I'm sad to report that Don could not be on this intro today. He accidentally swallowed a bug that, weirdly enough, crawled out of a pinball machine that we got recently. It just flew right at his face the moment he lifted up the playfield for the first time, so he didn't even see what it was. just down the hatch. Anyway, he hasn't been feeling well since then. Probably a coincidence? Anywho, it's October and things are getting a little spooky around these parts. Alright, start the tape. Come on in. Welcome to the theater of magic. Welcome to the party zone. Welcome to my home. Welcome to the bash! Alright, alright, alright. So we are talking about putting a pinball machine at a bar. We found the bar. Yes, yes. After a long search. Yeah. Actually, not really. I just, you know, happened to like this place. And I noticed when I used the bathroom one night, they had a Gorgar back glass hanging up on the wall? Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, well, the first thing was, oh my god, why is there not a pinball machine in here? Yeah, it's weird to just have a back glass and a spot for a pinball machine and no pinball machine. I was like, you know, obviously you have to know something about pinball if you have a freaking Gorgar Was it lit up? No, no, it wasn't lit up. But it was just the whole back glass. Yeah, yeah, like hanging up art, you know. By the bathroom. But it's a cool bar and like it's always been a cool spot. I don't know. No judgment zone. Artistic, cool. Yeah. You know, people that are into weird stuff and weird music. And just it was like a cool spot, like a divey cool spot to hang out. In Carborough. Pretty much like, yeah, Carborough vibes. Carborough vibes. Perfect. So anyways, yeah. Once that idea planted itself in my head, but I got to know the owner. I met him. Yeah. I think somebody introduced me, like one of my friends or something. Yeah. Then a few months later After some arm twists He finally was like Fine I'll do it And then it was like Begrudgingly? No no no he's super cool Shout out to JB Then it was like oh my god This could actually happen What the hell are we going to put in here What's going to go in here What's the vibe I never thought it would get this far Because we're not going to put No good gophers in this place right that was kind of the beginning i don't know for me i didn't really like think of it as a bash thing it was just like i like this bar i would play pinball here and then it became a bash thing because you know obviously our connection together and like us going in on games and stuff like that which i wouldn't have been able to do this on my own right yeah yeah but it's just funny like that's the inception that's like the baby that's the seed of the story yeah and part of the story is there's not a lot of good places to play pinball there are not there is one barcade in carborough but the pinball doesn't usually work so then we were like what game should it be are we gonna put in here so i think you were the first one to pull up inside and you were like yeah like the same day started sending me listings what about this what about this yeah yeah i go all in i don't remember the specific listings but i do remember like opening it up like in my head i would like visualize it because you hadn't seen the space yet no i hadn't so you were like heavily relying on me to give you feedback and i was like describing the vibe to you i was like well it's kind of like this and there's like this like l shape you go in there yeah and then you take a right and there's this little look right before you get to the patio where it's perfect yeah and you were like yeah but is there an outlet exactly but anyways yeah so you would send me the listing and then i would pull it up and i'd be like I could like envision myself and other people that frequent the bar and like I don't think so yeah well I don't think it took long for us to stumble upon a game that actually neither of us had ever even played before but you could tell that the vibe was right I think you found it right and I hadn't even heard of it to be honest well yeah that's kind of rare especially nowadays because it's an 80s game Right. The moment I pulled up that listing, I was like, this is it. This is the game. Do you want to reveal? Drumroll. Swords of Fury. Swords of Fury. Yeah. Lion Man. I've been on a System 11 kick for a little while. Right. You got the... I got a high speed. The project high speed. Yeah, I've got a project high speed. I'm just into System 11 games right now. I really want F-14 Tomcat. Oh, yeah. Cool. Love to get them mousing around. Cool. Bad cats. Cool, bad cats. So many good ones, and they're fun. And I haven't been able to play them in so many, you know, most arcades, it's like, if you're lucky, they got WPCs and newer. Right. So, yeah, I've been kind of on a 6-11 kick, and it's like, okay, those games are also a little cheaper. Right. Like, if we're trying out this bar routing situation, then maybe we shouldn't spend more than a few grand. If we're going to let a game out on the loose, having never done this before. And also, I have the idea in my head that System 11 games are in some ways the best starter games to get people into pinball. Because they're not as hard as modern games. They're not as complicated. They're just immediately fun, a lot of them. The original themes are super weird and vibey. Yeah, yeah. I agree with the vibe. Gameplay, I still think mid-90s, like Williams and Ballyarma Jam. Yeah, but learning how to do, just getting good at those games and learning the basics of it. You have an alpha-numeric display. You don't have to worry about a DMD. They do feel more nostalgic and retro in a way that I think works for a lot of bars and stuff. Yeah, and it was perfect for this one. I would say the demographic is probably like 30s plus. Yeah. Now, downside. So we found a Swords of Fury for $3,200. And that's not like dirt cheap, but we're talking about charging 50 cents for it. Instead of we could get like a new Mando Pro for five grand or something and charge a dollar for it So that was like the tradeoff And also like potentially working on an 80s game versus a modern game reliability parts stuff playing field wear all that stuff The game already being so old, is it going to require more maintenance than like a potentially newer game, et cetera, et cetera? Yep. Ultimately, Vibe won out. Vibe won and they freaking did it, dude. Yeah, we got it. Like we said, we found it on Pinside immediately. Yeah, you're like on it. You're like, oh, you want to split a game? Let's do it now. Let's do it today. here's 10 listings by the way this guy's free on friday you want to go pick it up like oh my god which is kind of what you did right because literally like it was like not even a week later we're gonna we're like on the way to pick it up yeah i'm like i don't know if don is gonna continue to have this idea another week from now so let's just make this happen while we're all in agreement that it's a great idea no i know i agree i agree honestly and uh Don Life advice to all the young listeners. I'm older than some of you, presumably. Always. Do it. Just do it. We should coin that. Just do it. Totally original. Don Life advice. Just do it. If you have a good idea, just do it, man. Time keeps passing. We should make a logo for that. Just do it. And now for a word from our sponsor. There's a new cereal in the neighborhood with O's and Ghosts. Tastes real good. Ghostbusters! Marshmallow Ghosts. I hear you! Fruit-flavored O's. Ghostbusters tastes great with milk and juice and toast. A nutritious breakfast with the Ghosts. Ghostbusters! Fruit-flavored O's. Ghostbusters! Marshmallow Ghosts. Ghostbusters! And what are you going to crunch? Ghostbusters! And now, back to the show. We moved very quickly on this idea and, you know, found the dude on Pinside. His name was Greg. Yeah. Wasn't his picture weird? Yeah. You sent me like, I think, like his thumbnail on Pinside. So, yeah. He was like a beard. Like, was he a beard? I actually tried to look back at the messages with him and everything was gone. It disappeared? Like deleted users? I think he must have deleted the account or something because this has been a few months ago now that we got this. Right. And so I was trying to just look back at their records and I can't find any of it anymore. But I do remember his name was Greg. Okay. And it was in Virginia. And I also don't remember what town it was in or like what the name of the city was. Wow. But for some reason, my memory is particularly hazy about it. Yeah. But also, I can't find a record. Now that you say that, mine too. Yeah. I remember very clearly everything but the names and just the details. I don't remember the details. The towns. I don't remember any of that stuff. It was a few months ago now, but yeah, it has a dreamlike quality. It really does. But was it his thumbnail? Was it just me or was it a bearded guy or something with a red, maybe like a bonfire in the background? I thought it was like a camper, like some guy camping or something. Yeah. From the picture, I thought it was like a mountain man. Like we're getting ready to meet, you know, a guy with a cowboy hat and a huge white beard. Right. Based on the thumbnail. But anyway, that didn't turn out to be the case. Not at all. Yeah. Don't assume the person that you're meeting is going to match the picture in the thumbnail. I think that's always good advice. Well, we took a risk. Yeah. We saddled up. We pooled funds together. Yeah, yeah. And we took a trip. It was like two hours away. I think it was like two and a half, maybe. Yeah, not too bad. I'm willing to go four. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't too bad. Typical road trip stuff, I would say. So what vehicle did we take? We took yours, right? We took my Pilot. Yeah. That's like the easiest pin mover. So the only time that worked for everyone was like a weeknight. I think it was a Friday night, like an evening. Yeah. Yeah. So we had to leave after I got off work. Right. So we were like, maybe if we leave early, we'll make it before dark. It's always best to move a pinball machine in the daylight. In the daylight. Especially when you're driving to unknown location. Right. So we got a little bit into Virginia, started getting kind of mountainy. Yeah. Really beautiful. Yeah. And so we pulled up to that address and it was just the end of a road. with a mailbox. You could not see the house from the road where the address was. I don't know if it's a massive property, but for whatever reason, he gave us that address and said he'll meet us at the end of the road. Next thing you know, we're like, oh man, we gotta hurry up because it's getting dark. It starts to feel like this weird fog rolling in. And then we took this turn into this really tight road, kind of hilly, werewolfy. There was basically a mountain on one side yeah we start driving down this road into the fog pretty desolate i haven't seen a car in a while we don't have service it's looking like it might rain dude again picture like werewolf vibes right yeah dare i say castle of dracula vibes that's what i was thinking was very did we just enter the carpathians we did what happens next we keep driving there is a vehicle yeah there is a truck with the lights on where roughly greg said he would be yeah flashes lights at us so just continue to follow him down so he turns i didn't even see there was a road there and honestly i remember this a lot because i was driving and i was like dude i gotta take your car into this crazy four by four situation i don't even know what's happening here yeah so do you remember the road it was like kind of narrow yeah they were narrow branches and like potholes and mud yeah and we're following this this truck it was red right yeah it was red yeah as he was pulling into the dirt road he was like follow me that's what i heard i was like just go slow you'll be all right or something like that he was kind of far away he was kind of far so we just kind of trusted our pin gut yeah we didn't drive two hours to not go back with swords of fury um you know after we started following greg into the the wilderness it was already foggy but we went downhill kind of behind him and his truck disappeared yeah and we were like all right we're just continuing on through like a few feet in front of you kind of thing right that's why visibility was you bad yeah basically like we drove into a cloud like a complete fog blanket Yeah. And when we came out on the other side, we saw a house. And we like dude Okay Dude You can tell it had been there for a long time yeah probably passed down again and again and again it was like several buildings built by someone bare hands yeah probably blood sweat tears yeah it was so far back so like it made sense that he told us to follow him because he's like you could not we wouldn't have we would have never found it and so once we pulled up there he was already out of his car i guess yeah and we saw his license plate the actual license plate was gorgar okay i i guess gorgar he got it i like i'm jealous now well well maybe in north carolina there's still a gorgar that i could get well that was you know the first like oof yes like like sign of this is where we're supposed to be right right like obviously oh god you know we're at the right place we're not gonna get murdered we didn't just follow an axe murderer down a random road through the woods into the fog with a couple thousand dollars in cash yeah with a bunch of money in her pocket it's a little freaky like as far as picking up a pinball machine stories right this was pretty freaky one well again like you know three grand isn't worth somebody's life but you never know about other people yeah i was in a dateline it happens for a lot less but yeah anyway he had like multiple buildings and we weren't sure which one he was in but we just pulled up behind his vehicle right on the left there was like a big kind of shed building it was like an extension of the house so the door was just open to this shed and we could see some like dim flashing lights like i guess that's where yeah like red flashing kind of glow coming out of this place looks like pinball yeah okay that's probably where we're supposed to go we just had a you know we were still a little bit uneasy about it because it was like we hadn't even seen this guy like all we had was mountain man from the picture right hadn't talked to him on the phone or anything that's all inside messages weird voice yeah follow me you should be all right you know what i almost always try to get a person on the phone that's good if i'm doing a transaction like this because i feel like you can eliminate a lot of fraud yeah and just like the treachery treachery general treachery treachery that's a hard word to say general All treachery can be avoided by just talking to a person on the phone. And then you have like, I don't know, it works. For whatever reason, in this case, it didn't pan out that way. It was all pin side messages, more or less. So we don't have weapons. I don't carry a knife or a gun or anything like that. I think we had like a socket set. Probably a socket set. So the next best thing was your freaking tape recorder. Like an ancient Casio tape recorder that's been in the glove box since at least 2007 or earlier. So luckily, if we get murdered, we're going to get it all on tape. Yeah, it's like a handheld little tape recorder for musical ideas, like voice memos and stuff, like pre-iPhone. Somehow it feels more reliable than using a phone. Every time I try to stick a phone in my pocket, I accidentally hit the screen or hit a button. This thing just has a physical button and a microphone. We'll probably keep recording no matter what. Yeah. So you put it in your back pocket. Yeah. Hit record. We got to document whatever's about to happen. Right. Have some sort of record of it. Better than nothing, dude. The following is a live recording. Matt, this place is freaking creepy, man. Are you scared? Yeah. Let's try to get out of here as quickly as possible. Should we tell him he left his dome light on? I'm not doing it. He'll figure it out, I guess. Hey, it's Greg, right? How's it going? Hey, how's it going? Nice license plate. That's my dad's car. You got a nice collection. Here. Have you ever played Orbiter One? Orbiter One? I don't even know. No, Greg, it's okay, man. We should probably get going. Wait, wait, wait. Don, Don. It's Orbiter One. I got stuff to do. I got to do laundry. It's going to rain. Dude, where's the Swords of Fury at? We'll take turns. We'll just do one game. Alternate balls. Let's go. Let's go. You're playing one game. Dude, that game is insane. Yeah, but the motor spinners are a nightmare to fix. Let's get out of here. Greg, where'd you get that huge Gorgar portrait? It's amazing. It's an oil painting. Cool, cool. It's so detailed, the texture. It's lifelike. Matt, let's go. It's been in the family for a while. Yeah, I guess Gorgar's pretty good for a late 70s game Gorgar, hurt you Gorgar is a timeless classic Berio's best The Swords of Fury is over here Finally So, why'd you decide to sell it? We gotta hurry up I need to raise some funds for a shadow Oh, the art on that game is amazing Doug Watson Art Deco style is good. Yeah. All right, Greg, thank you so much. Matt and I have to get going, so the game looks great, right, Matt? Yeah, yeah, it looks good to me. We can get out of here. We can get the car ready. Here's the cash. We've got to get the car ready, so we'll do that while you count the money if you want. Thanks for letting us play Orbiter One. Thanks. all right so yeah that's the that that's the the recording that's the tape i need to ask you a question matt when we were there did you not realize how freaking weird this guy was i mean pinballers are all a little bit unusual, I would say. We're a strange breed. Yeah. So, I mean... You just wrote off to that? He? Dude, he has... He's a little odd. He has something else going on, man. Like, I kind of felt this other energy. Not just the regular pinball weirdness, but some kind of like... I mean, he was a little intense, I'll give you that. I mean, honestly, man, I was thinking a little bit more demonic. You just have, I think, all the Gorgar stuff everywhere made you think... You think seeing the plate and the painting and stuff, you think it made me feel that way? I mean... He was fine? Totally normal? Well You weren scared of him at all I mean I get What about his face I was pretty excited to get Swords of Fury to be honest He didn even look like his picture Well I mean he had a hat on At first, I just thought he did look like the picture. But then I realized, because he had a frontier, which the back glass, the cowboy guy on the back glass of Frontier was his avatar. His avatar that you were chatting with. But then IRL, he also had a cowboy hat on and a beard. Yeah, and like a big leather coat or something, like a long duster, like a trench coat or something. Yeah, and his hair color was not, he didn't have gray hair, he had black hair. Right. So then I was like, oh, it's not, that's not an actual photograph. I mean, the avatars are really tiny, so it's good enough artwork that I thought that's what he was going to look like. All I got to say, man, is I'm glad we're alive because there was a moment where I was like, we should just leave. Like, we should just get back in your car. Well, listening back to the tape, I think I was so focused on... You were entranced. I was a little bit entranced by Orbiter One and his games. He had a cool collection. I'm not going to lie to you. The Gordar painting. And like, eye on the prize, man. Let's get this Swords of Fury. Hearing the tape back, I'm starting to realize that you seemed a little bit, I don't know, panicked. I was... Honestly, the last half of that tape, I don't even remember. Yeah. I think I was just in fight or flight. I think I had checked out mentally. I think I was somewhere else. I think I was just in survival mode. Yeah. And I just wanted to get the game and go. Well, we did. We did. Eventually. We did. We did. Yeah. Success. Success. Sorry for not being more in tune to your desire to immediately vacate. But we got the game. Oh, God. The transaction was completed. We're still here. We're still here. honestly it's the back glass being like the mirrored glass is amazing it makes a huge difference right yeah yeah and uh it's actually my first time seeing one uh IRL a mirrored back glass in general no no okay yeah and then seeing it with the back glass yeah um now adding this experience to it it's gonna be an unforgettable game for me yeah I mean it's a super cool game it is it's tough too it's tough it's scary I don't know it's got like all these cool elements that make it a very original, unique game. As far as System 11 games go, I think that game was to other System 11 games what X-Men is to modern games. Sure. It's like wild. The play field is very different and outside the box relative to other games from that time. Especially, even if that was a brand new Stern layout, you'd be like, this is kind of weird. Yeah, it is weird. The shots are also weirdly hard to hit. You have to really kind of refine them. Yeah, it's got some tricky shots. It's got some little mini playfield. It's interesting, yeah. It's got four flippers. With the mini one, yeah. It's got a middle, almost like middle of the playfield flipper. Literally in the middle of the playfield. It's almost got three separate playfields. It's got a lower playfield, middle upper playfield, and then an upper left playfield. It's really cool. It's cool. And I think that's why I have a hard time with that game because I'm used to like an open middle. Like I'm just used to being able to fly through the middle. And like here I have to kind of like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you like an open shooting game, it's probably not for you. But if you like something a little different and weird, it's definitely that. Yeah, the music. The music is awesome. And the call outs and the lion man and everything. It's pretty great. Super fun game. And then the artwork too. It has that 3D effect. and it looks like it kind of goes down some steps. I'm really excited about it, man. Yeah, it's very cool. I'm really excited about it. The game played pretty great when we got it. You know, Greg mentioned that the drop targets were a little sticky, which cleaned up pretty easily. Did he say anything to you about having to work on it for a second or something while we were going to the car? I think he just had to adjust some bolts or take the bolts out of the backbox. Because I heard him talking to someone when we were getting the car ready. Maybe. Anyways, it doesn't matter. Love the game. Thanks, Greg. I think this is the ideal game to put at Bull Bar. So that was our crazy pinball story. If you have a crazy pinball story, pod at bashpinball.com. Whether we're just reading an email that you sent or if you want to actually be on the show, we could probably make that happen. Everybody who's been in this hobby for a while has had some... Dude, everyone's so weird. Some kind of story. Yeah, I mean, the guy I bought Dracula from... We're all so weird. All of us pinball people are so weird. We're all a bunch of weirdos and yeah, there's some really funny stories out there. Yeah. Pod at BashPinball.com Find us on Instagram. Yep. Bash Pinball. Send us a DM. Send us an audio message. send us some text doesn't matter we want you to tell us your story and if you want it on the show we'll put it on the show probably if it's good if it's a bad story then we won't don't send us your bad stories send us only the good ones guys come on Greg if you're out there I hope you're okay with us sharing that audio from our interaction and we can't find you on Pinsight anymore so we couldn't ask for your consent. Yeah, I hope we didn't offend you with our Gorgar snickers. Yeah, yeah. Listening back to it, I realized that was kind of rude of us. He seems mildly offended at the Gorgar joke. But thanks for hooking us up with the Swords of Fury, man. Hope you're doing well. Hope your family is doing well. Yeah, we didn't tell him about the podcast so he'll probably never hear this. I don't think we did. It's probably for the better. Yeah. Outro Music