All right. We just had a sponsor of the week for Pinside. Are you a frequent Pinsider, Rob? You know, I really only use it very sparingly, and I never check the message boards anymore. I get to casually peek in, take a look at the map, see the rankings, get some information if I need it, and I'm out. How can you possibly stay abreast of all the news in the pinball community? You know, there's other platforms and outlets. So podcasts, I think, are generally more positive, even when they're not being positive. So I like that community a little bit more. I can send you a few podcasts that might not be so positive. Well, right. I mean, it's, yeah. We shit on Pinside, but the only thing I ever really complain about Pinside is just the forums. And I know there's a lot of good stuff on there. Like if you're an owner of a certain machine, if you want help on a machine, they can definitely find that information. I like that a lot. I like the unique things. It's just really the bitch fests I choose to ignore. I think we've talked to some people. They take a look at the forums. I think Chuck does from Spooky. I think Dwight Sullivan kind of takes it all in as well from Stern. I don't know. I couldn't handle it if I was – well, I guess – Marty, you're now with Haggis. I never even thought about this. Have you been taking a look at the forums and taking little thoughts? Oh, what are they saying about Fathom and this and that? Yeah, do you know what? We're in a – I hope by saying this, it doesn't change. But we do look at the forums every day, particularly myself and Damien do look at Pinsai and check those feds every day. We're in this really fortunate position in that there are a lot of advocates for haggis. So by the time we've read the comments and want to respond or update, people are really informed and they've already answered the question. So we catch up every morning and we do a review of what's happened on the socials, the socials, and we literally log in and go, our job is done. Like the fans or the advocates have all answered questions accurately. So maybe, I don't know, we're an outlier. And as I said, I hope that doesn't change. It's really refreshing to have people that are, I'm not talking about like they're blind fanboys, but I think there are people that want Haggis to be successful. So the spirit in which they answer these questions is very informed and with a positive slant. So I hope that answers that. But certainly we also do see other manufacturers that are having a harder time to win people over. and that's when you've got the mob mentality of, and we say Pinside, but just about all forums, gaming forums in particular, are very similar like this. Pinside is not alone. Do you engage the people? If it's a direct question and you can give a direct answer, I guess that's a little safer to get involved with some of the comments, but I would just ignore them. I mean, I would take note of things that might make some good sense, some constructive criticism, but I don't know, engaging some of these keyboard warriors. That's the thing that drives me nuts. There are no names to these monikers or pin side nicknames. It's just any random person. You have no idea who it is. No one has the guts to put their name forward. So in that sense, why even respond? But I guess, I don't know. What do you think? Well, I think if there's questions that are left unsaid, particularly in internet time, If there's some questions that are left unsaid, the more you leave it unsaid, the more people can make up their own mind. And sometimes that can go either way and you're not in control of that. But as I said, we just keep seeing people answer these questions accurately so we don't need to respond. But one thing that we do is if anybody reaches out directly, either via a direct message on Pinside or via email, they get answered immediately. as soon as we can because we're very busy at the moment. I can imagine. Now, Rob, do you use Pinside for maybe thinking, okay, what will be my first game if you choose to get one? I mean, there's certainly a lot of information out there. For me, when it was getting my first game, it was the right price. I'm just getting into the hobby. Okay, I'll give it a try. It's a decent game. I went on Pinside to find out where it was in the rankings and kind of read some of the comments. Do you do any of that? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's what always gets me to get to the edge of the cliff where I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it. Or it's like, maybe just not yet because I mean, it's like, I'd love to own a world cup and there's one up for 3,400 and it's like, yeah, I, I, that, that price. Okay. It looks all right. And then I just don't know if I would play it as often as $3,400 is worth when I can go and play one on location an hour away. Well, there is that factor too, because if you have great locations nearby, you really don't even have to own a machine. and it's great to support those locations. We had Bruce and Ron on last week. We talked about the pinball collective that's going to be happening there in Rochester. So that I know you're going to be frequenting once in a while. Absolutely. I am so excited for that. I think that's another reason why I haven't bought a machine yet is because I realized really early on, because I've only been playing since May of 2019. So, you know, pinball has been shut down on location more than it was when I was playing. But that collective is going to be incredible. I took a tour of it, kind of a brief stopped in and talked with everybody, and it looks amazing, and it's going to be a ton of fun. But again, in Western New York, I've had so many great locations around me, and within, let's say, two hours, no, let's say an hour and a half, I've got maybe 150 games on location when Silver Ball Saloon was still open, and then even more once they open the Collective. Yeah, that Collective is going to be pretty sweet with all the games in there and a lot of different variety, too. So 150 machines in your area. I mean, Australia, we can't do a comparison because we just are so much smaller and we just don't get that many machines in here. But if I had 150 machines in the vicinity of me, that would be incredible. Yeah, and that's just at basically four locations that I'm counting. I'm not even saying like smaller bars and stuff. So there's way more than that. That's just Pocketeer, Swillberger, the Strong Museum of Play, and then Silver Ball. But especially with the collective, like I said, there's going to be even more. Yeah, it's huge. I'll tell you one thing about playing games on location. One of my all-time favorite games, and it's a game I've never owned, and I would love to own it, is Iron Maiden. I like the flow of that game. I like the rules. I like the theme. Everything about it ticks all the boxes. The reason I didn't buy this is because I can play it everywhere. If I couldn't play it everywhere, I'd buy it immediately. But I know so many people, friends, locations that have it, so I can get my fix. And I wanted games that I couldn't play anywhere else. when you have a limited collection. So I can kind of see your point too. But when it comes to buying that first game, if you have 150 games in your vicinity that you can play, do you think it will be one of those 150? Oh, I keep going back to that. Why am I keep throwing money into that when I could own the thing? I could have paid for it by now. You know what? The funniest thing is it would be teed off, which was on location at a burger place near me. And it was the first game where it finally clicked how to actually play pinball. but I have not seen one in quite a while because they moved it out of the burger place. But it also goes to, I got really addicted to tournaments and the community at large. So I don't really like playing pinball at home. I rented Metallica from Bruce when they shut down during COVID, the temporary shutdown of Silver Ball. And I played it quite a bit, loved the game, But I got bored with it, even though I enjoy it that much. So I don't know if it's so much owning a game or if it's being with the people, especially after this bizarre social experiment that we had to all go through this past year. Is it just having people there with you to enjoy the experience? Or is it the competition? Who's going to beat who? Is that what's appealing to you? You know what? It never really was the competition because my goal was to get up to the top 10,000 on the IFPA after a year of playing. So I was never really playing against anybody else. I was playing for myself. So it was really just like the camaraderie and getting along with everybody. Well, 9,882. Oh, go you. Well, see, that's the caveat is I got decayed into it because I think I was like 12,000, and my points just went up as everybody else decayed. Just knock it. Just take it. That's great. Why should you be penalized that you haven't been playing for three years? The fact that you played right up until the pandemic, good for you, and you played in incredible tournaments. I think there was one you played at Silver Ball Saloon. I can't remember that one. The Pinball Worldy something or other. I can't remember. I had a couple drinks that night. Get it right, you son of a gun. Pinball World Tour? I can't remember. You can talk about that one. You're allowed to talk about all the other ones in the world. Just nothing in Australia. Yeah, Jeff didn't win it. That's all I remember. I didn't win it either I was top four Andy Crushman won that if I recall that was the Pinball Profile World Tour and Phil Birnbaum I know he was in the top four as well yeah that was that's fun I mean it was fun putting those tournaments on I'd love to do it again fingers crossed we'll do it but that's neat for me to hear someone like you Rob who I mean you were only in pinball for six months at that time maybe six eight months at the max and you're having enjoyment in that type of format. Now, that was one of the ones we didn't do a flip frenzy. We did match play, and I do think match play is pretty incredible. The only thing that's difficult about match play is when you have a lot of people, it's getting the timing right because if you've got the best group on, say, Star Trek, Stern, they're going to play forever and ever, and everyone's going to be sitting there going, okay, we're waiting for the next round, let's go, let's go, let's go. But you still enjoyed it. Well, yeah, I think that was part of my mistake where I decided, okay, I'm going to have a couple beers, I'll Uber home, no big deal, I'll just drink one drink per round. Oh, boy. And then as the day went on, and I was there, you know, into the evening. I mean, I got knocked out pretty early. I think I came in, like, 40th of 42 or something, but still. Well done. It still went on for a long time. But that was actually the only time that I really, like, had drinks and played pinball. So, again, it didn't really matter about the tournament. It was just enjoying being around that many people. And that was really impressive to me because I'd only been playing against more or less the same pool of maybe 20, 25 people in the area. It's funny, these bigger tournaments, and that one was certainly a bigger one, it brings out some really good players. I know we had a bunch come down from Ottawa and Canada. And again, that was mainly because we enjoyed the location of Silver Ball Saloon with what Kat and Bruce did and the great quality of games. But these competitions, that's something, and I feel bad. I doubt you ever got a chance to go to something like Pinberg, but I certainly hope you get to go to bigger competitions and you'll really enjoy them even more. Yeah, that's the biggest bummer for me was because I finally – all of the events were kind of happening and I was hearing them from people who had just gone to them come back. And I'm like, oh, yeah, well, I'm definitely going to do that next year. And then that next year was 2020. Can I just go back a second? Because obviously you're just saying that that's probably now 18 months ago, two years ago that you got into pinball. Does that mean that you hadn't really played pinball before then, or had you played it but really not shown that much of an interest? I'm curious to know the difference. So I played it off and on growing up, but I was, you know, I'm 35, so video game arcade, that was really like the bigger thing when I was growing up. But then barcades came around, so I would play pinball sometimes, but it never clicked with me. So I didn't know how to actually play the game physically. So like I said before, there was that teed off. I'm waiting for my burger at this burger place. And then I got a multi-ball. I had no idea how I did it. And my little buzzer is going off for me to go pick up my burger. And I'm still playing the game for another like five minutes. When in the past, I'd only played games for two or three minutes. You know, just really terrible rookie stuff. But then I went home and Googled how to play pinball. And then it's like I'm opened up to the world of Bo and Karen's. And then my mind was just completely blown. So I went down that rabbit hole as far as you possibly could go, and it became pretty much my entire everything, like my entire life at that point. So with that in mind, what is your view of the pinball industry from somebody that's been in it a couple of years versus us that have been on it 40 plus years and can get a little bit tainted with all the information that I've had over the years? oh, that's not as good as this one that was back then. And, you know, Bally Williams games didn't have pooling and all that kind of stuff. But I'm just curious, for somebody that's been in it for a couple of years, what is your opinion of the pinball industry? I guess at large, I mean, all the information to take in from that point on was a little bit daunting. But I've seen, I guess, even just in this short amount of time, things change kind of a lot. I mean, I don't know. It's just I've taken in so much information from podcasts as well. So I guess my point would be, I don't know if I'm a big fan of any of the manufacturers that have released anything in the past maybe six years. I like older games, to be honest. What's turned you off the newer games? I guess it's just I still can't really wrap my mind, and I could spend so much time reading or looking at videos on YouTube. I can't wrap my mind around how to actually play some of the games outside of the information that I need to know to play them in tournaments. Well, hold on a second. Dwight Sullivan's here. He'll explain it in 30 seconds or less. It'll be a piece of cake. I appreciate what you just said there because I certainly like the new games. I like the older games, too. What I like about the older games is I can explain to you in probably three sentences what you need to do, and then you just have to execute. It doesn't make them simpler. It makes maybe easier to comprehend and you don't have to do as much math maybe in your head and you don't have to worry about action buttons and multipliers and this and that. But as we see the sales of new games go up and up and up and the demand is just increasing and suppliers and distributors are having trouble with keeping supply on hand, there's something to be said about the deeper games as you are spending that much more money and maybe bringing them into your home or operating them that, okay, there's more to it and I will not burn out of this game. But it's funny that you said you had Metallica and you got bored of it. I mean, to me, I think Marty and I both said a couple weeks ago. it's maybe the best Stern game ever made. Well, I guess like, I don't know if I've contradicted myself or it's more like this, where it's like the price point for any of these newer games absolutely makes sense to have them in your house if you're going to play them over and over again to try and advance through all the modes and stuff. Whereas like I guess my gameplay is what exactly do I need to do after somebody else has just played to try and best their score rather than try and beat the game That is two different things It when you play a game at home, especially during this pandemic, is you really change how you're playing the game. For me, it's, okay, can I complete this? Can I get to the wizard mode? Versus, well, if I was playing in match play, I would just do this to get a decent base score and not really try to blow it up. So I guess you're hooked on that kind of competitive aspect where what's the best attack to do well in this match. Yeah, I would say that too. And I just, you know, again, since I'm really not that well versed in every single game and I can play that many games, I'm just kind of trying to tool around and figure out what is the multiball and when do I need to start it, you know? Even something as simple as that seems really entertaining to me and worth the money, even just to get replays. So a lot of people have said that since the advent of the LCD screens in pinball, that reliance on the screen to tell people what to do versus inserts and text on playfields has actually made it harder for people to understand the game. Arguably, I'd say the confusion was coming before screens. I mean, Game of Thrones was very confusing when it first came out. Walking Dead is still confusing to a lot of people and it's a dot matrix display. I'm not even sure whether it's how complicated or how deep the rules are versus how are they telling you that information? How are they making that game accessible to you? And as the demand for deeper and longer code because we're now putting these games in machines is causing that further problem of being able to have a complex rule set but make you understand that rule set. A game that I feel recently got it right was Elvira, because lots of inserts, you can understand what to do just by looking at what insert or what arrow is lit. It's a relatively deep rule set, but it guides you, it holds your hand along the way. You know what? I was actually going to bring that one up is because a lot of the play fields have gotten very, very busy. So even if I have a baseline knowledge, even just looking at the play field, there's so much to look at. With Elvira, I feel like it's that plus I can make the shots so I can advance through that game. And I've only played it maybe 30, 40 times, but I like that for that reason. Jeff? Because Jeff and I had some interesting words about Elvira. He's making fun of me because he knows I wouldn't own Elvira. He's confusing that with, do I like Elvira or not? Well, you bagged the shit out of Elvira when it came out. I think it's an easy game, but I don't think it's a bad game. It's an easy, easy game. For somebody of my caliber, I'm not trying to be a real dickhead here. I know it comes across like that, but I can fucking make those shots. They're not hard to miss. Anyway, I think it is a fun, fun game. I would recommend that to anybody. I love hearing Rob's analogy of it because that is exactly what that game is. And the great thing about it is you can get deep on it too. So it has something for the beginner and it has something for the expert. That is a perfect mix. It's a good game. You can't hear me say it's a bad game. Yeah, but my point is even though if that had harder shots, it would still go back to the point we're talking about as it's accessible because the inserts tell you what you need to do and the way it lights certain arrows, you know exactly what you need to do as opposed to some of these newer games can become really confusing. So I think if for you, Jeff, if that had much harder shots, I reckon that would be the ultimate game for you. Probably. I think so. It's just the fact that you can hit a lot of those shots with both flippers is the only concern I have of me getting bored and playing it a long time. That's all. But I think it is a great game and the code is perfect and the layout is great. Like you say, the shots, The call-outs are spectacular. What's not to like about it? It's just not something I would see me owning. But that's interesting that you bring that up about how do you do these things. Rob, Martin, I'm going to say a bunch of games. Feel free to both jump in. Tell me on the games I'm about to name how to start the add-a-ball. Oh, okay. Now, Rob, before I even said anything, you went, oh. Why did you say, oh? Well, to keep the ball alive. Okay, but if you're in a multi-ball, there's a way to add a ball. This isn't a game by any means, but I just want to know how quickly you guys can figure out how to add a ball in multi-ball. I'll say a game. Blurt it out, boys. Metallica.