it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff keels you can find everything on pinballprofile.com all your subscriptions past episodes and more please join our facebook group we're also on twitter and instagram at pinball profile and you can email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. You have no idea how badly I wish I was in this wonderful country right now. We head to New Zealand and we talk to our good friends, Danielle and David Peck. Hello, Danny. Hello, David. Hello, G. I am so jelly, as the kids like to say, about what's going on there. I don't know if you know this, but there's this thing going on in the rest of the world. It's called a pandemic. There's this kind of COVID virus that's been happening. You haven't probably heard about it New Zealand. Oh, no. Yeah, not at all. Messing things up here. And I know it really just doesn't exist in New Zealand. What's life like? Magical. I mean, I personally work at the hospital. I volunteer there twice a week in two different wards there. And it's really funny. You just sort of don't hear about it. It's sort of like, it's just not really a concern. It's not like they particularly worry unless there's a massive community outbreak. No, it's been really, really very different life, I guess. It's sort of quite normal compared to what I think it's like overseas. We're not always stressing about, have we caught it? Have we done whatever to get it? But yeah, we're sort of just living life, getting by day by day, I guess. Just doing our thing. David, how many times have you heard over the past years, you're out in New Zealand, you're out in the middle of nowhere, and now you're looking back going, yep, yep, you're right, and we love it. Well, it was always at the back of my mind. I mean, living at the bottom of the world definitely has its disadvantages. Like whenever I need to go and visit Josh Sharpe at the World Champs or something, we have to travel 15, 16 hours to get there. But I always knew that when there was a nuclear war, we're the place to be because down here at the bottom of the world, we're pretty safe and sound. So we just live down here and do our thing and leave all you guys to it. But things are, quote, unquote, normal in New Zealand and have been for quite some time. In fact, I think you were telling me, Dave, that you and Danny were playing pinball as early as May. That's kind of when things opened up last year. That's right. We had the year when COVID first came out, what, February, March, I guess, last year. We went into a whole nationwide one-month lockdown, which was a strict lockdown. And I always laugh with my American friends about their lockdowns. But our one was a real lockdown where the only thing that was open was like the supermarket and the petrol station. That was the gas station. That was it. Everything else was closed. So everyone had basically a month vacation, stayed at home. You're only allowed to walk around the block for a bit of exercise. And then that was good. Yeah, got rid of all the COVID that was in the country, all disappeared. And yeah, months later, we could go back to what we were doing. So we started pinball tournaments. I think the 20th of May was our first one. And we had, I think, about 35, 40 people showed up. And yeah, we're just back to our normal schedule of having pinball tournaments every three or four weeks, like we have done for the last nearly 10 years now. Danny, I know you're at school currently. You're in your final year of university. By the way, Danny's 19. That's how brilliant you are. And you said you're volunteering at the hospital. But what happened in that lockdown? Was school closed and was it just short-lived like your dad said? Yeah, pretty much. I think my university did an interesting thing. So during that, because we have a like four-tier alert level COVID system, during alert levels four and three, which are the highest tiers, university goes fully online. So probably, yeah, maybe half a year, the equivalent of half a year, we were fully online. You know, we hang out and it's like, yeah, nothing's ever really happened. In a way, and there are not many positive things at all about the pandemic, but you were busy with university and school, so you weren't able to travel a lot. So the fact that the IFPA and competitive pinball shut down for the last year plus, that kind of worked well with your schedule. So you're not really missing much, are you, Dani? That is true. It actually has given me a good chance to sort of just sit down and focus on my studies, which has been sort of a nice change. It's been interesting seeing how really COVID and the pandemic has really changed my perceptions and priorities in life. I'm like, okay, no, for now, we're not doing any traveling. We're just going to hunker down here and get really comfortable with the uni and get through it because I'm planning to go on to postgraduate studies. Where are you going to be doing your postgraduate? So I plan to stay at the same university that I'm at right now, which is the University of Auckland. It's like New Zealand's sort of biggest university. And I'm currently studying psychology and statistics. So I actually don't know what I want to go on to do, whether I go on to do post-grad statistics or psychology. Either way, I'm very excited to continue on doing things that I love. I remember that time when university or college, when that came to an end and you thought, oh, I've got to get a job. Oh, and I've had jobs before. I need a career. Is that settling in? Do you know kind of at least career-wise what you want? Maybe not so much postgraduate, but where you want to go next? Yeah, definitely. I mean, there are so many options with really the subjects that I've done, but I'd really love to either go fully clinical psychology and sort of work in the DHB, like the hospital system, and work with the people who I've, you know, met throughout my time volunteering there, or go into data analysis with statistics if, you know, clinical didn't work out. Or, you know, maybe both. Why not a bit of both, you know? Life is very long these days, and I can probably get away with doing a bit of both. You know how it is. Yeah, life is very long. Very, very long. Until you're me and Jeff's age, then life is very short. No, I tell you what. I tell you what. When I fell off my scooter the other week, I got a little e-scooter. Once I fell off my scooter the other week, I was like, that's it, man. I've got to do what I love, don't I? Oh, I've got to. Oh, okay, no. I'm not going to start talking about that. That's a too long story. I'll keep talking. Okay. Continue on. But you're okay from the little wipeout, I hope. Oh, yes, yes. No, we're all right. It took a little minute. I saw my pinball career flash in front of my eyes, but we're okay now. When I had my kids, when I started my family, I kind of stopped doing the risky things. I'm not saying riding a scooter is risky, but I'm just saying, you know, I wasn't going to be doing things that might put myself in jeopardy. And I don't know, call me a chicken, whatever. uh dave for you it's a little different i know you were into the racing for quite some time and uh but that's kind of come to a stop now isn't it yeah when you get to a certain age jeff where you figure out that your motor racing costs so much money you can just buy more pinball machines instead so also what's doing the uh the big target race around new zealand which is a famous uh race where you race race around all the country roads and you in your fast cars and we went off the road and my co said we had a car stop right on the side of a 100 fall and we just walked away from it no big deal But my co-driver looked at me and went, we could have been killed then. And I said, yeah, we could have been. What do you reckon? And he never got back in a car again after that. But I kept on going for a few more years. But then the novelty of working 24 hours a day, fixing up racing cars and lying on old concrete floors and taking your gearboxes out. The novelty ran out of that. So now I just stick with fixing pinball machines instead and doing up old houses. That's what I've been doing for the last year. I've seen some of your posts on Facebook. It's very impressive. And I have firsthand experience too. It was years ago. I was having trouble with my Flight 2000 and you reached out to me. I'm seeing this, oh, there's Roto Dave. And what's he got? And you helped me with the fix. And some were easy. Some were a little more complicated. but that's what I love about the pinball community is the willingness to help others and we're all in this fraternity, sorority together. We're all in one big family and there to help other people out so that the community grows. And with your collection, you must be fixing machines all the time. To be honest with you, when you've got 100 pinball machines, it is a full-time job and I'm lucky enough to be sort of – I call myself semi-retired, but I've worked 300. Last year I worked 360 out of 365 days restoring this old house that we were talking about. So I'm just lucky that I just don't have to work a 9-to-5 job. But all the time that I'm not working on the house, I'm fixing pinball machines for people to come around and play when we have our big events because all the big events in New Zealand are held in my house. So we need to keep them all going. And lucky enough, I've been doing pinball now for 30 years, so I've picked up most of the skills along the way. And I can fix 9 out of 10 things I can fix myself. every now and again I need to get someone to do a logic repair on a board or something which is a bit beyond my pay grade but everything else I can do no worries and yeah I love to help people out because everyone's got to start somewhere so most problems when you know what the problem is they're actually really easy to fix it's just knowing what the problem is so you can fix it so yeah when I see someone with a problem online I don't mind reaching out on Pinsight I'm always helping people giving them the tip on how to do little easy repairs because you know if you're going to pay someone $80 to come around and fix up your pinball machine every time it breaks you're going to be a very poor man you talked about having some of the events at your home i have to tell you the one that you did last year and it was in march i was so in awe i was like i've got to get to new zealand i just left australia i could have stayed another month headed over to the pecs for the fish tales symphony for those that don't know please explain what this wonderful tournament was right well that's the brainchild of another guy here in new zealand simon hexston who's played in the world champs in fact he came to canada last time uh so you might have run into simon uh that was his idea and it was all part of the big pin cave thing that we have every march this year it was just before the pandemic so what simon has always been simon's dream we got 10 fishtails from most of them were from the wellington area i loaned him some fishtails parts to make up the big display one that he had with the big fish coming through which you would have seen in the photos and then it was sort of like a speed challenge on all the machines so you'd get 10 people standing up to the machines at a time now you had some goals simon would call out what the goal was so some of the goals were start multiball uh start feeding frenzy what else do you have monster fish yeah some of those things so you had to have to do those in a certain time and whoever was the first guy to get it held hold up your hand and you got 10 points and the second person got nine points and eight points and so on so yeah that went really really well i think we had from memory 40 people in it i ended up winning that and then our guests from sweden johan came second i think from memory it's going back a long time jeff you know we're getting old but no it's a great event and the next one he wants to do he wants to do a getaway one because down in wellington just about everyone's got a getaway pinball so we're probably going to do a getaway one next time we're down in wellington next year so maybe you can come down for that one oh fingers crossed that would be so nice but danny what are the tournaments you've been able to sneak in between the odd school here and there over the last year oh pretty much just any of the monthly tournaments we do we haven't really had any big ones obviously since uh covid and then the pin cave covid really hit. I mean, that's really it. I can't hop over the ditch to go to any sort of Brisbane Masters type thing because we've still got travel restrictions here where basically if you leave the country and you come back, you have to stay in an isolation hotel for two weeks and I just can't afford that with my schoolwork. But the monthly is always fun. I get to play with my best friends, aka my parents and my other best friend Mitchell and it's all fun and games and it's always good. The last time I saw you both was at indisc in 2020 in january and danny a former indisc women's champion it was nice to see the banner there from 2018 and some great work and commentary and always a lot of fun playing and dave um we met in a classics tournament i think i didn't do very well and watching you in fact really beat the hell out of me you rolled something what was it i can't remember some uh Wizard, I think. Wizard or Captain Fantastic. Yeah, I like the older games. Now, to be honest, a lot of the new games, because I haven't got new pinballs now, just getting so expensive that I'm not buying them anymore. So some of those, the more modern games, I don't even know the rules of. I still haven't played an Avengers, haven't played a Guns N' Roses, haven't played a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We just don't have them here, so I never get to play them. So last time I went to Indus, I just concentrated on the classics. I know all those games, and I've made the classics finals every year. unfortunately um by the time i've got a sort of mental condition where i get a little bit tired at the end of the day so every time the finals roll around i usually bomb out in the first round so um i qualify strongly and then run out of puffs so that's the way it is but i've gotten the finals i've been every the last three or four years we've been there so that's been good times but um never progressed too high there but uh yeah but you smoked me and you could go back to new zealand with that and i know that was exciting for you and uh kudos to your excellent play i had a picture of that, Jeff, and I blew it up and stuck it on my wall. And it's something that inspires me every day. I get up in the morning and have to go and do another hard day's grind, but I look at that picture of defeated Teolis and I feel a lot better about myself. My self-esteem boosted greatly and I go out there to slay the day, you know? Yeah. It's been a great thing, Jeff. Thank you for doing that. I don't mean to burst your bubble, but there are a lot of those photo opportunities where people have smoked me in pinball competitions. So you're not alone there, Dave, but kudos to you for what you did. at InDisc and the Museum of Pinball looks like it's going to be moving. I mean, the current banning facility is an awesome facility. So old Mr. Weeks must really want to expand it. He wants to double the size of that. I mean, it's crazy big as it is now. So goodness me, if it's going to be twice the size, that's something to look forward to. The new Papa-like tournament, it was like that for January 2020 when we went to InDisc. So it certainly had that feel with all the different variety of games, machines available, the free play area boy that could be a week event and you still wouldn be able to do everything I think that the way that you organized tournaments before Geoff and the logistics of moving machines and that around like Pinberg used to do, it's just such a huge undertaking. You really need a big facility like I've got at my house here with my 100 machines and I can handle the most I've ever had here is 120 people, which for New Zealand is pretty big, but somewhere like Indus where they've got the machines there and if the local guys there can get all those machines up to competition standard. I know usually at Indus, Carl and Jim bring in a lot of their machines and Jay rather than using the museum's machines. But in time, that'll get up to be like a puppet type facility. And then, yeah, definitely run a 10-day tournament like they do at the Brisbane Masters and the big one that they run in Germany. I think that's the way of the future, have those big tournaments and have all the machines in permanent locations. I think that's the way we're going to be going. I think so too. You talk about your large collection. Everyone knows you have every System 11 game, and the collection grows. You mentioned you like the older games, and costs certainly have gone up in pinball, whether it's the bill of materials for the parts themselves. You add to your collection. I've never found out from you, have you ever sold any of your machines? I mean, you have all the System 11s. You can't break up that collection. But for people who have smaller collections, there's a lot of rotation of games just for the variety aspect. What's it like for you? Well, my place is a little bit of a pinball graveyard. They do tend to come here and die. But we know certainly machines come and go. I sold, during the pandemic, I sold 15 machines just to clear out some room. I really wanted to change the orientation of the main room I have here so I can make it a little bit more people-friendly so I can handle the big crowds. So I cleared out a little bit of dead wood, and 15 machines sold over a four- or five-week period really made a big difference. I had 135. I think I'm down to 119 now, which is still insane. But you've got to remember, most of those machines I bought 10, 20 years ago, I think the average price I was paying for a pinball back then was $1,000. $1,000 New Zealand dollars. So I've certainly done quite well financially out of the collection, should I ever turn around and sell it. Okay, so games do come in and out, and I've seen some pictures of some of the newer games, like certainly Rick and Morty, and I know you're big fans of Spooky. I know Danny and I are both kind of sad that the Spooky Podcast came to an end a few months ago. That was something that's very important to you, wasn't it? Yeah. I said, well, I'll explain. The Spooky Podcast was like, I just feel like the Spooky Podcast allowed me to sort of expand my horizons and allowed me to connect with so many lovers of pinball, which was like really cool. And I mean, the spooky people are just so lovely. And it was great to be able to like form a nice connection with those guys because they really are so lovely. It was just fun. It's fun to be able to sort of get to share knowledge of games or even have to research games. And I think it actually gave me a deeper knowledge of the games I was talking about. So, yeah, I suppose it's a whole lot of that. Yeah, we just talked to Charlie Emery on Final Round that I do with Martin Robbins on the Pinball Network. And I don't know anybody anywhere that doesn't root for Spooky Pinball and the Emery family and for their success because we certainly like their business model. We like what they've done to their community, and God bless them for everything they're doing. Yeah, no, definitely. I've met Charlie and all the family, and they're all just very, very reminiscent of us here in New Zealand. That part of the country up there, too, is very similar to New Zealand. They've got a great community up there, northern Illinois, Wisconsin area. I went up there when I drove around America in a hearse, what, 2014, that was, and met all those guys like Jay and Hilton, all that whole, yeah, Scott and EC and Terry at Pinball Life. they're all really really good genuine guys they have real great pinball competitions up there play a lot of dollar games just got such a great community and charlie's part of that they all get on so well and yeah good on charlie and ben you know sort of starting off making the game in their little uh in their little incubation room and yeah it's just gone that's the way to start a business you start no different from how i started my furniture business we started at small and then grew up where we had three or four shops you know so yeah start small baby steps and away you go he's done it exactly the right way so and we can see other examples of people who've done it the wrong way and we've all seen how they ended up but charlie's done it the right way and so good on him well don't sell yourself short because you're a bit of a pinball innovator yourself because you decided to re-theme a game and boy it just took off when you made a led zeppelin pinball machine stern went oh you know what that's a great idea we saw what david and the Peck family's done. We're going to make Led Zeppelin, too. So that's all because of you. I don't know about that. I'm pretty sure they had it in the pipeline before I hacked into it. But, yeah, I had that belly freedom lying around, and the whole thing started because I'd always wanted to retheme a machine. We were originally going to make a Death Note, an anime machine, a slightly more modern machine. But I had that freedom lying around, and it was a bit crappy. So I thought, well, let's do something with that. And it was a 1976 machine. That's my favorite era of EM machines. Those are 74, 75, 76 ballets like Captain Fantastic and Wizard and Old Chicago, Bow and Arrow, that sort of era. So what are we going to do? So what's a good theme that was big in 76? So you've got some movies around. Clockwork Orange was one I'd considered a lot of because that's one of my favorite movies. But Led Zeppelin was the obvious one to go for because they were the biggest band in the world in the mid-70s. They were a big influence on me when I picked up the guitar back when I was 12, 13 years old. So, yeah, let's hack into it. So we rethemed it. I mentioned it on the Head to Head podcast a couple of years ago. Brad Brad Albright from Texas was nice enough to drop me a line straight after he heard it on the podcast, and what a great contact that was. I gave him direction as to which direction I wanted to go and then just let him go with it. He came back with a couple of ideas, and we tweaked them a little bit here and there to bring it into the era of the machine because the whole idea wasn't to make a Led Zeppelin pinball. It was to make a 1976 Bally Led Zeppelin pinball, so we wanted to match the Captain Fantastics and the Wizards that came out at that time. And so the highlight of the whole project was when the New Zealand Stern distributor said, when Stern did announce Led Zeppelin, he posted up on Facebook, oh, finally, we have a brand new Led Zeppelin pinball machine that rivals the old one that came out in the 70s and it had a picture of my pinball machine underneath. So even the New Zealand Stern distributor thought it was an old one. So that was pretty cool. That is hilarious. I didn't realize that's so good. Yeah, it sucked. But that was the whole idea was I don't like things that if you've got an EM machine, you don't want to put Back to the Future on it because Back to the Future came out 10 years after EMs, you know, or you don't want to put an anime theme on an EM. To me, that's not right. So you want to do something time specific or era specific. So that's why Led Zeppelin was there. Another one you could do would be Black Sabbath. Some of those bands that were around if you want to go music for that sort of thing like they did with the Beatles machine and try and theme it a little bit like an EM with the EM scoring that they have on the back glass I think that the way to go and make it sort of like era like that And yeah if I can suck people into thinking it really is a belly it actually says belly on the back glass I think that the way to go make it sort of era like that If I can suck people into thinking it really is a belly it actually says belly on the back glass When Brad first did the artwork he wrote Peck on the back in belly writing, but I made him take it off and put belly back on. That's so cool. Danny, since the last time I saw you, what are the games that you've been playing the most? I know you're excellent at every era of machine, but what are the ones you find yourself going back to? So I definitely think Rick and Morty's been one of the games that I've played the most lately, just because the code's awesome and the theme integration's just so, so good. And the games are really challenging and really fun. Aside from that, I still play Alice Cooper Heats, because I just love Alice Cooper in general. I'm still waiting for my Judas Priest pinball machine, thanks very much. You're a Priest fan? I had no idea. Oh yeah, Judas Priest is my favourite. Rob, help it. Okay, no, I've got to tell the story. Now see, he's got me going. just, it was in 2019, I went to see Judas Priest live. Dad took me to see Judas Priest live. And it was like, oh, goodness, no, I can't. I'm fangirling. Rob Halford walked out on stage and I started crying. Like, it was like seeing Metal Jesus. And I say it every time, but it's true. I love Judas Priest. My favorite album would probably be, hmm, oh, my God, am I completely nerdy now? British Steel. British Steel's a jank, but. Can I keep going? Yes, keep going, Dan. Keep going, Dave. Screaming for Vengeance is my favorite album, but I must say that Desert Plains is one of the best songs ever, and no one can find me on that. It's great. I love it. Rob Halford is my life, and that's all. Oh, that's so funny. British Steel's Garbage, okay. What was the one that she said was her favorite? Screaming for Vengeance. Slightly heavier, Jeff. We're slightly heavier than you, buddy. You stick with your Led Zeppelin, buddy. I've seen Priest live twice. Hold on a second here. That's more than me. let me just tell you they were the headliner motorhead opened and in between was heaven and hell with dio oh that's cool yeah i saw that they came here don't tell danny this and i'm glad her headphones aren't working judas priest was in third like motorhead blew everyone away deal was on fire by the time you got to judas you're like oh well after you've seen i think for me uh for me dio is uh is heavy metal jesus he's for sure and followed probably by david coverdale but uh that's another thing you love coverdale can i tell you the coverdale page album is spectacular yeah i didn't get into that so much sort of sounded a little bit like zeppelin ripoff obviously but early white snake and and deep purple burn and stormbringer oh honey just and even come taste the band with tom rebowland you should check out my record collection one day listen i i will for sure sorry we're going off track here but uh okay so you mentioned a few bands it looks like you'd like to see Judas Priest, maybe Black Sabbath, some of these bands come out as maybe the next pinball theme machine. Are we still going to be doing more of the older rock bands, do you think? Or do you think eventually we'll get into maybe some hip hop, maybe some pop music? Where do you think we're going to go next with music pins? Well, definitely none of those, because unfortunately, the people who buy pinballs who splash out 10 grand for an alley, they're all old guys. So old guys aren't going to be buying any hip hop or Miley Cyrus. So that's just going to, you're going to see more and more. You may be a Black Sabbath, or something like that. I mean, personally, I never buy a pinball on theme anyway, so even if they made an under-oath pin tomorrow or a testament machine, I'm not going to be buying it anyway unless it's the best pinball machine. It's the same with Iron Maiden. I'm like a huge Iron Maiden fan back when I was a teenager, but it had to be a good pinball machine. So I waited to see, make sure it was a good pinball machine, then I picked up a second-hand one down the track. But I think that's where you're going to see more of the same because they're the pinballs that people buy, you know? So school's wrapping up for you this year and everything's fine in New Zealand. What's the next big pinball event in your country? Oh, that's a good question. I think that later this year we are planning to have the Southern Hemisphere Pinball Competition, which is normally a good 100 people. Normally some Australians will fly over and it looks like we're sort of opening our borders to them. So hopefully by the time sort of September, October rolls around, sort of whenever we end up scheduling it, depending on COVID, some Australians can come over and we can have a big weekend-long tournament filled with pinball. It's sort of our little IFPA pinball, like World Champs rip-off, but just for the Southern Hemisphere, because not everyone in New Zealand wants to spend way too much money to fly over to America or Europe to compete in that style of tournament. I think that's a pretty good explanation of what that sort of is as a tournament. What time of year do you normally run that? I know things are obviously a little shaken up with the pandemic, but when do you typically like to have that tournament? Well, normally our biggest tournaments in New Zealand, every March, usually at the beginning of March, we have our big pincade, which is the one where we have that this year. We have the Fishtail Symphony, also the World System 11 Championships that I run at my place, and the pincade classics. So the last couple of years, we've had around 100 people in each of those. And then in October, we have the Southern Hemisphere Pinball Championship, which we started up a few years ago, which is our sort of version of the European Pinball Championships, or maybe the American pinball championships, and I run it in a Pinberg style because, as Danny says, not everyone in New Zealand wants to spend, you know, $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 to travel to Pinberg. Of course, I can't go to Pinberg anymore. So we basically ripped off Pinberg, and we call it Pukiburg because it's in Pukekohe. In the shirt, to most Americans, it looks like Pukeburg. It does look like Pukeburg. Because they don't know Maori. So, yes, it's actually Pukiburg, but it looks like Pukeburg. So I get lots of email requests wanting Pukberg shirts, which is quite amusing. But last year we had, when we did it, actually because last year, we run it at a different time this year, but normally it's every October. So our big ones are in March and October. And then we have the Brisbane Masters, which is around about July. So that's in Queensland, which is only a three-hour plane flight away for us. So last year we went over there in good Kiwi. I think about 10 Kiwis went over for that. I got fifth. Another guy got seventh. And I think Simon got tenth. So we had a good turnout at Brisbane last year as well. So those are the big three tournaments down under. So nice. And hopefully we can get there soon and there can be some international travel. But we'll get there. It's just not right now. But I love what you guys are doing. All the best to you, Danny, with school. Dave, with all your machines and your renovations. I appreciate you coming on the program today. No worries, Jeff. Always good to talk to you. And we'll see you again next year. Yes, thank you so much for having us, Jeff. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. Check us out on Facebook. We're also on Instagram and Twitter at pinballprofile. And you can email us, pinballprofile at gmail.com. I'm Jeff Teolas.