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Friebus Free Bus

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 12m·analyzed·May 3, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Zaccaria voices, Willy Wonka gameplay deep dive, Australia pro circuit launch, Zen commercial cabinet expansion.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Jared's voice work for Zaccaria Pinball's Fire Mountain remake, Jersey Jack's Willy Wonka Pat Lawlor table reveal via Deadflip stream, upcoming Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective pro circuit event in Australia with Steve Ritchie appearance, and Zen Pinball's commercial cabinet rollout to Dave & Buster's locations featuring multiple manufacturers (Pinball Factory and Pinball USA).

Key Claims

  • Jared Morgan provided voice work for Zaccaria Pinball's Fire Mountain remake with approximately 50-60 callouts integrated throughout gameplay

    high confidence · Jared confirmed doing voice work for Fire Mountain, Chris discussed recording with Mark at Zaccaria

  • Willy Wonka (Pat Lawlor design) features a 'Wonkavator' ball lock mechanism based on the glass elevator from the film

    high confidence · Chris described the mechanic from watching Deadflip's 4-hour launch stream; James from comments confirmed the 'Wonkavator' name

  • Willy Wonka is an exceptionally deep game with extensive shot diversity hidden behind an inviting, accessible initial appearance

    high confidence · Chris watched progression tree and observed constant shot activation without empty play sequences

  • Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective is organizing a 10-day pinball exhibition at the Royal Show in August, marking Australia's first pro circuit participation and Stern Army inclusion

    high confidence · Jared described the event details, tournament formats, and official Stern Army status confirmation

  • Steve Ritchie will attend the Brisbane Royal Show event and commit to signing memorabilia including prototypes

    high confidence · Jared referenced Steve Ritchie's direct Facebook comments in the event thread committing to autographs

  • Zen Pinball's commercial cabinet rollout is expanding to Dave & Buster's locations and casinos in the USA

    high confidence · Article from Future of the Force bloggers (Patty and Kat) confirmed by Zen's Twitter retweet; Jared cited the information

  • Zen commercial cabinets are manufactured by two different companies: Pinball Factory and Pinball USA, with different cabinet designs

    high confidence · Chris and Jared clarified the manufacturer split based on the Future of the Force article details

  • Zen commercial cabinets can be 'keyed' to feature different IP themes (Star Wars, Marvel) and contain approximately 80 tables

Notable Quotes

  • “So long as you have an audio program, you can do your own recording and send it in... Keep your eye on the Zaccaria Facebook page because now and then they'll post a little notice saying, 'Hey, does anybody want to try out to be a voice?'”

    Jared Morgan @ early — Community opportunity information for aspiring voice actors interested in Zaccaria projects

  • “Mark, you're going to have to throw me a bone here. What is a mountain voice?”

    Jared Morgan @ early — Illustrates the creative process and how Zaccaria provided reference material (Lord of the Rings Sauron orc scene) to guide voice direction

  • “Holy smokes. There is just a ton—a butt-ton—of things you can do. So it's an incredibly deep game hidden behind what looks, from face value, as a very simplistic table.”

    Chris Freebus @ mid — Key observation about Willy Wonka's design philosophy balancing accessibility with strategic depth

  • “I'm going to autograph the world, he says. So people are, like, dragging off their getaway things, like translights and getting ready for the signing.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid — Steve Ritchie's enthusiasm for the Brisbane event and commitment to memorabilia signing

  • “I wonder who, who works in casinos and makes slot machines and also owns the Williams license. Gee, I wonder who that could be. Hmm. It's a very scientific question, isn't it?”

    Jared Morgan @ late — Speculation about IGT's involvement in Zen's commercial cabinet casino testing, implying potential Williams licensing leverage

  • “These machines are popping up in Dave & Buster's... they can be keyed to feature Star Wars. But they were like, it can also be keyed to be nothing but Marvel or if you were doing a Marvel event.”

    Chris Freebus @ late — Confirmation of multi-IP capability and commercial venue distribution strategy for Zen's arcade cabinets

  • “The other interesting thing, too, is that on the Steam, not Steam, the Switch experience, there's a lot of Easter eggs, apparently, that's been put into the Switch release for this game”

Entities

Jared MorganpersonChris FreebuspersonPat LawlorpersonSteve RitchiepersonMarkpersonWilly WonkagameFire MountaingameJersey Jack Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Commercial pinball cabinet manufacturing split between Pinball Factory and Pinball USA with differentiated designs (wraparound graphics vs FX2 variant)

    high · Chris and Jared clarified two separate manufacturers based on Future of the Force article details

  • ?

    community_signal: Zaccaria Pinball's community voice casting program recruits voice talent through Facebook announcements with minimal equipment requirements (audio DAW)

    high · Jared detailed ongoing voice casting opportunities; recommended Cakewalk DAW as accessible tool; Fire Mountain is example of this approach

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Willy Wonka exemplifies accessible surface design concealing exceptional strategic depth with extensive shot options and progression tree

    high · Chris observed constant activation of different shots during stream gameplay; progression tree showed extensive depth; Pat Lawlor design known for this approach

  • ?

    event_signal: Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective establishing Australia's first official pro circuit participation with 10-day Royal Show event in August, including Stern Army affiliation

    high · Jared detailed event scope, tournament formats, and confirmed Steve Ritchie appearance commitment via Facebook

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Zen's commercial cabinet keying flexibility allows venue-specific IP branding (Star Wars, Marvel) suggesting advanced licensing architecture

    high · Future of the Force article mentioned keying capability for different IP themes at operator discretion

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.219

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan g'day chris how you going uh you know i'm getting along i'm getting along yeah i got no complaints same here busy week but good week yes lots of stuff stuff and things stuff and thing you know stuff and things that's uh just kind of a normal part of the course for us right pretty much yeah it is it is exactly us to a t it's stuff i know i have a friend that i won't you know i'll go sometimes up to a month not talking to right i'm like hey what's going on nothing nothing What has been going on? Nothing.
0:56
Okay, great. Oh, good chat. See you later. Right. Just like you and I have to have a little five-minute warm-up, sometimes you've got to have those little warm-ups with the people that you're familiar with. Exactly. Yeah.
1:14
So we're going to dive right into some pinball stuff. Off the top of my head, I don't have any random stuff to just kind of spout off about. So we're going to hit right off early because, folks, there's something you desperately need to know. That is there's a new table from Zachariah remake called Fire Mountain, and our boy Jared here is the voice that you will be hearing while you play that game. Yes, you will hear me put on a faux American accent and go, combo. Yeah, I'm really disappointed it's not an Australian accent. I volunteered for an Australian accent, but Mark wasn't keen on it. And he was, in fact, a little bit apprehensive about me doing the voice because he thought it would be combo, combo, double combo.
2:03
So I had a go at it, and my first impression was, oh, hey, look, Jared gets to have reverb. Oh, they put reverb on it. There's a little bit of reverb going on in there because Jared has to sound like a mountain. a not i love this is what i love about zachary pinball uh how they named their tables back in the day why call it let's call it fire mountain instead of either the most obvious thing which would be volcano hello so there's a little bit of broken translation right there or i don't know pompeii um something something the old italian-esque i don't know the crazy thing is that In Italian, volcano is volcano.

high confidence · Future of the Force article mentioned keying capability and table count; Zen's beta testing at casino mentioned

Jared Morgan @ late — Indication of additional content/surprises in Switch version beyond what was in PC/mobile releases

Zaccaria Pinball
company
Zen Studioscompany
Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collectiveorganization
Pinball Factorycompany
Pinball USAcompany
Future of the Forceorganization
Dave & Buster'scompany
Deadflipperson
Netherworldcompany
Mel Kramerperson
Cakewalkproduct
Star Racegame
  • $

    market_signal: Zen Pinball commercial arcade cabinet rollout to Dave & Buster's confirmed with multi-IP keying capability and casino beta testing

    high · Future of the Force article confirmed by Zen's Twitter retweet; cabinet contains ~80 tables; beta testing at USA casino location

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Steve Ritchie confirmed as international guest for Australian pro circuit event, indicating designer mobility and industry globalization

    high · Jared documented Steve's direct Facebook comments confirming attendance and autograph commitment

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball's Willy Wonka (Pat Lawlor design) officially revealed via Deadflip 4-hour launch stream with gameplay footage and designer interview

    high · Chris watched 45 minutes of stream; described Wonkavator mechanic, progression tree, and Pat Lawlor interview

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen Pinball integrating platform-specific features into Switch version including light side/dark side mechanic and Easter eggs not present in PC release

    medium · Jared mentioned Easter eggs in Switch version; Chris noted light side/dark side mechanic from mobile being incorporated; September release planned

    • 2:48
    So if they could have just called it volcano, there would be nothing lost in translation at all. I just, whenever I think about the way that they named their tables, it's just, it's like a three-year-old naming their stuffed animal. You know, it's like, it's a blue horse. Horsey!
    3:07
    Right. Everything just has an E on the end of it, so I don't know why they didn't call it Pinball-y, you know, or Flipper Flipper. um it's yeah it's uh i don't know it's they're they do have some unusual names yes some of them make sense like you know pool champ it's it's about playing pool fair enough but it's more some of the more non well unusual theme one like a farfalla which which does actually mean butterfly in um game in italian so that's kind of correct because there are butterflies all over that table.
    3:39
    Just use the Italian name for them, because they're for an Italian audience. Call them... Hey, what's this table? Clown. Oh, okay.
    3:54
    It's not Serviceable Pair. It's not Cyclone or Hurricane or whatever. It's Clown. They would have got the theme. Oh, we're making a clown theme pinball machine. What would we call it? Well, Clown. right we call it the clown that was the extent of the brainstorming session clown next what else do you got train oh yeah okay yeah okay train yeah very bizarre it was fun doing the voices for it you get to understand I'm sure you can relate to this because you've done voices as well but the call outs you've got to do about 50 or 60 of them and there's a few and which is good because it shows that the way that Zachariah do their remakes is that they don't just scatter a few voices here and there. It's quite well integrated into the game.
    4:49
    I'm looking forward to listening, cringing and listening back to myself as I play that table. I don't think you have much to cringe about. Like I said, you got to do this cool rumbly mountain voice. You're sounding ominous and everything. I got to do a disco voice. Disco voice. Yay!
    5:10
    There was a table that I was asked initially. I don't think the table actually came out yet, but they were asking for this ominous god-like voice, and so I was doing these really ominous samples. And I thought, oh, this will be pretty cool. And then it was, we're not going to do that table. We're going to do this other table instead, can you do a disco voice? And I just went, what the heck is a disco voice?
    5:42
    Well, it's funny because Mark, when he got me to do this set of voice, this call-outs, he gave me the brief, it's a mountain voice. And I went,
    5:50
    Mark, you're going to have to throw me a bone here. What is a mountain voice? You're like, you're le-hoo-hoo!
    5:57
    I mean, I said, yeah. And he then, he linked me to, which helped me immensely, he linked me to this scene from I forget which Lord of the Rings movie, but there is a scene where the Fellowship is standing outside the gates of Morthor, and the gates open, and this mounted orc rides out, and this orc is possessed by Sauron. And he's got these really jagged, really big mouth for an orc, and really jagged, spiky teeth, just like Sauron does, or as Sauron is depicted in the movies. And then he starts speaking. and it's like this slightly tormented very very deep very um staccato style voice that shows that it's really like this this this orc has got a few screws loose um and it gave me the reference point i needed to he said look just like this but less creepy because he like it was really disturbed like obviously because it's sore and it's not a happy chappy um so i i used the kind of pacing and the um tone um to make it sound big and um i think i did it okay so um yeah the thing is that you know there's going to be people out there who absolutely hate it and i know this um it's how voiceovers work. You will never please everyone with a voiceover. There will be people out there going, this is a crap voice. Well, okay. Your opinion is your opinion.
    7:36
    So anyway, folks, go check that out. Available on the Zachary Pinball right now. Both PC and consoles, I believe. It got released on just a couple of days ago. It is out there. It's live. it's live that it is I was trying to think of what the other thing that was popped in my head about Zachary and it's quickly escaped but anyway let's move on did you I did get news from Matt that they're already 50% through the Android yes see all it took was just one little thing and it has nothing to do with that my mind folks if you wanted to be a voice folks keep your eye on the Zacharia Facebook page because now and then they'll post a little notice saying hey does anybody want to try out to be a voice and that's when you get to go and you get to so long as you have an audio program you can do your own recording and send it in I'll put a shout out just keep your eye on their Facebook page and you'll get the opportunity if you ever had the opportunity to do it I would recommend downloading a program called Cakewalk, which is what they call a digital audio workstation or a DAW. It's like Audacity, but doesn't suck from the perspective of the interface.
    9:03
    I was using Audacity, folks. Yeah, it's really, really good. And it's free, 100% free, which is insane because it's like, it's a professional DAW and the stuff you can do on it is ridiculous. and it's actually free, so recommended. Now, for those that have paid attention to the show, if you now go to the website for our show, which is block8pinball.com slash episodes, and you look up episode 173, which is what you're listening to right now, Jared will probably have a link to that very program in there. Probably will, yeah. Most likely will put links to things like that in there. Yeah, that's just one of those things that happens. did you by any chance watch the Willy Wonka footage from Jersey Jack Pinball? I haven't had a chance to check it out yet so Deadflip hosted the launch release thing 4 hour YouTube video live streaming so I didn't watch all 4 hours by any stretch of the imagination I think I wound up watching actually about 45 minutes of it though that's a fairly long time for you It's a fairly long time for me to sit there and watch, but he was giving a lot of information while people were playing it. And then I was just plain eyeballing it to see, because truth be told, I don't care for Wizard of Oz at all. I find it an absolute bore and too labyrinthian what you have to do. I'm not a fan of wide bodies to begin with, yeah.
    10:36
    Because the issue with wide bodies, they play slower. That's just by the very nature of them being a wide body. It's more distance for the ball to travel. Yeah. Some tables, like Twilight Zone, manage to hide the fact that it's a wide body. Because it's so jam-packed full of... Exactly. So there is ways of making it, but for some reason, I don't know, both... Well, Wizard of Oz especially, I just find boring.
    11:02
    Hobbit, I think it was one of those things where I just kept on comparing it to Lord of the Rings and going, I think Lord of the Rings is a better table. It's just I'm having more fun. but then you get Dialed In which was a standard width and I love the hell ever loving hell out of it I thought it was fantastic and it topped off as a Lawler right well hey guess what Willy Wonka is it's another Pat Lawler table and I'm looking at it when I first looked at it I just kind of went oh it looks a lot like Dialed In's layout just with different toys and stuff on it now after watching the video a little bit more it's not as simplistic as that. It does have kind of some of the same shots, but what I did notice was my god, there are just a ton of different shots to take. It's not a shoot this, spam this ramp, spam this ramp until you activate something and then go. People were having all, I mean, there were some people that were just flailing around, some people that were trying to get something particular activated.
    12:04
    But what I was just noticing was that they would start shooting for different things constantly and things were happening. It wasn't just like they were shooting somewhere and nothing was happening. No, it was activating this and activating that.
    12:19
    Later, I saw the progression tree that Jersey Jack likes to put out for their tables now. I think that's a great idea, by the way. Holy smokes. It really lays out how deep a game is. I think it's a great marketing tool. There is just a ton. A butt-ton of things you can do. So it's an incredibly deep game hidden behind what looks, from the face value, as a very simplistic table.
    12:48
    That's the best sort, right? I don't know if it necessarily looks simplistic, but it's one of those tables that you can tell is immediately inviting, that it feels like things are happening.
    13:00
    And when you walk up to it, it doesn't make you go, oh, jeez, why have I got myself into here? Right. because the ball lock is there's a, I forget what the exact name of it is, a wonka something or other, but anyway, they put this cool mech underneath it where the ball kind of goes and sits in the tray and it rotates and then will swallow up the ball. It looks big and it's easily seen but based off watching players shoot for it, it's not the easiest thing in the world to hit. It's one of those targets that screams at you, come on, I'm right here, I'm right here, and yet for some reason you can't. Oh, thank you. Our comment section here from James says, Wonkavator. Wonkavator? Yes, Wonkavator. Yes, okay. Which is the big glass elevator in the movie, remember? Yes. Yes, yeah.
    13:50
    I never was able to see, there looks like a ball lock mechanism kind of on the back wall of the machine. I couldn't figure out what happens with that.
    14:04
    Just partly part of it was just how the camera, you know, what it picks up, what it doesn't. Because it's a top-down view, right? Yes. It's a high-field-style view, so you only really see the tops of everything. Yeah. But anyway, I do recommend just people can check it out because it looks like a lot of fun. And they said that they pulled a whole bunch of quotes from the movie. but anything that was recorded specifically for the pinball they had a narrator who they purposely had do it very generic because they didn't want him overshadowing all the characters. Yes. And so that's the kind of thing that I was like, I was picking up all sorts of interesting info that they were dropping on it. But... That does sound cool. I'm at least going to have to do the 45 minutes and have a good look at the gameplay. What I watched up to was the point that they interviewed Pat Lawler. And at some point, he actually plays the table. I didn't watch him play the table. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So like I said, if you go onto YouTube, it's Deadflip's stream. Wait, is it Deadflip or is it Buffalo Pinball? Might have been Buffalo Pinball. Is it Deadflip? I think Deadflip. Oh, hang on. No, Deadflip got the exclusive on Swords of Rage. Yeah, no, because he does pretty much Stern stuff. No, I think it's Buffalo Pinball that did it. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. yeah um so anyway all sorts of all sorts of new machines that i'm like when am i gonna get to touch one i don't know i just want i see that we've actually got in in queensland a swords of rage pro um on location down in cool and getter which is on the border of queensland and new south wales so way too far for me to actually track down there but um yeah it's it's in it's in Queensland. Yep.
    15:58
    So in other related news, if we're finished with the Juicy Jack news, there's a, we, we had this thing coming up in August called, um, well, it's run by this, uh, newly formed group of operators in Brisbane called the Brisbane pinball arcade collective. And there's, you know, there's the usual suspects like Jimmy from netherworld is there. And, um, there's a whole lot of other operators in there as well that they're running this thing. The thing they're doing first is they're organizing the exhibition or the royal show in August, and there'll be 10 days of pinball at the show. So it's a huge festival of pinball. There's going to be like, you know, the classic tournament, which Star Race will be in.
    16:41
    There'll be like a whole host of different formats. Like there'll be probably a Flip Frenzies, a couple of those in there. It's going to be a really huge, huge event. And, you know, it has to be because this is the first time that Australia actually has a pro circuit. Oh, okay. We're on the pro circuit here. This is a big deal for Australia. It's the first time we've ever been in, well, ever been a pro circuit contender. So we're going to probably get people coming from the U.S. to actually play in our tournaments, which is a huge deal.
    17:13
    So along with that is we're actually like part of the Stern Army now. Australia actually has a presence with the Stern Army. So that's how big this is now. And they've been announcing some of the special guests that will come along for the show. So one of the ones that some people will be familiar with is Richie Knuckles. So Richie Knuckles is huge in the arcade scene, and he'll be coming along. But the exciting one for Pinheads is that our good friend Steve Ritchie will be coming along as well. Oh, very nice. So they'll be coming down. There'll be a Swords of Rage, probably by that stage, premium or LE on the floor because they'll actually have those available.
    18:02
    And, yeah, he'll be doing tournaments. And he said basically, like, he's in the thread. Like it ridiculous We watching this Facebook thread and here Steve Ritchie responding in the thread to stuff It very surreal And he going look just bring anything you want alongside Anything. He goes, I'm going to autograph the world, he says.
    18:25
    So people are, like, dragging off their getaway things, like translights and getting ready for the signing. signing oh yeah some people even think you're bringing their prototype machines along because someone has a prototype getaway oh and i think you're bringing that along i would um i would totally like how often do you get steve in australia it's like uh i bring whatever you can find yeah so pretty cool um what that kind of reminded me so this kind of relates to watching videos.
    19:02
    As soon as you start watching it, obviously people know this, something on YouTube, all of a sudden your YouTube feed is populated with other videos and stuff. So all of a sudden I got this thing that was saying, frequently asked questions about new pinball...
    19:22
    I don't know what the exact title was anyway. So I clicked on that just to see what it was. And it's some guy from Australia and I didn't catch, but apparently he has a show and stuff, but anyway,
    19:36
    it is the... I just had to laugh at it because he didn't answer a single question. Really? Oh my god. It'd be like... And it was... He'd be like, here's the question. And this little thing would go, question! And like, graphics would pop up and disappear. And then he'd go, what pinball table should I buy? Answer! And it was just, what is going on here? And he had the most dry, monotonous voice. But so he goes, many people will ask, what table should I buy? Well, that depends on what it is that you want to be playing in the first place. You should find some pinball machines and just like, I'm like, dude, just give an answer of what are some, you know, don't buy an EM if you don't, you know, I mean, it's like, there's some basic ways you can answer this. And he doesn't answer it in the least. My favorite part was when somebody goes, how much does a pinball machine cost? And he starts going, don't ask how much the pinball machines cost. Ask how much it is you want to spend. I'm like, whoa, I got a used car to sell you, buddy.
    20:43
    Yeah, totally. Because he's like, prices can vary. They can be very expensive. They can be rather expensive. It all depends on where you live. where I live, prices are a little bit higher than if you were in Sydney or Brisbane. And so then he's like, so just figure out what it is, how much you're willing to spend, and then look and see what tables are available for that price. Like, this is the worst advice ever.
    21:12
    Well, that is one valid way of doing it. Like, what is my budget? Like, there'll be some people out there that, you know, they want to put a machine in a game room. Yes. They might know, well, pinball machines range anywhere between $1,000 and $12,000. If they're looking at the RRP on a Stern, right? So they go, oh, well, I reckon I can't spend much more than $2,000 or $3,000. So set that as your budget and go onto Gumtree or Craigslist or whatever it is in your country and go looking. That's probably how I do it as well. But a better way to answer the question would be, folks, if you want to buy a DMD machine, you're looking at a minimum of probably starting price of $2,500, and that's for a beat-up-to-hell one. One that functions well is going to be probably starting at about $4,000, and they're going to go between $4,000 and $7,000. Yeah, so bracket it. Bracket it. I bracket the price thing so people know, oh, okay, well, I need to extend my budget a bit more if I want to get that deal that works, for example. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean there. That is a better way of answering that question. I would agree with you on that. Yeah. So anyway, I have, sometimes I start watching these videos and I just have a laugh because like there was one, because there was one that was also, you know, it was like as a new player, how should you approach a pinball machine? And it was just like the basics of never flip at the same time. You know, it was all these things. Do you just kind of go, did I ever know that? Or do I just know not to do that? I don't know. It's yeah. It was just kind of interesting. And some of these are actually informative, and some you get guys like this where you just like everything about the video. Not only, okay, not to rag on it. Again, see, I don't even know who the guy is. Not to rag on it. Not to rag on it, and I can't really guide you to it because I'm not even sure what the title was. But it was like the camera was probably like eight feet looking down on him. So everything is he's looking up at the camera kind of thing. And again, the monotonous delivery to the weird graphics that were, you know, just like, I don't know, everything about it just had me just kind of going, huh?
    23:24
    Yeah, right. That's bizarre, right? Bizarre. What things have we seen in the news? well you know over on over on twitter um zen retweeted an article that was written by some uh two gals that you actually know the name of this um yeah yeah um i know you have it handy yeah i do have it handy because this is what i do now if you're looking on thing i have a keep thing that i tag with blockade and anytime i see something interesting on twitter i add it to my keep my google keep so i don't forget it because i always do that right um so this is from a um a couple of lovely uh ladies from future of the force which is as the name suggests a um a blog all about star wars now these two um uh folks were at um the uh star wars celebration with zen and they got to have some hands-on with the new digital cabinet and also... That groovy, big space-age cabinet that has the video on the side of it, yeah. Interesting. So in the article, and we'll get to this, in the article they explain who's manufacturing that as well, which is, I think... Pinball Factory. Yeah, Pinball Factory. It was known that they were doing it, but I think this is like the next level of the cabinet. Because if you have a look at the cabinet, It actually, the wraparound part with all the graphics, the marquee graphics, that is extra than what was normally around their normal cabinet. No, that was a different manufacturer. Oh, really? Yes. So this is being made by Pinball Factory. The other machine, which has the FX2 logo on the side of it, that is being made by Pinball USA. Oh, okay. Interesting. Two different manufacturers going on here. So, yes. So in the article they were talking about these two. So Patty and Kat are their names. And they're very new to pinball. And the thing that was good about this article was the fact that it was a new to pinball take on the stuff we already know. And get a different opinion about what it's like to come on and play these things for the very first time, which is a distant memory for us. Right. So it was a great article. I will put it in the show notes, of course, so you can have a read of it, or just go to the Zen Pinball feed, and you will see the link that they shared. But the key information that we got out of this that we're like, we couldn't tell you last week, and now we can because it's now in print by someone else, is, Chris, that... These machines are popping up in Dave and Buster's. so like when we splattered on Twitter commercial cabinet confirmed it was kind of like ha ha he he no these are actually going to be in Blockbuster or not Blockbuster Dave and Buster's they make it sound like they're already there I don't know if that but then they also said this is a prototype so I don't know if it is or not I've been kind of waiting on Mel to get back to me and say I'd known that they were going to be putting stuff in Dave and Buster's and I said, well, hey, when one pops up into my area, can you let me know if I've heard anything? Because I definitely will want to go check that out.
    26:56
    But the other interesting thing that they mentioned was these machines can be keyed, so like this one was keyed to feature Star Wars, but they were like, it can also be keyed to be nothing but Marvel. Or if you were doing a Marvel event.
    27:13
    And then they mentioned that it had all 80 tables on it or 80-some tables. And I went, so does that mean if I walk into a Dave & Buster's that I have the entire Zen catalog to choose from? Are we talking about just the Zen originals or are we talking about Williams? I don't know. I need to know these things. And they didn't know to ask those questions. That's right. They thought, oh, cool, whatever. The other thing that piqued my interest in this is that they say in the article they're also beta testing these machines at a casino local to the USA office. A casino. hmm interesting I wonder who works in casinos and makes slot machines and also owns the Williams license gee I wonder who that could be hmm it's a very scientific question isn't it yes all I know is when we get to talk to Mel which we should be getting to talk to him soon the questions are stacking up You better allocate a lot of time because there's going to be a laundry list of... It's pretty much going to be, yeah, I don't care about what tables are releasing. Let's talk about this other stuff.
    28:27
    Yeah, cool story. Please do your mandatory, this is what's coming up announcement now. Yeah. Yeah, so for such a... I mean, it's not a long article at all, folks. It's not. It's a quick read. but like I said, it opened up a mountain of questions. Oh, yeah, which is great.
    28:50
    Love to stack the questions up. Yeah, and like you said, your point of them being new to pinball, but obviously they were very into Star Wars,
    29:02
    so seeing that perspective of what would it be like to just be plunked in front of, oh, you're a Star Wars fan? Look what we have for you. Look at this. There's 19 tables. And you're like, I don't even know what the mechanics of this thing are, but I'm going to stare at these tables because they were like, oh, my God, they had the sound effects and there was music. And, you know, I mean, it was like all those things to draw you in. And it was really cool. They were saying it's really cool that, you know, the action zooms in on the ball. And I got to see all these cool stuff, all Star Wars. I know. And I was like, oh, I hate that.
    29:37
    Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, that makes it really hard to play pinball. What are you talking about? Yeah, exactly. But for them, they loved it. And that's the thing. This is a new player's experience. The other interesting thing, too, is that on the Steam, not Steam, the Switch experience, there's a lot of Easter eggs, apparently, that's been put into the Steam release for this game, which I didn't go into as well. But that'll be one to add to the question list, Chris, as well. Because what are these Easter eggs? The guys apparently had a lot of fun putting these Easter eggs into the game. Yeah, because the only thing that I had heard about was basically they were doing what they did for the mobile release, which is you're now picking dark side, light side, kind of battling for that as you progress through. It was something that was in the mobile release that was not in the PC release.
    30:28
    And so I know that they're incorporating that into the Switch version. So I don't know if I don't know how many if that's the kind of Easter egg or if they're talking through Easter eggs, but I don't think they've done anything to the tables themselves. It would have been more to maybe what's in the menu. I guess we'll have to wait until September when it releases.
    30:53
    Oh, I'm not waiting that long to find out. I know. Well, we can see it for ourselves. Sure, maybe. Maybe. Maybe you'll have a switch by then, Jared.
    31:06
    Maybe. It's still pretty expensive here. I can't find a secondhand one. I will buy one if I can get a secondhand one. But they're like $400 or $500 still. Yeah. And they're thinking of, like, there's a strong rumor that there's going to be a re-release of them this year with updated hardware because there's some things on it, like it doesn't, strangely enough, the switches don't have Bluetooth audio stack in them. Oh, okay. You can't connect Bluetooth headphones to them, which is really bizarre.
    31:34
    And just minor things like that, which a refresh would well and truly address. and things like they can sometimes overheat too.
    31:43
    And so they'll probably do a whole range of improvements to their cooling and stuff like that. But yeah, I don't know. It is a, it's not a pressing thing that I'm going, I'm on Craigslist or Gumtree every day looking for discount consoles. It's like, yeah, I'll just keep my ear to the ground and see what happens. If you have a McIntyre phone, exactly. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, sure. if it's like two or three hundred dollars yeah fine i probably would but otherwise no so uh okay i have a quick question for you uh the arcade you go to all the time netherworld is that what it's called yes is netherworld purely arcade or is it also uh bar and restaurant kind of oh yeah it's it's it is the uh trade back registered barcade barcade um it is it is a which apparently we're getting an official true barcade in los angeles area real soon oh cool that's cool um so yes it is a bar arcade um to avoid the lawyers and um and it has it has a mixture of it's got a mixture of everything really oh you've got some you've got vintage arcades you've got consoles that free to play you got pennies and you've got board games there. So, and beer and food. So, yeah, you can spend hours there. So, I got to... I get these little flights of fancy all the time and then I stick with them for a couple of weeks and then I move on to the next flights of fancy.
    33:17
    And this... So, near my house, there's an intersection that I am frequently at and there used to be a video store in the corner, like the center corner of a strip mall. I thought we were talking about Blockbuster here. Sort of thing. Funny enough, if you do the typical L, and then the parking lot's in the middle of the L, side streets on either side, so it was in that center corner, right? Blockbuster built a building right there at Streets Edge, blocking from view the video store that had been there for years. Just a total, total dick move. Total cock move, yeah. Oh, just total. And it made me so happy when Blockbuster closed and the video store was still in existence.
    34:08
    Speak it to the man. That being said, the video store went out of business at the end of 2017. So since then... That's actually a pretty long run, considering how videos have changed and the way... Well, and why did they go out of business? He said it. He goes, I can't compete with streaming. I can't compete with Redbox. It's just impossible. Can't do it.
    34:30
    So that particular location has been vacant this entire time. Yeah. And, of course, whenever I see a vacancy, I start thinking, what kind of pinball machines could you put in there?
    34:43
    I had the same thoughts, yes. Right. And so I decided to carry this over to – because I was trying to have my little daytime dream fantasy, dream the dream while you're dreaming it. But I kept on running into hard realities of going, I don't know if any of this makes sense. I can't have fun with this if I don't have some basic parameters of how this would even function. Right, the big sounding board. So this is what we're going to do.
    35:13
    So I started a thread on this on Digital Pinball Fans, but as is that's often my testing bed for things I'm going to talk about on the podcast. Here we go. We're going to talk about this in the podcast for a little bit. I have not seen this thread, so I'm coming in. Right. So first things first. I'm thinking purely pinball. This is not a restaurant, not a bar. This is just purely an arcade and purely pinball. Okay. So with just that bit of knowledge, do we think that kind of place could exist today? You're in a suburban neighborhood. There's homes, businesses, high schools relatively close. People would walk by. It's next to a laundromat, so you do have...
    36:06
    Foot traffic. It's not shopping foot traffic, but you've got that captured foot traffic. If you're at a laundromat, what are you going to do?
    36:14
    There's that. So if you were just doing let say concrete floor machines overhead lighting that the extent of it Would that kind of arcade be able to exist and survive I think it be closed in about six months That what I agree Okay so that being said I thought okay so you got to elevate to a little bit more. You've got to give people a reason to come. That's the problem. Right. So a couple of people on the thread suggested, oh, well, you need a pool table, and you need darts and a jukebox. And I went, well, see, now we're getting away from why you'd want to go to that destination. Now you're making a pub. I might as well have a golden tee golf cabinet, you know, and air hockey. It's just, you know, and a redemption machine. And because they were like, oh, and, you know, we throw in a Pac-Man or, you know, a couple of multicades. And I'm just like, I don't know, that to me would cheapen the reason. If you want to get a clientele, I would think that you want them to be, look, this is a pinball destination. This is where you go for pinball. Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay, so we're saying no to you can't just have the industrial look. It's got to have something a little bit more interesting on the inside, let's say.
    37:27
    So then I started thinking about, well, what if all you had was brand new pins? So if you wanted to start up, and this way you're not dealing with for a little while, your maintenance issues aren't going to be terrible. All the parts would be readily available, right? You're not having to try and source some piece of plastic that broke from something from the 1980s, you know, scouring eBay trying to find it. No, you just call Stern, you call them JJP, boom, new part, right?
    38:00
    Look, if you have got $100,000 lying around, or you can get the bank to approve a loan for $100,000. You're going to need more. I already priced it. Right. You wouldn't be going for the pros here, would you? You'd be going for premium. No, no pros. So it would be all premium. Except for like JGP, I'm not quite sure. Other than, say, Shaker Motors. You can go with pros for them because they're very good with their levels. All you get, the gameplay experience is the same. It's just trim that changes with their premium. It's either trim or, like I said, Shaker Motors. That would be about the other thing that they were throwing in. Yeah. And you can buy those separately if you want. Right. So currently, right now, at this moment, from Stern, you could buy brand new Black Knight Sword of Rage, Monsters, Deadpool, Iron Maiden, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, and Batman 66.
    38:55
    Those are what are currently being sold through Stern. And all the Kapow ones, like Beatles and stuff? They did not have a price readily available for Beatles and I think the same thing went with Woe Nelly so I'm just kind of like saying eh I mean you could go to any number of distributors in the US and they would have these on the floor ready to sell you which means you could probably pretty easily also source a Game of Thrones you could probably source a Metallica but I'm talking about just let's ignore that you're going straight to Stern this is what we're buying from.
    39:37
    JJP, all five of their machines are still manufacturing Wizard of Oz. Hobbit, Dialed In, Pirates of the Caribbean, Willy Wonka. And then I threw in going to Chicago Pinball, or Chicago Coin, whatever it is, doing the Medieval Madness remake, Monster Bash remake, and Attack from Mars remake.
    39:59
    So there you would have 15 machines. All brand new. It's going to cost you $125,000 just for that. And that's US, far out. Yeah.
    40:13
    So, now on the one hand, you'd be like, woohoo, we got all the new machines, folks. Isn't that great? But on the other hand, is that really the lineup that you want? I don't know.
    40:24
    And you're forking out a buttload right off the top. you think you know you could go to somewhere like i i think you would want to have a mixture of a brand new and recent if that makes sense recent yes i agree with the reason yeah so i'll be thinking along the lines of going to if you go to outfits like tnt musings for example and you take one of their refurbished and reconditioned machines.
    40:58
    If I had the money, I could set up that for well under $100,000 and get some double the machines and have a balance between the new and the existing because I can tell you the range of machines on the floor at Netherworld cater for different audiences. See, if you're going for this brand new straight out of the box Stearns, you would only get a certain type of player in. And that would be players that are either like just, you know, real pinheads that really want to come in and just like smash the latest games. And, you know, that's a good audience to attract. But that audience is a lower audience than the audience that will be bought in by things like a really nice quality diner or a great fish tails. So here's my thinking with that in that regards. In Southern California, we don't have, I mean, basically there are two places right now that people are going for pinball. One of them is an arcade or a bar slash arcade. That's in Orange County. Another one is in the Valley. And that one is a Korean restaurant that apparently has an amazing collection of pinball machines. Okay. Nice. Those are the two places. These are the two places that are premiering all the brand new tables. When they arrive, they're getting them. Like one of them, the Korean restaurant place is called AC Goki, something like that.
    42:31
    They just got Oktoberfest, and they're saying that. The other place, which is called Mission Control, they just got a Black Knight. So as soon as these things come out, they're putting them in. Yeah, I've followed Mission Control on Instagram. They got a lot of nice pins there. I really need to go down there. You should. It's like, I don't know, about a half an hour away from here. But at one point I'll go get to them. But my point being is, other than that, all the places in Southern California, they're bowling alleys or, you know, a restaurant that has three or four pins. But at the most, they're maybe having six pinball machines. And that's it.
    43:11
    There are a lot of collectors in Southern California. And I know this from when I was doing the pinball league. Yeah. So to me, those people, they already have these machines, the older machines. So what they don't have is they don't have the brand new machines. True. So I would think ideally if these are, if you want to have an audience, you want newer stuff. That's what I'm kind of leaning towards. But let's go back to the hypothetical here. You want those milkshakes to bring the boys to the yard. The nice, new, shiny, out-of-the-way milkshakes. If all you had was brand-new machines in this place, do you think that would be enough to get you an audience? Or are you now faced with the problem of how fast can you pay back the loan? Correct. If you still face the same problem, you'll be closed in six months. Okay. Because, and this will probably come back to the point you're trying to make here, is that you need a reason for people to be there. Right. The thing that early on when Netherworld had started up, Jimmy Nails went on the Head to Head Pinball podcast, and this is what he said. He goes, to be successful as a bar arcade or any sort of arcade in general these days, you have to get the venue right first and then look at the games and the stuff you put in it. So you don't make a pinball arcade with beer. you make beer with pinball yeah and that that therein lies the problem because people won't just go and play pinball for a bit and then go well they might but that's a problem they won't stay there and that's where you get the money okay so i have i have possible solutions for this but we're going to go a little bit still in in the uh what kind of collection to have so what if you had these new pinball machines there, right? I honestly believe that to be a destination that people will go to and want to attend, you need to have at least 20 machines. Why do I say that? Because at 20 machines, if you spent five minutes per machine and you hit all the machines, you're there for at least an hour. That's worth your time going. If there's only two machines, is it worth your time to drive there if you're not a 15-minute drive away? If I drive 30 minutes to go and play a couple of machines. If they were brand new and the reputation was that they're always in top condition, maybe. But there's an interesting point there that one of the – I got a Facebook notification from my mother-in-law, and she said, the Brightwater Hotel now has Star Trek Next Generation and Ripley's Believe It or Not on location up there. So two pinball machines on the Sunshine Coast, which is approximately from where I live, around a 30 to 35 minute driveway. Very similar to Mission Control for you. So two machines on location. Would I go and play those two machines? I'm thinking about it because I've never played a Ripley's Believe It or Not in the flesh before. And you just don't see that table on location in Australia at all. It's very rare to see it on there. But then how disappointed are you going to be if you walk in and it's a dirty play field and cracked rubbers? Yeah, I'm going to be pretty pissed. Exactly. So that's one of the things that I'm thinking. No matter what, you've got to have top-quality machines. These things. Now, look, the play field can look abused. Yeah. But so long as it plays well, then who cares? It can be player's condition. But if that player's condition makes it a fun game, I don't care. If that, like, Ripley's was a bit beaten up, but the flippers were strong, all the mechanical items worked, I could lock balls correctly. Yeah, all the lights are working and, you know. I don't care. It's play as an addition. That's fine by me. I don't care. Yeah. So what if you had a section of the floor devoted to, and again, this is partly I'm thinking because you've got collectors, a lot of collectors, and they want to sell their machines, right? Mm-hmm. So what if you have a space reserved for, say, five machines at any one time? A real must-break list. Exactly. They drop their machine off, right? Contract file. Now, you've got an area that's devoted to basically maintenance of your machines.
    47:41
    So you've always got three tables in the back that are being worked on and being cleaned, being new rubbers, just being a basic shop job. So the person brings in their machine. You're like, hey, don't worry. We'll shop it. We'll put it on the floor. we get to collect whatever money the thing earns but it's on the floor for a month if it does not sell within that month we reserve the right to say come pick up your machine or hey it might be making some good coin for us and we reserve the right to you know we can still keep it here we won't buy it but we'll still keep it here for a little bit longer maybe somebody will eventually want to want to purchase most importantly we will maintain it yes and that way you get some of these older machines out of collections out of collections coming in without you having to and and they would rotate a lot because obviously as one sells them you know hey maybe somebody else has something you know then you become so would that be would that help you think maybe get the clientele to come because they know that this is a place they can try out machines that they're going to buy well yes that could be an interesting that could be an interesting thing but as a collector of these really well lovely maintained tables would you actually want to put them on site and have other people play them um because i don't know whether a collector would like even if they wanted to sell it they would sell it from their house because no one's going to be slamming it with balls and potentially breaking their beautiful clean plastics and everything yeah um and for the if they were putting this on location and they wanted to sell it they don't have any problems selling these machines on Craigslist now if they put it up on Craigslist they would get 20 people wanting to buy a machine of that quality so why would they put it on your floor and risk having stuff broken on it? Fair point so now we start getting into so what would make this kind of successful or even possibly successful. Let's put it to you that way.
    49:46
    We've kind of come across the things that wouldn't make it work right. Okay. So I was thinking, first off, if you're doing Coindrop and you have all new machines, you're going to be asking a buck a play. That's all there is to it. That's what the current term price is. And because you don't have older machines, you don't have to worry about, well, why is that one only 50 cents and this one's a dollar? they're all a buck a play or two bucks for three plays that's kind of the standard thing. At Netherworld regardless of the age or type of game it is, every machine is a dollar so Trident from Stern Electronics from 1979, a dollar a play and you know it may be five balls but still a buck, I mean that is the standard price in Australia for a game of pinball doesn't matter, but also the brand new games like Iron Maiden Pro, a dollar and you know the operators still do pretty well. I've seen the cash boxes and they're pretty full. So clearly now you've got to have change machines installed so that people can be converting change.
    50:50
    And now you also have to worry about thieves. Because if there's one thing that a thief loves, it's a coin door. Because they're super easy to get into. Yeah, they are. I worked in an arcade back in the early 90s and I know how well that sensation of walking by my cabinet and having the door swing open and you go oh oh no yep and i also know how i hated seeing the giant lock bars that would be screwed into place and ruin cabinets um yeah there was one there was one obviously on the star race that's uh from from africa because yeah they'd be having all sorts of stuff but people would actually in in some cabinets, they would drill into the underside of the cabinet and get rid of the plywood and then haul the coins out of the coin box underneath the cabinet. These people would stop at nothing. They took thieving from arcade machines to a new level over there.
    51:49
    So that's the issue if you have a purely cash business. You're going to get people that start targeting you. There's no doubt about it. You've got to have a lot of cameras and you've got to have alarms on the coin doors, because you can get those with machines, like alarms that will alarm as soon as a coin door swings open, which will annoy the crap out of the operator every single time they go and address a problem, it'll sound off this alarm. But it is a very good way of deterring thieves. Yes.
    52:19
    Now the opposite, another option to go is with the card reader. The bad thing about that is if you're a small business, now you have to buy all of those card mechs to make work on to make function on your machine yeah true uh that's gonna be an expense no doubt about it there is a way around that though and there's a very there's a very nice way of getting around that and that is to use uh there was this podcast i used to listen to that tried the system out on all their machines that they had in the bowling alley and it was the best solution because it was like a card reader but it was cheap and it wasn't you didn't have to actually have a stock of cards because it was all done through your phone so you take your phone it's got bluetooth you walk up to this machine you hold the phone over the sort of receiver on the machine and the app actually you actually recharge all your money through the the app it's like think of it like paypal but like um for pinball machines okay and the thing is you can actually control it that will actually interface with the machine so if a player if you're having a league night, what you do is you switch all the machines over to free play, which means that basically if they're a registered player, they're registered through this app, you add them into the tournament, and then whenever they walk up to a machine and prox the reader, it's a free game for them. You can do promotions with it, so you can actually have like, hey, look, you're a new customer. Here's five free games. Thanks for joining. That's the way you get around that problem. And the other nice thing is you can even do flex pricing, if you will. Correct. Hey, happy hour, everything is this price. When the place is packed, suddenly there's surge pricing. And it's at the touch of a button, you can change all these prices. Absolutely. Piss off all your customers at the same time, but you can do it. Now, my only thing with the card thing is that, yes, now you have to have your supply cards.
    54:15
    Even with the phone app. If you're doing smart cards, yes. Yeah, if you were doing the phone thing, I gotta believe somebody's gonna figure out how to hack this and get free credits. Maybe. Now you just know that it's gonna happen. Yeah I think yes but would someone go to the trouble of trying to hack because these things are used in vending machines as well Right So it way of it originally devised for vending machines but they basically enable it for pinball machines as well It originally devised for vending machines but they basically enable it for pinball machines as well The other thing is now you dealing with the fact that what if you get a teen that comes in, a young teen who doesn't have any credit card access because his parents didn't enable it on his phone and he just wants to use cash. You're like, sorry, the only thing that we're doing is these scam thing with your phone. Now you've eliminated customer. So that got people talking about doing the pay for an hour kind of thing. Oh, like, yeah. Like Pacific Pinball Museum does. Like, you know, pay a flat rate, go in there and play a little bit. Play a flat rate. Now, that got me thinking, because you'll find you want to charge $20 for a day pass. That's great, but $20 is a lot if somebody's just planning on you know, they just want to pop in and play a game and leave again, right? And not be there for the rest of the day. Five bucks for an hour would be way too cheap. Way too cheap, yeah. So what if you did like seven bucks for an hour, but then ten bucks for two hours? Because if there's one thing people would rather do is hand over one bill and not get any change back, then hand a bill and get change back, which isn't enough change to buy even more. So it becomes that, and you got to start thinking like mobile apps and freemium. How do you start attracting? you know so there's that but then it's how do you police that i mean you have wristbands but what now you have to have one person at a desk passing out wristbands another person walking the floor saying what hold up your wristbands i gotta check the color you know is it this hour you know take a hike or leave you could probably combine that with um the whole app thing so if a person installed the app on their phone you could add them into like here's a basically you swipe it for an hour or two hours, and when your time's up, and it stops working. Yeah, and I'm saying not doing the swiping again.
    56:38
    Instead of putting everything on free play, not having to deal with coins, not having to deal with cards, you're just dealing with wristbands now.
    56:46
    It has its own challenges. It has its own challenges, right? Yeah. Okay, so those are kind of the issues of, well, how do you even go about charging people? So then I started thinking about, okay, so you want to attract people to this thing. You want to make this a destination. Already I've said it's purely pinball. That's all there is in it. Maybe you have a vending machine of water and soda and a vending machine of some snacks so you can get some easy money from that. But that's about it. Other than that, it's all pin, only pin.
    57:16
    What if over, say, 10 of the machines, you've got the monitor displaying the play field? So camera angling down, displaying the play field. Now you're tournament ready or ready for doing tournaments. One option for that. Let's say you had a giant video wall that was displaying whatever you want to display. If you're running a tournament, there's your scores list of where people are placing. If Super Bowl's happening or whatever, you throw the game on. You can put whatever on. But then at a moment's notice, let's say you notice somebody's having a really good game on one of these pins. Boom. gigantic screen of the play field that's being played so that anybody could see. And then that would automatically set up a Twitch screen and you would broadcast to Twitch. And there's where I started thinking even more, and this is based off of what I saw with Willy Wonka. So not only did they have the camera looking overhead, they also had, and I don't know if they did it via camera or if they were plugging into the video feed of the back glass, but you could see what was happening on the back glass and they had a camera pointed at the person playing. All of it was on screen doing a Twitch stream. So what if you offered the ability, hey, do you want to come do a Twitch stream? We've got it all set up. You can rent it for X amount of dollars and come and do it. And then the location itself, which by the way would be Blockade, let's see, Pinball Palace? Pinball Parlor? Pinball Emporium? I don't know, but it'd be Blockade, I'll tell you that much.
    58:47
    My name was Pinball Delicatessen, because I'm the finest. I'm the finest pinball. that Pinball Valley has. Only the finest Pinball. Yes.
    58:56
    You know, that at the moment notice, you can just be like, hey, we're streaming live, whatever's happening. Come down. Well, you don't even have to come down, but tune in, because if you start getting that Twitch following, then they're going to be like, well, I want to check out this place. And people, again, it becomes a destination for people, you know, to come in. Yeah. That's, you would have to do some sort of live streaming thing. So, so would that be enough, do you think, to maybe start putting you over the top for what would be, sustainable or are you still you're six months and you're out oh you might be eight months and you're out so you start to build you're going down the right idea you gotta have uh it's about being able to give people a reason to want to come down that's fundamentally what any business is successful and i think it's not only getting people to want to check it out but stay there and come back yes yeah um if you were guaranteeing that you always have the latest and greatest and of course what would you do you'd have movie poster frames on the window with you know whatever is laced or have the window painter come and you know we have black knight you know something to just be like screaming hey come you have a scrolling a scrolling time square marquee out the front of your building going hey just because you know they're actually pretty inexpensive to get now like that that sort of thing like there's this uh electronic store called JB Hi-Fi in Australia. And the one near us has one of those digital billboards, but it's like an archway. So you walk through it and it's just this big surrounding marquee of stuff and specials and prices and stuff going on. You know, that's, and that thing, those things are bright. Like they stick out like dog's balls. So as far as attracting people in, as they're driving past at night, your little store, they'll be going, what? I would just be putting a giant neon version of our logo outside. That's what I think. A big pulsing, throbbing, blockade logo. Yeah, because all the other businesses in that strip mall are... Right. No, they pretty much close by 8 p.m. Nothing else is open. So you have a whole parking lot to yourself. You're the only destination. I love this. Over in the YouTube comments, I got... but you put the pinball machines on a bus and put everything on free play, and it would be the free bus, free bus.
    61:19
    Remember, there was an episode we did where we discussed the idea of doing a pinball bus. My wife really likes that one. She's howling with laughter in the background there. It's great. I love it when your wife believes she's in it. It's great.
    61:38
    I love it. Okay, so here's my last-ditch effort to entice you into this. Here is the arcade that if I walked into and I saw this lineup, I would lose my mind. Here's the thing. I don't need to see Creature. I don't need to see Monster Bash. I don't need to see Attack from Mars. I don't need to see Twilight Zone. I don't need to see Star Trek Next Generation. Those are like everywhere. They're what people want to collect. I don't think they're what people want to play in an arcade. That's just me.
    62:13
    So you would have your Pat Lawler wall, because I love Pat Lawler. I love the wall. And it would be Whirlwind, Adam's Family, Roadshow, No Good Gophers, Dialed In, and Willy Wonka.
    62:25
    Then you'd have the music wall, which would be Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Aerosmith, and Iron Maiden. Right.
    62:33
    Oh, by the way, just to further entice Jared, all machines have headphone jacks. Oh, yeah. Okay. Just that would be a given. Yeah, that would really be necessary.
    62:45
    Then you have your just-arrived wall. So currently it would be Black Knight, Monsters, Deadpool, Guardians, and Pirates of the Caribbean from J.J.P.
    62:54
    Then you'd have your classics wall. And for me, it would be Roller Games, NBA Fast Break, Centaur, Bride of Pinbot, and Medieval Madness. and then you have your pins for rotating in uh so the you know at any one at any time any of the other pins could be pulled and these could be put in their place uh indiana jones pinball adventure a ball deluxe lord of the rings till the rabianites and world cup 94 okay so those are the ones that your hot spears just in case the machine goes down basically exactly exactly um because honestly I'm not impressed by any of Spooky Pinball's stuff other than Toll of Nuclear Annihilation. I just don't care for any of the others. I wasn't impressed by Houdini at all. I'd still like to try Oktoberfest, but I don't know what parts are like for American Pinball.
    63:45
    I think they're available. They've got their own... They've made them all. It's not like the big Lebowski, for example. Exactly. They've got a supply chain and they're making these pins. So I think parts at the moment would be easy to come by. The thing that concerns me, and I know this for a fact, is that Sterns and their distributed computing model with their Spike 2 system, that stuff is not as reliable as you think. The amount of times that we've seen daughterboards fail on Deadpool at, what do you call it, Netherworld, that's so bad they've actually got a hot spare board in the bottom of the cabinet just waiting to go in because it fails all the time. So from a reliability perspective, I actually think if you have a well-restored vintage pin, like from the 90s, you might actually get better reliability from that than you do, unfortunately, at the moment from Stern. Interesting. Which is pretty dodged, but it is the way it is because that board infrastructure, it's not distributed. It's just a board. It does what it says in the box. Whereas the new Stern system, for some reason, they're constantly dying. And it's not good. So my point is, though, if you walked into an arcade that had that lineup, would you be just like, oh, hell yeah. I would be happy. As a pinhead, I would be very happy to see that lineup. But if I was not a pinhead and I was just dropping off my laundry next door, would I want to come and play? Well, I probably would, but I wouldn't be rabid about it. No, because again, I don't think that that's necessary. I think you need to target the people that want to make it a destination. I don't think you can rely on foot traffic. You can't just send it to the public going, oh, look, pinball machines. What are these? That's not your target audience. However, I also don't like, and I know a couple of people have opened up these kind of arcades where they go to an industrial park and they basically,
    65:46
    you've got to drive through the industrial park and there's their little warehouse that they have all the machines in, I think that's a terrible idea too, because it's too difficult. There's nowhere to go. And there's no, there's no way to go around it. The thing is that like, exactly. Sort of thing. You probably have some restaurants around there that, you know, you partner with, you could actually say, look, go, go dine at this restaurant and get two free game credits. Well, I mean, just even catty corner from the location I'm talking about, uh, Costco and there's seven 11 and the taco place, you know, I mean, it's, it's all, you're in the middle of the city of the of the suburban city you know if you will yeah there's stuff to do basically it's not just your your little sort of hole in the universe right yeah and that is definitely the important thing location here is really important it's going to be it's not so much of a problem in america because everyone drives everywhere but in the case of netherworld it's successful because it's right near a train station yeah and you know you don't you can basically you can get boozed up you can get a skin full of booze and then you can catch train home. That's great. That is great. That is one of the great reasons why you go to Netherworld, because it's so accessible.
    66:53
    And those sort of things play into the success of the venue. So I think we came to the conclusion... Oh, you know what? And just for fun, I put in Zen's machine. Of course you would. I think we came to the conclusion, though, on the forum, that you're looking at probably needing a half a million just to start up? Half a million, yeah, to start up and also make sure you don't... You can, I guess, wait out the tough times if you establish a business. Because it takes six months for a business to become kind of profitable unless you've got a really special formula. I'd also love to know what the electric bill of a pinball arcade would be. A lot.
    67:38
    It would be quite a bit. I would definitely be getting a building that had solar panels on the top and offsetting your electricity with a Tesla wall and solar panels for sure. Because I did actually, the place I was looking, again, I'm not serious about this at all, folks, trust me, but to help my dream world be complete, I need to know all the particulars. And so I looked at it, it's 5,500 square feet inside, more than enough space for 20 pins.
    68:13
    And to have a facility that you could repair with a back room or whatever. $450 a month rent plus utilities, though.
    68:27
    And it's the utilities that you go, ooh, that's going to hurt. Yeah, the electricity is, yeah. The electricity would be just through the roof, I got to imagine. Especially during summer when you're having to crank the AC also because you know it's going to get hot in there. Yeah, make sure you can get solar panels for sure. So anyway, it was one of those things where I was like, okay, so now all I need is a dream investor. Yeah, you need to go for venture capitalists that can fund the thing. Instead, I'm thinking what I need to do, Jared, I need to start a GoFundMe to send me to Budapest so I can go tour the Zen facility. I've priced that out also it's probably around $3,000 $3,500 for the flights and hotel for a week should I do a GoFundMe for that? I don't know people do it for bliss seriously that's what I go you know what I've seen people be like I want a trip to Disneyland GoFundMe I'm like really? what?
    69:32
    yeah they funded it so you can bring a whole bunch of family members too and go do all the really expensive stuff wow okay good luck with that mate right i just out of curiosity i was checking out what the flight to budapest is oh that's ugly from from los angeles bad flight because you it's guaranteed one stop and i was saying flight times depending on how long your stop is uh anywhere from 16 hours to 32 hours. Right. Yeah.
    70:13
    It's not good. No. I'm going to have to ask Mel about that because I know he makes that trip. I don't know how often.
    70:20
    He'd have some hacks that he would use. He would have to have some. If anything, you know what my one hack would be? Have me fly into Chicago. I'll stay in Chicago for a day, go tour the Stern factory, and then hop on a plane again and go do the rest of the way.
    70:34
    Yeah. Stop-offs would make it tolerable, I think. Yeah. alright well I think we've had enough of this nonsense I've got people coming over in an hour and a bit so I need to do bathrooms and also yay there's vacuuming and children in the background at the moment so you should probably hear alright folks hey why don't you go tour our socials they are at blockade for the show you want to do that because right now you want to vote on my 80s comedy bracket you do want to do that and you want to go ahead and follow Jared at JaredMorris and you might as well follow me at ShutYourTraps. Then, you want to go visit our website. I already mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again. PinballArcade.
    71:22
    BlockadePinball.com slash episodes. And you can always drop us an email. BlahBlahBlockade at gmail.com. And for sure, go get yourself a t-shirt like what Jared's wearing right now over at RedBubble. Speak, Jared, so you pop up on the screen. Look, it's me. I've got a shirt on. See? It's green. One of the many flavors of shirt you can get on the BlackHate website. Exactly. Go do all those things, and we'll be stoked. We may or may not be having a podcast next week. It depends. I'm seeing Endgame normally during our podcast session, so it just kind of depends on what we're able to work out. If there's juicy news, we'll probably work it out, but if there's not, we might skip it. Yeah, exactly. So depending on your opinion of our podcast, pray or pray for no juicy news. All right. Until then, folks, we appreciate you listening and commenting, and we'll talk to you all again later. Bye-bye. See you later.
    72:18
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    72:32
    don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball