bring four screens to that topper. So we released that officially as far as shipping about a month ago. We've shipped about 10 of them so far. It literally has four 3.2-inch LCD screens on them. there's five interactive modes but you can also customize these screens to whatever you want so it comes with some amazing artwork highlighting collecting the monster monitors uh heat ray destruction jackpot uh rodan and then the saucer which is a saucer that goes up and down but you can actually replace all that with like classic gifts from the movie uh which is really cool so the feedback's been amazing and we've also got a black and white one of course because everyone's doing black and white stuff now uh but there's actually a different uh uh paint job for the black and white versus the color one of my favorite parts about the business and watching honestly rob skills grow and everything grow along with it you know we concepted what we wanted this topper to be before we had any idea how the hell we were going to do it and but we had to get something out there so the first version of the topper was an amazing you know step up from what we've done you know technologically speaking from from twilight zone It's a huge leaps and bounds to where Godzilla is. But where we had to get to make the Conqueror's upgrade is even leaps and bounds beyond that. And we've been able to do this in such a short amount of time. It kind of blows my mind to see where we are today versus where we started. And I think Attack from Mars is a great example of that, too, because we could have made that topper really early on, but we didn't have the skills to really do it justice until where we are in the iteration of the company. So having it be kind of the fourth generation topper, it takes all the lessons learned from topper one, topper two, topper three, and puts it into kind of a complete package to where we are today. Yeah.

high confidence · Alec describes the Lebowski limited release strategy and notes 'They went pretty quick—I think, like, two or three days'

Rick
person
Brad Albrightperson
Twilight Zonegame
The Big Lebowskigame
Josh Roopperson
Scott Larsonperson
Lymanperson
Zach and Nicoleperson
Dutch Pinballcompany
CGCcompany
Cactus Canyongame

high · Alec describes Lebowski FOMO-driven success and explains limited Attack run helps 'focus on a single product and build it well, optimize margins' while maintaining demand urgency.

  • ?

    community_signal: Brad Albright emerging as preferred artist for high-quality pinball projects, creating artwork for multiple pinball companies and aftermarket creators

    medium · Scott notes Brad created artwork for their GOAT shirt and merchandise. Rob mentions Albright also did Motorhead and Led Zeppelin artwork for other projects. Brad described as 'at all the shows' and 'easy to talk to.'

  • ?

    announcement: Electric Playground officially announces Attack from Mars interactive topper with official Planetary Pinball licensing, priced at $1,279, limited to 300 units, launching October 9th

    high · Rob and Alec provide extensive product details including price, unit limit, release date, and shipping timeline. Official website TEPpinball.com confirmed for orders.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Electric Playground distinguishing Attack from Mars topper from CGC's original through interactive light sensor integration rather than pure articulation mechanics

    high · Rob and Alec acknowledge CGC's quality but emphasize their topper's 'interactivity' through light sensor system. Explicitly designed for both CGC remake and original Williams versions.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Electric Playground implementing thoughtful design accommodations for real-world installation constraints (adjustable topper height from 12 inches down to 10.5 inches for low-ceiling basements)

    high · Rob explains height adjustment mechanism: 'alien's mounted on the back, and there's actually like four holes' allowing 'moving it down notches based on height of your basement.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Electric Playground demonstrating iterative advancement in topper technology across Twilight Zone → Big Lebowski → Godzilla → Attack from Mars, incorporating LCD screens, articulating mechanics, and sophisticated light sensor integration

    high · Alec describes progression: 'topper one, topper two, topper three' with Attack as 'fourth generation' incorporating 'all the lessons learned.' Godzilla features four LCD screens; Attack uses six light sensors with eight light show modes.

    • 6:31
    We've got a bunch of attacks going already. This will be the first time we've released a product where we've got actually 50 ready to go, which is exciting.
    6:40
    But lots to talk about on attack. So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Definitely. So, okay, Attack from Mars. I know you guys said you're making these because it's games that you love, but this is your first official licensed topper. How did you convince Rick from Planetary Pinball to sign on to this? Well, I mean, you know, Rick's been great to work with as far as, like, giving us access to the license. Like, in our promo video, we've got a ton of, like, audio clips and stuff, which we're not actually using on the topper, but he's been kind of opened it up to us. We always wanted to do stuff that was officially licensed. Like we really try to toe the line in terms of how blatantly we use intellectual property that we don't own. So you're not going to see like blatant use of intellectual property on Godzilla. You don't see it on Twilight Zone. You don't see it on Lebowski. But you do see it on Attack from Mars and because we wanted to get the license. So it was really a timing thing for us to like build some notoriety and some credibility. And also we wanted to go to Rick and be like, hey, we're the real deal. You know, we can make these things like it's not just a pipe dream idea. So we've been in touch with Rick for a while now. And this seemed like the right time to kind of make this happen. And also we wanted to be able to build up some inventory. So we've really been able to build our team. We actually just moved into a new space. So this is a new space, like three times as big as where we were. So that when we launch this thing, it doesn't take us, you know, 18 months to build them. We want to ship some right away. We really want to build this, the whole business the right way. You know, we're we're not doing this as like a pipe, you know, like whatever is flashing the pan. You know, we really want to we want to give the artists the credit where it's due. We want to make sure that they're getting paid what they're worth. We both come from creative backgrounds. We've we've been on the other side of this. So we want definitely to, you know, pay the artists what they're worth, but also do like I said, put put our big boy pants and grow the business in the right way and do it. Yeah, I think this is that was a big step for us, for sure. well so you you oh i was just gonna say you chose brad albright which josh and i've worked with and brad's always been great to work with uh he he did our goat shirt and uh he did uh he did all the um that montage if you get the shoes like that was from brad albright too so how did you choose brad i mean i know that well he's been great to work with for us but it's brad's an amazing guy you know super easy to talk to you know he's at all the shows not that we've been doing this for a real long time this will be we've done two tps in an hour second expo but talking him up i mean his stuff is amazing um he along with you know some other known artists in this space like just really have this amazing style that works for pinball yeah and uh kind of like with rick it was like we talked to him for a while and we're like let's do this you know now's the right time and he was i mean attack for mars come on you know uh he was he was definitely ready to jump in so we kind of worked out the specifics pretty quick and off to the races i've decorated my game room and my movie room was pretty much all Brad Albright.
    9:39
    He gets me. We didn't know each other, but we knew each other. It was a bro-ship at first sight, right? To know Brad is to love Brad. It's easy. He's a great guy. He is a great guy. And his other stuff, if you guys have not checked out his other stuff, Motorhead and Led Zeppelin, he did these if I remember correctly, it was David Peck that hit at these. insanely cool mail. I'll mail, put some pictures in the, in the video, which by the way, if you're watching, if you're not watching YouTube, it's fine. You're watching the podcast. It is whatever, but we're trying to do something a little different. So as you're watching and follow along, we're going to have the picture in the video going along as we talk about it. At least I hope so. If not, well, it is what it is. You see our beautiful faces. Exactly.
    10:25
    So, okay. This is a really, in my opinion, this is a very competitive price point. You guys are coming in at $1,279. As toppers go, that's actually pretty good. And you're limiting this to $300. What made you to do both those things? Yeah, so Twilight, we didn't do limited. Lebowski, we did limited. We did 100 of those. They went pretty quick, I think like two or three days. And I really felt like what that did for us as a business is it allowed us to focus on a single product and build it and build it well. uh optimize you know margins around some of the materials which you know continue to go up in terms of costs and stuff and and we wanted to just we want to build this thing we want to build however many we can sell um and get it out there and move on to the next one i mean we've got more ideas with planetary we've got more ideas for other games um and also you know we want people to know like we're going to build this thing for you now you know it's not going to drag on we can get it for you if you want it. And then we're going to move on to the next one. So there's a lot tied up with like choosing to go limited. I know some people don't necessarily love it, but as a business, especially in our current position, like getting the parts, building the thing and moving on to the next one is really important. That's it. What's the timeframe you're aiming for here? Yeah. So we're going to have 50 available to ship within two to four weeks of the initial sale, which will be early in October. And then we're going to move through the 300 if we hit that many or however many we hit within, well, by the end of 2025, I'd like to say within nine to 12 months is definitely realistic.
    12:06
    Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Alec. What were you going to say? No, I was going to say, I think an important point too is, you know, we're consumers just like everybody else and we see the price of things. And of course, even when we started this business, we were, you know, looking at the price of toppers as they were back then and wondering who's paying this? Who are these people that are paying $1,000 for these things? And when you come to actually build and really mass produce a product, you quickly learn what goes into actually making something like this. And everything is getting more expensive. But we're still trying to find ways to create toppers at a lesser price point to make them accessible to all people. So we're not – this is where we are with Attack from Mars, but we're with the next – whatever the next topper is going to be. we're always trying to see if there's a way that we can create you know an entry point you know that's more accessible for other people too now there's also some element of integration and so that's what i do want to talk about with the attack from mars topper i have some toppers who you know we found i found them off the market that you know i got a simpsons one because obviously back in 2003 they weren't making toppers so i got one of those and basically it just lights up so it's kind of fun you see it but that's pretty much it now your topper you were talking about integration so tell me about that process because you actually have to take that to a next level where you are connecting it to the game the topper has to know what mode you're in it has to know what is going on with the game so you really have to figure out how to splice and dice that into the game itself not only that you're doing this between cgc's models and valley williams models where you're bridging the gap for almost 20 plus years of circuitry. Yeah, there's, you know, there's a lot that goes into that. I do want to, you know, celebrate some of the companies that have recently announced that they're doing more for mod makers.
    14:01
    Dutch Pinball with their Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. They're working to open it up so that you can connect directly into it. But we didn't don't have that convenience. There are some ways that you can kind of tap into like the Cat5 cable, they call it like a serial sniffer where you can kind of like try to infer what's going on. And some platforms like Pinsound do that. But what we decided to do because we didn't want to be reliant on like code updates, possibly bricking our topper for customers is we wanted to go a little bit more old school with it. So the way our system works is that there's a series of light sensors that you mount in various places throughout the game. And in some cases where that's a little bit of a tighter area, we actually build an entire harness that sits behind one of the boards in the game. So with Godzilla, there's actually about 12 sensors of light that then gets processed by our own central computer on the topper. And then we do a light show based on which of those lights are on or off. and there's combinations of those that allow us to know different situations and different modes happening in the game but essentially you're running a node board that comes with our topper underneath the play field it's connected to the topper via cat5 cable and ethernet cable and then that node board has a bunch of sensors that kind of spider out into the game and pick up that light so in the case of attack we wanted to make it a little simpler than godzilla because Godzilla has a lot of them. So there's only, I think, six sensors on attack. The topper is going to take you probably 45 minutes to install. It's not like a stern where you're just plugging it in and it goes. But at the end of the day, it does do all the things that you would want a topper to do in the modern age, different than like the Simpsons game you were talking about, where, you know, we've got about eight different light shows that play out on attack. And of course, We've got some articulation in the alien that shakes. So all those things kind of happen through this, not proprietary platform, but a platform that we've developed that we're now reusing across each topper that we release. But without making any major modifications to the game. Yeah, no cutting, no soldering of any kind. We really do want to focus on making it easy. But at the end of the day, we are picking up a lot of information through these light sensors.
    16:28
    Well and I like how you guys have taken Attack from Mars and you taken some of the biggest moments from that game and somehow fit it all into one topper right
    16:38
    I don't know exactly how it's going to work if you guys are releasing the video before we release this or whatnot, but if you guys have seen this video, it's insanely cool. Like the big old beam, you've got spots on the sides where they're sucking up the cow and the chicken because they've turned them big. And you've got extra ball. The whole thing's flashing orange. And that's the thing about the original CGC topper that was made was the articulation. It tied into, like, it was kind of harassing you, right? Well, you guys have a spaceship and an alien on here. They're both articulating and harassing you. It's like you've just kind of taken it to, like, level 11. Yeah, you know, we talked about price earlier. I mean, to be able to build movement and, you know, kinesthetic things into a topper, it does require a lot of prototyping and then building out. So, like, we're trying to always have something that's highly interactive in the game. I mean, with the Twilight Zone, we had the ball, like, literally going around a habit trail. So we try to pull that in. So with Godzilla, you have a raising thing. With Attack, you've got movement. We didn't have movement in Lebowski, but we also wanted to make that kind of an art piece. So that kind of has its own kind of artistic style to it. But, yeah, movement is awesome to have, and it's not easy to do, for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's easy when you pick games you love. You just want to design it to be, like you said, kind of that homage to the title, you know? Attack from Mars is like the game I grew up on. It's the first game I played that it made me love pinball. I can't talk enough about it. My dad used to put me down on a bar stool when he was playing his band jobs, and that was the game I got to play. And it's the first one where pinball made sense to me. There was a mission, you know, destroy the saucer. It just finally clicked in my head to what I was doing. And I got the bug ever since. So, yeah, being able to do something for attack has always been kind of a dream or whatever. You also took it to integrating some of the rarer modes. Like I noticed you even connected it to the video mode, which I've been playing. You know, I have Attack from Mars and I've been playing it. And there are times when I totally forget there's a video mode in it because it's not that common. It doesn't come up that often. I think he guaranteed extra ball How do you not like That's always part of the strategy Paint the side to side Baby just paint side to side Yeah we like to I mean we love pinball We're deep players like we don't have Huge collections You know four or five machines so when we have Machines we go deep on them and we Certainly like to celebrate those moments So that those are a little bit of icing On the cake for those that are you know looking to really get excited about the game again too you know it's like hey you know pick up our topper and see this cool light show and remember you know why you love this game i remember though i was like this year's old whenever like someone finally taught me that if you hit that start button you get like one free like swipe the screen on the video mode i didn't know about that when i owned the game i i didn't know that until right now yeah so what they're talking about if you're in video mode and the saucers are coming down if you feel like you're too much like you're someone's got a touchdown you press the start button or the launch button and it uh it wipes the whole thing all out yeah it's it's a combination of missile command and space invaders that's kind of how it seems like it yeah that's cool have you seen the cow mode uh you know i don't think i have what's the cow so there's a way i i don't know exactly the how you get it to go but there's a way to the instead of um thing whatever they're dropping Instead of saucers dropping, they're cows And every time the cow goes, it moves So there's a video mode, but it's cow mode Okay, so there's got to be someone out there There's someone out there who knows how to do cow mode I've only seen it one time Where's Bo and Karen's? Because I guarantee The bullfrog The WB frog Hello my hey Hello my baby Through the tunnels It actually pops you out to the bullfrog instead of, yeah, anything. Hilarious. Yeah. I love those little Easter eggs. Yeah, I love the Easter eggs. I'm not sure that I have the talent to get consistently the Easter eggs.
    20:57
    Yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of them. There's like a dirty pool thing on attack. Yeah, dirty pool. So if you get the ball behind the attack target and then you shoot it in there. Yeah, and also you have strobe light multi-ball, which I really I've had the game for eight years and I think I've had it like five to ten times this is making me so sad like I feel like we need to move on oh okay possible no but it's just kind of funny like no it's to be I also rotate from games to games so I've been playing a lot of Cactus Canyon been playing a lot of Godzilla and I was just back on Attack for Mars which I haven't played in a while so that's part of the problem of having a lot of games is that you find a hard time of sticking with one and so that's probably because my um my rules knowledge is not as deep as it would be if you only had five games because you would know them very well um but they're both in stroke of luck which is the mystery just got to get get deep into those and you'll you'll find both the video mode and stroke which we have modes in our topper for that so definitely check those You know, the thing that I love, and I think everyone loves this, the late great Lyman knew when you were close to something, he was willing to give it to you via stroke of luck on Attack from Mars.
    22:17
    I think it's brilliant because it's like, I really need this. I need it. It always seemed to be there in stroke of luck, and he was willing to give it to you. It's like Mario Kart. You're in eighth place. Blue shell. Yeah.
    22:32
    It was just wonderful. It's what made Lyman great. is like he knew what the player wanted or needed at that moment, and it was like, boom, here you go.
    22:42
    Cows from heaven, not mana. Cows from heaven. So I've got on here. There's some people like me who don't have a tall enough basement. Well, I guess mine's tall enough to have toppers. But, like, I saw, I think her name was Jamie Marie, one of our listeners. They cut out the ceiling just so they could have the labyrinth topper, but they, like, built into the ceiling. Oh, yeah, they finished the basement around it, yeah? Yeah. I can't wait to see when they list that house for sale.
    23:11
    What's that one spot right there? Okay. Now, Vic did the same thing. Well, he didn't cut holding the ceiling, but because he had the Godfather and he couldn't put the topper, didn't he put it on the side? I think so. Yeah. So on this topper, you can adjust the height. So the overall height is 12 inches, but you can go down to 10 and a half, and it's 24 wide. How do you get to adjust? I'm slightly confused. Yeah, it's pretty simple. I mean, we we didn't plan around it. But obviously this making toppers, you've got this issue that comes up a lot. So whenever you get it, the aliens mounted on the back and there's actually like four holes. So it's a pretty typical system where you're just moving, moving it down notches based on the height of your of your basement. But, yeah, I mean, we put a lot of thought into this, both on the installation side and on the product itself. And this was one where it was clear we could do it, so we did it. So, yeah, it goes down a little bit if you're tight on headroom. We only need that quarter of an inch. I can adjust it right here. Yes. Okay, so this is going to be available.
    24:20
    Well, how do they get it? How do they get it? This will be available on October 9th, which is a week from the start of Expo. We're going to be having it at Expo. But on the 9th, you're going to be able to go to our website. You're going to be able to put down a deposit of just $100. That gets you your official spot. We're going to fulfill orders based on how the orders come in. We've got about 50 ready to go, or, well, technically we had exactly 50 ready to go within the first two to four weeks of your order. Once it's ready to ship, we'll send you a payment link to complete the full payment, and you'll have it. So, yeah, this is unlike other toppers. We've got a bunch in motion. And then for the rest of them, we'll be working on them throughout 2024 and into 2025 and hopefully have most of them out by mid-2025. And say that website again. Where do we go to order this? Yeah, so the topper is at TEP Pinball. So TEP, the electric playground, pinball.com, TEPpinball.com. That's the exclusive place to get it. So on our website. Perfect. looking over some of the stuff too one of the most um one of the coolest modes that is in this game is strobe multi-ball you get this going uh it's nervous especially in a dark room especially in a dark room yeah and watching the video coordinating with this mode is insanely cool i'm assuming the whole room if you've got a dark room it's going to turn into a disco ball all of a sudden yeah Yeah. Yeah. Was it just one of these things like it's a must have to do with the top or how'd you do that? You know, yeah, it was like we can we can make it flash. Sorry if you have this one because this one's not going out. Yeah. But this one was actually kind of interesting to get to work, too, because, like, again, we don't know the data on the system. So there's there's two unique situations with the lighting for both strobe and video mode with strobe. only the lights in front of the attack wave, which is that thing that goes up and down, is lit and then no other lights are on. So we basically are looking at capture one, which is one of the orbit lights. If we see that's off, but we see the lights in front of the up and down thing is on, we know you're in strobe multi-ball. That's the only time that the lights are set up that way. And then we make the topper flash in sequence with the light that is underneath the UFO. So you're, you're definitely adding to the effect. Uh, we've had a couple of people actually say like, Hey, you're lighting up my play field a tiny bit more. So I appreciate that. I can actually see, um, a little bit better, uh, but it's a cool mode and it certainly is, uh, way more impactful with the topper. It's another one of those. Give me an extra ball mode. If you can do it right, you can get that extra ball. Yeah. 10, 10 hits on that, uh, that bar in the front and you've got an extra ball. So definitely Scott don't, don't skip over that one. All right. No, no, no. Sounds good. You know, one of my favorite moments ever in a pinball tournament, we were playing Attack for Mars, and I lined up all the shots, and I did the big billion hurry up. For those that don't know, the ramps and the orbits, if you hit them so many times as you're stacking them up, every time you hit that final shot, it starts that big old beam.
    27:39
    And you hit it, and it gives you like 100,000 points. but if you're able to stack the four modes they're the four or five and you you successfully hit each shot as each one's running yeah a billion hurry up it's an insanely cool little little easter egg and i was able to do this in a pinball tournament and the person behind me i did it and obviously all of a sudden i went straight to first because i just got a billion points and then my ball i'm feeling like king kong on steroids right and i walk away from the machine and one of the competitors is like what the heck yeah you just do what did you do what's the big bill it's the big bill and hurry up and he's like okay walk me through this i'm like sure like i anyhow yeah it just this game is just it's so great for so many reasons now i'm wishing i had my i had a limited edition it's funny you bring it so we we had a lot of fun with our promo video in terms of like bringing in audio i downloaded like the rom and i extracted it and like got all the audio there's a ton of stuff in there that I don't think ever made it into the game. But there is one where the alien goes, five billion! And I don't even know what that is tied to, but apparently there's a five billion call out as well. So that's a super deep one, but maybe it never made it in. I don't know.
    28:56
    Man, they did have it in, and then the code was just, like, everyone's just going to go for that. This is all this is going to be. Yeah, exactly. Like in Pride of Pinbot, you know, everyone goes for the billion shot, and it's like, That's the thing you do with that game. That's what it's known for.
    29:09
    Okay, so I want you to walk me through constructing your topper. Like how do you go about saying, hey, there's always – there's a lot of toppers, some of them better than others, and some of them you can see behind me that are better than others.
    29:25
    But you can actually see like what goes into it to say, you know what? People, if they're going to spend X amount of money. So if it's 500, if it's 1,000, if it's 1,200, 1,300, what is it about the topper that you want to bring to the environment, to the game experience? Oh, man, that's a great question. I mean, we kind of dove at this in different ways, and we usually prepare ourselves to answer this question because there is a lot. Where do you want to start? When you look at just how we started, we literally started with the games that we owned, right? So Twilight was a game that I owned. It's, again, just one of my favorite games ever. But we had access to it. So, you know, we were looking at it and thinking, what if, you know, if we were designing something, what could we do to make it really cool and unique? And that whole idea came from just sitting in my basement, staring at the top of that game and staring at the play field. Godzilla kind of happened because Godzilla is Godzilla, you know, is the most popular game is just absolutely blowing down doors. We both owned it. We loved it. we got sick of waiting to see what Stern was going to do, and we wanted to make something for ourselves. And then came up with a really cool concept that kind of took on a life of its own. Lebowski is just, you know, it's one of the greatest themed games of all time, and we both love the movie. So we wanted to pay an homage to that. Attack, kind of the same thing. Yeah, I mean, we look at the markets for the games, right? Like, you know, how much is the game moving is important, right? Like you want to pick a game that people are excited about in general because therefore that's going to translate to them being excited about the topper. And then we try to create – we don't use the term topper moments, but we try to create the pinball moments of toppers. So like now it's less, of course, about what games we own and it's more about like how much does the market care about the game and whatever capacity that is. So like with Lebowski, it was obvious we were we were kind of nervous about that one because of the volume. So we do look at volume pretty closely like that obviously hit the mark for attack. We look at the options. So with with Twilight, it was there were no like well-known options. So that was easy. We also don't probably we're probably not going to try to compete with Sternstoppers too much going forward. I mean, it's just like really tough to compete with like having a mode, the simplicity of install, you know, that type of thing. I mean, we get asked about JAWS like all the time. Right. Because that one kind of is underwhelming.
    32:05
    I guarantee you could make a more impressive one. I guess we could. But it's like how many people are really going to move on it after, you know, getting what they have? We kind of got that with Godzilla a little bit. I mean, I think we we thought, you know, there would be just like way more interest than what we, we, I mean, we've done a ton of them. I think the Conqueror upgrade is going to go a long way, but it's like what we heard over and over again is like, I love your stuff. I love my Twilight Zone. I love my Lebowski, but I've already got the Stern Topper. Like, so we look at a lot of different factors, but I think the most important one is like, how can we create a really cool moment with it? Yeah. And then if we can tie those two things together, of the business and the idea, then we're off to the races. There's been plenty of times where, again, to my earlier comment, where our skills kind of evolved over the course of the business. And now that we know what we know now what moments could we create And then you start thinking about okay what games lend themselves themselves to those that type of you know that type of moment you know so twilight zones got the ball rolling around obviously it be really easy to make the ball a boulder and indiana jones could all of a sudden come in the mix you know like they're like a lot of people have always said like why don't you just do the same thing for indiana jones but we don't want to be uh you know like the do the same thing over and over again and be a one-trick pony you know like that's we're not we don't want to be the topper guys that just have the ball rolling around that's not the goal right but we know how to make that type of of interactivity is there a way to make it unique for something you know a game like indie or whatever and you know allow that moment to shine that then that's kind of like something that we think about as well of course well on the notes you sent over speaking of these different titles that you've been speaking about you have on here that you're going to be doing more licensed series toppers. Can you give us a little more insight in that? Maybe how many toppers you're doing? Yeah. I mean, we haven't firmed up a specific plan yet. We actually are doing another topper that we're announcing at Expo. It's actually going to be the first commercially available interactive EM topper. So we are doing another pinball topper with Planetary here in a couple of weeks. That'll be announced. That's going to be a lower price point. So we're excited about bringing something different to the market. But getting back to the kind of mainstream, you know, Valley Williams titles, we're, of course, going to be looking closely at what they did with CGC because those are the titles people want. You know, you've got a bunch of other games with really good toppers, and you've got a bunch of games that are being possibly remade or being entered in the pipeline for the first time. So we're looking at all of those. We're looking closely at, like, what Brian Allen has done, looking at like why he made some of the decisions he made and how to augment that experience for people where they've really taken their game like up a notch in a couple of different levels and tap into that type of buyer because at the end of the day like not everybody's into mods certainly not everybody's into toppers and we need to be mindful of like why they're doing things to their game and and really give them you know what they're looking for so we're definitely going to be doing more planetary stuff in the mainstream market uh just haven't really decided exactly which one yet. And we are a company of the people. So come to us, please. Come to the Boots at Expo. Talk to us. If you want to see something, we'd love to talk to you about it and explain to us why that should be our next topper. Yeah, I mean, what do you guys – do you guys have any recommendations among these titles? Because we're certainly curious what people think they would like to see.
    35:48
    Well, I can't – just off the top of my head, I think of the ones that have great toppers already, right? Yeah, yeah. But I guarantee there's something you could do with something like Whitewater. Okay. Where you could definitely – it has the cool effect, but there's a lot of those you can't get at all. And there's a lot of people who are looking at, okay, what else could we do with Whitewater? Whitewater is such a great game that that would be my suggestion is to consider how to do that.
    36:18
    Okay. it's okay i'll put it this way and this is actually what we were getting getting uh down with on current companies that are that are releasing things what makes a great game because a lot of times it's just whatever connection people have whatever experience people have when playing it some people a great game means a competitive layout balanced scoring and something tournament ready. Well, there's a lot of games that don't fit that category that people still like having in their house. And so what is it about that that makes them fun and be able to keep them around? Yeah. You know, Whitewater is an interesting one. We've talked about Adams quite a bit, you know, which obviously tons of those toppers out there came with the topper. It would be an interesting business decision to try to compete with that. But I mean, imagine if we took the house to another level where it's almost like a cuckoo clock and like interactive things are happening in the windows and uh it's a five thousand dollar topper is where i'm getting at no but i mean like there's you know we have a lot of fun with like all these ideas we have to think about licensing even in the case with working with planetary like we can't even with monster bash we have to work around all the different characters adams is probably going to be very difficult to do even with the license whitewater is cool i mean in the sense of it's open from a licensing perspective um in terms of a third-party license uh it would really come down to like how can we tie a a moment in the gameplay um so we would if we did pursue that one we'd probably sit down with someone like you scott and be like hey like what is what do you get excited about achieving in that game and then how can we augment that and then is that special enough to build a topper for yeah so i think i think the one that comes to my mind i mean it's because i've owned it for the last decade is world cup soccer and i know like from a third party standpoint like fifa is a pain in the butt to deal with but just some of the moments in that game when you score a goal yeah you have like a like you know the giant tv over the stands it doesn't have to be like the topper itself but in the corner if it just did go on the back they have fireworks incorporated in that thing if you can make it look like fire like i know you're not gonna have like actual fireworks going off but if you could do plastics with the lights trailing up so it looks like their fireworks going on you know yeah a little crowd articulating every time you make a goal they pop up and they cheer you know yeah stuff like that just you almost make it like you're looking in on the stadium you know the jumbotrons in there and the yeah you can make the characters kind of come to life and that way we wouldn't really need to to work with fifa you know it's like with adams it's like okay you got to do some things to make it an atom stopper but with like world cup you wouldn't have to like you don't have to have the dog up there you know yeah for example so yeah i like that one i mean i'm that that was my attack for you you know you said attack like that game was the one was like okay i get this i'm scoring goals i'm a kid and pinball is awesome um so certainly have a soft spot for that one well even like tim kitsrow would probably even still be up for doing some more call outs because you said you did more like you did sound clips for the topper for attack well that was for the promo video so there's nothing in the topper just to be clear but we uh there's there's a ton of great sounds and we have talked about you know for some even classic em games we're not doing that but like how could you possibly build some sound stuff into it um we we still want to build a topper with some smoke one way or another okay so here's what i did i just pulled up pin side top 100 and just going down and seeing the games that uh so what i'm going to do is i'm going to kind of focus on games that are you know maybe the dmd like pre-2010 yeah um and so i'm looking at games that i'm like how could that take it to the next level okay lord of the rings one don't start yeah okay no i know there's a lot of options but there's also a lot of fantasy options that you could dance around and we react that way because we've got an idea already that we're going to build at some point. I think it's pretty over the top. Okay.
    40:37
    So we do a lot of collaborating with other mod makers. I'll give a shout-out to Jimmy Lifum with 86 Pixels who builds. They did the screen for the back box of Twilight Zone. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yes, I do. Pin Vision. Is it called Pin Vision? I think so. Okay. It may be called Pin Vision. so anyway he made this like screen that sits in the back box of twilight zone and he he may have done it for another and it's it's really cool because it it does it it shows like different modes and shout out to him he spent a ton of time on the white star system which is for lord of the rings because we want to do some stuff with like jackpot one jackpot two jackpot three because that's like a huge moment in that game and we want to know that that's happening and that's a difficult piece of information to know is happening in that game. So with Lord of the Rings, for example, it's like, we know what we want to do. Now we got to figure out how to do it. And we've just got to kind of spend some time with him to kind of get there. But that, that, that's the type of game where we do like targeting that because we know people take that game really far. Right. Like we want to, we want to, that, that would be one of my issues with world cup is like, how many people out there are really taking that game to the ultimate destination? It's ultimate self because we need a lot of people doing that from a business perspective to, to build the top. You're saying buy the game, mod it. Like who's doing that for what games? Cause they're not doing it for world cup. I mean, circus Voltaire, I'll talk about it a little bit because it is on our radar. Like people do do that with circus Voltaire. Like it is an amazing title for a lot of different reasons. People invest money. if you put the led option in the back box it looks really good yeah so um that that's one to where like the volume wasn't crazy high but the passion is there and it seems like an easier choice and they're not going to remake it i wouldn't think maybe i don't know they made fun house but that would be a factor too because we also like even with like thinking about doing something for medieval madness, like they're going to re-release that game and they're going to make those toppers. Like we don't need to compete with that, you know? But there's also like tales of the Arabian nights. There's a lot of really good options there. Theater magic.
    43:07
    Keep going down your list. Yeah. Let's see. Other things that I, that popped up. You could even throw up like ACDC because ACDC didn't have a lot of great options. I know you'd have to deal with licensing in the band, but you could also – you could do a lot of hell themed on that.
    43:27
    Okay. Simpsons again. That would be kind of fun. Simpsons would be cool. Yeah. Tron doesn't have a lot of options, but you could do things. Again, I know you're dealing with Disney. You're dealing with that kind of stuff. but that is a game that if it's i actually had one of the prettiest trons out there that was custom modded and it was it was amazing and so like someone who's really into tron they would definitely do that well in that game i swore that game's probably the top modded game of all time they just be yeah yeah it just there's so many different mods for and everyone has to have i mean that's interesting because like obviously twilight and godzilla would be thrown into that comment but uh you would put tron there too that's good yeah i mean i did the like the light cycle races where it's just literally the topper is just like doing almost like that centipede game where the lights are following each other yeah and if we did tron it would have to be like over the top yeah yeah i like the challenge yeah yeah let's see okay go i now we're kind of getting into like some other stuff uh you know funhouse again they're whirlwind everyone always whirlwinds gargling right whirlwind put a leaf blower up there and just blow their hair back you know it's they're gonna put one of those fans you put on your floor when you've got to dry it out that's what they're gonna put as their topper right yeah it's gonna be we're gonna do three fans or underneath so like so it like blows your legs like whoa Getaway Yeah I guess you're kind of getting down Into the weeds here Flashboard Getaway could be a fun one The siren was a thing right But it's like if you could take that to the next level I think people Yeah Is there a deeper title that we've considered That would surprise these guys I'm trying to think A deep root title A deeper title That was like a Deep Root title. Did they make any? No, no.
    45:32
    They were on the Raza originally. How about the Evaporating Money topper where you just pay for it? Dracula would be a great example of a Deep Root title that we would love. Bob Stoker's Death Draft. Yeah. I mean, I definitely modded a lot too. Yeah. When you put a game in an actual casket.
    45:50
    Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was good. Yeah. We had some good ideas for TNA. Yeah. I can see that.
    45:59
    That would be cool. Yeah. So we did a panel at Expo and bounced around a bunch of ideas. I think that Indy comes out a ton. Oh, Ghostbusters. Yeah. Ghostbusters. Yeah. Well, you look at the toppers that I would say significantly underperformed. You can put Ghostbusters up there. You can definitely put Star Wars. and there's like a billion better mods than having like r2d2 up there i will say hands down our number one request is monster bash and i think that kind of played into our decision to do attack because it's like that many people want that topper and they had it available to them like clearly they didn't hit enough with their toppers for their game so no and they didn't and and the difference between that one and attack from mars like the you know there's some articulate so you got into it with articulation, something that connects with it with the monster bash one. It's okay. I could probably make a similar one by buying some dolls and gluing them up there. And it's, it's so there's not enough connection with the game to make it worth a lot of money. That's why I'm saying medieval madness would still be fine because it's a great topper, but it's just, it's just like monster bash. It's some sculpts that set there, which is fine. It does great, but it's, I think if you took it to the next level, people. Yeah, I mean, definitely like replicating the castle up top and making that articulate. I think it would it would be maybe a hit for sure. I think, you know, we look at the the sculpts and everything, you know, from the CG season. And, you know, of course, we love we love the molded pieces as much as anybody else. But I think we look at the toppers more as a light show, as much as it is, you know, the the the molds and sculpts themselves. right so right you know what's it going to look like in your arcade room and i think a lot of our business is really built around like how can we make people's game rooms more you know and you know more personal than themselves like like how can you mod your game room just like you can mod your game right so yeah the light show that comes off attack from mars if you play in a dark setting which i do but if you play in a dark setting that thing just takes things to another level like we're talking about with the strobe multiball when the topper is going off with it yeah it it takes it up just a whole nother notch and yeah you might have an epileptic seizure but it's worth it you know the other game that really gets modded a lot is a creature from the black lagoon yeah sure yeah we've we definitely spent some time talking about that one not idea wise but just like getting that on the radar i mean it's so loved we're big mod guys i mean we we do pin sound on a bunch of our games and we we take it various degrees when we have the time alec has a t2 that is hands down like the baddest ass t2 i've ever seen um and it's it's like the amount he's put into that um so yeah creature is is right there right it's like people put a lot of time into that one so that would be a good fit yeah that's i we've owned that game in our in my family's history i should say i'd have known him my brother had did but spent a lot of time on it um i was happy to when he got rid of it eventually you're like okay i'm done yeah okay how long have you guys been doing this like i everybody tells their their pinball origin story so like yeah like how long have you guys been really interested in pinball when did you start getting the bug for modding and when did you say you know what we can take it to the next level and actually start making things to sell Yeah You want me to take this one or you want to start off with a comment Yeah It kind of an interesting one I mean well I been in the hobby off and on for a while. Alex has been really into it for longer than I am of recent. I used to go over to his house and kind of joke about how he would have these amazing machines. I think you had like X-Men, which was like five or six K and then you had Lord of the Rings and he would put like a couple thousand dollars worth of stuff into it and i'd be like it doesn't make any sense to me why this needs more stuff it's already freaking amazing and then i got a medieval madness standard cgc and like turned it into a royal and i i was hooked you know i was like oh my god it's so much better and i had so much fun doing it right like that was either the lights underneath because man that was a pain that was like a six hour oh my gosh that was painful i still have that harness because Because it's just like it was so difficult to get out of there. Then we under-cab light? Well, basically, the standard version didn't come with RGB lights. You had to take out all the – is that what you're talking about, Scott? Yeah, yeah. So I did exactly the same thing. I bought the standard, and so I got the – It didn't have RGB lighting. So you had to take out this crazy-ass GI line that goes throughout the entire thing and replace it with a replacement GI line.
    50:54
    So big screen on it. So anyway, so we both got our Godzilla on the same day, premiums. It was about 12 months into the run. Okay. Here's a quick question, though. Yeah. On your speaker light panel, do yours change color or do they just have one color? Just one color. That is the non-royalness of my royal. Okay.
    51:18
    You can actually do it so it can change color. And I did it. Well, I don't have it anymore. Oh, okay. make another you could you could have done it it was it was kind of fun i was able to to figure out how to do that but yeah there's a there's a very unique story about my medieval madness it's not appropriate for this conversation but i'll have to tell you about it at some point it was coming up yeah yeah so uh some but some people sign up to the patreon and you can get yeah exactly um but anyway we got our godzilla on the same day uh we joked about who was taking which one Alec ended up having a major play field issue with his Godzilla uh they got the turd out of the it shipped right below the MagnaSafe so like it literally like started coming apart oh wow so now he's got uh now he's got a play field that'll never get installed right no I got a play field mounted on my wall we fixed the play field Rob and I were able to actually fix the play field Yes, it was fixed and then he got a play field out of it. But anyway, yeah. So like I come from the toy space. So I've done a ton of prototyping with like toys as part of part of another business. Alec and I used to work together. We're good friends now and we're both into the hobby. Got these machines and there was no timetable for the Godzilla topper. So I was like, I'm going to make something. He made one, too. It wasn't nearly as cool what I ended up making, which was layered plastic that originally was based on a photograph of the side of the premium cabinet. And ultimately, I wasn't happy with like the color density of the photograph. So I ended up hiring an artist to like recreate the side cabinet artwork for Godzilla. And I made it and it looked fantastic. I mean, it's basically the layout of the premium cabinet. and uh alec was like i want one because my like has toys on top of my my not so great toys on top of my uh my my godzilla so so we ended up like getting that information out there and we ended up selling a handful of these things because it was like it was pretty expensive to make and that was prior to like officially forming the company so uh that was not compliant with licensing and so this was this was basically a homebrew this is like a fan yeah it was you just doing stuff yeah yeah the the people i mean that we we made less than i think we made like 25 of them you can see them pop up on pin side every once in a while uh and we we decided to do this you know in in that capacity and then eventually uh we alec challenged me to make the most packed pinball machine in pinball twilight zone a topper that would do that justice and that's kind of how we went off to the races was making that topper yeah i'd never seen anything in the market that i felt like really was worthy of you know twilight zone there people were taking that thing off the off the slot machines you know and that was kind of like the biggest like the coolest topper that became the unobtainium thing but these things are selling for like two three thousand dollars and even then i didn't understand it and it just didn't make sense to me for the price point and when we were in that basement just staring at the game like what's the best moments of these this game you know like we kind of just mapped out what our favorite parts of that game were and then of course like wouldn't it be wouldn't it be cool if like what if the gumball actually had a gumball come out like what if we were actually able to make this thing go around and And then that just kind of like pushed things to another level.
    55:02
    So, yeah, so we launched that at TPF 2022. We kind of got things ready. We took it to the show. We started to reach out to media. Kerry Hardy ended up doing our install video for us. I used to think Kerry was the creator of Penn Stadiums because I would watch this video of him installing Penn Stadiums. Like, oh, that's the guy that made Penn Stadiums. So I learned that he did install videos as part of his content. And it was universally praised from the beginning. I mean, despite being $1,600, which is crazy amount of money to spend on a topper, like people were like, I'm rebuying Twilight Zone because I want this topper. And that was, of course, for entering the hobby brand new and fresh. That was the ultimate compliment. For sure. That is. That's awesome. To answer your question, that's actually my origin story is I've re-bought Twilight Zone because I saw. was American Pinball's black and white version that they made. Yeah, that was cool, right? I didn't realize you could do something like that. I'm like, well, now I need to go buy that again. So it was right when COVID started. We just had time on our hands, and I was able to source a game right before the prices all went up and had an awesome project.
    56:16
    Awesome. I'm excited for this topper. This Attack from Mars topper is insanely cool. If you're going to Pinball Expo, you need to check it out. So Joel reminded me, when you guys did TPF this year, you had a peephole at your booth. So you could kind of see what the next little secret was coming. Are you going to have something like that at the booth this year for Expo? I do remember Joel coming by. We did a little highlight reel, and I think I mistyped his last name. So, Joel, I apologize for writing your last name wrong. But he was super excited about it. We had a people, so people could get a little glimpse at it. We do not have that at this show, but we are going to be revealing another topper. As I mentioned, we're going to have a homebrew section within our booth. So we're going to have Brad. I forget his last name, but we're going to have Friday the 13th in our booth, which is a huge title. It won best of show at TPF. And then we're going to have another title from a St. Louis homebrew guy who's brand new to the scene. And this thing is crazy. Yeah, you're going to love it. So we got a 10 by 30 booth. Thank you, Rob Burke, for hooking us up. We got a homebrew section and we're going to have attack and this new topper. And then we're going to have our color Godzilla topper and our black and white Godzilla topper. So we're going to have both those on display with the screens at Expo. Nice. I will say that people think that was my favorite part of TPF. I just watching the people have to bend over and some people that literally probably haven't been over and they got down on one knee and like maybe 30 years. Try to get down to watch, you know, see what the heck they were looking at. everyone thought they were going to be getting an eyeful of something else and then when they actually saw there was like an actual topper we weren't trying to just like you know joke pull a joke on him that was my favorite that was my favorite part of the show that was his brainchild yeah it's it's on instagram go back to march for the electric playground you'll probably see cary hardy with a big cheese on his face when he sees what's inside that hole when you're chained to a booth and you gotta just sit there for hours you need entertainment i can only play so many games of twilight zone and godzone right so that people gave me so much just relief i just watched this i i'd encourage everybody that was like hey you can come look at our people you know it was called the glory hole by the end of it but wow wow yeah that's that's a that's a little different context the uh okay so legit i have a twilight zone and i do have like a pyramid on top but dang, your one looks so good. It's like, that looks like something I would do. We're on a bit of a hiatus on that one right now. We're building other things. Okay, but there's a wait list. It says join wait list. We'll build it again.
    58:58
    Did you see the silver screen edition on there? I did. I was actually, I was there. We haven't really promoted it. So we did end up making, I guess I'll give a shout out to Great American Gaming. They made five, well, they're making some black and white toppers for sale, and they acquired five toppers from us. They're black and white editions. They're going to be coming with that game when you buy it. It'll be expensive, I'm sure, but we've got some available. We actually have a wall version that has actually a working clock, and you can flip a little switch and make the ball go. So we sell quite a few of them to just collectors who used to own the game. Oh, the wall art thing. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, yeah. If you don't have Twilight Zone and you want to pay homage to the amazingness of that game, you can get a wall version of our topper. It's really – and actually the Big Lebowski too. I saw there's a wall art version of the Big Lebowski. So you can definitely experience your stuff if you don't have the games. For sure.
    59:59
    All right. Is there anything we didn't cover that you guys were just like, you got to know about this before we shut this down? No. I think we got most of it. The EM topper that we're going to be doing, I think it's fun to throw a shout out to Rob Burke.
    60:15
    He's been pushing for two years for us to do an EM topper. If you know Rob, you can imagine how those conversations went.
    60:25
    He's like the epitome of why I love this hobby so much. He's just such a crazy, eccentric guy. just never afraid to share an opinion especially when you don't ask for one and he really pushed us to do this EM topper and I think it came out amazing I just can't wait for him to see it and to be there when he gets to see it and actually show that we did this for him and you know see if it actually sells but it's going to be a fun reveal at the very least so make sure people come by the booth to check that out for sure definitely why well some of the old school things are great like i and i totally forgot about this but i remembered it when i when i saw the clip at the end of superman 2 when he goes in and attacks the bully do you guys remember this scene he like puts him on a tray and then throws him down the uh throws him down the bar and the guy crashes into a pinball machine and the back of the pinball machine is the donkey like kicking his head i'm like that's the kind of stuff that that's the kind of stuff that you want to see. You want to see that kind of stuff.
    61:33
    How come they haven't made a classic Superman game? That is just criminal. That is a perfect word. Yeah. All you need is you need the music and you need Christopher Reeve. That's pretty much it. You hit that start button and that soundtrack hits.
    61:52
    I'm in. I'll slide a blank check across the table. The other number feels fair. All right. So our audience has been listening this whole time. If they if you want them to get a hold of you for their topper ideas or for questions or even buying, how do they get a hold of you guys? Yeah, I mean, we're on all the stuff, right? Pinside, of course, our website. We've got a contact form. A lot of people get a hold of us there if they've got like a special request. We don't do like one-off toppers, but if you've got an idea, you know, we'd love to hear about that. Instagram, we've got quite a bit going on there and Facebook as well. So anywhere, but mainly you can find all that through the Electric Playgrounds website, which is teppinball.com. Awesome. And if you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. You can get a hold of us on all the socials, Facebook, Instagram, X, Twitter, Twitch. I guess X and Twitter are the same thing. also if you haven't been noticing we've been sporting our loser kid gear in support of attack from ours we got the loser kid attacks right yeah and so you want to get that silverball swag.com slash loser kid shoes all that jazz the hat list is now officially closed we're no longer taking orders for that we might have some extra expo so if you missed out run into us hey say hi i want a hat see if we can get one you can still get hats we can send them to you but we just don't won't have them ready for Expo. Exactly. So, Scott, give us our last word. I'd like to thank Rob and Alec for coming on, and absolutely go check out this Attack from Mars topper, and if you want to get a better Godzilla topper, check out their Godzilla topper. And we'll see you guys at Expo. This just in, reports are coming in from all over the world. Greetings, Earthling!
    64:01
    Germany, he's victorious! Watch out, men. They've got a big old beam. Look out! Martian! Run away! Jackpot!
    64:47
    Go for the extra ball! Extra ball! Get the troops ready. You cannot defeat our force field. Well done, soldier.
    65:31
    Total annihilation! Woohoo! You rule the universe! Get every available man! The fate of the world is in your hands! owners