you're listening to the head to head people podcast find us on facebook email us at Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 70 and my name's Martin and with me... It's Brian C. And Marty, you've got about four pinball machines, I think, so your pinball penis is fairly small to me. I would say it's micro, for sure. It's a micro penis. I've got 26 or so, so I've got a pretty big pinball penis. That's a big slong. It's a big song, okay? And it's almost down to my knee. But our next guest in the pinball penis measuring contest pales in comparison to us because he's got the biggest penis of all time, Marty, with 126 machines. He carries his pinball penis in a wheelbarrow in front of him. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, all the way from New Zealand, David Peck. Hello, boys. Have you seen my pinball pooners? What sort of intro is that? Well, I mean, admittedly true, but sure. We don't have an industry person on the show this week, so let's, you know, let loose a little bit this time, okay? Yeah, sure. Unloose. Indeed. Okay. So, a bit dry on news this week, but we did get to see Stern Pinball's Beatles at IAFA. Yes, we did. What did you think of the awesome footage provided? Well, look, there was some pretty low-res footage that was out there. I actually got sent some higher-res imagery. I think it looks good. It looks fun. I saw a multiball in action, and I think that's where the machine itself really shines. It looks good. What did you think? I noticed that it was the first Timor machine, Marty. unless the... I mean, I just saw footage from a cell phone, but I think it's the first pinball ever that's been introduced with warm white LEDs. Amazing. Round of applause. Is that a good thing? Yeah. Okay, cool. It's meant to be a classic game, but it's meant to look retro. It is a bit weird, right? It's almost like a pinball machine with an identity crisis because on the LCD screen, you've got the EN score reels, it's a sea witch layout, which is a solar state, and it's a LCD pinball machine. So which pinball machine is it, Marty and Dave? Can't it be a combination of everything that's a new genre in itself? A new genre of all the genres? It's a new retro something. So, Dave, you've got a lot of pinball machines. How many Beatles have you ordered? Unfortunately, Ryan, none because they're $15,000 New Zealand dollars so a little bit out of my price range but it looks like a really cool machine and I'm sure it's really, really fun to play I saw some of the footage as well from IAPA and yeah, it looks like a cool machine to play but I realise what Stern's trying to do and going for the collector market but unfortunately, that's sort of not really what I am I'm not really a Beatles collector and I haven't really got $15,000 So, unfortunately, you are a pinball machine collector though, right? Yeah, I am. But the reality for me here in New Zealand is for $15,000, I can bring in six or seven old classic machines from like Los Angeles and that's where I'm at. You know, I can buy, even though they have gone up a lot now, especially in California, but you can still buy like I bought, just looking in my garage here at the moment, I just got a bow and arrow not long ago, real nice bow and arrow for 900 US bucks. Got a wizard for 900 bucks not long ago. Captain Fantastic for a grand. So I can buy a heap of machines like that. So 15 grand New Zealand's just a little bit, you know, for a machine that, you know, it's not going to really get a lot of play. It's 15 grand is a lot of coin, you know. It was weird because I only realized when we saw the footage that we hadn't seen, like everyone was talking so much about the Beatles that no one had actually seen it. and I guess everyone was okay with that because the layout is so similar to Sea Witch, but I'd be really interested to see if the people who are buying it kind of get sick of it because a lot of the people that I know that are buying it don't have those classic games and maybe they don't enjoy those more shallow rule sets. You also see the same with TNA, though. If you go through the TNA, like I've got a TNA, and for me a TNA it's a little bit, even though it's a great game it's almost a little bit superfluous because I've got so many classic games where if you go into the TNA owners thread a lot of the dudes that have got TNA and are really praising it are guys that haven't got classic machines so for a lot of those guys it's their first it's almost like the gateway drug if you know what I mean they might trundle off and go and buy a fathom or a sinkhole somewhere down the track but that's the thing though, do they all after a year of owning it, like, realize that it doesn't have that depth and complexity of some of the newer J.J.P. or Stern games? And do they all kind of, like, then get put on the market? Or, I don't know, as I said, it's one or the other, right? Like, they're either going to fall in love with the classic games, or they're going to realize they're a little bit shallow, and they don't enjoy maybe playing them as much as playing the other games. So then in your collection, Dave, having lots of old and lots of new, how much game time does it get for you playing it? On TNA? Yeah. I've got to be honest, I mean, I really love the game and I love what Scott did with it but I'll be honest, it doesn't get a lot because you know, there's so many games here and I'm only at the big house half the time and I'm up in the city working in the city the other half of the time so normally when I'm out there, like I've been playing pinball all day today, I've just been rebuilding my skateboard which is nearly finished with a playfield swap and that and between that I've been playing, actually been getting a little bit more into the 90s belly guns, which I don't really give a lot of love because I've had some of those for 10 or 15 years now. So I've been playing some Twilight Zone today and a bit of Fishtails and a bit of Funhaus. And I know, that's tough. And then yesterday, my wife's on a real tear with the EM machines because she's got a good chance of beating me on those. So normally, we try and get out to the garage every couple of days, the EM machines, because you've really got to play the EMs all the time or else they seize up and don't go properly. So, you know, she can whip my ass on the EMs. We came out and played four last night, and I think she won three and I won one. But she won't dare take me on on ACDC or Metallica or anything because she gets wasted. That's crazy. When you have a collection as big as yours, Dave, then I guess you don't really need to play every game all the time. Well, I mean, it's probably impossible to do that when you have 120 plus. but I guess you can ride the wave and just gravitate towards a certain era of pinball machines, and then you're not buying and selling because you have a small amount of space. That's true, and I do try to go around and play them all, because if you don't play them all the time, then if you only turn them on once a year, then generally they don't work when you turn them back on again, especially the older ones. So I do go around, and I do have a lot of events here. I mean, we have an event at this house every couple of months, so there's always people coming and going, and we've said that we can keep on top of it that way. But we do rotate around and play a lot of games all the time. So I don't play a game, like if I buy a new machine like TNA, whereas a lot of people might buy it and then play 2,000 or 3,000 games in a row, I might only play it. But I might play it 50 times and then not play it again for three or four months because I'll be playing, you know, I'll be fixing my skateboard and then I'll be playing Funhaus or something, you know? So, look, the thing that people have mentioned about Beatles really is they like the layout, they like the game, and it probably would fit nicely in your collection. People have sort of talked about the price, really. Oh, yeah, I like it, and I really like Sea Witch too, and Sea Witch is a game that I haven't got, although I did have one at my house for a couple of years because my buddy had a few pins, and I put them in the house here for him because they were just in storage, so I set them up and got them going for them. And Sea Witch is a great game. And I really like Beatles, but not for 15 grand like it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay, guys. Listen to these four pinball machines. Alice Cooper, Nightmare Castle, Ghostbusters, The Beatles, and Rolling Stones. What do those four machines have in common? Sorry. Okay. Screaming Girls. Wow. Okay. So they all have screaming girls. And it's one of those weird things, kind of like that Houdini thing, where you don't notice the slingshots, and then when you stream it, that's all you hear is the chuckling girls in the screenshots. When I was watching that footage, every time I went to the pop bumpers, instead of a cool retro sound, it's screaming girls. So let's see how annoying that is. You're a sound guy, though, Ryan, so you notice all that sort of stuff. Yeah, you just notice that kind of stuff. Whereas, yeah, normal people probably wouldn't even notice that. Yeah. Notice, like, the sound that's coming, like, out of a pinball machine that you're playing. Anyway. Maybe leave it on. So the other massive, massive news of the week, Ryan. Massive news. Everybody was talking about it. Yes. 1966 1.0 code. Can you insert the Celebrate Good Times music? Which one? The cool in the gang or the Kylie version of... What is it? The original. The original. I'll do that. The original all the way. So there's not really much that's been added to it. I think all the Super LA Customs speech is now there to enable it. So it's just the final one. The note was... This is in the notes, right? that you download with the firmware. It says, note to SLE owners, email a photo of your game along with your name and serial number to bugreports at sermpimble.com to have your features enabled in the next release. That is so weird. It's like, why can't they just let... I don't know. Are they going to lock it to the serial number or something? Yeah, of course. You've got a premium, right? I'm sure there's a day that those 80 people can be like three or four days. Dave, we'll have one. Initially, Stern offered me one of the original, I think, 30 Super LEs, which is very, very nice of them. Is that without a video? No video. No video required. But, yeah, I ultimately turned them down because, again, it was going to be super expensive. But I did end up getting a premium later on, and it's a super great game, and it's been interesting watching the code come along. But there is a Dave in there, so I've always wondered whether that was my original Dave because I had my name down for one, or whether it's another Dave, I'm not too sure. But it would be cool if he said Dave, so it would be a good way to, if we can figure out a way to hack it, that would be pretty cool. Well, there probably is, because this might all be for nothing, because basically, I think the callout is, like, Dave, and then get to the bat phone. So there's Adam West saying, like, 80 names, right, and there's 80 different sound callouts. if that's all it is then I guess all you need to do is go into the pinball browser and change, I don't know, what's the normal sound Dave when he wants you to answer the bat phone? Good question. But yeah, to be honest I don't know what it says because I've been doing this funny bat phone challenge thing and good segue, good segue. So I haven't been answering the bat phone. I've been trying not to answer it anyway. I've been trying to rig up as much score on the bat phone as I could. There you go. So, yeah, anyway, we did that on Pinside last week, I think. We decided to have a Batphone challenge. See who could get the highest score on the Batphone. So you've got to hit the little target and try and crank that up. And at the end of the day, we got some good ones up in the hundreds of thousands. In the end, I got it up to nearly a billion. I couldn't quite crack the billion, but I got up to 985 million just Batphone hurry-ups. So you can just keep on going and going and going. Is that a valid strategy for tournament play, or does it all disappear once you drain the ball? Yeah, no, it'd be pretty risky. Maybe if your name was Bowen or Keith, you could probably pull it off, but if your name was Dave or Marty or Ryan, it'd probably be pretty risky because if you drain, it all goes down the toilet and you've got to start all again. But it's good fun to do, and it's actually very good skills practice as well because you've got to catch the ball and hit this tiny little target and then try not to hit the bat phone and collect it. So it was very frustrating, though, trying to get it up to... I got 950 on my first attempt, and then it took me about 50 games to get it up to 980. It was good fun. Marty, you've probably played any Batman 66, have you? I play... Well, no, that's... It's actually more paradise now, and now I actually have to learn how to play it. I know it's a long-playing game, so I'm not sure how to... I remember for a few hours. So I got to play a lot of it. Yeah, I was there. I played one game and I was like, all right, I've had enough. Yeah, no, I actually quite like it. And, you know, one did come up recently for sale, like a, I think it was a premium and it was just over 10K. And I looked at that and went, oh, you know what? If I was in the market for one, that would be something I would get. I do quite like it. Yeah, that's pretty good. What are they new in Australia, price-wise? Twelve and a half, I think they were. So your chain grain's pretty good. Now, I'd hardly recommend the game. There's so much into it, and it's probably one of Lyman's best games up there with Walking Dead. The codes, it's a little bit like Lord of the Rings in the way that you can approach it. There's a number of different, well, Lord of the Rings is probably a little bit more, you've got to do the things, but Batman, you can go main villains, you can go minor villains. If you do certain minor villains, they have effects on what happens next. So there's so much different in the game. Is one of the minor villains a two-ball multiball? Yes. Yeah, that's Shame, Shame the Cowboy. So that's probably the best tournament strategy if you're playing it, would be to start at one of the four major villains and then go straight into Shame. That'll give you a two-ball multiball. And there's two of those. So there's a Season 1 and there's a Season 3 Shame, and both of them are two-ball multiballs, which you can add a ball to by the mystery hole around the back. So that's a good valid thing. But all the minor villains... When you lose the balls that are in your minor villain multiball, can you just then start it again? You can then just go straight back into two-ball multiball? No, no. So any of the minor villains that you start, you can only play them once. Unless you do... There's another minor villain, the first one, which is Mad Hatter, season one. If you beat that one, then you can just play any of them over and over and over again. So each one of the minor villains, and I think we're up to about a dozen of them now, each one of them has different powers. So, yeah, Mad Hatter, who's the first one. It's time to learn all of this shit, man, and holy crap. One thing I like about Lyman's stuff, even though it seems complicated, like ACDC maybe seems complicated, but I can figure them out pretty easily, whereas Wizard of Oz and that, that's still like, I don't know, the hell's going on there? I've never been able to figure that thing out. So maybe it's just Lyman. I'm the opposite. I feel like I can figure out Keith P. Johnson games easier and Lyman games seem easier, but there's all this hidden stuff in the background that I don't know how it's working and what the scoring is. Like when Raymond Davidson was talking about when you finish a mode on Walking Dead and that shot's worth more. There's nothing on the D&D that explains that at all. That's invisible. But I think that that stuff, that's the beauty of Lyman's stuff, is that that's the cream on the top. So you don't need to know any of that stuff, you know, unless you're particularly a little retentive or something, but you don't need to know that stuff to be successful. You can walk up to Walking Dead and pound away at the prison or pound away at the well walker and have a shit-hop game, get a couple hundred million points, whereas some of the other games, like Simpsons Pinball Party, it's a little bit harder to do that, if you know what I mean. It's a little bit less accessible. So that's what I've always thought anyway. Yeah, great. So Ryan, explain to me horses of a different colour in Woz. So there's a bunch of horses on the playfield, right? And if you match, and you can hit the shot, and in the corner of the LCD screen, the horse will then be collected. Now, if you collect all the different colours, that's worth a certain amount. If you collect the rainbow one, it's worth a certain amount. if you collect all the same color. And basically you shoot underneath the upper right flipper. Yep. And then your munchkin modes and your bonus is then huge. So it's effectively like 1.5 times or 2 times or 2.5 times, depending on which horses you collect. Yeah. So that's not explained anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same point. It's really wonderful. Even though there's probably only one or maybe two things in Wizard of Oz that are like that versus 10 in Walking Dead. Are there horses in Wizard of Oz? There you go. I think maybe with Wizard of Oz, maybe the screen is so big and there's so much shit on there. Personally, I find it hard to take it all in. But that's just... I think that Wizard of Oz would probably, like you guys have got them in your house. if I had one in my house and I could spend a few hours playing it like I do with Batman then I'm sure I'd figure out what the fuck the horse is all about you know that's the joy of Wizard of Oz for me is that and you know Ryan and I will talk about this later when we talk about me streaming Deadpool last night but I like discovering the rules of a machine kind of almost organically as I play it and I think huh what is that? And then I'll read it and then I'll work it out. So I kind of like, you know, Wizard of Oz just having this depth to it that you just explore. The other good thing too with a game like that, and with Batman as well, is if you've got another good person to play it with, or if you guys watch a lot of streams, which I don't, I can't sit around watching streams all the time, but if you've got, like, if Danny's playing, I can actually watch the stream and see what's happening, and then sometimes I'll say, hey, when you hit that, this happens. So that's a good way to organically learn as well, where it's a lot harder to pick that stuff up if you're just playing solo all the time. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And the way I started learning pinball, like, you know, four years ago when I got into pinball, is literally a drunk guy sitting next to me and telling me what to do the entire time. And then when I got my pinball machines at home, it was like, well, how do I know how to play, like, these games anymore when I don't have the drunk guy telling me to? You look smarty there. No, no, no. We didn't know it was out the back of the head. Even more drunk. These guys are drunk. Yeah. That's just an Aussie thing though, isn't it? Yeah, it is. That's pretty nice. Very good. Interesting. So did you guys notice, I'm just adding to the show notes, that Homepin, our favourite manufacturer, Homepin, released a picture of a bunch of machines and one of them was all greyed out. So that's Homepin's new game. How exciting. How exciting. Is that exciting, Manny? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, Ryan We're nearing the end of 2018 And that can only mean one amazing thing The squippies, baby I know But there's another amazing thing as well The twerpies, baby That's right It's our chance to, you know, tongue in cheek talk about some of the misses in the pinball world of 2018. So twippies are run by This Week in Pinball, and they are basically everything that you'd like in pinball. The twippies are from us, the head-to-head crew, and it's all the stuff that you don't like. We're using the words worst because it's easier than saying the stuff that you don't like. So we are launching this now, so by the time you listen to this, you can vote. We'll post the link in the show notes. We'll post it in our Pinside threads. I'll post it probably tomorrow or something on Facebook. Share it around if you like. We don't want this to turn into a hate fest, but it's just a little bit of fun and, you know, I guess a post fun at weird stuff and choices that pinball manufacturers have made in 2018. Yeah, absolutely. So the first category is the worst theme in pinball based on theme only. Correct. Now, we couldn't... The Pimel machines that are available in these categories are basically all the ones that you can buy in 2018, and we excluded Monster Bash because it is a remake, and, you know, if it wins the worst something, you know, it's not really George Gomez fault because he wasn't involved. Yeah. All right, so worst thing of the year. So what are the list of the machines that are available this year, Ryan, that you've got in the categories? Okay. Thunderbirds, Pirates of the Caribbean, Deadpool, Beatles, Iron Maiden, Supreme, Alice Cooper, and Houdini. Okay. I mean, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Kind of eight machines were released this year. That's pretty good going. Yeah. I had a look at last year's twerpies, and it was nine machines. But it always feels like Pimble was getting bigger, but I guess last year was pretty big as well. I kind of actually just felt that there wasn't really that many machines this year, and, yeah, there was. Yeah. I mean, as I said, like, Oktoberfest is fresh in everyone's mind, but no one's receiving that this year, so we're not going to include that. No, that's right. And we didn't include the Mafia as well. We did have a bit of a debate about it because even though the sample machines have been made and I think they've all been accounted for, it's not really in full production to consumers just yet. Yeah, and we do have some categories later at the end of the list that got them included. So the second one is worst theme integration, i.e. the worst world on the glass. a category that both of you don't care about the worst call-outs slash voice work now I've removed Supreme Puma Machine from this I believe there's no call-outs so I don't want that to get all the votes when it shouldn't be in that category we do care about it but just not as much as you no that's right but it still gets a good look in when you talk about the next category which is Worst Music and Sound. Yeah. Everything but the call-outs coming out of the speakers. Yeah. Worst Artwork, which encompasses Playfields, Cabinet, and Backglass. That might be a hard one, because this year there really aren't many speakers. Like, there was a massive hoo-ha about Star Wars last year, and I think that's what won, but there really isn't anything there that... No. Actually, okay. There is one, but we're not going to mention our... We're not going to say what we think because we don't want to influence the votes. The next one is Worst Rules and Code, or Rules and Code, I guess. All of them are up for that. The next one is Worst Toys Slash Gimmicks. They're all available for that. Yep, and they're all again available for Worst Layout slash Gameplay. There's one that's really obvious for that. Worst Display slash Animations. Now, this is a hard one because some of the machines are using a D&D, such as Thunderbirds and Supreme, and the rest of the pinball machines are using LCD screens. I don't think that a machine should be penalised for being a D&D because it's still a display animation I guess it's how well they portray the animations and displays you like I guess That'll be up to people to determine what they think should be the bias there Then there's the big one The worst game of the year Yep That's just the overall just the worst game or something. That's just the absolute stinker. Worst bang for buck is the next category, or, you know, biggest rip-off, I guess. The biggest rip-off, yep. So we included Mafia in this one because it is available to pre-order and buy. So people are thinking about that. This is an interesting one, Marty. The worst reveal. Yeah, okay. Cast your mind back to all these pinball machines, Deadpool, Beatles, Iron Maiden, Supreme, Alice Cooper, Oktoberfest, Mafia, and Monster Bash Remake, including this one, and think about when it was revealed, or was it a long and drawn-out process, and was it a crappy video, and this, this, and that. There's a lot to choose from, okay, because there's been some pretty bad reveals. And does that have to be within this calendar year, as far as the reveal goes, like Pirates of the Caribbean, for example? Yes, I know, because that was revealed last year, so that's not in this list. It was, yeah. Okay. And so speaking of lots of choices, the next category, which is just an amazing category, I just need to have this moment, is the worst pinball book deal. There's two to choose from. You've got the Stern's 30th anniversary book. Even though it's not available to buy, is that more frustrating that they just hired the intern, Marty, and they've got the stuff, they can start their work now? Yep. Or is it Todd Taki's Pinball Adventures, the one and done instead of ten and done, which also doubles up as toilet paper thanks to the paper quality and the leg leveler? Yeah. Absolutely. You've got to feel sorry for Todd there. Yeah, 100%. We do. It's not good at all. And so the next one is the biggest clusterfuck of the year or the drama, big drama in pinball. And, jeez. What? There's been a lot of... It's been a while. You've got Highway Pinball Collapse, J-Pop ongoing Zidware legal case, Pirates of the Caribbean removing the three spinning discs, Stern Beatles being expensive and see which modified layout, Todd Ducky book deal, Oktoberfest monkey ass grabbing art, grabbing, yeah, Dutch Pinball contract issues, Home Pin shipping first machine to Canada instead of Australia, Stern getting Godzilla license that Spooky wanted, Supreme Pinroll in general. And Ryan, last one? Last one is Kaneda, a.k.a. Chris, being banned from the New York City tournament, getting chucked out for throwing a drink in a Stern employee's face. And yes, we weren't really going to talk about it, but those 11 things, and I might be missing one. If I'm missing one, let me know, guys, and I can add it in. but yeah, that's a lot of drama in my opinion. It's not bad, is it? It keeps the inside interesting. Yeah. Correct. Oh my gosh, the next one is bloody hard because there's so many options. It's the worst rumoured title. I guess it's stupid because you don't know what the game is going to be until you see it and get to play it, and we haven't seen any of these games, or we don't have, I guess, verification that these games are actually coming out. But I guess it's just what people don't care about the most. And I'll run through the list really quickly. So from Stern, you have Alvira 3, Primus Pimble, Monsters, Steve Ritchie Original Theme, Superman 1968, Godzilla and Beetlejuice. From JTP, you have Willy Wonka, Toy Story, Guns N' Roses. From CGC, you have Cactus Canyon, Theater of Magic and Big Bang Bar remake. Spooky, you have Scott Danesi's second game. and Deep Root you have Fire and Brimstone, Magic Girl, Raza, Alice in Wonderland, and from Home Pin you have a Chinese unlicensed thing. So which game do you care the least about? And there's a lot of games to not care about in their money. There is. So the second last category, if you're still clicking away on that survey, is the worst company image slash public relations. Now, this is also going to be a hard one, Marty, because I didn't realize how kind of poorly I thought of certain companies until I was writing this list. So we've got Stern, Deep Root, JTJAC Pinball, American Pinball, Chicago Gaming Company, Spooky Pinball, P3, Team Pinball, Home Pin, Dutch Pinball and Pinball Brothers slash Highway Pinball Now I guess it hard to include some of them in there because some of them barely exist as a husk of a pinball company but I don't know. They're all super-registered companies, right? I guess. That'll be an interesting one. And then the last one is the worst arguments on Slam the Top 100, and effectively you've got either Ryan or myself. Ryan McStumble on his words or Martin McLaffey. There's been some classics. There's been some absolute shockers. Who is the worst at arguing for the better game? Anyway, that's the squirpies. A little bit of fun. We had over 100 votes last year, but we kind of did only a couple of months into the podcast, so we're hoping for, you know, I don't know, 300, 400 votes would be good. 110, maybe. 100th place. Yeah. Share it around, guys. Share it around. And what does the winner slash loser of each of these categories get? I will send them a... Baggages. No, I'll send them a... That's got to be something bad. Isn't there a website like sendyourenemiesglitter.com or something? Really? Send your enemy... Yeah, because it's the most fucked up thing you can do, because, you know, if you send someone shit, then it just smells and you go and chuck it in the bin. But when you send them glitter, they fold the package in a certain way that when you open it, it just falls everywhere, and you know glitter like is impossibly hard to do. Glitterbobyourenemies.com.au If you send someone jizz, though, that would do the same thing. If you open the envelope, then that would go everywhere as well. Well, that's illegal though, right? Well, I love this, I guess. Yeah. I just love this. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. It says... The thing is that we've announced it now, and it's meant to be totally anonymous. Like, this company will never rat you out, right? So you just keep on sending people just these anonymous... I just want to read some of this stuff from this website. So it says, you know, stop letting people off when they give you shit. Get some sweet glitter payback. let us send them some stupid fucking glitter that is guaranteed to go everywhere. And I love that they say this is home of the spring-loaded glitter bomb and mail-a-bag-a-dicks. Type in send your enemies in Google, and it's glitter, poop, crabs, spiders. Send your enemies anonymous. What is it? Sendshit.com.au. Let's admit someone back here. The only answer. No, we'll just announce it, and then people can laugh and move on. It's true, because, I mean, last year, CERN won almost everything, and they sold and made the most money. So it means absolutely nothing. No, it's just shits and giggles, guys. It's just shits and giggles. Yeah. It's just for us to have literally an hour-long segment when we announce the winners. Correct. Yeah. So there you go. Is it time, Marty? Yes, it is. slam. That's up 100. 100. What's number one this week? Navel Mammoth. Yeah. So let's talk about what happened last week. If we're really honest, what happened last week was I literally got the biggest turd. There was nothing I could do with it. I didn't even remotely pretend to like the machine. It's that bad. And this is Maverick. You got like 12% of the vote, Marty? 18%. Give me some sort of credit. I don't think this is the worst we've had, but just so you all know, Maverick is a steaming turd of a machine. So it's better than 150 games or so, according to Pinsir. Well, apparently. But also, it was against Firepower, which is one of my absolute favourite games of all time, which you knew. Okay. Dave, you're on the show. Would you like to be... Yes? Yes. That is correct. He is on the show. I am on the show. Yes. Would you like to be on one of our teams or would you like to verse us? What do you reckon, Marty? Me and you team up? The old guy versus the young guy. What do you reckon? Yeah, I reckon also the best Arcewa. just, you know, pre-empting the twerpy results. Yep, keep going. Okay. My number's coming first. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Coming right up. Four. Torpedo Alley. Yes. I love that game. What number was that? 174. Torpedo Alley. I didn't hear the number. I just heard it say four. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Coming right up. 181. Yep. Pinball pool. Pinball pool. Fucker. Okay. All right. Mm-hmm. I'm not going to say anything at this stage. Okay. So I have to go first. Which one are we, Marty? So we are pinball pool. I don't think I've ever played that game Oh well Rely on How am I meant to know about anything Rely on me To talk about Pinball Pool And then you can bag out Ryan's game Okay Torpedo Alley I can come up with that I've played this a couple of times But not much Pinball Pool No I've never even seen it Okay Carry on Ready mate I am ready go Alright Torpedo Alley by Data East My favourite manufacturer of all time game designed by Claude Fernandez right, we always talk about diversity in pinball, there's obviously someone of like a different descent in pinball, yeah go Claude, sound by David Thiel, now David Thiel hadn't been involved in many pinball machines before this but the number one thing that people like about Topito Alley is the sound has a great layout pretty average art, okay I know you're going to bag out the art money the music keeps you in the game, and... I don't even know what Torpedo Alley is, my dear. What are they doing? Are they on a ship? Okay, they're on a ship. They're on a ship, and they're about to torpedo some people up their alley. I love that game. It's cheap as fuck, okay? The game is good, cheap, nasty fun. Torpedo Alley. Okay. Well done. You did all right, considering you've never seen the machine, nor heard of it before today. Yeah, I'm watching YouTube clips right now, Marnie. The guy that's playing is grinning ear to ear. Grinning like a fox, I could say, Marnie. Oh, you could say that. It's an Australian thing. So, Pinball Pool, 1978. I have extraordinarily fond memories of this game. I have played this... Back in the time when it came out, I played this probably more than any machine for probably a good two years. In fact, I was talking to a good friend of the show, Marcus, that runs the Ross Town Retro Arcade, and I said, you've got to have this machine. It is just such a cool machine for the time. I love the back glass. It's got a couple of cheeky chicks on the back with a robot playing pinball, pool, something. Sure. Okay, whatever. What I like about the layout of this is it's quite nice and open and it feels quite safe but you've got a really tricky 8 ball shot right up the middle when you hit one of the targets on the right the corresponding target on the left goes down you get all down then hit the 8 ball and then extra balls and all that kind of stuff I love this game from Gottlieb it's an amazing game you're a good line money I'm telling you now this is one of the earliest memories I have of being obsessed with the pinball machine. It was this one. It was when you were about 18 or so, Marty? Yeah, correct. And of course, I'll just add in there, pinball pool, of course, one of my favourite games, I must say, from 1979. I've put a lot of hours on this machine as he quickly looks at the playfield to see what the fuck's going on. Seems to have a lot of drop targets in there. Beautiful woman on there, which is always a good thing. quality Gottlieb System 1 architecture, which never, ever breaks down. So that's good. And of course, 7,200 units made, which just proves what a winner this machine is. Dave, you're speaking out of your ass. All right, let me tell you about Pinball Pool, right? Gottlieb trash. Basically, you know, we talk about sexism in pinball. You've got two ladies that are trying to have sex with a robot basically on the back glass. Yeah. And this game is... This game is symmetrical. Down with symmetrical games. You've got literally... It's perfectly symmetrical, right? Except for the little rubber thing that stops the ball when you plunge it. You've got three lanes at the top, two pop bumpers exactly the same from left to right, two saucers, the same drop targets just with different values. Symmetrical games are boring. Why would you want the same experience from one suburb to the other? Have a look at the Torpedo Alley's layout. Totally different experience. No one's trying to fuck robots. And Zardes is better than Gully. Sure. I win. Thank you. All right. So now it's up to you, Dave. You can either talk about how terrible Torpedo Alley is or, again, talk further about how awesome Pimple Pool is. May I do a combination of both? Great. Why not? Why not? I'm the guest. Well, first of all, Symmetrical Layouts, very, very good, you know, good for simple-minded people like myself. Pitbull Pool, it's got a plentiful drop target, it's got something in the middle there. Robots, women having sex with robots, very, very underrated, I must say, so that's a winning theme for a machine. So, and now just having a quick look at Torpedo Alley, I have played it before, but not extensively. They have one at Flippersfield in Las Vegas, and that's the only place I've played one at. I've never seen one here, to be honest with you. All I've got to say is just look at the back glass. It appears to be something out of maybe the Blue Oyster Club from the 80s, and that's really all I've got to say about Torpedo Alley. That's, I rest my case. Yeah, the back glass. That's all we've got about it. Yep. Yeah, look at the state of it. You've got three beautiful women that are obviously in control of, like, you know, they're in a male-dominated... Is this a guy actually wearing pants? Yeah, he's wearing white pants, and the girls are wearing one-pieces. They're wearing sexy leotards, and they're firing torpedoes up the alley. Data risk machines are so highly regarded. you could have to say that all again that went very robotic oh dear oh no where do we go from just cut me out alright so I'll have that up on Facebook Torpedo Alley vs Pinball Pool wow we're really straight from the bottom of the barrel yeah I want to go back to the top 100 oh my gosh we need some more pinball machines alright so we asked everyone on Facebook what to talk about this week since there weren't many topics and new topics to talk about. Marty, you have a massive list there. We're going to see what speaks and what doesn't. Yeah, we can either just quickly move on from them or we can, you know, stop and ponder and have a bit of a discussion. The first one from Edward Partridge says, the mystery of Roger Sharp's moustache. What's the mystery, Ryan? Well, I thought that he got all these, his powers and his sexiness and his manly hood from that moustache. It was Samson, right? And he's had it for... Yeah, and he's had it for decades. And then all of a sudden, there's a picture of him at IAPA playing the Beatles next to Zach Sharp and the moustache is gone. So is he retiring or what's going on? He's got the same manhood. He's just not. He just doesn't look... And it's Movember as well. Why would you shave your... Yeah, come on. You're Moe in Movember. You literally have the most famous, you know, facial hair feature in pinball, where would you take it off of my member? Yeah. Anyway, it's a mystery. Yeah, it is. It is. Where did it go? We need to find it. Should we get him on for another three hours of you and I? Yeah, we should. I'm just about to start. So the next one, Leah says, I was in a discussion recently about leveling machines, dot, dot, dot. Yeah, that's a bit of an open-ended question. Like, should you do it or should you not do it? Or, how do you level machines? How do you level your machines, Dave? You've got 126 machines or so. Yeah, well, most of them I can do by, yeah, that sort of just happens automatically these days. But there is a very good app you can get for your phone only on the iPhone, unfortunately, called PinGuy, which is really, really good. If you calibrate it properly, you can be underneath the machine and it'll talk to you. So that's a really, really invaluable tool, which I recommend to a lot of people. but normally the best way to do it you get the ball, roll it down the middle if it rolls straight down the middle you know you're sort of on the right track That's what I usually do now, do you throw it up or do you just try and line it up with the middle like base off inserts or something and then let it go from the top? Yeah, I'll do that and then if you have one game, normally if you've been doing it for a while you usually get a pretty good feel for it but the Pin Guy app is very good because you can turn it on, like I say it'll talk to you so you can be under the machine and when you set the angle up to 7 degrees or 7.5 degrees or whatever you particularly want, you can hear it under the machine which makes it a lot easier than getting up all the time. And I've never really found a level, like a spirit level that's really suitable for doing pinball machines. I think you can get them in America but I've never seen one here. The next one's a big one, Matty. So this is from Clifford. Two parts to this one. First one says, tournament apparel. In your opinion, what is best to wear at pinball tournaments and what is kosher? What is comfortable clothing, if any, for the long-haul pinball play? Shoes. I've heard shoes come off sometimes during long tournaments. Is this a good thing? Well, I'll answer by saying that I've never really been in a tournament that has gone over maybe six or so hours. So I just wear shorts and a t-shirt. But Marty, you rock up in suits, right? No, that's not true. Well, actually, yeah, it is true. But that's only because I've had to go straight from work. But for the long haul, there's a couple of things. I will say dress whatever is comfortable, right? Seriously, just whatever's comfortable. But the one thing I'll talk about is shoes. This is my tip for shoes. You ready? Buy shoes that have got memory foam as the sole because they will cushion you for a very, very long time. So, you know, there you go. Good advice, Marty. I just want to add one thing. No camo short, no win. That's our saying over here in New Zealand. So camo short. Camo is in camouflage. Camouflage short. Yeah. No camo, no win. Because nobody can see a torso? I think he's just trying to justify the 20 pairs of shorts that he's got in his cupboard. I haven't. They're all the same colour. If you ever go to a long tournament like Thinberg, you'll see me wearing the same clothes every day. My wardrobe looks a little bit like Homer Simpson's. But, yeah, I back up Marty there with those. I've got Puma shoes with the memory foam in there. It's a good investment, especially on those Thinberg days or Southern Hemisphere pinball. start at 9 in the morning and you're finishing about 11 o'clock at night it's a bloody long day so yeah take the weight off your feet whenever you can grab a seat and sit down have an apple or something good advice there you go so the second part of this was health benefits of playing pinball either hand coordination, concentration etc what health benefits could be put forward for playing pinball surely it's not bad for your health or is it Yeah, it's fucking shocking for you, Hal. Because you don't play pinball all the time. It's everything that encompasses playing pinball, sitting around. Every event that you're at that's like a pinball meet or a tournament, everyone's buying pizza. No one's saying, hey, let's go get that kale juice and let's sip on that in between rounds. Yeah, that is true. Pinball will make you fat and lazy. Hmm, yeah. I think... And it also depends where your events are. Like, you guys tend to have your events in a lot of bars, so that also encourages drinking as well. Over here in Kiwiland, we don't tend to do that so much. All the events are in private homes, and we have a few beers, but nothing too silly. Obviously, health food on the barbecue as well. Yeah, or I usually bring a salad and some apples. You know, you've got to make conscious health decisions when you get to the Middle Ages party, you know? It's pizza and beer, come on. Lies. It's all lies. But yeah, I don't know. I remember there was that video about Robert Gagnon and how his mind works differently than everyone else's, whereas everyone kind of sees chaos and their eyes kind of move in a certain way when like multiball is happening, whereas Robert Gagnon can look at a pinball machine and kind of track all three balls at the same time. I remember those videos somewhere I'm not going to be able to find it so I won't be in the show notes but yeah I don't know have there been any studies into what it does to hand-eye coordination Dani's been playing pinball for years since she was a little kid right? Yeah she started when she was two or three but I think a lot of especially young kids have it naturally I mean you see it with guys like Escher and I mean Escher's been playing pinball since he was a little guy as well and now you're seeing a few other guys coming through like Colin Urban and Alexander, who have been playing pinball since they were like five years old. I think one of the things with those young guys is that they don't feel the stress as much as the old fellas. But the younger you are, I think the better hand-eye coordination you have. And definitely as you get older, your eyesight starts to go, your hearing goes. Well, me and Marty don't hear all those things. You hear, Ryan, because we're all deaf as a post. So, yeah. You guys all can't see as well, so you need pin stadium lights because your eyes are horrible at your retinas. Well, the one thing I'm just astounded by is how much pinball knowledge that eventually you all have to store up in your brain. Like, the amount of stuff... And I'm still learning so much about pinball, but just the rules, just, you know, the physical hardware of a pinball machine, useless trivia and facts, it's so much brainpower that I could be using for something else. but Dave, you've got 120 plus demo machines and you know how to play all of them. You're not a collector that says, you know, doesn't know the rules of their demo machines. You know them all, right? Well, they're here to play, so that's the general idea. You've got to learn them all somehow. A lot of the machines are simple machines and not rocket. But in saying that, like I was playing my Viking in competition and I was playing it a certain way, I watched a video online with Adam Becker playing his Viking and he played it in a lot different way than I did and I've changed to his way of playing and I'm just consistently doubling the scores that I used to get. So you can always pick up new information and you've got to be willing to change the way that you play as well by taking in more information. But I think the older you get, I was listening to someone today actually talking on a podcast and I think they're right. You know, your brain's a cup and eventually it flows over of information. There's only so much information you can put in there. Yeah. Next one is from Chris Meunier, who is the brother of Eric Minier, the guy who did Pirates of the Caribbean. This just popped up on my Facebook feed, but with the recent natural disasters, the Californian wildfires, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Trina, et cetera, how many machines do you think have been lost to such circumstances? Fourteen. Fourteen? I'd go for 17. I'd go 26. 26. Okay. I don't know Jeff Riviera says I struggle to come up with my own topics I'm not giving you that free content so the generous Jeff hashtag has now been exterminated, he's no longer generous Jeff this one is an interesting one Marty, this is from Ruth Bear, why do why does pinball seem to attract people with mental health issues not all men I don't know whether it necessarily attracts But I think because the pinball community is relatively small and it's all about pinball, it's just one of those things. We've talked about it before where it's just all walks of life. Anybody can come in and they will be welcome. And as long as you are respectful to the machine and the people around you, then it just doesn't matter. But I think Riff Bear's talking about himself and his own obsession with pinball, really. It will be. And pinball's like any hobby, too. I mean, if you're in a big car club, because we all love car analogies, but any club, be it a bridge club or a golf club or anything, there's a certain sector of the population who are going to have mental health issues. So it's no different to any other hobby. You attract all sorts of people, as Marty says. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mental people everywhere. Yeah, I kind of like it. And I, you know, when I'm running tournaments or involved with, you know, events, just try to welcome people that, you know, are feeling a little bit, you can tell that they're sort of a little bit nervous and a little bit jittery. You think, okay, just ease them in and let them have fun. And anyone can integrate. It's really easy. It's weird because it really took me aback, kind of like the aggressive nature of certain tournament players or even people at an all pinball meet. Like, you know, a lot of characters out there. But just, I don't know, after a year or so, like, I'm so used to it now that, you know, everyone has mental issues to me. You know, we're all fucking crazy. So I don't see it as much as other people might see it because I'm hanging around these people all the time. Yeah, it's good fun. There you go. Next one is from Pinball Mayhem. 1967 Williams beat time with the Bootles Beatles rebuff. Have you ever played this machine, Marty? Yes, I have actually. I played this at Papa. Yeah, I've played beat time as well, yeah. It's an EM, so there's no call outs or sound. It's just chimes, right? Yeah. No call outs. You won't like it, Ryan. No call outs. So just ding dong, ding dong. It's alright I wouldn't You know Would you pay 15,000 New Zealand dollars for it, Marty? No It's just of that era Where it's got the smaller flippers So it's just Probably a bit before when I like my EMs There you go So the next one's from Aaron Nicholas who says, watch Bad Boy Bubby, wants a full report. Anyone seen it? Yeah. What a movie. Have you boys not seen that? No. Who do you think you are? Really? That's an Australian class? I thought that was mandatory. I thought they made you watch that at Australian high schools. You would have seen it, wouldn't you, Marty? Yeah, you know I haven't. Really? Okay. Do you want me to give you a quick synopsis? Yep, go for it. Okay. It's pretty shocking. So it's an Australian movie. Guy, he's caught in a mental illness. Guy's got a slight mental illness, lives with his mother in a house. It's been a long time since I saw it. But eventually his mother dies in the house, but he doesn't want to acknowledge that his mother's died, so he wraps her up in cling film and... It's true. Wraps her up in cling film and then just sort of hangs around the place with his mum all wrapped up in cling film. I can't remember what happened since, it's probably been 20 years since I've seen it, but yeah, it's a pretty good watch. It sounds like a rip-off of the Hitchcock movie. What's the Hitchcock movie where the guy murders someone in the shower? The famous scene? Psycho. Oh, that's Psycho. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Along the same lines, yeah, the mum was still sitting in the chair, but I don't think she had any cling film, though. Okay. He's joy in touch. Glad right. Yeah, of course it is, yeah. Okay, sounds great. Tom Watson messaged in and said, Has there ever been a pinball game with balls that were not silver? I was thinking a volcano pinball theme would be neat, with multiple having four or five crimson red balls bouncing around, causing destruction. Or is the industry just set on that anything besides silver is blasphemy and would cause a pin-side revolt? Yeah. There's obviously a couple of very famous non-silver balls and Twilight Zone has one, being the ceramic ball. And AY has heard you. Yes, that's right. Avatar LA has got the ceramic ball as well. Hercules has a pool ball. Does, yeah. And someone mentioned Viper Night Driving actually has fluorescent yellow balls. Do they actually glow, though? They're meant to. They do, but it's just a complete novelty. It's a terrible game. But funnily enough, Ryan and I were talking before we started recording, and you mentioned a particular game that had come up somewhere. Turns out this game has a ball other than silver. What? I don't remember this conversation. You do. The game is called Gold Ball. Oh, Gold Ball. Yep. So it actually has... Does it actually have gold balls? Yeah, well, hey, I'll tell you what it's got. It's got a normal silver ball and it's got a gold ball and you can set it up either way. Sometimes... And I'll read it out here. It says... So it's not multiball. Either the gold ball will come out or the silver ball will come out and you can have it do it either way. You can either have it randomised because when the goal comes out, the playfield scores are tripled. How does it know? It obviously knows. Just by timing, obviously. What do you mean? How does it know? It doesn't know which ball is out. The twilight zone has this sensor where it sensors metal. It obviously can't sense it, so it'll just be timing. You have to put it in the right position when you set up the machine. Well, you can actually set. Well, no, because you can actually set. It says that it's got an operator adjustable percentage. So you can have it randomly come out between 1% and 15% of the time. Or you can have it set up so if you spell all the gold ball letters, when you drain your current ball, the gold ball will come out, and it's considered an extra ball. There you go. We were literally only talking about this before. I've never... There's one game I've never played, so I've seen one, but I've never played one, so I'm not familiar with that. Dave, are you interested in buying one? Because the only reason why I mentioned it was it actually came up on Gumtree, and you can currently buy one for the low, low price of 3,000 Aussie dollary dues. No, I'm pretty sick with my tips at the moment. It's a offering. Yes. Yeah, it's an interesting-looking machine, but one thing I'd like to say is, yeah, adding... I've played a few machines around at people's houses, and they put black balls in them, and spider-web balls, and things like that, and I just can't see those. I can't see them, so please don't do that. Okay, the worst one ever... I mean, if it's a black ball, then whatever. It's maybe black. But the worst one is the Alvira ball, where it's like a spider or an eye. I can't remember what it is. Yeah, there's an eyeball, yeah. Because it looks amazing when you just look at it, But as soon as you're playing, because the ball is rolling, it's just black. And it just looks like the dirtiest ball. I feel like it's chewing up the playfield. So please don't put those in your table. Well, if you do, just don't invite us around because I can't bloody see them. Unless you've got the fantastic Pins Stadium lights, of course, then you might be able to see them. Exactly. Imagine how good gold would look with the yellow teams on Pins Stadiums, Marty. Amazing. the next one is from Christian Lyme Dr. Tim and he said just get money drunk on gin and let the magic happen but you not drunk on any money No I not No Where the magic Marty Come on Where the magic No No gin. No magic. No. No. We should get a gin sponsor and that should be the, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Your passion should be just no gin, no magic. Someone needs to write in to me and tell me how can I send gin over to America. I don't know how it's done yet. Take it in your suitcase. I don't think you're allowed to send the alcohol across the board. I know you're not allowed to post it, but I think you can send it via courier. So I've got to work that out. Anyway. You should be able to get a sponsor, Marty. For the last two big competitions I've had here in New Zealand, I've got two big beer sponsors. So the first one gave me two grand with a beer, and the next one gave me two and a half grand with a beer. Oh, shit, yeah. I'm sure you'll be able to get some gin. What do you actually do? Let us know the process. You just write them an email and say, hey, there's going to be this many people. It's all about public relations there, Ryan. You know, you've just got to be a nice guy to everyone and good shit. Well, I'm a, you know, I'm a c***, so I'm not very good at doing that. Yeah, you're not going to get anything, but Marty might, you know. You know. You never know. If you don't ask, you don't get. Fair enough. If you ask 10 people, I'm sure you'll get something. If anyone wants to give me a free Quicksilver or Stargazer to pinball machine, just head to head to pinball.com. Okay. Free Diamond Beetles for me. Diamond Beetles, going for the top shelf. Kyle says, talk about how some random dude in California found a new Old Stocks series paper. Go ahead and Skype. Okay. Yeah, that's nothing. I forgot how to pronounce this guy's name. Kwee. He's wrote him before. Kwee. Kwee. Sorry, I'm so sorry because I know a couple of months ago he told me how to pronounce his name. He says, talk about crazy classic Stern prices. Now, Dave, you're probably the best guy to take this because you've been around for a while. You've got some Stern classic games and what's going on with Stern classic prices at the moment? Well, it's pretty simple. All you really need is, I mean, if you go back two or three years ago, most of them were pretty much worthless. I bought this Mint Meteor, the one that I've got in Los Angeles, which is an expensive place to buy pins in America. It sat on pin side for like six months for $850. In the end, I got it for $750. And, yeah, that was on pin side for probably four or five months. The guy couldn't sell it. But you get a few guys who start talking things up and all you need is 10 people who are interested in them. and then 20 people, then 30 people, and next minute you've got quick silvers for seven and a half grand selling overnight. So it's easy enough to spike up the market. So are you in the same camp as Marnie that you think that these classic Stern games aren't actually that good in comparison to the Bally Williams stuff at the same time? Or do you think they maybe were just kind of maybe unloved because of the market dominance of Bally at the time? Yeah, no, I think all those Stern games, most of them are great games. And, yeah, there's great belly games and there's great Stern games. There's also some spinkers as well, bellies and Sterns. So I think they're all equal. But, you know, for a long time the Sterns were, a lot of people didn't want them at all. Like the meteors, like in New Zealand, even in New Zealand there's quite a few meteors around and nobody wanted them. But, yeah, all of a sudden, yeah, they've just taken off. in the same way that on the belly side you've got Fathoms and Centaurs. Your Fathoms, Centaurs, 8-Ball Deluxes have all rocketed up. I mean, Fathoms are selling for $7,500 as well. So I think, yeah, they're all good games, whether they're worth $7,500, $8,000. Well, I suppose the market says that they are these days, so that's just the way it is, I guess. Do you think it might have also something to do with, you know, a lot of people playing tournaments and maybe the Stern rules had it maybe a little bit more balanced for them than some of the belly games that was just kind of like do the one thing over and over again because there's a scoring exploit there? I think just people looking for different things. I mean, a lot of the belly games are similar in the way that they count bonuses and then the bonus and the bonus multipliers receive every ball, whereas with a lot of the spurn machines, like Ali, for example, the multipliers and that will stay for every ball, which is different. So it's just a different way of playing the games or different rule sets. I think variety is the spice of life. But I definitely think tournaments, if you go back three or four, or probably a little bit longer now, five or six years ago, like Congo's were worthless. It wasn't until they started streaming them in tournaments that now Congo's really quite a sought-after game. But nowadays they used to chop them up for parts, you know. So with these days, with the amount of information and that that's out there and the amount of streaming and competition play that goes online, people get to see these games that they maybe haven't seen before. I suppose back to Stern Stars, for example, I mean, three years ago I got one of those in America for $300. I got offered a mint one for $500. I said I didn't want it. Now my friend's got that. It's just a machine that's just gone up and up and up and up as people have figured out that it's a cool game to play, you know? So it's a – but sales story, market value. So you get one or two people want them, they're worth $500. You get 50 or 100 people want them, they're $5,000. So just market forces in action. Yeah. Do you think there's any forgotten, you know, pinball manufacturer, you know, of a certain era, like a Data East or something that, you know, the prices are still low and it might have its time in the coming years. Zachariah? The only problem with Zachariah is I've just bought my first one. I've checked all of them because they're all shit-hot games. They are very thin on the ground, though. There's a lot of them in Europe, but not so much in Australia or New Zealand. Well, that's pretty perfect for all the container pins, right? That's where all the pins are coming from in the Australian second-hand market. They're all imports. They're great. absolutely great games but I haven't really got room for any more but I've just got a Devil Riders, picked that up in America for a grand which was a real good buy a really nice tidy one but I don't know if they're particularly cheap either and they are a little bit thin on the ground so there are a few guys around they've got complete sets of them but if you look at those games and the era that they come out, if you compare them to the other machines that were around at the same time they actually blow them away, the Zacharias some have got some cool artwork and some real good gameplay and some interesting rules. And the next one, yeah, the robot. Like, that's the only robot I've ever played. Yeah. Like, it has that ramp, and the way that the ball kind of comes down, like, that's not in any game ever, right? Like, yeah. They weren't copying anyone. We got the five pop-up robots, which is a little bit similar to the old, was it Dragon? The other one that pops up the little dragon heads everywhere, Interclip Dragon, which is also a cool game. But, yeah, there's some real good stuff in that Zachariah. So that's, like I say, I don't think they're particularly cheap, though. The problem is these days there aren't any. Stern was really the classic Sterns were really the last unexplored empire, if you want, of bargain pinball machines, and that's rapidly closing up. So there's just so many fire stuff. You've heard it here first on the Head to Head podcast. Put all your money in Zachariah's pinball machines. but I guess the other thing is we have to pump it up every single episode like Slam Tilt pumps up Stern Games, right? Like we can't just say one and done. If we do that, like I've just got my Devil Riders for a grand US so I reckon we pump it up every podcast until this time next year. I reckon I'll be seven and a half grand for that next year. We'll commission on that. I think this is the winning formula so let's go with that. It is. Okay. All right, so the next one. Let's move on to the next topic. So this is from Jermaine, and I've met Jermaine. Hi, Jermaine. He wants to talk about Germany TGP gate. Now, I went to read this, but Tilt Forums is down at the moment, so I don't know what he's talking about. Do you, Ryan? I do know what he's talking about because I messaged the one guy who would know what he's talking about. Do you know who that one guy is, Marty? when it comes to TGP? Internationally or locally? Locally. Yeah, Luke. Luke, yeah. So I messaged Luke, and I'm not really sure if I'm, like, you know, I didn't ask for permission to read out his response, but apparently if you have, and there's a tournament in Melbourne that utilises this money, if you have a finals round, like say it's like qualifying, like best game qualifying, and then down to the final eight. If you change the structure from the top eight to the top four, I believe it all gets melded into one and you get TGP for the... Say if the final four were best of three games, right? Yep. With four players. Apparently the top eight will adopt that TGP even though they're not using that. So it's kind of like an exploit where it's maybe quicker to go through a certain finals area and whittle it down to a smaller pot, but you're not actually playing those games. Apparently it's a really old TGP formula and it hasn't kind of been closed up. It's not really a big loophole. So I don't know if it's going to get addressed because I don't think anyone's really doing it. It's not really worth it. Anyway, there we go. TGP game. well so speaking of tournaments John Cothran has written in how about your favourite tournament format there are increasing numbers of ways to compete out there which do you think is the most fun and is the fairest way to decide the winner do you want to go first Dave oh yeah no worries well most of the tournaments we run in New Zealand are just simple 3 strike 4 player game tournaments and that's a real good way to you know we get a lot of new guys coming along so that's a really good way to introduce the new guys they get to watch some of the more experienced guys play. So, yeah, that's a cool format. We run match play. We just ran a Pinberg-style format. I really enjoyed the Pinberg-style format. We run an IFPA-style World Championships format, which we've got coming up here at my place in a couple of weeks' time. But we had a lot of fun. We ran our first ever Flip Frenzy here, utilising these new rules that I, as head of IFPA New Zealand, and Luke and Dan, as IFPA Australia, We sat down and worked out some sort of definitive rules on the Flip Frenzy format to make it like a legitimate format. And that was really, really good fun. Everyone who was here, most of the Kiwis here, hadn't played in one before. I think we had nearly 70 people in it. I think 67 or something people in it. And probably 60 of them had never done it before, and everyone had a shit-hot time. So that was a real good and especially good way to kick off. We ran that on the Friday night of a whole weekend tournament. So everyone got to meet everyone. I think the winner played, I think, 19 games in three hours. So, yeah, every format's good. Anything that's... There's nothing I've played really that I don't like. I think everything's pretty cool. Manny? Well, so the only format that I haven't played really is the format that's now coming... Well, they call it the old Puppet format, but it's now coming back to INDISC, and that's the card format. Now, you've played in one of those before, haven't you, Dave? I did, and that's probably one of the toughest, well, as far as I go, it's definitely the toughest format because you've got to string together four or five games to complete a card, and so you've got to play four or five good games in a row. So most of us average players, we can do one or two good games, and then the next game's a shitter. So that's where the wheat gets separated from the chaff, as they say. so yeah I've only ever played them to one the last one that they run at the last card format they run at Papa before they change to best game format or Pump and Dump so yeah it'll be interesting to see how it goes at Indisc but you're going to be coming along to that maybe Marty? Yeah we'll see how we go How instrumental was that? It's good I'd already bought me and Danny, Danny wanted to go back and and she won the Women's Tournament there last year at Indus, so she wanted to go back and defend her title, and she's finished up at university at that time, so we're already booked to go before they announce the card format. So I'm not a super fan of it. For me, I'm not as good a player as some of those other guys, so for me it's going to be a little bit tough, but we're to re-buy our plane tickets, so we're going whether we like it or not. So the card format is you play a series of games, a string of games and your score is based off all of your entries in that card and you can't if you buy another card you can't say okay I'll take the high score from this one, the high score from the other one, it's just all one it's a whole new card so you have to have a shithot streak so you could play five games and you could play Iron Maiden, get the best score of the weekend first and then you could play Iron Man, get the best score of the weekend and then play Wizard of Old Chicago and Bow and Arrow and get nothing and your card's worthless. You've wasted your whole cards down the toilet and so has your 20 bucks that it cost the buyouts. Wouldn't that kind of be exciting, though, to feel the pressure of those final games on the card if you're having a good streak? Like, doesn't that kind of add some element? It could be exciting or you could cry, one or the other. I'd probably be tending to cry more than get excited, to be honest, I think that that format, I think of all the ones, and I haven't played it, and I wouldn't want to because of what I'm about to say. I think that the card format really does, as you said before, it really gives to the best players. Because the best players will be able to do great games on five cards. I mean, if they get a stinker, that one stinker is still going to be ten times the score of anybody else's best score. So I think if you really want to have a tournament format that really ensures that you get the best of the best in the finals, then the card system is the way to go. No question. Yeah, Pump and Dump has its advantages. It really does. I mean, look, you've still got to put up a good game, but if you've got a lot of money, you can get more chances to get one of those good games. so look and and I'm running as you know the the flip out Melbourne silver ball tournament in two weeks is going to be the herb style or the pump and dump format and I just wanted to try it again in Australia the last time was at our pinball expo the other thing that's good about this really is you get progressive prize money. So the more that people put into it, you know, pumping and or dumping, that money just goes to the pool of money that's available and you can track how much money is available. So it's self-fulfilling, effectively. Does it really matter? I mean, the pump and dump and the card-based system, in the end, everyone has to play finals. So if you can somehow scrape into the finals and you pump a lot of money in the Herbstall one, pump and dump, and you're not as good as the other players, then you're still going to get knocked out anyway, right? You will eventually get knocked out, yeah. That's absolutely true. But, look, you know, I was at Indy's beginning of this year. In fact, I was there last year as well, and Dave was there as well. It's okay, I think, if you're a local, so you can just go along there. and if you don't get into the finals, okay, you can go home. For us, where we have to travel all the way around the other side of the world, that's a big deal not to get into the finals. Yeah. So you're like, okay, so you're just like, okay, well, you know, I've spent $1,500 to get here, what's another $20 adventure? That's right. There's a lot of like, oh, I'm just going to go and eat some food in the boardwalk. No, but that was exactly what it was like. Like, I can't tell you how much money I spent in the pump and dump side of things at Indies, but it was holiday money, so it didn't matter. I'd spent so much money getting over there. It was a small proportion. Does the Never Drain software keep track of how many entries people have had? Yes. Yeah? So I can check. I can go to INDISC 2018 and check how many entries you had money? Yeah, probably. I don't know whether that's still available, but yeah. You can at the time. The other format which is sort of maybe crosses all of those is the limited qualifying one, which is how Texas Finball Festival works, where you pay your one-off entry fee and you get 20 games. So you can play, there's 10 games. You've got to play three old ones and three new ones, and your best scores count. The World System 11 Championships that I run here, you get 10 entries and you have to play one game, just one game on each of the 10 System 11 games. so you can afford to have, no one's going to have 10 higher scores but the most you can afford to have one or two crappers if you want I had a crappy qualifying game in Elvira last year but I still came through as top qualifier so that's a good way to do it and it also cuts down on the time as well because a lot of these things can drag on as well which you don't really want the thing going on for three weeks My answer I guess because I've only been involved in smaller tournaments is the The fairest way to decide the winner in a small tournament would be, I guess, Swiss match play, which is basically you get put into four-player groups, and after each round of games, there's a ladder, a high-score list of how many points you have. The next round gets drawn in that order. So the people that are going really well play against people that are going really well. The people that are struggling play against people that are struggling, and it keeps on changing round to round. And you can do finals at the end or no finals, because if there's no finals in every game throughout the day, it has counted. I guess the most fun for me is easily, obviously, flip frenzy, but it's 100% up to Ferris' way to do it unless you cut it off after two and a half hours and do finals after that. If you play maybe for 10 hours of flip frenzy, then yes, but because you're not getting matched up against the best players, is the best. A guy could play against the bottom 15 players of a tournament if it's a 25-player tournament and never play against the best and just win everything. So, yeah. But FlipperMZ is the most fun, especially for noobs, because noobs like to play pinball and FlipperMZ is the quickest way to play as many games as possible. And also, like I said before, great social events, so ideally a way to start a tournament where you can just meet everybody because you're playing so much pinball yes a really good way to introduce people into pinball the one complaint that some people have against with split frenzy is that sometimes it isn't social I mean unless you're talking to the person next to you because it is a situation to play against you can't play against talk to the person that you're playing with unless you're not playing pinball whereas in a four player format like Swiss Match Play there's three people not playing at any one time so you're talking to three people and they can give you tips if you're new etc Which is similar to the three strikes I was talking about before, which is what we run here. So you can have one guy playing and the other two guys can be, you know, talking to the other, the new guy behind them when they're playing. So your four-player group is certainly the way to go, especially for introducing new guys, for sure. And, I mean, there's still undiscovered tournament formats, right? I mean, I don't think there's no rule about, you know, the way pinball tournaments can be run. I mean, yes, there are, sorry, IPA rules, but someone creative will think of something else that is even more fun and more cooler. And maybe Mrs. Pin. She's full of out-of-box ideas. Mrs. Pin, if you're listening, think of a new pinball format. You're still not deep enough in to have no ideas like me. Let's move it on. Vincent Kemp writes, Which is the most popular LED mod colour? Purple or purple? Oh, wait. Maybe it's purple. Dave? Purple. Yeah, Marty? I think it's purple. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure you follow Purple Pinball on Instagram. He posts just pictures of purple pinball machines. That's actually the way to go. Just purple everything. It's like I've got 126 machines. I just buy the purple LEDs by the thousand. You know, it's just the way to go. Why don't you just put, why don't you save money, Dave, and just get purple lights, like down lights, and just purplify your pinball machines that way? I could buy those. I could buy pin stadiums and I could get them to make me purple ones. Can you turn them purple, Marty? Which ones? Pin stadiums. Of course you can. You can do it like any colour. 60 million colours, Dave. Absolutely. And how many of those are purple? An eighth of them. At least 1.2 million. Exactly. Purple's the way to go. Marty, the next one. Which games do you have a love or hate relationship? A game that you hate due to art but loves you, the gameplay and rules, something of that nature would be interesting to know. Okay. The one game that comes to mind that I have a love-hate relationship with is Kiss. Okay. Because... That's a good expression. I will elaborate. Because I like, I love the layout and I love the art. I don't love the rules and I just feel that it can be so much more. But I'll play Kiss and I'll enjoy playing it but I'll never feel really satisfied. Okay. Dave? I'm sure you've got a bunch of them. Yeah, I have. Number one at the moment is Demoman. It's just one of those games which particularly that left shot that goes around the multiball start shot in the left orbit if you like. So hard. Yeah, sometimes I play that game and I'll crack up, you know, two or three billion points and I'll go and play it the next day and get 30,000 points, you know, it's a disaster. So when I played Kaylee George over in Denmark on that game, he was just smacking it up the middle and shooting it into the multiball start shot instead of shooting the left orbit. So I've been doing that a little bit as well. But that's a game, yeah, at the Southern Hemisphere Pinball Championships. I've been practicing all week on Demoman. I thought I was on top of it. I played it twice in the weekend and lost every single game on it. So, yeah, that can just be a filter fucking thing. But that's my number one hate at the moment is Demoman. But there's a few of them. Ironman I've been having a bit of a funny run with as well recently in tournaments. I smash it all the time. The minute I play it in tournaments, I get wasted. So I don't know what's going on there. Magnus I remember Pat I think it was Pat Lawler in the Top Guys interview it might have been Pat Lawler I think he said something about he has a design rule where he'll make lighting locks hard but the lock the ball shot should be easy like you should you should make you shouldn't punish a player once they light lock it should just be like a straightforward shot I think he might have been talking about Rocho at the time where he he regrets making that shot hard I can't remember so yeah Demoman definitely falls under that category where it's fairly easy to like multiball but it's one of the hardest shots in the game to get it started my game that I have a love-hate relationship is Metallica and nothing to do with art because I've got I've got two more machines that have horrible art and I love them, Tron and Spice Shack LA Metallica it's more about the fact that if you have it on default settings it's a lot of chopping wood at the start, once you get the game going then yes, you can go in multiple directions. At the start, the only really viable strategy to get a decent score is to start Sparky multiple and go from there. If you change it to what people have been doing in tournaments where it's a lot harder to Sparky and crank it up is 55555 or 8888, that's a little bit better. But the game, I know it has a million layers, but it is a lot of chopping wood at certain stages where you have, okay, now I have to hit this shot five times to get this going. I've hit Snake this many times. But it's also Metallica, one of the greatest games ever. So, love, hate, Metallica. Anthony Whippy writes in and says, find out when Pirates of the Caribbean is making it to the shores. So, I saw this come in. Yeah, I emailed Wayne. I know you did. And, oh, did he see you on an email, did he? Might have. Okay. He said two are coming in by air this week. I'm guessing that's called a flip out. And the container arrives around December the 1st. So in a couple of weeks, we'll be playing Pirates of the Caribbean. Absolutely. Marty and Dave, did any of you watch the Carl D'Python Anghelo, otherwise known as Carl D'Python Anghelo, Pirates of the Caribbean stream? Yes, I did. Holy shit. Wow. Like, we mentioned a couple of episodes before, I've been avoiding watching their streams, but I just said, I'll watch five minutes of this. I ended up watching about two hours of it. Carl makes games look fucking awesome. I don't know what it is. I think it's like his stream set up. The way he set up the pinball machine, Marty, I actually thought I fucked up and was playing the YouTube clip at 1.5 speed. Because I'm like, Pirates of the Caribbean isn't this fast. Why is the ball whizzing back to the clip that fast? he's just set up the machine perfectly do you have any thoughts about that mate? yeah no look I was chatting as well to Carl and Raymond Verhoef was there as well and good friend of mine Johnny Modica and I sort of just said towards the end how does it compare I know it's a hard question to ask but I sort of said how does it compare to the other Jersey Jack games. And really, I guess what I was trying, knowing that Carl still has his Wizard of Oz but got rid of his Hobbit and I still have my Woz but got rid of my Hobbit, I was curious to know what sort of last ability it would have. And he just said, there's just so much to go for. It is so deep. It will just keep you entertained for a very long time. It looks good. It sounds great. I reckon it's a good machine. there's a lot of things to take in like I'm still pretty unsure on what's going on with the software but I'm the kind of person that needs to learn by playing but it just, I don't know, Iron Maiden's been a great pinball machine this year and I'm sure it'll probably win the squirpies sorry, the squippies but Pirates of the Caribbean has to be a smokey for it, right? Like it's probably not in enough hands yet but it has to be up there because As I said, I will look in the show notes, watch Carl D'Python Anghelo's streams. Forget about all the other streams you've watched, even though there were Keith P. Johnson and Eric Winnier explaining the game. Watch this stream. It's fucking amazing. Long games. About an hour for a four-player game with no ball saves. So it is a long player, but so is Batman 66. It's a long player because these four players are incredibly good. Who would love this with people? They were, like, really freaking good players. I have no idea who they were. I missed the first 30 minutes of the stream. So I know Johnny Modica. I know him from tournaments. And Raymond I know because he's Vuvvuf, and I watch his Twitch stream. Is he the guy with the blonde hair, or is he the guy with the long hair? Long hair. Ah, he's Vuvvuf. Okay. Yeah. He's awesome. Hello to you. Okay, cool. All right, moving along. I think we've got a lot to go. We've only got a couple more. Okay. So, things you would put in a pinball machine if you were tasked to design one. Not a dream theme, but rules and layout. There are a lot of possible rules that have never been done before. Jeez. And then part two, what kind of crazy toys would be possible if pinball machines had a $25,000 bill of materials? Oh, Ezra, thank you for the question. Oh, my gosh. This one... We should have saved half of these for the next episode. That's such a good question. I reckon we need to revisit that one. We will not have enough time. Yeah, I'm not creative enough to think of something on the spot. Steve is seconding Marty's gin request. Rick Savage, what about mods that regress, didn't turn out or just didn't like? Well, you don't mod your machines, really, Dave, do you? Do you regret putting the custom decals on your creature from Back of the Gun? No, it's pretty cool. it's actually purple. No, I'm not really a big mod guy, and I've got like, in all my machines, I've got probably 10 mods in all of them, so I'm not really a big pimp the machines out. I just like to have the machines working 100% and playing well. I more of a player than a modder but yeah not my thing What about you Marty Well as you know I don mod but the two main mods I actually had for my machine, they were both for Star Trek, and I was not necessarily regretted buying, but I was disappointed with them. The first one was one of the Pinovator's headphone jacks that you can put on a Stern. And Stern had changed the design of the volume control within the front part of the machine, so I couldn't use the external volume up and down button. So that made it really quite annoying, and I was kind of disappointed that it didn't come, and I paid for the extra one that had all the volume control, so I guess I was disappointed that I spent money on that and it didn't work. And the other one that was also on Star Trek was an LED mod that goes in the Vengeance machine. The Vengeance machine. The Vengeance ship. It looks very cool, but because of the weight of it, when you destroy the Vengeance, the Vengeance falls down and then won't go back up again. Is that the reason, Marty, or is it something else? Surely it's not that heavy. No, it's not that heavy, but I think I've put the same one on mine, and mine's fine. I've seen that mod in two other machines Star Trek's and they do exactly the same thing so there might be some tweaking that I should do but I don't but it's just one of those things where I go this should be easy and they don't I guess the only time I've ever stuck a trinket on a pinball machine was Istron and it was like the Amiibo things or whatever it's called or... Sorry, there's Amiibos and then there's something else. You know those little things that you get for, like, Xbox and PlayStation where you... NFC devices? Anyway, it's a little figurine of, like, Tron, but it was cartoony and it didn't really suit the rough edge of the pinball machine, so I installed those and removed them. I'm not really a trinket guy because it's usually going to fall off one day or a ball will hit it or it will chip. I don't know. Yeah. that's about it. I haven't done so many mods anyway and if you like them. Aaron talks about the horrible condition that Cider pins are for $2 a game. That's just people being lazy. We've talked about that before. The best example is I guess, as long as the pinball machine is still making money then there is absolutely no reason for the operator to care. So if you support the pinball machine by putting money in there then you can't really, you know, continuously, you can't really complain about the condition like I do at BaseLag because I still go there and now I've embraced how shit the Pimmo machines are. Yeah, you just adjust your play style. So at least you guys... As long as you guys have actually got machines out on route or out on site, we haven't got any machines over here or there's very few left now. So at least you guys have got something to play. That's true. Not that you would ever go and play the machine I mean if there was a location Dave that had 50 pinball machines and they were all in amazing condition would you still have the massive collection that you have today? No, no, no I wouldn't I would I mean I think we've talked before about me actually I've been looking to set something up in Auckland where I'd set all my collection up for people to come and play but the real estate in New Zealand and Australia is just so expensive it's just cost prohibitive to do it so it's not really a winner. But no, there's no need to have all these pinball machines if there was somewhere to go and play them. I'd love for there to be an arcade in Auckland and I could have a heck of a lot less machines, but then there'd be nowhere for people to come and play pinball machines. My setup is just purpose-built to run tournaments and to have people around to play them. That's the only reason I have this collection and have the setup that I do. The little setup that I have at the apartment with the 12 machines up there, that's a great personal collection, probably similar to what you've got at home, Ryan. Yeah, that's a perfect setup for home. Well, dude, I've got a really good tip for you. Apparently, if you just ask General C for $10 million, people will crowdfund. I know real estate is really expensive in Auckland, but if you just ask, there's a website called like wefunder.com or something. I've heard of that, yeah. Yeah, put your story up there, ask for $10 million, and the money just rolls in. Yeah. I might start a thread on Pinside tomorrow actually, see if I can knock a few up see if I can get a bit of a loan happening Petty Pinsider is talking about how much he sucks, thanks Petty the next one is about Wombat Poo Money and scientists have finally figured out after all these years, so we were trying to figure out why it's done we kind of worked it out what, square arsehole? No, it's not their superior souls. It's their intestines. Certain parts of the wall will flex more than others, so it actually forms like a cube or square-type shape around the intestines, which forces it to be cube-shaped. Did you read the article, Marty? Yeah, I did. Did you read all of it? Yeah. So the funniest part was... We currently have only two methods to manufacture cubes. We mould it or we cut it. Now we have a third method, Yang said. It would be a cool method to apply to the manufacturing process. How to make a cube with soft tissue instead of just moulding it. Holy crap. So they figured this all out because they want to figure out how to make cubes. So they literally got wombat rope kills, opened them up, and now they're going to use that to make cubes. hilarious it's yeah beautiful internet great follow up story yeah Michael Jones says have you bought any pinball machines that you later regretted buying I haven't you guys have a lot more machines have you regretted buying a machine Dave my brain's just ticking over there's been a few that have come and yeah I'd have to think about it there's been a few that have come in and gone out pretty quickly. Actually, I remember one I bought recently was Belly Truck Stop, which was the first game that Williams made after they bought out Belly, and it had half Belly running gear and half Williams running gear. It's a good-looking machine. I've never played it. I've never seen it in the flesh. I've seen pictures of it, but what's it like? I've always wanted to play it because I've never seen one around. One popped up for sale here, and I went and saw the lady and got a good deal on it. And it came in and I tidied it all up and played it, sold it two weeks later. It was actually a really, really underwhelming, really disappointing game. It just wasn't very exciting at all. There hasn't really been too many others. That's probably the one that comes straight to mind. There hasn't been... I mean, I've been buying pinball machines now for nearly 30 years, so I'm sure there's other ones, but that's the one that comes straight to mind. That was a disappointing clanger, that one. for me it was probably well maybe a tie between Champ Hub because I just literally I'd never played it before saw some footage of it and didn't want to watch too much I'm like yeah this is it this is a good deal and when I got it I was bored after a couple of games sold it after two weeks the next one was Revenge from Mars and that was all that was not the pinball machine is fun and it's actually not a horrible game it's just my expectations was that if it can be half as good as Attack from Mars, which I thought it might be, and, you know, at one-third of the price or one-fourth of the price, then I'm on to a winner here. But it's nothing like Attack from Mars at all. It might share the same name and have the same humour, but the shots and the rules are 100% different. Yeah, and is that the one that's now at Michael Kors' place? Yeah, I didn't think he was going to... I fucking sold that to him so cheap. because of his collection, right, so he had dialed in, I'm trying to remember them, you can help me out, dialed in Centigrade, what is it, 37 or whatever it is? 37, Tron, Shadow, Roadshow, Cactus Canyon and Batman. Yep. The old one. 2006 Batman. I played Revenge from Mars the most. Because no one was on it, Marty, and the place was packed, is that why? No, it was when I actually did have a choice of all the games. It was actually that and Centigrade 37 I played because Centigrade 37 was just mint. It just played so snappy. But I have a soft spot for Revenge from Mars. Yes, it is absolutely not as good as Attack from Mars, but it's a very underrated game. It's probably the only game I've ever owned where I had pretty much zero interest in learning the rules. And I still don't actually know the rules because I never got too far into the game, but I just didn't like the whole... Yeah, every other game I'm like, well, obviously I don't like this because I don't know the rules and let me do some research, but then I was just like, okay, who wants it? I concur. Both of my thin 2000s didn't hang around long. The Star Wars one, that's no good at all. And, yeah, Revenge from Mars didn't do anything for me either, so they both got flicked on. I remember a couple of others too. I had all the Data East and Sega games. Apollo 13, that didn't do anything for me. that was in and out pretty quickly. Well, once you get your 13-ball multiball, that's where you're done, really. Yeah, that's right. And my 13-ball multiball didn't work. It was only the top trot was stuck. I did fix it before I sold it. The other one that comes to mind as well is the wrestling one, the Royal Rumble. Always thought that looked good, you know. I like a lot of the Darnery schemes, but Royal Rumble just didn't do anything for me, so that wasn't around. Yeah, it sort of looks good. I've still got Guns N' Roses as the only one I've got left, but I still like Rocky and Bullwinkle and a lot of those games, but Royal Rumble just didn't do anything for me. Do you think GNR is the best daughteries game, Dave? Certainly the most expensive one. I like Tommy. Tommy's a good game. Rocky and Bullwinkle's probably underrated. Guns and Roses can get a little bit repetitive, but it's certainly up there, yeah. I'd have to think about that. So let me ask you guys a question then. Are there any machines that you've regretted selling? The only one I've ever regretted selling is the first machine I ever bought, which was the, let me think about it, got the SolarCity, the two-player version of Target Alpha. And I bought that in 89 or 90. It was the first machine I ever bought, and it got boring after a while because it was the only one I had. And I sold it, so I still wish I had that one. But otherwise, no, they come and they go, and if they go, it's normally for a reason. So that's the only one I ever regret selling. Yeah, I've bought a couple of pinball machines twice, but then kind of, I think, whitewater's the only one that I've bought twice and held on to it. Not really. I mean, I guess that's why I've got a bunch of pinball machines on site as well, because I own them but don't really own them at my house, so it's that halfway in between of selling it but, you know, not really selling it. So not yet. I haven't sold a machine that I've desperately wanted back so much that I regret it. Well, except for the ones that you did sell and then bought back. Well, when I bought them back, it was just, I'll give another go. It's not like I was like, oh, my gosh, I fucking miss that game so much. I get a lot of messages that I get like, oh, hey, will you please sell me your this? Because I used to have one, like that Whirlwind. I was like, I had one two years ago, and I don't know what I was thinking when I sold it. And I think about it every day. Like, I don't think about anything every day that I've sold. She's gone. Yeah, it's actually very liberating to me when I sell a pinball machine. And when I sell one, I always think about selling more. Like, Floor Alert, the Grand Prix, which wasn't even my pinball machine, sold this week, and it felt so good when it sold that I was like, I could sell this, I could sell that. And I'm like, okay, let me sleep on it. And then I wake up the next day, I'm like, no, I'll keep it. Are we done with that segment? That long, long, long segment? No, it's good stuff. Well done, everybody. Thank you very much for your suggestions. That was actually really cool. I thought we were going to get like one or two things, but there was 50 comments there, so that was popular. That was really cool. All right, so then just lastly on to this week in pinball. For me, there's only really one thing I want to talk about, and that is that I streamed Deadpool last night, and there's something that I discovered about Deadpool. so hear me out so when you think about a lot of games and particularly a lot of the games that we really do get these days are effectively a modified fan layout right shots left right and everything in between and there's probably 10 to 12 shots including targets on the left and really what happens is if you've missed your shot then you're kind of you're paying for missing your shot and it usually comes back and you've got to try and use your flipper skills to keep the ball alive, or it might try to go out the out lane, all that kind of stuff. And that's the nature of a fan layout. Hit your shot, you get it, great. Miss it, it comes back at you, and then you're in peril. What I discovered last night, and this may sound like I'm trying to overstate this, but I'm not. This was a revelation I had last night when I was playing Deadpool. What's really great about Deadpool, and this is the testament to George Gomez, it's when you miss your shots, other things happen. The geometry is such that some of the shots you actually have a better chance of getting through a rebound shot. That little, that left sort of horseshoe thing, you can try and hit that head-on, but it's actually easier to have it rebound from the pops into that. You know, you've got the stick shot that goes up the left ramp via, you know, a left backhand shot. so there's a lot of movement of the ball around the top two thirds of the machine that actually have meaning as opposed to a ball just randomly going around and then coming back in its depth but you're saying that's random like you're randomly getting lucky by hitting things by accident well I just think that he has set it up so you are meant to have more chances of hitting things through rebounding as opposed to the ball missing and coming back to the flippers and all of a sudden it's about flipper skills. There's a lot more going up there with the ball moving around. Okay. So it was just a really interesting moment that I had last night when I realised part of this game is not direct shots, it's a lot of rebounding. I mean, that rebounding snick shot, that is the multiplier for the entire game, which is pretty important, right? Like, we can bag Dwight South as much as we can, but you're in control of that multiplier the entire time. Whereas that's like, well, yes, you can go for the shot and hit it. It is a valid shot. But you're saying that you can kind of accidentally hit it and then, you know, you're on 2S and then 3S? No, no, no, no, no. I was using the stick as probably the easiest example where, you know, you're going up that left ramp instead of the conventional way you're doing it by rebounding a target. but one of the things was there's the center shot, there's a center spinner, which you can get from the left flipper and it's much harder from the right and you can't do it directly. You've got to rebound it via the right flipper and you can do it consistently and that's deliberate. It's intentional. That's what I was coming to terms with with Deadpool is all these rebound shots are deliberate. it. It's not just an accident that you can do these things. So it's very cool. The one thing I noticed, well, not noticed, I mean, George Gomez kind of talked about it, is that he doesn't usually put targets in between shots. He uses that little blue nub to get one more shot in the game. And it's funny because if you miss a shot on, say, like a Tron or Game of Thrones, you've got Game of Thrones, Dave, like, you're punished because the ball comes back at you at lightning speed because of that target. If you miss a shot and there's a blue nub there, well, it depends on which part of the blue nub you hit, but it might kind of clank around and feel like it's a clunky game, or it might kind of come back slowly because those blue nubs kind of absorb the pressure. They don't fly back at you. They're not like spring-loaded. So it's interesting that a lot of kind of like George Gomez games have that, and when there's a lot of those blue nubs and it might feel a bit more clanky and the ball's moving sideways because of those shots versus a target that will shoot the ball back more times than not when you miss. Hmm. There you go. Yeah? Blue nubs of death. Batman 66 will tend to throw it back at you a little bit. Yeah. Yep. But that's what I was saying. That's what I just thought about Deadpool in particular is it's more than just the shots that are obviously in front of you. I think there's a bit of a thread on tilt forums about that. I think Kaylee George brought that up. And I think it's just going from memory, that target that you're talking about randomly hitting, that in that head-to-head battle that Zach and Keith Elwin had a little while ago, Keith was hitting that on purpose from the flipper. So if you're a good player like Keith, obviously you can hit it, and it's not so random. So I think it can be hit if you're Keith Elwin. Yeah. It's the hardest thing ever to design a pinball game. Oh, definitely. It appeases everyone, and that rule will probably piss off a lot of people in tournaments that aren't Keith Elwin. Even though Kelly George is an amazing player, I'm not sure if it was him that started that thread, but if someone hits that target accidentally and his whole mode is then 2x and you haven't done that, then you might not win. So, anyway, Marty, let's go to your social media watch. I just want to put one thing in there. Social media watch. The Stern Facebook page, Marty, they mentioned that they had a picture of Ed Robinson playing the Beatles, right? And the Beatles have some pretty profound lyrics, Marty, you know, something that you can do that can't be done, nothing you can sing that can't be sung, all you need is love. being positive in the face of depression, hey Jude, refrain, don't carry the water upon your shoulders, etc. What I'm getting at is they called Ed Ed Robertson the fifth Beatle Marty. So let me read the most profound lyrics I've found from Bare Naked Ladies. You ready for it? Chickity China, the Chinese chicken, have a drumstick and your brain stops ticking. So there we go, the fifth Beatle, ladies and gentlemen. There you go. We need Ed Ed Robertson. You need to come on our show. Come on. All right. And my first question to you is going to be, why are you not bigger in Australia? Bigger. Sorry. Just giving you a bit of a heads up on the kind of questioning that you're going to get. Questioning. Yeah. Is that all you've done this week, Marty? That is really all that's of note. I'll go through mine really quickly because this has been a long episode. those. Do you guys know about the Whitewater rule called camera craze? You said words there. None of those words made any sense to me. What did you say? Do you know, in Whitewater, the pinball machine, do you know about the mode in there, or like the thing that comes up on the screen saying camera craze? And the big shot takes your photo everywhere when you're shooting around. I've played so many games on the machine and I always avoid Bigfoot Hotfoot because it sends the ball sideways. It only gets hit when I've got the kickback lit. But I was just playing a game like, okay, I'm just going to go for that target and got into Bigfoot straight away on the first ball. Was hitting Bigfoot non-stop. I think that was the fourth time you get Bigfoot Hotfoot and it's given me like 10 million a shot. It then starts camera crazy taking so many photos of you. And the mode's over, but then every shot I hit, no matter if it's lit with a yellow arrow or not, it's like every shot in the game, you get three million points, which is worth crazy amounts. I want to know if this is like a valid tournament strategy, or if it's just going for 5x multiple. Yeah, I think definitely Whitewater's all about the multiball, and if you can do 5x, then you're going to win by miles, but you have to be camera-crazy. Is it four times? Is it through hotfoot? Again, it's something you don't normally go for. Yeah. And even when I've gotten to Bigfoot Hotfoot, sometimes you struggle with the shot, but I think I hit it about five or six times, and I'm pretty sure it activated about four. So, interesting. My Bigfoot Hotfoot hadn't been activated so long, my machine told me that it was broken, that the verter didn't work anymore. I understand. That's the ding, ding, ding that I get every single time on my whitewater, so that's why I decided to go for it. so I was sick of going in and flicking the switch, so I said I'll do it manually. Marty and Dave have bought another pinball machine this week. Marty, do you want to guess what it is? Is it that photo that I sent you? Yeah, well, you sent me a photo of Gottlieb's Genesis. And I don't think you would be so obvious to show me what you've got before an episode. You know what, Marty? Genesis, I mean, I've only played one game on it. It's literally just one game. And I usually don't like games straight away, but I like this game. It's your favourite. Yeah, it's a fun game, yeah. It's a good game. It's so cool. Like, the sounds that are coming out of it, the shots, that's pretty cool. Yeah, the back glass. Oh my gosh, the back glass is so good. I'm going to try and get Veep to do a review on the back glass and just walk her in with a blindfold and just reveal, what the F is that? Anyway. Now, I was very confused. Like, why is there a little person there? Like, what's his relevance? What is this? So did you actually buy Genesis or not? No. It's just at my house until it gets picked up. Right. It's at a halfway house. I did buy another pinball machine, by the way. Okay. It's been too long to play the guessing game, so I'll just tell you it is Iron Man VE. I bought it again. I don't regret selling Iron Man. At least you do. No, I don't. No, you do. I just want to give it another go. and yes, we've been talking about sounds this episode that I like sounds more than this person. I think it might be that I really, really, really dislike the spinner sounds, which is gunshots. It's just gunshots non-stop. And it's too real for me. And I haven't been to the war. I don't have PTSD or anything like that. But when you hit a ramp or something in like super ramps in Star Trek and you hear that amazing laser sound. What are lasers called in Star Trek, Marty? Phasers or something? Sure, photons, phasers. Photons. Yeah, they sound fucking amazing. But gunshots are just gunshots. So if I don't like it after two weeks, I'm editing the Iron Man spinner sound to photons or something, something cool. The quick-spill the spinner sound. And if that doesn't work, then I'll sell it. I'll put it on site. So that's Iron Man. Cool. Cool. And the last thing I did was I registered the great Wapish Unity pinball tournament thingy. Three tournaments in one day. I can't remember talking about this episode, but yeah, three tournaments in one day at my house. 14 hours of pinball would be the longest time I've ever played pinball for. And that is in on the 16th of December. So I'll link that in the show notes, and I'll talk about it in a future episode. Awesome. Dave? Yes? I've done a million things this week in Timberlands. Yeah, I have. Yeah, I've just finished the skateboard, put a new CPR playfield in the skateboard, so that's all cool. That's going like a rocket. What else have I done this week? How much skateboards go for? I bought that machine, that came out of Boston. I bought six machines off a guy in Boston and shipped it back, and it actually came with two playfields, one of which I thought was good, had a crappy one in there, and it shipped with another playfield, which I thought was good. I stuck it in the corner for a couple of years. I pulled it out and I went, oh, both playfields are shit. So I had to get a CPR playfield for it, which, of course, cost a fortune. But it's well worth it. Skateball is a really good game. Now, you would have played that before, Marty? I have. That is, get the right hole as stacked as you can and then repeat, repeat, repeat. That's the one. And the trick is you can't, because you've got to shoot the escape targets to ramp up your hole on the right-hand side. But if you shoot another skate target, when you get the extra ball up or the special and you shoot the hole, then it goes back to zero again. You have to start all over again. So you've got to shoot... You want to shoot two or three banks of skate targets, but not four. So that's cool. So that's all up and going. And the other thing I've just done this afternoon before we started recording was I've got a Freedom Firewood here, which I picked up on the chip, and I'm going to re-theme that as a I've got this fantastic scheme I've been working on it for a little while Freedom's actually not a bad game, but it's not the greatest game ever so I'm going to re-theme that there was never ever a Led Zeppelin pinball machine made back in the 70s, which is surprising because they were the biggest band in the world they probably wanted to sell us money well, yeah, or maybe they didn't license, or I'm not too sure so I've got pretty much all those classic ballet EM machines from 1976. I've got Wizard, Captain Fantastic, Old Chicago, Bow and Arrow. Freedom came out in 76 as well. So what I want to do is I want to make the Freedom into a Led Zeppelin pin, but make it as different. I don't want to put photos and that on there like a lot of people do. I want to make it look as if it came out in 1976. So if anyone walked up to it next door with my other ones, they'll say, I've never seen a Led Zeppelin pinball before. well, where did you get this from? Going for the Beatles strategy from the same era. They were popular in 1964. So let's try and emulate that era. Yeah, but where Beatles has gone for modern, it's really got modern gameplay and modern space. Yeah, you're waiting for it to look like it came out at the time. Yeah, so if random people came up, they'd go, oh, shit, I never knew they made a Led Zeppelin pinball machine. So what I really need, this is actually an ideal platform ideal platform for me to beg for help is that I'm a clever fella but I'm artistically inept so I've got a couple of pictures that I want to use for the back glass but I want someone to draw the pictures because I don't want to put photos on there because none of these are all hand drawn so I've got some pictures, I really want someone to sort of stylise the pictures into artwork that I can put on the back glass, playfield I've got under control, it's just the back glass that I need a little bit of hand with so if anyone wants to I've got some pretty good photos I want to use. We can use them as basically price over them, but then hand draw them. I think that would be real cool. So if there's anyone out there who will work for Peanuts, maybe Bear or – Christopher Franchini. I think he does our logo. He does mine, but he sounds pretty pricey. But, yeah, his artwork, like he did for Batman, would be – that's exactly the concept that I wanted to go for. So if there's any kind listeners out there who have got some spare time and will work for Ardabeer or for cheap money because of the Peanuts project, then please send me a message. It'd be good. And how do people contact you, Dave? You can contact me at dave at pinballarcade.co.nz. That's pinballarcade.co.nz. or they can message you on Pinside because you are Roto Day, which we failed to mention at the start of the episode, so this is Roto Day, people, if you've got two hours into the episode and say, who the fuck is this guy it's Roto Day that's me, so yeah just send me a message, if anyone wants to give me a hand that'll be real cool, the rest of it I'll do myself there's no problems, but just that back glass I want to get it looking 1970s, 60s so if anyone, it actually could be a good, a really good opportunity for somebody who hasn't done like not an established pinball artist to do some art like this and then you never know, Stern will be giving you a job. What a pitch! What a pitch! You could be the next Christopher Franchi, your gateway is APEC, yeah. That's true. Did you, okay, so just artwork, you're not, the sounds are going to be all the same, the rules are all the same. I'm still going to run chimes, I've actually got an electronic system I'm going to run in there. I'm still going to have the chimes but I've rigged up an electronic system with MP3s so that each player plays a song but it's still going to have the chimes as well so the chime is going to be the main ding, ding, ding but each song, each player, so player one first thing you're going to hear when you walk up to this old EM machine you're going to push the player one button and it's going to go and then player two will have another song so each player will have their own song and then it'll come through. I'm going to plug it into my Marshall stack so that the...